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I wish this paper had been published while Prof Hawking was still alive. It might have made him think twice about accepting an invitation to appear on stage at the RSM next to the person who has played a lead role in promoting and popularising such unhelpful ideas for the past three [edit, typo]...

Jonathan, however implausible, can you conceive of any possible way in which CCI could cause ME symptoms in some people without it having been noticed by those specialising in CCI? As I don’t know enough about anatomy or medicine, I’m trying to think about this from a purely logical...

The finding could also mean that there is a sub-set of people with ME who have specific symptoms which others do not have (eg worsening of symptoms when turning head) who have CCI. Based on what I’ve read, both before and since Jen’s surgery, I will not be seeking testing for CCI at this time...

I’ve now read Jen’s blog and I thought it was well written. She says a lot of the sort of things that I have imagined I might say if I was ever recovered – differentiating between feeling well but exhausted and deconditioned, and the awful feeling of having ME and PEM. It makes such a nonsense...

First, great news for Jen. Let’s hope her remission is permanent. I have often dreamt of what she must now be experiencing, and it must be wonderful – albeit with the apprehension of not knowing whether her symptoms will return. After 27 years of severe ME, the prospect of ever returning to...

I’ve not got the capacity to read through this thread at the moment so apologies if what I say has been said. First, thank you to @Jonathan Edwards. The ME community owes you a huge debt of gratitude for taking this on, along with all your other voluntary ME related work. If only we could get...

You mean, they claim to have dropped accelerometers due to the load on patients. The evidence from TMG minutes suggests that they actually dropped actigraphy because a Dutch trial had shown it was “not useful” – i.e unlikely to produce the desired positive result. (Newcomers, see @Lucibee ’s...

Yes, and look how that turned out – the banks got bailed out at the taxpayers’ expense while the bankers gorged themselves on cheap credit and the inflation in asset values due to quantitive easing. Surely it must be possible to end the madness in psychological medicine – for its standards to be...

£5 million is the figure that is usually quoted, although I suspect the costs have exceeded that now. http://www.rae.ac.uk/submissions/ra5a.aspx?id=176&type=hei&subid=3181: [Edit crossed with @Esther12]

Excellent, thanks @Carolyn Wilshire . A very useful and well-written summary for the lay reader. I spotted a couple of typos, as well as the £1.5 million one: “In our reanalysis, we set about to see what the results would have looked like if the protocol had been followed.” “However, in our...

Many, many thanks, @JohnTheJack . Great result. For anyone reading this who is not aware, this has involved a huge amount of work – many, many hours of complex legal arguments against senior academics and highly paid lawyers over many months. For John to have achieved this result on his own...

Private Eye column on Claire Fox: A Fox in Farage’s coop: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php/hp-sauce?section_link=hp_sauce&issue=1495 (my bold) It’s a great shame that its medical columnist, Dr Phil Hammond, has such a conflict of interest (working at one of Dr Crawley’s CFS clinic)...

Isn’t the hint from both the PNAS paper and Fluge and Mella’s paper that there doesn’t seem to be any difference between ME/CFS cells and healthy ones? My limited understanding is that these studies hint that the difference seems to be in the plasma or serum, and that cells in ME/CFS plasma or...

I am desperate for a diagnostic test but we should be mindful that such a test would only change things for those who test positive for that particular test. Even if the nanoneedle proves to be useful as a diagnostic tool there may still be a significant proportion of people who are currently...

I’m not quite sure how I’ve ended up defending someone whose work and views I hold in such low regard but, as we have discovered to our cost, making inaccurate criticisms can be counterproductive, and I don’t believe that is an accurate reflection of what SW said. What he said was: I do not...

I agree that if it proved to be a unique biomarker for ME/CFS it would not matter if whether it was a cause or effect of the illness (although that would still be interesting and useful to know). However, I’m not sure that is what SW was trying to say – and even if it was, it still raises an...

At the risk of getting no likes, am I alone in thinking that SW comments were surprisingly sensible and even quite helpful? I sincerely hope that this test may be able to differentiate between ME or CFS patients and patients with other sorts of fatiguing illnesses or incapacities but, as far as...

Thanks for the summary @Simon M. Perhaps we should try to persuade some of the BPSers to volunteer to have blood transfusions with blood from people with ME, rather like when John Gummer MP tried to make his 4 year old daughter eat a beef burger on TV in an attempt to persuade the public that...

But, as understand, it doesn’t exclude the possibility that a significant proportion may not share that common pathophysiological pathway. And, of course, the looser the diagnostic criteria, the greater that proportion is likely to be. I am mindful of the fact that although I have been...

I wonder if the best way to expose the worthlessness of these studies would be to do a CBT study on a condition which can be measured objectively, with two protocols: one using Chalder methodology and one using adequate controls, objective outcome measures and strict adherence to the...