BMJ: Pressure grows on Lancet to review “flawed” PACE trial

Esther12 said:
I hate the emphasis on this 'all in the mind' stuff - it's such a distraction, and always gives the impression patients start with foolish assumptions about mental illness or the way mind and body can interact. Was this ever the issue driving concerns about PACE? Certainly not amongst the people I'd been speaking to about it. Anyway, even if ME/CFS was a MH problem, the problems with PACE would still remain, and would still need to be spoken out against
Click to expand...
Spot on. My quoted blog’s opening line did make clear patients’ simple motivation:

“Like all patients, what I want most from clinical research is treatments that work, not ones that merely look good on paper."

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2016/09/2...nts-to-scrutinise-studies-about-their-health/
 
Last edited:
Sly Saint said:
Is there a rivalry between the Lancet and the BMJ at all?
Just wondered if it might be worth someone writing a letter (as a commentary like this one) to the Lancet re BMJs failure to reply (to @dave30th ) to problems with Crawleys research?
Click to expand...

A little. But I think you would quickly find The Lancet siding with the BMJ on this one.

(RH really doesn't like the involvement of investigative journalists: https://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7001)
 
Last edited:
dave30th said:
Absolutely. I am sure this would not have happened without the Times article. Even the opening phrasing is similar, and the list of universities represented. Coverage generates coverage. This article in BMJ has now made it news not just in the general world but in the medical journal world. Whatever the limitations of any specific article, it's clear that the CBT/GET ideological brigades no longer control the narrative.
Click to expand...
Which is the snowball effect. A virtuous circle. Exponential increases like this start off slow but accelerate more and more. :)
 
The author of the article in op
"Ingrid Torjesen
Ingrid Torjesen is a freelance journalist specialising in health and health policy. She is a regular contributor to The BMJ and the Health Service Journal and is editor of The Advisor, a magazine for people working in smoking cessation services. In the past she has acted as news editor for The BMJ; opinion, features and news editors for the HSJ and features editor for Nursing Times. Staff posts include associate editor and news editor of GP newspaper, news editor of Pulse, and reporter at Australian Doctor, based in Sydney. She has a degree in Biological Sciences specialising in Genetics."

she's on twitter and her contact info can be found here:

https://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/ingrid-torjesen/929.bio?firstPass=false
 
Londinium said:
I would have bloody loved it if a well-designed trial showed a therapy to be effective regardless of the pathology underpinning that treatment; I'd much rather have a condition shown to be psychological and curable than physical and not.
Click to expand...
Quite. Even if the truth had been that PwME were start staring bonkers, and come up with ways to genuinely overcome that, it would have been very welcome. As it is it's not the patients who seem to be a tad bonkers.
 
Last edited:
Kalliope said:
Michael Sharpe responded too:

Odd piece in Times newspaper about pressure on the Lancet to review unwelcome PACE trial findings
This 'news item' refers to a three times recycled letter that has been repeatedly sent to the editor of the Lancet journal by campaigners, about a study that was published in 2011.

Edit to add: He claims no competing interests. Am I reading right?
Click to expand...
Beat me to it. Was about to highlight that. Reading and believing are two different things :).
 
Kalliope said:
Michael Sharpe responded too:

Odd piece in Times newspaper about pressure on the Lancet to review unwelcome PACE trial findings
This 'news item' refers to a three times recycled letter that has been repeatedly sent to the editor of the Lancet journal by campaigners, about a study that was published in 2011.

Edit to add: He claims no competing interests. Am I reading right?
Click to expand...

I hope @dave30th or @Jonathan Edwards might respond to him. The PACE authors do poorly in debate in the open.

Weirdly, Sharpe says this:

"The trial referred to in the letter was subject to rigorous monitoring whilst being done and extensive peer review before being published. Furthermore, and unusually, because of the campaign against it, has been subject to a number of further reviews after being published, all of which have found its conclusions to be sound."​

What is he talking about? What reviews?
 
Kalliope said:
Michael Sharpe responded too:

Odd piece in Times newspaper about pressure on the Lancet to review unwelcome PACE trial findings
This 'news item' refers to a three times recycled letter that has been repeatedly sent to the editor of the Lancet journal by campaigners, about a study that was published in 2011.

Edit to add: He claims no competing interests. Am I reading right?
Click to expand...
Interesting that for MS's comment the title of the article morphed from "Pressure grows on Lancet to review “flawed” PACE trial" to being about "pressure on the Lancet to review unwelcome PACE trial findings"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom