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Yes

I am sorry if the cardigan references touch a nerve. It is all my fault, I admit. However, although I may reduce references to cardigans here if that is what people prefer, I am probably not going to drop the reference altogether because I think it may be useful. So I need to justify that and...

Thank you Clare (@Action for M.E.) and Sonya. That seems very helpful.

We are not talking about a single study. We are talking about a long series of observations from the US, the UK, Norway, Australia and Germany and wherever. Science only works if you check that everything fits together. It is very complicated but we have to make sure things make sense otherwise...

Nobody ever told me what it was throughout my career if there was one.

And there was Richard Horton saying how clever it was for these guys to wager five million quid that they could prove the patients' philosophy was wrong! That is some equipoise.

I don't think anyone is suggesting we do not study immune cells. I am absolutely in favour of that. The issue is whether or not a piece of work tells us anything that makes sense in the context of what we already know. What I think is hard for people not involved in science to realise is that so...

Or even more stunning that a professor of psychology is so unaware that readers of the statement might not to share his particular cognitive biases?

Yes, officially only day 2. But, even if I am biased, I would strongly recommend putting David at the top of the agenda here. The knock on effect from his work will be crucial to everything that comes next. A perfect cause for Easter Monday!

The antibody scatter plots for normals and PWME look very similar. The range is much the same and the upper tail to the distribution is much the same. There was a statistical difference in levels but in conditions where autoantibodies are known to be important you do not need any statistics. it...

I fully understand your feelings over this @Gingergrrl, but the whole point of science is that it has to be done properly. There is no difference between PACE being badly done and dangerous and antibody-targeting trials being badly done and dangerous. The idea that ME is due to antibodies rather...

I think people have to be aware that there are a number of gaps in the story. Firstly, if a significant proportion of patients with ME had pathogenic autoantibodies one might expect there to be a noticeable response to rituximab and there was not at phase 3. Perhaps most importantly there was...

It was felt sensible in the long term to have cross cover because if one treatment is shown to have a greater efficacy than the others then it will avoid the issue of one clinical discipline ‘owning’ the best therapy. I can see that would put the cat among the pigeons. You might not even need a...

It is a curious paper and presumably invited by someone? You do not normally publish a paper and then publish how you came to do the study a second time - unless of course you are testing Einstein's theory of general relativity or something. Some useful historical bits.

I am surprised that they did not go on strike for violation of restrictive practices. But this is interesting. I have it down in my notebook that maybe the colour of the cardigan does not matter? An important scientific finding.

Giving money I am afraid. As I have said often before, most illnesses have their major research funded by charities. Governments don't do it. Having said that the NIH has been producing money quite a bit recently and maybe the MRC would if good enough projects were proposed. The log jam at the...

Can @Russell Fleming advise?

Diagnostic criteria are not actually about diagnosis by doctors in the clinic. Clinical management is always dictated by probabilities, not categories. Diagnostic criteria are purely for research and epidemiology purposes. We have adequate figures and have had for some years now. About 02.% of...

Thanks, that seems quite comprehensive. Of course we are all aware of corporate corruption. The interest in the SMC is the apparent hypocrisy - the claim of being pro bono public when in fact the opposite be true. With the current UK and US governments there seems to be no reason to think...

Skewered, was she?