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  1. Esther12

    Bias due to a lack of blinding: a discussion

    Thanks. That's really useful. I just looked at the first participant blinded study in the MS review: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD009131.pub3/epdf/full That was Brissart 2012: https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13554794.2012.701644...
  2. Esther12

    Bias due to a lack of blinding: a discussion

    I was having to learn what those stats meant as I was reading the paper so it's possible I misunderstood, was not clear, or have now misunderstood your post! (To confuse things further, I think that I may have linked to a different table to the on I intended.) So I was talking about the...
  3. Esther12

    Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

    This reminds me of playing the mobile game 'plague'. The key to successfully wiping out humanity was evolving to be really infectious before the Olympics spread you all over the world. That game has left me kind of rooting for the coronavirus.
  4. Esther12

    Bias due to a lack of blinding: a discussion

    I just had a quick read of this - the results for different analyses have really wide confidence intervals, but seem fairly consistently around zero (Actually, I don't really have any intuitive sense of how close to zero effect these analyses are - they seem much closer than the other figures...
  5. Esther12

    Bias due to a lack of blinding: a discussion

    I've not read this new paper from Hróbjartsson, but thought I'd post it here as it has different conclusions (with different methods): Impact of blinding on estimated treatment effects in randomised clinical trials: meta-epidemiological study BMJ 2020; 368 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l6802...
  6. Esther12

    Article in Guardian: UK benevolent funds hand out £216m as hardship grows - features Emily Beardall (AfME) Jan 2020

    Not by the Guardian's standards! I think it's worth avoiding being too critical of things. There's plenty of truly appalling things to complain about.
  7. Esther12

    Trial By Error: Bristol’s Report Due Soon; Slides from My Oxford Talk

    That was so inevitable that it doesn't even feel like a prediction!
  8. Esther12

    Updates on status of ICD-11 and changes to other classification and terminology systems

    Thanks so much for all your work, and updating us on this. A timely reminder that sometimes persistently making strong arguments does pay off. This level of persistence is a marvel to me!
  9. Esther12

    Denmark: Open letter to health politicians from Danish ME Association with impressive list of signatures

    From the Fink letter: reference v is Recovery Norge. It's so bizarre to see this specially selected collection of anecdotes being used in a debate like this. Who is stupid enough to think that is respectable? Is that what the parliament is saying? Isn't it instead saying that, given the...
  10. Esther12

    Functional Neurological Disorders - discussion thread

    I wasn't starting from the assumption that FND is a sensible category or useful label - I don't know. Some people argue that FND is a label detached from any particular understanding of the cause of symptoms, and others argue that providing an explanation of symptoms to patients is an important...
  11. Esther12

    UK Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) project - draft website goes live, feedback sought on recruitment plan, and updates

    The Medical Research Council is currently listed in the £10,000 – £19,999 section: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/about-us/funding/
  12. Esther12

    Functional Neurological Disorders - discussion thread

    I think part of the problem is you putting that framing in your own words. eg If you'd found someone saying "I insist that no physiological dysfunctions could account for these patients' symptoms" then criticising that would be one thing, but my sense is that this is not what a lot of those...
  13. Esther12

    UK Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) project - draft website goes live, feedback sought on recruitment plan, and updates

    If explaining the problems with the way the SMC has promoted misinformation and prejudice, you could also ask if this is really the sort of organisation that should be receiving funding from the MRC? From what we've seen of the MRC, I rather doubt that they'd bother checking whether concerns...
  14. Esther12

    MEAction: "DEMYSTIFYING THE DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR ME AND RELATED DISEASE"

    I'd missed those survey results in here! Thanks to those at ME Action who did this. Although it's only the opinions of some researchers it's still interesting to see.
  15. Esther12

    The Hans Eysenck affair: Time to correct the scientific record (2019) David F Marks

    What do people think of this part? Wouldn't any UK body be very likely to made up of those with a desire to cover-up problems with the work of their friends and colleagues? The more I've seen of the personal networks within UK academia the more doubtful I've become that an official body like...
  16. Esther12

    Functional Neurological Disorders - discussion thread

    The FND field seems such a mess that I think it's very difficult to blog on if you haven't first put 20,000 words into explaining your definitions of all the terms you're using. Any simplification is going to be seen through the reader's starting assumptions, and you can see that happening with...
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