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Author here... I would like to thank the author of PLOS Biology, Nona Pariente, first for inviting me to contribute this editorial (which is loosely based on a quick talk that I gave at a conference back in March), and second for not querying the criticism of PLOS ONE during the review process...

I am in contact with the main French group for Long Covid patients, who are taking up the cudgels against this rather flawed paper. It even has several basic numerical errors (https://pubpeer.com/publications/0A3DD058F6FB53312C5DDD858AD7E7#8), and I have asked the journal to get the authors to...

Yes. When they switched from binary to Likert scoring (I think this was the order of the switch), APT/SMC results got better by more than CBT/GET results got better. Hence, any claim by opponents of the trial that "The authors switched to Likert scoring to binary scoring in order to make...

My reading is that CBT and GET have better outcomes (improvement and recovery) than APT and SMC with either scoring scheme, but that the gap between (CBT/GET) and (APT/SMC) is smaller with the Likert-based scoring. I am now getting a hazy memory of having pointed this out before, perhaps in...

Regardless of the identity of the reviewers, it is extremely unlikely that they were given the data, or indeed that they even asked for them. Until very recently this was almost unheard of, and despite the science reform movement, it's not yet the norm. Sometimes reviewers who insist on seeing...

I did these analyses back in May, but I don't remember where I got the description from, so the explanation that follows comes from reading my code. Maybe someone else can fill in the gaps. (There is some information on p. 828 of White et al.) There are four variables that determine recovery...

Not only should it be allowed, it should be mandatory. But in fact it should be mandatory for the authors not to play silly buggers and pretend that they don't have, somewhere, a single file with all the data in it, which is how everyone works, because it's simple and obvious. (People who have...

It certainly wasn't my intention to defend the researchers here. My only point was that the culture of how professional science is done is such that bad studies are to be expected, and skepticism from journalists isn't.

There is an ongoing debate in bio/medical/psychological research about exactly this issue. Publishing a paper mostly involves showing that your results are statistically significant (which means, roughly, that there is less than a 5% chance that you would have found the results that you got if...

I've also done my share of DB development. But nobody uses database software to analyse or store data from a scientific study. It would be a huge amount of overkill, and your statistical software wouldn't be able to read it. It would be like hiring a librarian to organise one Billy bookcase...

I find it absolutely inconceivable that there is not, somewhere in the vaults at QMUL, a single file with all of the variables in it. That's how you analyze data from any study of any kind, unless there's some absolutely huge number of participants or variables. The data shouldn't be stored in...

OK, done that. :) I see now. While I was continuing to reproduce Table 3, adding the number of people who improved, I decided to see whether the change of criteria (from Likert <= 18 to binary <= 3) benefited CBT and GET. It seems that the opposite was the case: The percentage of people either...

The latest release came in 5 files, with names that began with the digits 2 through 6 (perhaps because 1 was the first file released? I wasn't around then). The variables in the new files are as follows: File "2 pace_EQ5D": eq_index.0, eq_index.24, eq_index.52 File "3 pace_HAD": HAANT.0...

I have found some time to start building some code this evening. I reproduced some of the values from Table 3, where we have fatigue and physical functioning scores at baseline and 52 weeks. (Table 3 has these two side by side, but I don't have room on the page, so they are one above the other...

There were no common variables. :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: All I was able to do was merge the columns, on the assumption that the participant order was the same in each case. I added a fictitious participant ID number, so that if anyone sorts the file for some reason they will be able to...

I don't think this sentence is very helpful. The issue is their suggestion of causality, not the use of the word "predict" in itself. IMO the new language ("influence", "effect") also implies causality. Better would be to state that there is an association between the variables, which --- at...

>>It seems like "the data thugs" might be able to help us debunk some of the BPS work. FWIW, I do not think the tools that my colleagues and I have developed will be much use here, for a number of reasons that are very boring and technical, plus the simpler one that I have no reason to think...

I think the main point here is that he talked about "people who go on to develop chronic fatigue syndrome later on", but he didn't provide any evidence that any of 18 people with persistent fatigue at 6 months after treatment went on to develop CFS. Now I know it's not always easy to get things...

It has occurred to me that this is a possibility, but even if the new study was not statistically flawed, it don't think it would provide evidence to either support or undermine such a claim, because, as I put in my blog post, (a) the connection between IFN-a and ME/CFS types of fatigue is...

I'm feeling slightly guilty about my blog post. On the one hand, evidence of an immune system link would be positive news for patients, but on the other, there really doesn't seem to be anything there.