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It's difficult sometimes to pin them down, and I hadn't seen that apple/banana quotation, but essentially yes. The label of CFS also avoids the misleading connotations of 'pseudo-disease' diagnoses such as chronic Epstein-Barr virus infection or ME. From...

Beware of their use of language. Sharpe thinks ME is a pseudo-disease. He believes there is only CFS.

Thanks, both, that's very interesting. Helps explain perhaps why Peter Tatchell has been so willing to support us.

They slip in a reference to 'CFS'. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/michael-gelder-obituary-fc0mndtrz 'Under Gelder’s leadership, widely-adopted forms of CBT were developed to treat conditions such as social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, bulimia...

I don't have anything more on this particular question.

Agreed about 'lied'. Some may have noted I pointed out Sharpe 'made false and misleading statements'. I have purposely not accused him of 'lying'.

No, it doesn't disqualify him, but he was asked by the TSC whether he had any financial conflict of interest. He said he had none. But his royalties and work for insurance companies meant he had a direct financial interest in the outcome of the trial, one which he should have declared and which...

Thanks. I confess I did rather enjoy that one. If anyone is interested, the full thread in reply is: https://twitter.com/johnthejack/status/982933386049347585 Then one later with a link to work he did for Unum. https://twitter.com/johnthejack/status/983295771826180097

That's very interesting. And I think you're right that they weren't doing it for the money and couldn't (can't?) see the genuine conflict. I also think that the biggest COI for them was not financial but reputational. They are closely associated with this approach and their narrative of their...

There is none as such. They did have to follow MRC best practice (which I would argue they did not). They also agreed to abide by the Helsinki Declaration (which they didn't, as they didn't tell the patients about their COIs). Each journal where they published (check out the thread on the TMG...

I suppose the clever bit is wagering someone else's 5 million quid.

Yes, agreed. It is just an extraordinary statement. The false and misleading one about his interests may yet cause problems for him, but in many ways that bit about 'equipoise' is more damning.

Yes, @Sbag those are the letters.

Yes, it reads oddly and confused, part rehash of protocol, part narrative, part justification. It reeks again of hubris.

Haven't read that paper in a while. It's awful in many ways, but a few things stood out: Despite what they say when dismissing the actigraphy, they clearly set out to improve 'fatigue and disability'. The analysis 'also addressed the potential clustering effects resulting from different...

Thanks.

Yes, I think that's important. They essentially did everything they could to get a positive result and even with everything rigged in their favour, they didn't find anything more than a small, subjective, temporary effect which can be explained by other factors.

Thanks for those replies Lucy. This was their reason given in 'Response to comments on "Protocol for the PACE trial"' 28/07/2008. Although we originally planned to use actigraphy as an outcome measure, as well as a baseline measure, we decided that a test that required participants to wear an...

Would this be referring, for example, to this in Magical Medicine: 'It is Professor Wessely who is in charge of the MRC PACE Clinical Trial Unit.' My reading is that Hooper refers to PACE as 'MRC PACE', so Wessely is in charge of the CTU for the trial (the one at King's which played a leading...

I haven't read these minutes yet as closely as some appear to have done, but my impression is there was no discussion in the TSC of dropping the actigraphy. They have come up with quite elaborate explanations as to why this wasn't carried out at the end. Has anyone seen anything on it...