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When I read a paper and it claims that whatever their theory is, the statistical evidence is somewhere around the 'accepted' level (.05 or whatever), I assume that they massaged the data and/or reworked the experiment to make it reach that level ... and then ignore their conclusions/claims.

There are confounding factors too. Maybe on cloudy days you eat more of some kind of food, and on hot days avoid some. Activity levels may vary with the weather too. Weather affects airborne spore and pollen counts, and biting insect activity. Scents differ too, which can have physiological...

The good thing about stores like this is that it has at least a possibility of forcing people to re-examine what science is, and maybe rework the present "publish or perish" system to foster good science, rather than rewarding stories.

Viral infections may be a common trigger for ME, but I believe that it's not the virus that's important, but the activation of the immune cells. T-cell activation may be a stronger trigger for ME than IG cells, since there are fewer reports of triggering on Type I allergies, but maybe people...

"Peer review is more like a smoke test--"Does it smoke when you plug it in? Good enough."" Good engineers take the enclosure off for the smoke test. Bad medical researchers seal up all the cracks in the enclosure. Psychologists fill the room with smoke before the test.

I agree that environmental stresses and genetics may be involved in the likelihood of ME developing. I still believe that it's immune activation that triggers ME, but after decades of immune activations, why does a particular infection, injury, or other cause (like my type IV food sensitivity)...

Things that are easy to do and get funding for will get repeated. There's definitely a problem with the rewards for doing things already done. Maybe the decision-makers aren't aware of what's been published, because most of the studies aren't worth reading. There's also a problem with...

While that is true, it's also unfortunately true that there are limited resources available for ME research, and there is simply not enough available to study every single clue to the extent it should be. If we spread the available resources equally to all the possible...

I don't believe that ME is a metabolic disease, so not those researchers. I do believe it's neuroimmunological (glial cells involved), but I don't know any specific researchers or groups to recommend.

When I read the title, I thought that psychiatrists/psychologists would be more useful if they assumed a T-shape (arms stretched out). Coat racks at least do no harm. :)

I wonder how much the supplement actually changes brain serotonin synthesis. That's only around 5% of the TRP intake, so maybe the effects were due to some other mechanism than brain serotonin production.

If this test is done on ME patients, and it shows similar abnormalities, even if it doesn't explain why/how, it would at least be some clinical evidence that PWME are and continue to be as ill as people who had serious Covid.

I hadn't thought of magnetic susceptibility as a diagnostic technique, but that is the sort of thing I was hoping for. If ME is due to some brain cells not functioning properly, it has to show up somehow. Calcium levels seem to be quite important to cell function, so maybe the dysfunction...

Keep in mind that "feeling" something also involves bi-directional signalling networks and processing networks, and malfunction there can cause "feelings" even if there is nothing wrong with the actual muscles.

That's a study I hope gets a follow-up, especially with ME subjects.

Healthy controls and athletes? How about some unhealthy inactive controls? Let studies of differences between normally-active people and very-active people be funded by the sports industry.

Can we find someone to hack into the internet and global replace all mention of 'chronic fatigue' with 'chronic fatigue-like-but-not-really-fatigue'? Since I'm in favour of more studies on brain function, I'm not objecting to this study. I think it's a better use of resources than studying...

One other test I thought of but haven't heard of being used yet is to collect EEG data from different parts of the brain, vagus nerves, and any other nerves that might be involved in ME symptoms. Then apply the magic of computer processing and see whether there are differences between PWME...

I'd put this at low priority too. It assumes that ME is due to an infection. Ditto for genetics studies, which assume a genetic cause. ME could turn out to have a developmental cause, such as how blood vessels develop in the brainstem at age 6 due to environmental factors. It could turn out...

I was thinking more about it, and I feel that funding prevalence, 'how PWME's lives are affected', and other such studies are kind of defeatist: they're assuming that research is not going to crack the mystery any time soon. Being 60+, I personally don't want the target date for funding actual...