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I think that claiming expert support in anything, but failing to name those experts, is not a good idea. Any work should stand or fall on its own content, and only named proponents should "count" towards validating opinions there. Glibly stating that you have important people in the background...

Well, as someone from the UK who has ME, and whose son also has ME, and whose idea of an exotic trip to the wilds meant a caravan in Cornwall or Norfolk, it would be hard to come up with some sort of foreign assault on our systems. I have watched a fair amount of David Attenborough though.

@Jonathan Edwards , this remark has been rattling around in the back of my brain for a while. I think that both you and I, comfortably retired from a secure job, financially stable and male, can easily underestimate the pressures put on more junior members. If you have a large mortgage hanging...

@Peter Kemp , thanks for the graphs: I love looking at the way different analyses can be presented. What puzzles me though is what your horizontal axis represents. You'll find that in our "evaluatingpace" webpages we analysed the changes in fatigue levels in a different way.

This bit bothers me, @Peter Kemp . Why would anyone choose not to look at other analyses of the PACE trial to see what actually has been covered? And why would someone assume that such studies are limited when they have not read the various papers (including those in the JoHP)? As someone who...

The thee grades are A, BA, and UBA – awful, bloody awful, and unbelievably bloody awful.

Actually, @Lucibee , there is one of us that has benefited from some of your wisdom, and has greatly appreciated it. Or appreciated it greatly if you prefer. I come from this in a different direction altogether. I guess, as an ex-teacher, I'd definitely describe myself more as a conversational...

Well I've done more than my fair share of that, but I do agree with you. Can I offer a perspective? We need the public on our side, and banging on about the PACE trial isn't going to do that at all. In that sense I totally agree with you. Most of the MPs fall into that camp as well. They need...

Clearly this must become my new justification.

At the moment I am bathing in bleach each night in the hope that the Lightening Process will cure me. If it does, I promise to remain a pain in the neck for all the PACE fans. Perhaps we should create a new, more inclusive category to replace MUS, within which variants like ME can continue to...

How about Wesselian Intolerance Syndrome? My son and I are labelled ME or CFS depending on who we see. My wife has the label "fibro". I have friends with EDS, some of whom also have the ME label. For one, the ME label may well change to EDS. The overlap between the conditions is too great to...

I'd forgotten all about that set of graphs! Thanks!

I've been watching the animated GIFs a number of times, and the patterns are making me think that we really do need to get additional data about whether the patients were diagnosed with depression, CFS alone, or ME. It seems to me that in all groups the bulk of the patients show the same...

Yes, but it does emphasise the effect of the scaredy-cat therapy called APT. In effect you have one group that is told "You've got CFS, here's some painkillers, now get on with it!" You have two groups that are told "You are making a big drama out of it: get real, it's not as bad as you say!"...

Sorry @Lucibee ! I saw in the later post that you used Excel, but couldn't work out what you used to create the animated Gif. With Cheetah3D you don't have a graphing option, so you have to plot each point by hand (well, if you scale it properly, you have to specify each co-ordinate), but the...

Many years ago, when I was a mere slip of a lad, there was a computer called an Amiga, and some graphic software that did "tweening". You plotted where a point started and where it ended, then it moved from one to the other according to the type of movement you wanted. I think our Amiga had 2...

Actually, I love the GIF. You need to look at it a lot of times to see various patterns emerge. For example, they all have points which drop, either on the sf-36 PF or on the 6-min walk, but, credit to GET, not many of those patients drop their walking distance, but does have several dropping on...

The explanation that I heard was that the shaking and diluting process enables the water to retain a memory of the shape of the molecules of the added substance. Give me credit, I kept a straight face, which was necessary in the cirumstances.

Well you live and learn. There's me thinking that I'm not remotely musical, and it appears I've got a tensor timpani reflex.

Subjective assessment can be more "reliable" if the trial is truly double-blinded. An easy one would be in homeopathy, where the homeopathist could prescribe a certain mixture, but the patient could easily be presented with plain water (that is, as opposed to water that had been shaken and...