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I think there must be a misprint somewhere. He must have meant unlikely. The unblinded rituximab study is interesting here because the spurious positive effect lasted for three years. Sharpe and others have been trying to deny bias on the basis that it is unlikely to affect longer term results...

The comments by Bishop are interesting because they reveal a serious degree of blinkering. She is happy to be sceptical because the treatment is commercial. Everyone can be sceptical for that reason. But she seems to think the methodology was OK. She picks patient allocation and statistics as...

Maybe Norwegians have a thing about lights in the sky? I have always found them very sensible and sympathetic but we all have our demons it seems.

I think we may find that, like the Ouroboros, the system starts to eat its own tail. The Journal of Health Psychology has been printing the unthinkable quite a lot recently. And the runaway publishing system that allows any old nonsense to be published and garner reads and citations turns out to...

@Aurator, I am not aware of any known link between ME and lymphocytic gastritis. From what I can see it is an uncommon but recognised form of gastritis that may not have any specific relation to Helicobacter. I don't think anyone is going to be able to advise anything specific, and of course...

It's only a limitation of science if the scientists have limited initiative. As I have mentioned before I published a trial in lupus using exactly the sort of outcome measure you are advocating - each patient having a different definition of minor or major improvement. There were no complaints...

There used to be an Andrew Gelman active on forums. Young, bright and motivated. He may have 'disappeared' on purpose. If this is he then well done to get this out. Edit: having read the piece I suspect there may be two Andrews Gelman. Edit: There are.

Now that my attention has been drawn to it, mild ME is pretty much a contradiction. I don't think I ever considered the concept of mild rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is not a mild problem, even when limited and stable. The four levels sound sensible but I wonder whether it should be...

I didn't catch the straight line part.

I am so glad that you forgot Wittgenstein. He is a phoney. But Hyperaspistes raised the issue in 1641 of whether Descartes thinking mind was necessarily the same as the mind that knew it thought. Descartes had in fact touched on the problem himself. I agree there is a lot to pursue there. But...

Very peculiar.

So none of those statements adds up to what was quoted in Norway. One might seem to : if there was a general and consistent view that it was of poor scientific quality then it would give us cause for concern. This is not the case in relation to PACE But they are not saying that it is not the...

Livedo reticularis has two meanings. In both cases it describes a red/blue/purple pattern that corresponds to the drainage territories of skin venules. In one sense it is a normal phenomenon that tends to occur with temperature changes. It is most often seen in the legs. Some people have it...

It does seem worrying that they advertised for people interested in ME/fibro research about autonomic dysfunction and then discovered that the patients had signs of autonomic dysfunction. How do we know that this was not because people who knew they had autonomic dysfunction were keen to apply...

Did Montgomery actually say that?

Indeed, the first sentence you quoted from me goes with the ones before, not the one after!

I will do my best.

I know some who do. I can think of some on the NICE committee but I don't want to name names. I understand the pessimism but when we have Luis Nacul being appointed to head a large facility in Canada I think there is hope for a change. There are professionals who are totally theory neutral and...

Yes, that does seem a sensible option!

It looks reasonable but what I find disappointing is that I think I could probably have invented it myself without any special experience - just from knowing the symptoms and what PWME find difficult. If expert advice is to be worth anything as truly expert I would hope to see some unexpected...