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Interesting find. I'm hoping the slightly different spelling means its not the same person: I suppose if it is, then she changed her mind. That's encouraging.

Actually, the study itself (link here) provides some contradictory information about their approach, and I would recommend extreme caution in interpreting it. Pacing was actually used as a precursor to GET, which was the primary intervention hypothesised to have treatment benefits. The pacing...

One for those who enjoy being wound up by this stuff. The main example they discuss is fibro, not ME, but that's unlikely to reduce your outrage. It is interesting that this sociologist is unquestioningly buying into the assumption that those with contested illness are not really ill at all...

In what way, @Invisible Woman? Can you give me some real life scenarios that have stumped you when you've had PEM?

I wonder why the CBTs are thinking so catastrophically about menopause's effect on the workplace. Lots of overly negative thoughts there. Perhaps they've been ruminating about how awful things could get in the worst case scenario. Fortunately, you have CBT to help you deal with those!

!!!!!!

Good suggestions, @Peter Trewhitt. I'm not sure about visual processing, spatial memory or short-term verbal memory - are these major features of ME related cognitive impairment? (I need to ask people because I don't get much brain fog myself). Up to now, I've been keen on the idea that ME...

I've been watching Future Man, and I just learned you can shove cocaine up there too. Maybe coffee is a gateway drug...

Yea, all these more challenging cognitive tasks will have massive interindividual variability. The best you can do is find one that reasonably discriminates patients from the best possible matched controls, and then, as you say, you use it to measure change within individuals.

This is not a great task. You want something that involves more complexity imo. Anything that just measures slowed responding is too general, won't be a specific enough marker of CFS-related cognitive dysfunction. This is quite a good example of a continuous selective attention task.

Good question. Objective to me means something that does not involve people having to judge for themselves how they think their function is. So any measure that doesn't involve self-evaluation is a great start. Step 1 is to pick a task which taxes people cognitively in the right kind of way. I...

From the abstract: Its like saying "Little is known about exactly how long fairies' legs are". Both questions seem to rest on a huge elephant of an assumption.

Yea, CBT is good for whatever ails you. That's the joy of non-blinded studies relying on patient self-report. Homeopathy has proven benefits too, if you study it the same way (you don't blind patients to what medicine they got and you ask them to report how they feel).

I think my browser's crap at ordering sequenced tweets. Its still displaying them the same way for me whatever I do. Need someone with a decent browser to do some screenshots! Edit: thanks @Esther and @Alvin! I feel like an idiot now because everyone probably read that thread except me.

On the topic of harrassment, I read today that UCL's The London Conference on Intelligence had to be run in secret, because of potential harrassment from militant anti-eugenics activists.

"Its not what it looks like, doctor. I was administering a coffee enema"

I missed it, and in case anyone else did, here it is, the whole sequence:

I suggest we do not discuss the issue of harrassment any more here. By doing so, we are allowing it to sidetrack the more important issue - the damaging research and political agenda being described in this talk. And its potential harms to children and families. By continuing to discuss the...

Yea, I'm starting to get angry now too. The work this woman does harms children and ruins families. Its dangerous and misguided. Everything else pales into trivialities compared to that. If you want to have a discussion about the best strategies for advocacy, @petrichor, then we have that. I...

If you're enjoying a little light fun at Gwyneth's expense, this article is hilariously tongue-in-cheek: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2017/nov/30/have-a-happy-homeopathic-christmas-with-gwyneth-paltrow