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There comes a point with this sort of research when you get what I think is called an 'embarras de richesse' - too many good things. If they end up finding that hypermobility is associated with every condition they study the likely conclusion is that they are not measuring hypermobility...

Good to see therapy is given separately from health science.

This is so much what it is all about, I agree, @Esther12. One has to keep asking oneself how rational one is really being. After all it might be crazy to think that Simon Wessely had no idea what he was talking about. And it might be equally crazy to think 100 academics writing to the Lancet had...

It looks as if Cochrane has become just another commercial outfit like everything else in Trumpland. But my suspicion is that this may have been the reality all along, but in a previous world where idealism diluted money making. The problem seeems to be all about vested interest. I think from...

I doubt it. The trial was designed to answer one question and the answer was no.

I think he is retired so he may be some sort of 'honorary associate' or something.

Probably not because there are autoimmune diseases that do not respond - especially if the plasma cells making the antibodies are long lived.

I have said this before elsewhere but it may be fair to say it again here. This is not actually the case in practice and it is not what one would expect in theory either, knowing what we do of how B cells work. The evidence for immune activation triggering autoimmunity is pretty much zero, with...

Some nice comments in there. I am not sure about us knowing less about the female body and women being excluded from research. Certainly in my lifetime. Several of the really big epidemiological studies have been on women - like the nurses study in the States. My memory is that far more work...

I have no idea how the management works but there does not seem to be much scrutiny of what goes on in terms of the actual reviews. I am not aware of any alternative organisation and I doubt there would be.

No, a hidden agenda for medicine as a whole. Maybe to do with knocking pharma and rooting for home grown therapies. Cochrane was set up by a GP rather than an academic, as I understand it.

The originator of Cochrane, Iain Chalmers, now has a position in a Norwegian institution, maybe NIPH. Two different Norwegian organisations seem to crop up in relation to key Cochrane names. I do not know quite what is going on but there does seem to be a major Norwegian link up. That would fit...

I have got the impression that Cochrane had a hidden agenda from the start but it remained hidden and perhaps benign for years. As for the SMC it may be hard to define exactly what that agenda was. If there is a power battle recognised by Cochrane board members then things are clearly way out...

Antibodies cannot be activated or primed. They just bind to what they like to bind to. What may be relevant is that the binding in itself does not do much in most autoimmune diseases. (there are exceptions where the antibody binding actually alters pathways.) In order to get inflammation the...

I am pleased to say that we can be fairly sure the NICE committee will take no notice whatever of this!!

Presumably this is a departmental advert page so maybe Dr Sharpe wrote it.

I think you have to be very careful about this sort of thing and probably keep clear of it. TripAdvisor does this and has a major vetting system and even so has run into major legal problems. In the medical and academic world there are sites called Rate the Professor or Rate the Doctor and...

I don't see any prospect of hospitals feeling their reputations are at stake. If they ask for an expert opinion they will be told that what they are doing is fine and the patients are just being difficult. From a human nature perspective I see no prospect of getting a wanted result. And my...

I am not sure what animal models would be relevant. This looks a bit airy fairy to me.

Because in the case of flu the doctors said - oh it's bad flu. So people coped as best they could, knowing what was wrong. For the Royal Free situation the doctor said 'golly this looks like some weird neurological illness that we have never seen before - what could it be!!!?' So it was all...