A new paradigm is needed to explain long COVID, Saunders et al 2023

Thanks for raising this - whatever your background or knowledge this should be shocking. And evidence that the few balances such publications claim make their place in the world worthwhile are no longer being heeded.

I would hope they will be being pushed strongly for reasons/explanation for the rejection of this to be provided in detail. Otherwise it presents as bias in another part of the supposed chain of guards of research quality and oversight

For this area as far as I can see:
- licensing/regs on methods: not there
- an RAE style check on objective quality of research: not there, citation-focused instead
- EDIT: ethics/methods boards checking for things like changed outcomes, usefulness and so on: not consistently happening
- instead claim 'peer review' as some 'gold standard: but is that really what they have anymore in some publications and subject areas? noting the above point and hierarchy and attitude of those at top of hierarchy (along with findings that e.g. on certain papers in some publications peer reviewers have been subordinates or have reporting lines to authors)
- claim 'academic debate' will sort out the literature: not if replies are stifled or certain methodological voices are cut out of being allowed to reply and others end up in ad hominem retorts

Anyone else got any 'safeguards' to list, or aspects that are supposed to make the system stand up which publications such as this should be standing for across all subject and illness areas, whatever the demographic affected?

For a start the 'new paradigm' claim feels like a lie - it is just changing the words for the old paradigm at best here isn't it to pretend it hasn't been the hegemony that has stifled the area for decades.

Talk about either lacking accountability for oneself and ones own results if you are not prepared to state factually what this 'old paradigm' is accurately when you claim new, or being so wrapped up in your own tapdancing that even tho said old paradigm tested the same fixes you offer (not the narrative) and couldn't prove the hypothesis you think changing the storytelling is a change of paradigm.

I can see why they didn't fancy comment from actual different areas of expertise; without it this is like someone claiming a different flavour of milk of magnesia is a 'new drug' for something the last flavour didn't work for (by changing to different storytelling narrative, selling same thing a different way), and if you instead have someone coming in with e.g. evidence of h. pylori for ulcers being the up and coming research it shows up that it's just a rebrand of something that doesn't work and isn't different. EXcept this time I'm not sure they've even changed the flavour (just the story).

 

I keep wondering who this Topol guy is. (Presumably not who played Fiddler on the Roof.)
Is he just an AI bot that tweets anything trite?
What is his viewpoint on this - he doesn't seem to have one except wanting to tweet all the time?

Have I missed something?

 

Topol is supportive of ME/CFS patient and activists.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1619463240593059842

 

That's absurd. Biosocial discussion in other diseases is serious and useful, like, "Does poverty make it more difficult for you to afford medicine?" but in ME/LC it's garbage like, "Have you considered just not being sick lol" (Being satirical here)

 

Trial By Error: A Response to Call for “A New Paradigm” for Long Covid in Lancet Respiratory Medicine

"Last month, The Lancet Respiratory Medicine published a comment called “A new paradigm is needed to explain long COVID.” Not surprisingly, this “new paradigm” is the same old paradigm that has been applied to ME and CFS patients for decades. That paradigm, of course, has been debunked and discredited–even though many people seem not to have come to terms with that reality yet.

The journal has already rejected a couple of letters responding to the comment. I just submitted another, on behalf of myself and Sarah Tyson, a professor of rehabilitation in the Division of Nursing, Midwifery & Social Work at the University of Manchester. I have also posted it on a pre-print server, and am sharing it below."

https://www.virology.ws/2023/02/02/...or-long-covid-in-lancet-respiratory-medicine/

 

Well, our letter was already rejected.

 

“… we have decided not to publish it because we have limited space in the journal and cannot give your paper priority over other letters we have in the pipeline … “

Well I suppose we will find out how balanced this decision was when these letters already ‘in the pipeline’ appear. Though implicit in the reply it can not be certain that any other letters have yet been written. The rejection letter could mean that other letters had already been submitted, or it could mean that the Journal has already arranged for others to write letter(s) taking an angle or angles the Journal wants.

 

Good old academic freedom. These journals are echo chambers, it's genuinely worrying for the overall quality of medical research. So heavily political and ideological. This will be deeply shameful once the stalemate ends, how it was blatantly biased and corrupt. It's going to be critical to clean house over there, although at the rate that things are going, medical AIs are going to just take over most of the work before medicine even gets started on thinking about maybe doing something perhaps one day.

The excuse of other comments being slated for publication is genuinely one of the most asinine and dishonorable excuse I've ever seen. They're basically saying it's a hot topic so they have to censor it? So they'll limit how much it's discussed? What? Doesn't even pretend to make sense.

 

I heard from someone whose letter, which was critical, was accepted. apparently several are being accepted and the authors will respond, per standard, according to this communication.

 

Letter rejected.

Treating Long Covid as a functional disorder contradicts the evidence and is unhelpful to patients. Response to Saunders et al., Vink, van der Zee et al

https://osf.io/v8zr2/

 

I think this was rejected as well.

Long COVID is not a functional disorder, Svetlana Blitshteyn, Anne Bhereur, Todd Davenport, Nicola Clague-Baker, https://osf.io/h6jmd/

 

At least this flush of letters demonstrating the logical and scientific shortcomings of those claiming Long Covid is as functional and/or psychosomatic condition gives the lie to those regurgitating the tired meme of anti-science patients objecting to psychiatric diagnoses.

What is ironic is that those claiming Long Covid is a psychiatric condition, despite their assertions oforiginal thinking, are regurgitating the ideas and unscientific/even anti-science methodologies of Sigmund Freud from the 1890s.

 

The authors in the Lancet supporting the functional disorder paradigm want, or expect research to pinpoint simple causes of diseases.

Seems to me that's an out-dated view of disease.

 

I think it is very common that people confuse thinking something with believing it has an external reality simply because they thought it. We grossly over estimate the power of our own minds. I suspect it is an artefact of how the human mind processes information.

However it is depressing that people who have had an academic training and ought to understand scientific method and basic logic, allow themselves to be distracted by magical thinking when they have had years, even decades, of people pointing out their misconceptions.