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Yes I missed that bit out. I guess it is that the difference between the arms need to be big enough that it makes a real difference to a patient.

Any method should involve understanding the semantics of a scale in terms of what the questions mean and what the likely distributions are and how linear they are with change. Unfortunately they seem to forget these basic steps becasue someone writes a paper claiming a scale is valid and then it...

They do show that Cochrane is morally bankrupt in that their aim is to get something that the reviewers are happy with that doesn't fall to the most obvious level of criticisim. They don't seem to have any cares for accuracy or for the efficacy of treatments or patient safety. Just that the...

I thought that the MCID was concerned with having a value that must be big enough to improve a patients health rather than just a significant difference between arms. In terms of the questions if the questions are very different items (and scored the same) they simply shouldn't be adding...

I suspect that part of the issues will come with the algorithms used to look at the data. In the context of a lot of data analytics techniques using an L2 norm (least squares) are quite sensitive to mislabelled data (i.e. labelled ME but not). But other techniques (L1 - median and MAD) are more...

One point behind this paper is that for years a response to patient reports of harm with GET and other treatments was the line that it only happens when the treatment is not done correctly. What this paper shows is that the clinics in the UK (who are the ones who should be doing the treatment...

There is an agreement http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/3cpart/h2020-hi-list-ac_en.pdf for certain non eu european countries to take part in EU research projects so it will depend in the UK joining any such agreement (and paying into it).

I think he is trying to claim he has acted with good intent and thus shouldn't be blamed for the obvious flaws in his research.

Or maybe because the editor knows the authors? I find it hard to believe someone could read it and think it was worth reading. It doesn't even seem to have a coherent consistent view and rambles all over the place but fails to define the basic concepts they talk about let alone relationships.

I think this is the key paragraph which basically says it should be enough to treat symptoms and that symptoms may be caused by some undetermined relationship between biology, psychology and social factors but they provide no evidence that these factors interact in a way that relates to...

Is this simply someone trying to excuse themselves for pushing treatments that don't work and cause harm on a set of patients whilst increasing bigotry.

Just their first paragraph They seem to treat disease and 'illness' as entirely different and unrelated things rather than simply having a disease process that causes symptoms. As they do this they probably get confused. I suspect quite a lot of medicine is concerned with treating symptoms...

I think that is a gross overstatement. I would say the CFQ sums up a few answers to a random set of questions about how fatigue has changed within some confusing time period.

That amendment doesn't suggest they are bothering with any rigorous review process. I find it hard to see how we can have confidence in anything produced by the current authors since they have shown their lack of understanding of good methodology and the issues with many trials. It also...

I think one of the arguments to NICE needs to be that all treatments need safety assessments and some form of harms reporting system (not just drug treatments). This should be true for CBT/GET or whatever other treatments are being proposed. I don't see that having a 'natural' label on it makes...

You say it needs to be very up to give symptoms so could increased lactate be an indication of something different happening within the metabolic process but not the cause of symptoms?

I think they are going to different committees though.

Sometimes it is necessary to review the quality of reviewers.

I don't think it should have influenced anything.

I think making a pool of money available can be a good thing but that doesn't mean giving bad proposals money and I think when other research councils target money in particular areas they do things to get established researchers in relivant fields interested.