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Here's a fun, stupid game: guess the correlation. http://guessthecorrelation.com/ A random scatterplot is given and you have to guess the correlation coefficient (a number between 0 and 1 that indicates the strength of relationship between the two variables). My high score is 155 points Who...

Yes, but they only had 14 patients at 6-month follow-up so the lack of statistical significance could simply be due to this small sample size.

Sounds interesting because the differences between groups are enormous, especially since they didn't use healthy controls but patients with other rheumatic conditions. Looks like more than a weak correlation to me: Agree

Thought this was an interesting study: Blinding in randomised clinical trials of psychological interventions: a retrospective study of published trial reports https://ebm.bmj.com/content/26/3/109 Quotes: "In the present study, only 20.6% of the trials discussed the potential bias risk from...

Here's the COVID-19 symptom questionnaire (CSQ) they used: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10875-021-01083-7/MediaObjects/10875_2021_1083_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

In a sensitivity analysis, the authors also looked at predictors of those who scored equal or above the median CSQ or those with any symptom-CSQ at 6 months follow-up, and in both cases, the results for antibodies were not statistically significant. Figure S-5. Sensitivity analyses for...

The confidence interval suggests that it was just statistically significant, which makes me a bit suspicious. Instead of giving a definition of long covid they seem to have used a "score above the third quartile (highest CSQ score) in any of the CSQ items" as the predicted variable. I think...

To be honest, many of these studies do not sound so exciting or promising. As @cassava7 said, there doesn't seem to be much fundamental research. Many studies seem to be about 'managing' symptoms. Some examples: ReDIRECT: Remote Diet Intervention to Reduce long Covid symptoms Trial...

Thanks! There's also this study by Wessely and colleagues which reports "Our data supports the anecdotal belief that chronic fatigue syndrome patients reduce or cease alcohol intake." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15016579/

This seems to be reported quite consistently in the ME/CFS community. I wonder if patients with other chronic, fatiguing illnesses also consume less alcohol and say they don't tolerate it any longer. Would be interesting to do a study on this.

The effect size they report is enormous: a cohen's d of 1.34. For a comparison of effect size for some common treatments see here: How effective are common medications: ... meta-analyses of major drugs, 2015, Leucht et al | Science for ME (s4me.info)

So we might need something more absurd than the Lightning Process?

This study looked at how studies that tested a hypothesis, reported positive findings per scientific discipline. It reports that: "Space Science had the lowest percentage of positive results (70.2%) and Psychology and Psychiatry the highest (91.5%)"

Abstract The hypothesis of a Hierarchy of the Sciences with physical sciences at the top, social sciences at the bottom, and biological sciences in-between is nearly 200 years old. This order is intuitive and reflected in many features of academic life, but whether it reflects the “hardness” of...

Some of the most questionable research practices in the survey were "“Not submitting or resubmitting valid negative studies for publication" and “Insufficient inclusion of study flaws and limitations in publications". I suspect these are quite prevalent in the BPS literature on ME/CFS.

I suspect there is less fraud in the BPS literature on ME/CFS because the authors can use many other techniques to fabricate positive findings, that are accepted by journal editors such as a waiting list control group or manipulating how patients report their symptoms etc. So there would be...

More than half of Dutch scientists regularly engage in questionable research practices, such as hiding flaws in their research design or selectively citing literature, according to a new study. And one in 12 admitted to committing a more serious form of research misconduct within the past 3...

Sad news from the Netherlands where a patient with ME/CFS was denied benefits. He had to go to court in a gurney. https://nos.nl/artikel/2388341-zieke-patient-met-wensambulance-naar-rechtbank-om-strijd-met-uwv...

I've finally found a useful overview of findings in psychology that were once in high esteem but are now refuted. See: https://www.gleech.org/psych Many of the things were in psychology textbooks quite recently, including: Macbeth effect Pygmalion effect Ego depletion Power posing Stanford...