Once again Science Based Medicine shows that it's just a propaganda outlet for big pharma:

"The study is characterized as blinded; but the blinding didn’t work, since 95% of subjects were able to tell which group they were in."

As the researchers themselves say, the purpose of the study was to test their methodology before doing larger trials, including whether or not their blinding protocols were effective. They are going to be using active placebos for phase III, which are much more effective for blinding. In fact many of the other studies they've done already use active placebos, either a lower dose of MDMA or else something like methylphenidate. The authors address this in the actual study and explain that they now have FDA approval to use a three-arm protocol in the future, but SBM is pretending that this a methodological problem they found themselves.

"There is only a pilot study with scanty, preliminary, unconfirmed evidence."

There have been at least a dozen studies looking at MDMA as a treatment for PTSD, but again the author is pretending that this is the only one.

"Experiments using illegal drugs are always problematic, because researchers tend to be advocates for legalization and may be biased by their emotional investment."

Most of the MDMA studies use a triple blind methodology which is far more rigorous than the methodology that big pharma uses. What this means is that not only are the patients and the people administering the drug blinded (or will be going into phase III trials), but also the people analyzing the data were not the ones administering the drugs so they have no idea who was in each group.

Also, these are multi-site trials going on in various countries around the world, including ones where the legal status and cultural baggage surrounding MDMA is wildly different in both researchers and the general population.

"The patients in the placebo group improved, too; so a large part of the benefit could be attributed to the psychotherapy."

As one would expect. However, they still had PTSD whereas the people who got the MDMA didn't. Additionally, studies have shown that the MDMA group continues to improve in the months and years after therapy much more than the control group.

"The addition of MDMA to psychotherapy might prove helpful in refractory cases of PTSD, but the preliminary results of this one small pilot study will need to be confirmed by larger studies in combat veterans before the treatment can recommended to patients."

Agreed. Except for that again there have been many studies of MDMA as a treatment for PTSD, not just this one.

"Unfortunately, the history of medicine is full of equally promising treatments that didn’t pan out. Probably the most typical course is this: a strongly positive pilot study is followed by larger studies with weaker positive results, then by studies with equivocal or negative results, then reports of serious side effects or other problems, and eventually by rejection of the treatment. I sincerely hope this one will prove an exception to that course, for the sake of suffering veterans with few remaining options. But I am not optimistic."

The reason why this has happened consistently in medicine is because the studies are being funded by for profit companies and they are using extremely biased methodology to make their drugs look much better than they actually are. Whereas MAPS is a non-profit, and their methodology is designed to be as neutral as possible. The research may well still not pan out as trial sizes increase and patients are more effectively double blinded, but there is definitely reason for optimism based on the results so far.

For what it's worth, there are numerous videos online where you can watch the researchers (and MAPS) talking about these studies:

http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video3.html (This video is with Michael Mithoefer, one of the researchers behind this study.)

http://vimeo.com/32062578 (Talk given by MAPS about the roadmap for getting MDMA approved.)

There are several more videos online here about both the mechanisms of action, the pharmacology, and the results of other trials:

http://www.maps.org/media/videos/