Brain training that cured a real illness: first-person testimony about fully recovering from [ME/CFS] using the lightning process, 2026, Hartman et al

Maat said:
47 pages of references dating back to Engels 1977 paper. Not more than a couple of research references to ME/CFS. Mostly pain and MUS. I wasn't up to following the links. I don't know who yellow highlighted sections of each reference.

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Consequently, few clinicians are aware of the quality and quantity of evidence supporting a psychological approach to PPD symptoms
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Ah, that is certainly true, just not the way they imply here.
 
Health science is vulnerable to infiltration by bad science or pseudoscience, and relies heavily on gatekeeping to maintain its integrity. Gatekeeping, though necessary, is perilous. The history of science shows that gatekeepers may let in bad science or pseudoscience while keeping out important new ideas, due to cultural waves or commitment to entrenched frameworks. In the science of chronic illness, there is reason to think that just this is happening.
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Less self-awareness than a rock.
Faculty of Catholic Theology
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Not even sure what to say at this point. This is basically like a "We will be throwing rocks from a glasshouse" conference held in the largest glasshouse in the world and it's a double feature with a slingshot club.
"Excited Delirium Syndrome" or Asphyxiation? Evidential Practices in Forensic Medicine (Abstract)
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Honestly this is simply impossible to satirize, just way over the top aggressive. I'd expect a talk on Drapetomania at this point.
Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) remains a condition surrounded by considerable debate and controversy
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One time I got curious about this and went looking for this community. I was wondering what they thought of the extreme depiction of this in Better Call Saul, which seems about as over the top as Reefer madness, and I could not find a single community about it. No forum or website or anything like that. It seems to be mostly a made-up thing that it exists beyond a few oddballs.
 
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Has anyone seen a similar first-person-narrative-drawing-causal-conclusion piece of published "research" elsewhere? I mean, do psychiatric/psychological journals do this kind of thing or promote this kind of "evidence"? Case studies are different and certainly should be more cautiously written. The author does include a mild disclaimer that this is only his experience and he's only claiming it cured him, not that it's the best cure for others. But still.
 
rvallee said:
Less self-awareness than a rock.

Not even sure what to say at this point. This is basically like a "We will be throwing rocks from a glasshouse" conference held in the largest glasshouse in the world and it's a double feature with a slingshot club.

Honestly this is simply impossible to satirize, just way over the top aggressive. I'd expect a talk on Drapetomania at this point.

One time I got curious about this and went looking for this community. I was wondering what they thought of the extreme depiction of this in Better Call Saul, which seems about as over the top as Reefer madness, and I could not find a single community about it. No forum or website or anything like that. It seems to be mostly a made-up thing that it exists beyond a few oddballs.
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Oh I knew a lady with it, it really dominated her life but not in the “better call Saul” way, I worked with her so she left the house most days.
 
dave30th said:
Has anyone seen a similar first-person-narrative-drawing-causal-conclusion piece of published "research" elsewhere? I mean, do psychiatric/psychological journals do this kind of thing or promote this kind of "evidence"? Case studies are different and certainly should be more cautiously written. The author does include a mild disclaimer that this is only his experience and he's only claiming it cured him, not that it's the best cure for others. But still.
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I guess we would have to look around other papers by sociology/religion/psychology academics who had discovered some superhuman knowledge or power through some other route and found themselves truly fascinating (n.b. I am not even being sarcastic here, we are surely through the looking glass).
 
dave30th said:
Has anyone seen a similar first-person-narrative-drawing-causal-conclusion piece of published "research" elsewhere?
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Chandelier said:
Evil – how exciting, that reminds me of my muse Levinovitz!
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My spidey senses are tingling so hard but no matter what I try, I can't make a direct connection to Alan Levinovitz from any of the presenters.
Chandelier said:
There are other abstracts from that gathering that are thought-headache-provoking
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I've been going through the publication lists of the participants of that gathering and this study title by de Punder et al made me laugh, so I thought I'd share the fun:
Unseen vulnerability in elite sport: Insecure attachment is hidden behind psychological well-being (src)
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Looking back at my academia years, I could have written so much bollocks with the goal to one day show it to my children and have a laugh, but alas!
 
There really does seem to be an ongoing effort to legitimise these blatantly pseudoscientific "brain training" peddlers. Only today, this protocol appeared on MedRXIV from the McMaster group, which is led by a chiropractor (Busse); chiropractors necessarily having a vested interest in reducing the threshold at which evidence is considered reliable to benefit their own form of pseudoscience -

www.medrxiv.org

The Context of Recovery Among Adults Who Recover from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Post-COVID Condition Following Mind-Body Approaches: A Qualitative Descriptive Study Protocol

Background Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and post-COVID condition are complex, debilitating illnesses characterized by persistent fatigue and post-exertional malaise. Recovery is uncommon without targeted intervention; however, emerging clinical reports suggest that...
www.medrxiv.org www.medrxiv.org
 
Nightsong said:
There really does seem to be an ongoing effort to legitimise these blatantly pseudoscientific "brain training" peddlers. Only today, this protocol appeared on MedRXIV from the McMaster group, which is led by a chiropractor (Busse); chiropractors necessarily having a vested interest in reducing the threshold at which evidence is considered reliable to benefit their own form of pseudoscience -

www.medrxiv.org

The Context of Recovery Among Adults Who Recover from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Post-COVID Condition Following Mind-Body Approaches: A Qualitative Descriptive Study Protocol

