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'Such is the nature of large pragmatic trials. ' Oops, Wessely does not even seem to know what a 'pragmatic trial' is. The one thing you could not call PACE is a pragmatic trial. It was supposed to be gold standard watertight, definitive.

I see a logical error here. The issue of informed consent is only different for children because it is assumed that they may not be old enough to come to an opinion that is adequately informed. That being the case, asking them if they are keen to be involved makes no sense because we have to...

I didn't say anything about him paying for the beer!

'Last comment then that’s it. I didn’t mean to trigger all this but have followed your career with interest since those happy days at Lamar which will always be precious to me . If you are ever in london it would be good to catch up for our own version of “40 Years On”.' Maybe Wessely is still...

As Sarah says, simply because the rule is they have to tick a box in a certain time so a cheap 'service' that gets patients out of the hands of doctors is ideal. It is a complete scam. And if you engineer it that everyone can be scored to be a bit better you are 'value for money'.

'I continue to believe they did a good job with the trial and that it was carried out to a high standard the data is sound even if the results are relatively modest Such is the nature of large pragmatic trials. Our book on clinical trials written pre PACE talks about this' It is interesting...

I would be worried that this 'frailty' label is pretty vague and like 'fatigue' may just confuse everything. Just as you do not treat all fatigue the same way it is unlikely that you would treat frailty, defined by these criteria, the same way. I am also a bit doubtful about what these figures...

Trying to exemplify humility ain't quite the same as being humble (especially if you lecture people on human nature along the way). Us professors and lawyers need to listen a bit more sometimes. These ordinary patient people know rather more what they are talking about than might appear from a...

What is useful about flagging up this document is that it makes it completely transparent that those in charge of PACE and IAPT do not understand the difference between reliable evidence/inference and making things up as you go along. It is revealed. These people do not understand how science...

Nice to see Mike Godwin engaging. This last bit does sound a little bit like teaching granny to suck eggs though. The PWME who have been pointing out the problems with trials have done a brilliant job of uncoupling refutation of theory from condemnation. Alem Matthees, Tom Kindlon, Carolyn...

Proven shingles in a 9/10 year old should definitely be investigated by a clinical immunologist for immunodeficiency syndromes.

Sterling work. @Robert 1973 (And thanks for the book, which should be home soon.)

I might also comment that this has nothing to do with agreement about theories of treatment. It is just pointing out that the trials of CBT and GET in ME are incompetent scientifically. Any decent lawyer should be able to recognise this level of incompetence.

'I know some basics about research methodology, and I've exposed bad research a time or two, but I'm not at all qualified to assess the claims in this particular debate.' Perhaps someone could tweet to indicate to Mike Godwin that he is fully qualified to assess the claims in this debate. All...

Shingles in childhood is very uncommon. It will occur in young people who have immunodeficiency because of chemotherapy for leukaemia for instance. There may be very rare cases in otherwise healthy children but extremely rare I think.

A nice paper. I see Indigo has got theURL for everyone to see. Basically it shows that IAPT is hopeless for the conditions that CBT is supposed to be standard for. It does not even mention MUS or ME or the problems of PACE. But it is worse than that. Although the author is clearly being...

A nice abstract. I will presumably be able to get at this through college but it takes me a while to get through the system. This is presumably what David Marks flagged up as imminent a week or so ago. I thought the figure must be getting somewhere near a billion. With my 96 year old mother...

Undegenous retroviruses, ERV. Like mitochondria they are bits from elsewhere that got incorporated over the millennia.

My understanding is that we are all riddled with bits of retrovirus and it is entirely normal. For instance a common form of the complement factor 4 gene has a bit of retrovirus stuck in it.

It shows that the people who did better did better than the people who didn't do so well. That is not a very useful conclusion.