BMJ Archives of Diseases in Childhood: ''Editor’s note on correction to Crawley et al. (2018)'', 2019, Nick Brown. (SMILE LP Trial)

This might or might not be true. But I see no reason to take their word for it that the change was based on the qualitative findings, especially given a history of not telling the truth about the conduct of the trial. They didn't need to analyze the data to know which way trends were heading and which outcomes were producing good results. It was an open-label trial and the outcomes were self-reported.

 

I agree. The norm in science is to subconsciously massage data whenever the opportunity arises. People cannot help themselves from doing it. They do not even know they are doing it. that is why the assurance is worthless.

 

"There was no analysis of any outcome data during or after the feasibility phase until the entire trial was completed".

Absolutely. And it is carefully worded it seems to me: "There was no analysis". Seems to carefully skirt the high probability that outcome trends would have been unavoidably evident during the feasibility phase, and impossible to not pick up on. To suggest this played no part seems crass. This is surely the whole point of pre-trial prospective registration, because even the best-intentioned people would be unable to detach such awareness from their actions.

 

In a late 2017 article in Buzzfeed, she gives participant dissatisfaction as the reason for changing the primary outcome:

But this correction says:

Despite what further unpublished work might suggest, I somehow I doubt that the children would have underreported their attendance, compared to school attendance records - but I guess we'll just never know.

 

Blog by Steven Lubet

www.thefacultylounge.org/2019/07/fate-has-compelled-be-to-pay-attention-to-medical-studies-and-journal-articles-on-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-mecfs-i-am-usu.html

 

Barring a minor typo at the beginning ('be' instead of 'me') that is an excellent focus on the absurdity of the authors' marking their own homework. Also really glad that he highlights this:

 

Also this from Steve Lubet's same blog:

"Impartiality might reasonably be questioned" ... clearly the BMJ Archives of Disease in Childhood Care editorial staff have pretty crap powers of reasoning. I wonder if that could be due to their own conflicts of interest by any chance. The words that come to my mind: Corrupt as hell.

 

anyone read the Lightning process entry on Wikipedia........
it could do with a bit of updating (eg no mention of the correction of the SMILE paper)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lightning_Process

 

The wikipedia article sounds like an advertisement.

Maybe someone could also put in Edzard Ernst's statement? https://edzardernst.com/2020/06/the-lightning-process-implausible-unproven-hyped-and-expensive/

and this sentence is misleading and abbreviated:

"The approach has raised some controversy due to using psychological techniques to cure what people feel is a physical illness."

what the referenced article actually says about the controversy:

 

The article is from April 2008. There should be more up to date stuff available. (I recognised John Greensmith's name. I hope he's OK, he disappeared from the scene ages ago)

 

Just had a look on how the corrections are taken into account on PubMed.

This is the paper on PubMed:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865512/


And this is how it's listed in the PubMed "cited by" section e.g. of the PACE trial:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3065633/citedby/?page=3