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edit: I may have been too critical here - I'm planning to re-read the piece tomorrow. It does play into a few things that annoy/worry me. To me, that was a bit of an annoying piece and illustrated how whenever the conflict surrounding ME/CFS is viewed in terms of 'psychological/physical' it...

Not particularly interesting. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/05/chronic-pain-prescribe-mental-health-support-as-well-as-drugs-say-experts Some very brief info on the sort of 'support' that could be provided - also I found it interesting that they talked of improving 'reported...

Sorry - rambling post that's largely just me writing to work out what I think. There are lots of things surrounding ME/CFS that I think make the promotion of experimental interventions with personal stories of recovery particularly troubling: -the way the media can jump on recovery stories...

I think I'm genuinely still on the fence about the new paper too. There are things that concern me about it, and the politics surrounding it and Sterne, but I don't feel like I have a good understanding of it yet. edit: I'm on the fence on this paper - given the corruption we've seen around...

Drawing attention to patients jumping onto a risky treatment lacking a solid evidence base is going to encourage the 'fad disease' narrative. It was an important part of the 90s medical narrative of unreasonable patients needing to be psychosocially managed without informed consent. Best wishes...

I posted some reasons for concern about this paper, but I think we should stay away from any personal stuff about other peoples' health problems.

I'm not sure I understand your point then. Are you saying that I was inaccurate about something? Past endorsements can still serve as current promotion if they're not actively retracted. The SEE ME project they did with O'Dowd seems like it's still on ongoing concern. On the page I linked to...

5 years ago isn't that long, especially if there's been a failure to apologise for the problems of the past. PACE first came out in 2011, and there now seems to be an attempt by some to act as if this is so long ago that it's foolish to care about the problems with it - I fear that acting as if...

I don't know why some assume O'Dowd has valuable expertise for patients, rather than just attracting funding? The PACE trial seems to be the closest she's come to showing she does... and that's not without its problems. Thought this page could be of interest, announcing funding for the early...

What makes you say that at this point? I feel like I've still got no idea of the details of this.

I don't think that it would be a good idea to make a complaint about something like this. The Guardian has done so much worse!

I don't follow why it would be a self-fulfilling prophesy to have similar results rather than it being expected that nonblinded trials would be more likely to lead to exaggerated claims of efficacy.

Thanks a lot of John for his persistence on this (and also to those who first raised this issue long ago). I wonder if it would be worth a couple of people trying to do a short paper on the results (and maybe the trouble with getting the results out) to get it in the peer reviewed literature...

Just to be clear, I don't think this is anything to do with Cochrane, other than their publishing of information from clinicaltrials.gov: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04177459

Wonder if that's the same Jonathan Price who did Cochrane's CFS reviews?

She played an important role in PACE, and offered some shit attempts to defend it that showed she really had no idea what she was talking about. Here's one of the threads she posted in, but I can't remember which of them are particularly damning...

Thanks Michiel - I knew that my approach was highly inefficient, but I was a bit interested in going through the trials of neurological rehabilitation rated as being participant blinded anyway, and thought it could be useful for understanding how the BMJ paper as they must have had at least...

I don't think we really know, particularly as it's possible China had been understating the problem initially, meaning that more realistic recent figures look like a big upsurge. Unless you're in China it's probably not worth worrying about until we know more.

Some quick notes on the second trial where the MS cochrane review rated participants as being blinded, Cerasa 2012: 'Computer-Assisted Cognitive Rehabilitation of Attention Deficits for Multiple Sclerosis: A Randomized Trial With fMRI Correlates'. I'm hoping to find the time to go through them...

I think that everyone should be cautious about the way this paper is assessed until it has been really dug into. There are fair reasons for concern that it could lead to problems being overlooked, and Sterne's involvement is going to lead to scepticism, but it's worth trying to avoid getting...