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This study did reproduce the major consistent finding so far: reduced performance at the ventilatory threshold. The 8th study so far if we include the study based on a single pair of twins. The VO2Peak findings have been inconsistent because patients have not been consistently exercising to...

Regression to the mean is not a placebo effect, it is a bias that is often falsely attributed to the placebo effect.

I was under the impression that the blog post was the article, just not in print yet.

The "placebo response" in patients is highly likely to be the same as it is in any other group of people. The problem is a variety of reporting biases are being bundled up as a "placebo effect" and then claiming that the placebo effect* is magically high in some cases and low in others. When the...

It means that patients performed better on the 2nd CPET (72 hours after) than the first CPET, so there was no effect of PEM on performance after 72 hours. There is generally a mild performance increase the second time a person does a CPET, basically because they are more familiar with what they...

Again, how does that explain this? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15784798

Or is the same old cognitive mistake that many of us make? Assume your preconceptions are correct and try to cherry pick the facts to suit.

Wessely/Deale/Chalder 1995 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7709961 Which is totally contradictory to their conclusion from their review of "placebo" responses in clinical trials: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15784798 He also seems to be quite aware that patients don't actually...

Yes, as I said in my first post - all the hate demonstrated against antivaxxers on the internet is hardly going to change their mind. All of those people going on nasty tirades against antivaxxers on the internet, are at best, are wasting their time.

Looking at Sharpe's piece, it seems those standards are fairly low.

Here are the number of diagnosed cases of vaccine preventable illnesses and number of deaths in the USA from 1950 onwards. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/e/reported-cases.pdf And I'll also come out and say it: antivaxxers still annoy me because they're...

Because they lack knowledge of those fields. Many doctors for example, don't understand the necessity of double-blinding to control bias in clinical trials and many doctors think that unblinded randomised non-pharmacological trials are unbiased.

The authors of that review don't seem to know what a "placebo response" even is. Changes in subjective outcome measures in a blinded control group from baseline cannot automatically be attributed to placebo effects as they can be due to a wide variety of biases.

What does this mean? Were these patients who submitted Disqus responses? Or did they deliberately invite patients who agree with Sharpe to respond?

Governments pass hundreds of resolutions like this without taking action. Show us the money (policy that increases research capacity), don't just pretend to care!

There is very strong evidence that vaccinations work. The evidence is simple, compare the rates of child mortality due to vaccine preventable illnesses over time as vaccine schedules were adopted and improved. There are risks of course, specifically rare cases of autoimmune illnesses are...

This is correct. The fact is that vaccination rates in most countries is at or near highs and for MMR at least is high enough such that all cases can ultimately be contained before there is an uncontrolled/significant outbreak. Wakefield's ill-fated study had no noticeable effect on...

I've met Mike Musker and he's a decent bloke. I'd like to point out that he's the clinical lead, rather than a medical scientist. I don't really think the (Leptin) study is going to be a big breakthrough. But it is the first time so many samples have been taken within a short period of time so...

Lack of specificity of scientific findings is not a strength, it is a weakness.

@Jonathan Edwards Speculation about this seems like a waste of time and is fundamentally second-guessing the purpose of a blinded control trial in the first place. Participating in trials leads to altered symptom reporting and some people by pure chance might be lucky enough to improve on...