Scott D. Miller
Founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence and originator of Feedback-Informed Treatment. Writes about what actually makes a therapist effective, usually against the field's own assumptions about training and experience.
Scott D. Miller did not write this page. What is this?
It collects the places they publish and what they have said there, each linked to the source. They have no account here. Is this you? Claim it, correct it, or ask us to remove it from ppll.
Where they publish
scottdmiller.comSite The International Center for Clinical Excellence, which he directs, and the Feedback-Informed Treatment materials.
The home of Feedback-Informed Treatment: the measures, the training, and the research he cites when he argues that therapists do not improve with experience unless they measure what they are doing.
Link verified 3 Sept 2026.
writings.scottdmiller.comBlog The archive of the old blog. Dormant since January 2025 and says so at the top of every page.
Years of posts on therapist effectiveness — the Lake Wobegon studies, the nickel-and-a-cup-of-coffee piece on clinical experience, the first bona fide deliberate-practice trial. Kept online as an archive; new writing moved to the Substack.
Open writings.scottdmiller.com
Link verified 3 Sept 2026.
Scott D. MillerNewsletter Where he writes now, since the old blog was archived at the start of 2025.
The current writing: new outcome research, deliberate practice, and the field's habit of selling training that does not change results.
Open scottdmiller.substack.com
Recent
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- Playboy 24 May 2026
- Grilled Cheese 10 May 2026
- The Accidental Therapist 3 May 2026
- Dollars & Sense 19 Apr 2026
- Fragments 12 Apr 2026
- Bull 28 Mar 2026
- Raspberries 26 Aug 2025
- Breach 17 Apr 2025
- Talisman 20 Feb 2025
- Blinds 9 Feb 2025
- Sticky 24 Jan 2025
- Agape 14 Jan 2025
- Nonstop 5 Jan 2025
- Obedience 29 Dec 2024
- Favor 7 Dec 2024
- BFF 29 Nov 2024
- Abandon 21 Nov 2024
Link verified 3 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Beliefs
What they believeKorrents 6 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
A therapy is only shown to be more effective if it is compared against another treatment intended to help, not against a control nobody expected to work.
If one really wanted to know whether a treatment (e.g., CBT, IPT, ACT, EMDR) was more effective, it had to be directly compared to an approach intended to help - what Wampold and colleagues termed, a "bona fide" treatment. Doing otherwise, they argued, conflated artifacts of research design with actual research results.
Results from the first bona fide study of deliberate practice Said 11 Sept 2024
Therapists overestimate their own effectiveness by about 65%, and it is not a Western cultural artifact.
Since 2012 when the first study appeared in the literature, others have been published documenting the tendency of practitioners to overestimate their effectiveness - on average, by 65% (1, 2).
Alas, it seems everyone comes from Lake Wobegon Said 21 Aug 2024
Training a therapist in a treatment model does not make them more effective, however well the model performs in a trial.
Over the last 50 years, treatment methods have proliferated despite a lack of evidence of differential effectiveness between approaches. And even when a randomized controlled trial indicates a particular approach works, none show practitioners become more effective when they are trained in that modality.
How to (and not to) become a more effective therapist Said 2 Jul 2024
Show 3 more
What does make a therapist more effective is trainable interpersonal skill, not treatment technology.
It turns out that therapists who perform well on the FIS establish stronger relationships and are more effective (2). More to the point, the evidence shows FIS-related skills are trainable and that such training leads to better results (3, 4, 5).
How to (and not to) become a more effective therapist Said 2 Jul 2024
Therapists do not improve with experience: on average they become less effective, and their clients drop out more the longer they have practised.
Indeed, as I've reported in previous posts, research not only shows therapists do not improve with time and experience in the field, but on average become less effective (1, 2, 3, 4).
What therapist experience, a nickel, and cup of coffee have in common Said 21 May 2024
The field should stop attributing benefits to clinical experience, because believing in it is itself what stops therapists improving.
It's time for the field to stop attributing benefits to clinical experience. Beyond the obvious ethical concerns, doing so actually prevents us from improving our effectiveness!
What therapist experience, a nickel, and cup of coffee have in common Said 21 May 2024
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Latest
Full feed →Everything, newest firstFeed Posts and beliefs from the cards above, in one stream.
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- Fans 6 Aug
- Walmart 1 Jul
- The Fish 16 Jun
- Playboy 24 May
- Grilled Cheese 10 May
- The Accidental Therapist 3 May
Show 15 more
- Dollars & Sense 19 Apr
- Fragments 12 Apr
- Bull 28 Mar
- Raspberries 26 Aug 2025
- Breach 17 Apr 2025
- Talisman 20 Feb 2025
- Blinds 9 Feb 2025
- Sticky 24 Jan 2025
- Agape 14 Jan 2025
- A therapy is only shown to be more effective if it is compared against another treatment intended to help, not against a control nobody expected to work. 11 Sept 2024
- Therapists overestimate their own effectiveness by about 65%, and it is not a Western cultural artifact. 21 Aug 2024
- What does make a therapist more effective is trainable interpersonal skill, not treatment technology. 2 Jul 2024
- Training a therapist in a treatment model does not make them more effective, however well the model performs in a trial. 2 Jul 2024
- The field should stop attributing benefits to clinical experience, because believing in it is itself what stops therapists improving. 21 May 2024
- Therapists do not improve with experience: on average they become less effective, and their clients drop out more the longer they have practised. 21 May 2024