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Absolutely agree, this is a most weird and internally contradictory approach. A sort of BPS pastiche. Maybe rather than BPS it is BSP (bromsulphthalein if I remember rightly) or PBS (phosphate buffered saline) or SPB (a general term for societies for the protection of birds)?? Or maybe it is...

So this overview is from the editor-in-chief of the Royal College of Physicians educational journal aimed at trainees. God help us. A while back I was a bit optimistic that the MUS story would do an Icarus-style crash through its inherent absurdity. It certainly does not look like it now. I...

I sincerely hope so, it is largely disinformation. Which was a tantrum?

Looking at the blurb for the magazine is pretty dispiriting. It is indeed for children. The mission statement includes: peer-reviewed journal of the Royal College of Physicians, Clinical Medicine (ClinMed) publishes advances in general and specialist medicine and authoritative reviews ... it...

Indeed: 'The first thing to learn in medicine is how to make things up without letting on - how to bullshit professionally.'

It is produced by the Royal College of Physicians and is clearly intended as curricular material for trainee physicians. Which makes it a catastrophe. Medicine based on the blind leading the blind.

It would be cheering if one could be sure it meant what it seemed to. Just as patients will tell therapists that their treatment is wonderful, even if they are a bit worse people can be relied on to say the NHS is great. And of course it is. (Or it was before it completely collapsed about two...

In a sense I agree but in a sense I think that is wishful thinking. The politics of western democracies has recently been bedevilled by the fact that nearly half of the population seem to vote for things that are not only bad but not in those voters' interests. Artefacts of electoral systems...

Modelling has nothing to o with predicting Long Covid. You cannot predict the fuel consumption of a car that has not been invented yet. Some infections produce long term syndromes and some do not and we have no idea why so there is nothing to put in to a model.

Another angle: I was really querying whether Monbiot was taking an easy way out dissing scientists and medics. Because the paper he writes for, the Guardian, has done its darnedist to support the sort of touchy feely BPS rubbish that is the real problem. I guess the point is that you cannot...

I am a bit tired having driven to London to take up an offer of Pfizer vaccine first dose somehow wangled by a relative (also a doctor) under them with two different life threatening illnesses who was high priority - or maybe just because they had screwed up calling people in having opened the...

Sorry but that is back to front. The existence of ME, under whatever name, has been public knowledge for a century or more. The public is consulted every time there is an election. People can elect to have adequate health care and research or to make do with an inadequate disorganised system. I...

I am not denying that there is a systemic problem that affects medical research, medical practice and policy. I am simply saying that it is naive to blame scientists and medics any more than blaming fisherman for overfishing. Edwards did not believe that until after several years of finding...

Excellent

I see what you mean but isn't this expecting things back to front? It is a bit like expecting Esso and Shell not ensure they do not pollute the sea, without bothering to ask them. If challenged Esso could say 'all we know is that we were asked to find people some oil, if we bothered about the...

I have seen the El Pais story elsewhere. Vallance has certainly realised that the Israeli data cast significant doubt on any suggestion that a single dose has major efficacy. I strongly suspect that what is being fed through the UK media is being filtered. You can read an article on El Pais free...

The public have mouthpieces - they are called members of parliament, whom they elect and whom they can lobby locally. My neighbourhood constantly lobbies our MP about dustbins and about burglaries and about planning permissions and having mosques built in Golders Green and about car parking and...

I don't buy that. If the public and the government cared it would be transparently obvious to them that nothing useful was being achieved. Caring means being prepared to check that things are the way they should be - like caring that rivers are not polluted or that airline pilots are properly...

I would say so. Surely if no government has attempted to help patients they must not care. By definition if they cared they would have done something. I agree that responsibility can get spread too thin and one might ask exactly who it is that is not caring but pretty much by definition if the...

I think the comment tells it all. What researcher would give up researching because the patients were angry? And if it was a psychiatrist that would be completely absurd. I don't think this sort of comment does that much harm and may expose the ridiculous stance of the BPS crowd. I actually...