July 30, 2026
“That alliance and symptom change nudge each other week by week is not evidence that one of them drives the other.”
“The alliance predicts who improves more than it predicts when – and in this study that held equally in China and the United States.”
“The advice on repairing a strained alliance is remarkably consistent, which is easy to mistake for strong evidence when in fact all 25 studies cite a single research program.”
“A bond a patient rates as high as a human's tells us about the patient's experience, not about whether the software is doing therapy.”
“Before this paper, Russian services could talk about the alliance but not measure it – now they can, provided they accept a single score in place of Bordin's three factors.”
“The relationship earns demonstrably effective, but several moves we treat as established sit, honestly labelled, under insufficient research to judge.”