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I've just finished the 2nd blog. I'm no expert in UK BPS history, but I think the blogs are very well done. A number of the points we seem to have to make over and over again when evaluating BPS papers are well made in the blogs. e.g. (edited to remove note now covered by mod note upthread)

I agree. But, at the same time, a lot of people don't look very deeply at the evidence behind the statements. I think papers like this one probably do convince quite a lot of people that there is a huge stack of robust research on a wide range of biological anomalies. And those people...

I'm not sure that I've registered the term 'redox imbalance' before. The authors have suggested that redox imbalance 'may be a marker for systemic inflammation'. It sounds as though its about overproduction of ROS and reactive nitrogen species. So, the theory goes - infection or other...

I don't think either of those statements can be made with such certainty. Reading this paper, I'm left with the feeling that we have got to get some decent replication of studies to confirm (or disprove) the assumptions about ME/CFS that some ME/CFS experts state so confidently and that are the...

I don't think it's complete enough to say the physical stressors are exercise and prolonged upright position. Lots of people with ME/CFS don't do any formal exercise. It's physical activity that is the problem. I don't know that we have evidence that emotional stressors produce a worsening of...

Some posts about people with Long Covid receiving CCI diagnoses have been moved to this Members only thread: Structural spinal problems and ME - blogs and social media

I think that article by Ben Hsuborger is helpful in understanding the issues around this review, and I'm glad to see that MEAction is working effectively on providing feedback on the review. Apologies if it has already been mentioned on the thread, but this was information that was new to me...

Yes, but what is planned and what is reported are both not necessarily what actually happened in every instance. And it's difficult to standardise effective encouragement - disinterested encouragement that is delivered according to a schedule in a flat fashion, or ambivalent encouragement when...

For those interested in the questions @Snowdrop poses - 'What is going on and how is it getting done in the NIHR?', we have this thread: Transparency, the MRC and NIHR (UK) I think it's important that funders of the continuous stream of rubbish research from BPS proponents are challenged on...

No objective outcomes for their planned 'definitive RCT'. The study result is in safe hands.

Yes, and the issue of the six-minute walking test being only partially an objective test. There's plenty of scope for making an extra effort, or not.

Every time I see something new from Crawley, I think 'please, please, (Crawley) just go away'. I don't think the lack of a well developed PROM is the main barrier to improving treatment. If Crawley really wants to improve treatment of young people with ME/CFS, a useful thing she could do would...

Yes, the pre-test level of fatigue is an important thing to think about. Unfortunately, I don't think many researchers have thought about it enough. The reality of trials with respect to controlling confounding variables is, I think, often quite different to what we might hope for. Before...

Was anyone else struck by how similar his video appeared to @Adam pwme's videos in the opening sequences? The music, the text, the clip of someone talking. The similarity broke down really quickly of course, because whereas Adam was able to use a whole range of experts to make points, in...

I wonder if it ever crossed his mind that, if he stuck to evidence rather than flights of fancy, he could, as an Infectious Diseases doctor have said 'post-viral fatigue syndrome following a viral infection is common. Most people will recover spontaneously in 6 months, and nearly everyone will...

The International Consensus Criteria? I think Chapter 2, which describes MUS and ME/CFS could use some editing. It gets tangled up in whether ME and CFS are different, and the details of the criteria. I don't think a lot of the information is really needed to address the topic indicated in...

I should add that I appreciate David Marks' contribution to the challenging of PACE and MUS in general. And his effort in putting this document together - I am sure it will make a difference. Although this sentence about the prevalence of MUS is true (ie one source does give that estimate), I...

Actually Ron Davis is chair of OMF's Scientific Advisory Board, which is different to chairing OMF. wholistic > holistic Some particularly nice bits (I'm not very far into it yet) Interesting use of the 'Wessely School' - perhaps that is a good term to use as we consider his legacy.

Here one thread talking about it: Psychology & Health: Perfectionism and beliefs about emotions in adolescents with chronic fatigue syndrome and their parents (2019) Chalder et al. The Child and Adolescent Perfectionism Scale (Flett et al., 2016) is a 22-item scale, which measures two factors...

This from another paper on perfectionism in ME/CFS: They group the questions that are supposed to identify perfectionism into little categories to create more opportunities for finding something that is different in people with ME/CFS. In that quote that I've given, they have taken the reaching...