Background Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and post-COVID condition are complex, debilitating illnesses characterized by persistent fatigue and post-exertional malaise. Recovery is uncommon without targeted intervention; however, emerging clinical reports suggest that...
www.medrxiv.org www.medrxiv.org
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Thank you, new thread here:
The Context of Recovery Among Adults Who Recover from [ME/CFS & LC] Following Mind-Body Approaches: A Qualitative…, 2026, Cordovani, Zeraatkar, Busse+
 
dave30th said:
Has anyone seen a similar first-person-narrative-drawing-causal-conclusion piece of published "research" elsewhere? I mean, do psychiatric/psychological journals do this kind of thing or promote this kind of "evidence"? Case studies are different and certainly should be more cautiously written. The author does include a mild disclaimer that this is only his experience and he's only claiming it cured him, not that it's the best cure for others. But still.
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I've been wondering whether this falls foul of the UK ASA Regulations (a "regulatory gatekeeper"). A defence might be that the target audience of the Journal is not the general public. But a counterclaim to that would be evidence showing how brain training "research" is used by brain training provision providers whose target audience is.

The use of the word 'testimony', in this context, has a much more persuasive impact on the general public who would normally associate it's use in a legal truthful context ie fact.of a cure.
 
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Nightsong said:
There really does seem to be an ongoing effort to legitimise these blatantly pseudoscientific "brain training" peddlers. Only today, this protocol appeared on MedRXIV from the McMaster group, which is led by a chiropractor (Busse); chiropractors necessarily having a vested interest in reducing the threshold at which evidence is considered reliable to benefit their own form of pseudoscience -

www.medrxiv.org

The Context of Recovery Among Adults Who Recover from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Post-COVID Condition Following Mind-Body Approaches: A Qualitative Descriptive Study Protocol

Background Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and post-COVID condition are complex, debilitating illnesses characterized by persistent fatigue and post-exertional malaise. Recovery is uncommon without targeted intervention; however, emerging clinical reports suggest that...
www.medrxiv.org www.medrxiv.org
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'We will publish our findings in a peer-reviewed, open-access journal and present at relevant academic conferences. A lay summary of the results will also be shared directly with participating patient recovery networks.'
 
Maat said:
I've been wondering whether this falls foul of the UK ASA Regulations (a "regulatory gatekeeper"). A defence might be that the target audience of the Journal is not the general public. But a counterclaim to that would be evidence showing how brain training "research" is used by brain training provision providers whose target audience is.

The use of the word 'testimony', in this context, has a much more persuasive impact on the general public who would normally associate it's use in a legal truthful context ie fact.of a cure.
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Gimme "Things you were never told before in your life" for $1000:

Your legalese makes my heart go POTSy!
 
Jason W Busse (same Jason Busse who attended the gathering?) is also an author of this research published May 2025

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the 2021 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Guidelines on Public Perspectives Toward Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Thematic and Sentiment Analysis on Twitter (Rebranded as X)​


Edit;: Meanwhile, in the UK, ME/CFS Final Delivery Plan published June 2025, together with second Prevention of Future Deaths Report issued
 
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Maat said:
Jason W Busse (same Jason Busse who attended the gathering?) is also an author of this research published May 2025

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the 2021 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Guidelines on Public Perspectives Toward Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Thematic and Sentiment Analysis on Twitter (Rebranded as X)​

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Thread here, https://s4me.info/threads/impact-of...nalysis-2025-khakban-et-al-jason-busse.44266/
 
Nightsong said:
There really does seem to be an ongoing effort to legitimise these blatantly pseudoscientific "brain training" peddlers.
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Been going on for many years now.

It is genuinely obsessive fanatic behaviour. They simply cannot let go of their psychosomatic Holy Grail, regardless of how much they fail to provide any hard evidence for it.

They just know it is true, and thus are justified in weakening methodological standards and relentlessly torturing the data until it confesses that truth, to the point of even just blatantly lying about what it says, and running a shameless marketing campaign to convince the skeptical world of it.

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From https://www.jmir.org/2025/1/e65087

Tweets about the UK NICE guidelines expressed frustration with the 2007 version that recommended cognitive behavioral therapy and graded exercise therapy, and a prolonged campaign by advocacy organizations to influence subsequent versions. Tweets showed high acceptance of the 2021 UK NICE guidelines, which were seen to validate ME/CFS as a biomedical disease and recommended against graded exercise therapy. Tweets about COVID-19 often noted overlaps between post–COVID-19 condition and ME/CFS, including claims of a common biological pathway, and advised there was no cure for either condition.
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Well, it is the truth. Try it sometime.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest research is needed to inform how best to support patients’ engagement with evidence-based care. Furthermore, while patient involvement with ME/CFS research is critical, unmanaged intellectual conflicts of interest may threaten the trustworthiness of research efforts.
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DARVO and irony stew might be rich, but it is not a nutritious dish.
 
Peter T said:
Also something people don’t mention is that starting something new like brain training could be an indicator that they were already in a recovery process.

When I had my first remission, I believed I had recovered, however at the same time I was on a six month radical raw food organic largely vegan diet. I could have chosen to believe that it was a miracle cure but I think it most likely that I was only able to put the extreme effort required into this diet because some degree of recovery was already under way.

After my first relapse, repeating the diet was much harder to do because of lower possible activity levels even though by then I had had to take ill health retirement and did not result any dramatic change.
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Similarly, I’ve noticed there are quite a few things that help me a little bit when I’m on an upswing. They do absolutely nothing when I’m on a downswing. My conclusion is that they probably just help my body in ways that are nothing to do with my disease, and just help me get the most out of my upswing.
 
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