Cancer-related fatigue and functional impairment – Towards an understanding of cognitive and behavioural factors: Hughes, Chalder et al May 2020

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022399919309183

(not yet available on sci-hub)

 

seriously???

 

according to Wyller fatigue post mono may be predicted by having a good memory

ETA: I should be fine, then..

 

If two things correlate, one can definitely and always assume that one causes the other. That's how these people think .

Satire: I've discovered that people that enter the hospital can be divided into low and high worry groups, and that the high worry group is much more likely to die in the short term. Clearly that demonstrates the existence of a powerful mind-body effect. If we can get people to worry less, they'll be more likely to survive!

 

Just out of curiosity, I'd like to see what their image of a patient they'd define as not having pathological behaviour is..

Edited for clarity.

 

Ah, I see the latest edition of cheap psychological experiment cut-and-paste is out. How odd that the conclusions of every such Chalder experiment are always the same. The exact same. And they play out exactly the same way. As if the process were a formality that has no impact on the conclusions. Which are the same every time.

I just can't with this. There are centuries of painful lessons in science about exactly this, about being able to tell what factors play a role in the outcome and what is superfluous to outcome. The chemotherapy is clearly the relevant factor. Anxiety, whatever is actually meant by this and nothing that can be measured or evaluated in a meaningful way, is entirely superfluous and yet it has been decided that the superfluous thing is relevant while the relevant thing is not.

Good grief this is pathetic, flat Earth level of disconnect from reality.

 

the real question here is who is paying for this one trick pony show . only vested financial interest would waste time and effort into such simplistic thinking . in order to other sick and disabled groups so we can be abandoned and left to rot with little or no cost to the insurance industry as well as creating the framework that allows benefit agencies to dump all over us .

 

Biology knowledge? A simple understanding of the biological impacts of chemo may be enlightening.

Or was that not considered relevant ?

No matter how many times something like this comes up I am still gobsmacked.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1259483660018991107

 

So, we'll ignore the myriad of reasonable possible explanations, including

- They were more severely affected by side effects, including fatigue, the first time round and were understandably concerned

- They had no support at home, knew what a struggle they'd be facing

- They have cancer & a nice lady in a blue cardi came and asked them to answer questions about their anxiety, they wanted to please the nice lady and make her feel relevant and so agreed they were very anxious. Demonstrating some are more susceptible to blue cardigans.

 

The notable part is not what is written in the manuscript, but the fact that it will mostly be ignored in clinical practise as most readers will recognise it for what it is: mediocre quality research.

 

Chalder and co are all getting older themselves. At some stage they will succumb to the diseases of old age, and for some of them they will get cancer and other illnesses or diseases themselves at an earlier age (earlier than old age that is). I'll be interested to see how they cope when it happens to them. What? Catastrophise? No way!

Something makes me think that when they themselves are affected they will think that they deserve the very benefits that their research prevents or makes it very difficult to get for "ordinary patients". Let's hope they have as much difficulty as we do. (I'm a really horrible person - I'd love to see them suffer the way they've made us suffer)

 

I suppose that if this paper was shown to an oncologist, or any doctor who cares about their patients with cancer really, they would brush it off as nonsense based on their clinical experience. At least I hope so!

 

I think the point here is to be able to point at cancer papers that show the "same" to be able to give it more credibility since "it's also true for cancer". I have every expectation that everyone involved in this weak paper knows for sure that no one involved in cancer research or care will pay any attention to it and would in fact likely laugh it off. Publishing it in a garbage journal like psychosomatics guarantees no one outside the circle jerk will even see it.

When your evidence base is paper thin, all you can do is stretch it around.

 

rt by Michael Sharpe

https://twitter.com/user/status/1258861874462023691

 

My reaction to that was "Aww, diddums"