“…Most authors credit the randomized controlled trials, published in the late 1950s, with having disproved the idea that insulin coma therapy was effective (Burns, 2019;James, 1992), especially the trial that compared it with a barbiturate-induced coma and found no difference in outcome (Ackner, Harris and Oldham, 1957). For some, it marks the start of the movement towards 'evidence based medicine' because it was the first therapy to be rejected on the basis of randomized controlled trials (Andrews, Briggs, Porter, Tucker and Waddington, 1997;Burns, 2019). Others have described how insulin coma therapy was, in its time, seen as an efficacious and scientific treatment for mental illness (Doroshow, 2007), suggesting that today's view of evidence and what qualifies as 'scientific' is quite different from that of the recent past.…”