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Yes, the strict criteria in clinical trials is double-blinding or clear meaningful objective outcomes.

Only a poor tradesman blames their tools (in this case p-value). The problem is people making poor generalisations based on limited evidence, not the alpha itself.

It is quite clear they knew their results were going to be crap (reports from therapists and the FINE trial having null results) and that is why they reduced the analysis thresholds to what is basically the minimum possible change on questionnaires. There is no other reason why they would...

This is true, for biomarkers to be meaningful, there needs to be an impressive ROC - and of course the same is true for psychological associations if there are claims they are causally related.

Exactly. It would be fan-fucking-tastic if they worked!

This is correct, GET is a Cognitive-Behavioural-type therapy. The "effect" is the change on cognitions which results in a change on self-report questionnaires, but there is an absence of non-trivial changes on objective measures such as study/employment outcomes, actigraphy and...

And as we know, Michael Sharpe is an expert on designing analyses to yield desired results.

You must be ill!!!!!!!!!!11111111oneoneone

I had that severe vertigo very early on, but it passed after a few months.

All but one of those studies only tested urine or saliva... One of those studies tested blood in the morning and found that while patients had lower levels than controls, the average level was still well within normal levels. Apart from that, the other studies showed average group differences...

That is explicitly what psychiatrists care about - how patients feel about the illness. Central to the psychiatrist mindset is if patients say they feel better and don't complain to medical doctors etc, then this means they have done their job.

Yes. Vaccines are popular. Childhood vaccination rates continue to reach new highs across virtually all of the world, English speaking countries included and the impact of the now-disproven Wakefield scare only occurred in the UK with a dip in MMR vaccination rates that completely reversed in...

There is no evidence the amygdala is sharply aroused in CFS patients. The "sustained arousal" hypothesis (Wyller) and amygdala activation hypothesis remain unproven despite a modest amount of research attempting to investigate those hypotheses (with null results).

Simon Wessely gave the game away when he more or less said they had changed the outcomes so that the results "would be consistent with earlier trials". This is bad science by definition. We can deduce the story - the group allocation is still blinded, but they can still look at the data for...

That was my first guess too. Spin and mistruths similar to those that Michael Sharpe has stated in the media before.

I thought trial registration was invented back during the European renaissance? :laugh:

This is an excellent point. It is important that they are very specific when making claims about efficacy. I personally believe there are benefits for bed bound patients to be supported to be able to sit up, do gentle stretching etc to help with autonomic dysfunction.

Spin. Spin. Twirl. They can't be serious? Pull the other one! The problems of selective reporting was why databases of trial protocols were set up in the first place. The changes were not well justified hence the constant criticism. Besides, when people make mistakes, they should admit it and...

Classic tactics - defect our views to a strawman about debate about whether CFS is psychological or not. This debate is of course irrelevant. Patients don't much care about philosophy. We don't debate mind-body dualism as it is not relevant. We care about whether a treatment works. If this...

Oh, that isn't the point. The goal is similar to startups - pay yourself a whole lot of investors money as an 'innovator', regardless of long term success in the marketplace. I apoligise for being skeptical, and I certainly want to see more clinical trials, but their model of understanding is...