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The similarity of pattern does not need an explanation. 'Glove and stocking' patterns and unilateral 'arm and leg' patterns are standard patterns for apparent neurological signs that turn out not to be due to any structural lesions. Every medical trainee is taught about them and familiar with...

I have recently gone through McEvedy and Beard in detail. I am not clear what 'hysteria' is intended to mean. I certainly do not know what the scientific basis of the 'conversion disorder' concept is or why mass hysteria should be considered 'transmitted emotional distress'. However, I think McE...

My experience of the mechanics of medical articles in newspapers is that most of what is written is actually a transcript of material provided by people the journalist has rung up the week before. Some bits appear as quotes but even the other bits are mostly re-writes of what the 'ghost-writers'...

That is just complete crap. Lupus has nothing whatever to do with ME or fibro. The guff about genetics and triggers is just lain ignorant too. So who is ghost writing here? Why does nobody care that journalism is so bad?

That seems to be something of a watershed statement. So basically the psychological and social components of ME are no more relevant than for diabetes and coronary artery disease. Maybe he should quietly tell the psychotherapists that. You don't get better from diabetes with CBT. I get the...

Thanks @Chris Ponting. But let me argue, because that is how I have always done my science. I find it saves a huge amount of wasted effort in the lab. The patients want a result by Christmas. I agree that further GWAS should be planned. But to my mind the crucial step is confirming that there...

This just seems to be a marketing site for quack therapies so is there anything surprising? This is Wakefield/Trump land stuff.

Looking at links it seems that this comes from CauseHealth, which is associated with someone called Nancy Cartwright and involves philosophers (the author seems to be a philosopher) and also with a university called NMBU in Nrway. As I suspected this has links with the organisation that Iain...

The Pariente review is really a very clear exposition of just how muddled the BPS thinking is. He does not appear to understand that there is no such thing as a 'psychiatric interpretation' of biological changes that is of any use in understanding causation. Psychiatric descriptions do not...

It sounds like a psychotherapist using pseudo-philosophy to advertise their mumbo jumbo. The philosophical content is all rubbish. The basic argument is that although evidence is nice if things are complicated it is better to make things up as you go along.

= their overstatement should be replaced (compulsory) with my overstatement.

It seems a non story about women being bullied. Men get bullied in science too, and recently the main bully was a woman. It is a dog eat dog business full of bad interpersonal relations but what's new? The real problem is patronage and pecking order, which MRC have always had a problem with...

The relevant body would be the Medicines Control Agency, or current equivalent, which decides drugs are safe and effective enough to licence. But their remit is to do just that, not to make general comments about quality of science. The quality of the science anyone can comment on and it is not...

Quoting that would seem to be a bad mistake at this point.

On thinking, I don't think Watt's reference to Cochrane can have had anything to do with my comment,other than perhaps as a memory jogging. It would be an extraordinarily risky tactic.

I think he is talking the same language but he is using the words in a way that makes no anatomical sense. He talks of a tender point over the left breast related to the thoracic duct. But the thoracic duct is way deep inside the ribcage. I don't see how you are going to get varicose lymphatics...

There are other things mentioned to me in confidence. I was initially pessimistic that anyone within Cochrane would actually be motivated to make a significant change but I am less so now.

Yes, if this was in response to my comment she seems to have missed the point that it was Cochrane who had expressed worry that their reviews of ME/CFS might not have been gold standard after all. When I was asked to referee a review of exercise therapy I was expected to fill in a form from the...

I doubt it. Chris Ponting will make sure whatever is appropriate will get done I think.

I don't think sending off individual samples is much use if the gene variant is present at around 40% in normals. What is needed are formal, if small, stuies of well documented ME cohorts and matched controls. I am not sure that cohorts derived from internet based enquiries are going to be...