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Lovely example, of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story. The results of this study didn't even find a reliable difference in Toronto Alexithymia Scale scores between CFS pts and healthy controls. Which is pretty surprising, actually, since the questionnare is loaded to generate...

The photo, the photo! Yea, sure, MECFS is just like having a slightly sore neck at end of a busy day.

eeew indeed. Can't stand adults disrespecting their own kids to try and cosy in with other adults.

Damn, I think I just answered my own question:

Yea, its also incredibly arrogant not to recognise that many aren't as lucky as her. Honestly, those who've had the disease and have known other sufferers have no excuse for that sort of ignorance. Lets hope that she was aware of that, perhaps the piece was edited?

Did any of the key BPS figures say anything at all on the day? I can't see anything by them.

Yea, Ed Bullmore. Amazing how many people are shoehorning it into a psychosocial account of depression, though. Its all that negative thinking that causes the immune dysfunction.

The sarcasm was noted and appreciated by me! I think this paper was really interesting @Andy, thanks for posting about it. You can find the full thing here: http://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/s41380-018-0058-9. Here is the interesting bit: So in other words, people diagnosed after their first episode...

I have to say, I really love the "may" here! We couldn't possibly commit ourselves to saying it does devastate lives and families now, could we? Don't know whether that's because they believe their offerings are so great that devastation can be avoided through due adherence, or just because...

Thought this was an interesting example of a situation where papers can be retracted, even when there's no major error or hint of fraud. A paper reporting adverse effects associated with the use of HPV vaccine has been retracted from Scientific Reports...

In case you were wondering about the biomarkers, they say this: So defo a psychosocial orientation then. Also, the patients' evening cortisol levels at baseline were high compared to previous healthy and depressed samples. Its hard to make out what was going on for IL-6 and TNF-alpha, because...

Yes, it seems well-intentioned. But let's not forget that this author really believed that their talk therapy might be capable of modifying the disease - including not only self-reported symptoms/fatigue but also specific biomarkers. So the framework is very much psychosocial. There is also...

I've come to delight in this pic appearing at unexpected intervals in our discussions... Makes me smile more each time I see it. Like savouring a joke only we understand.

For me, its quite validating to see these researchers expose the true mindlessness of their ideas. I found it frustrating when we had a conversation about Edwards on PR a while back and some were saying he was heading up "real", "legitimate" research. Because he used some neuro-terminology that...

It very likely was, at least in many cases, because if the GET patients, as a group, had genuinely increased their activity levels , it should have shown up in the form of improved fitness one year later. But in fact, the GET group was not significantly different from the control group on that...

Or else the therapist IS doing CBT but thinks that it would be counter-productive to reveal this fact to the patient.

I'm a bit late to the party, but I just wanted to point out that another danger in basing criticisms of PACE on the overly loose selection criteria is that it implies we believe there are at least two different illnesses: "real" ME and "all other fatigue", and it also implies that the second...

I don't remember saying anything like this, @Snowdrop, but I completely agree. I do agree that society and environment in general can play a huge role in certain forms of psychological distress. For example, a woman from an underprivileged background, no money, no job skills, no real options...

What a complete and total cluster***! Wonder what prompted them to own up to the massive error? Moral courage? Fear of getting found out? Someone important noticing something fishy? Its fascinating to speculate!

I'm wondering what they would make of ME, and given that the evidence for biological causation of ME isn't in-your-face obvious, I suspect it would fall into the category of an expression of distress, which arises due to the interaction between the individual and the limits and expectations...