Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Occupational Status: A Retrospective Longitudinal Study, 2021, Chalder et al

Retraction Watch highlighting Brian's blog.

 

Trial By Error: An Exchange of Letters Concerning Professor Chalder’s Latest Disaster of a Paper

"On Monday, we received an e-mail from an assistant editor at Occupational Medicine. They relayed a request from the editor-in-chief that we trim our letter from 1326 words to the strict maximum of 500 words and re-submit it. The editor-in-chief also suggested that we send the full, unedited version of our letter to the paper’s corresponding author–i.e. Professor Chalder."

https://www.virology.ws/2021/12/22/...rofessor-chalders-latest-disaster-of-a-paper/

 

That's the trouble with writing to robots!

 

It is quite interesting that the publishers offer access to the paper for the price of £150 for the single issue. I had rather expected it to be free. Those inclined to ponder such matters might consider what implied warranties there might be on the part of the publisher. One might think that they should have taken measures to be expected of a reasonable publisher to ensure that the material published is of the scientific standard to be expected of them. Perhaps there defence would be that it is.

 

The journal has written us back that our letter has been sent to the authors for their response. The journal promises to get back to us with a plan of action, likely next month.

 

This exchange is seriously amazing, and what a great response. Does the editor not understand their job? This isn't a printing factory, they're supposed to actually check their stuff, and do something about it when it's shown to be wrong.

Maybe it's a conflict with dealing with vanity projects devoid of substance, there's just no expectation that substance would matter.

 

EDIT - yes they should simply state they don't know and set out research options i.e. to try to understand the disease and eventually treat it.
This stuff just looks like self serving crap.

 

Perhaps notable that the editor-in-chief of the Occupational Medicine journal also happens to be, as the President of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine, one of the named signatories to the RCP's sour-grapes statement about the new NICE guideline.

 

Good connection! I hadn't noticed that.

 

What is it about the Royal Marines that might lead to such a particular view of the world? Silly question - no answer required or expected.

 

Pretty OT, but last year FOM gave an award to Emma Giblin for her (unpublished) CFS work

https://twitter.com/user/status/1140914332059996160


https://www.fom.ac.uk/clinical-excellence-awards/peter-taylor-award-winner-announced

"Ira Madan was a fantastic supervisor and without her help and support I could not have done this.”

Ira Madan has a troubling record with CFS.

 

Trial By Error: Awaiting Response on Chalder Paper; Australian GPs Still Promoting GET and Citing PACE

"Professor Hughes and I called for the paper’s retraction. The journal has forwarded our concerns to Professor Chalder, the corresponding author. We have now heard from the journal that the authors are eager to respond to the points we have raised. We were advised that this would likely occur later this month, and that the editor-in-chief will let us know what’s happening after he reviews the account submitted by the authors."

https://www.virology.ws/2022/01/04/...lian-gps-still-promoting-get-and-citing-pace/

I have also posted this on the thread for the other article mentioned here, Australia: RACGP: GET for CFS.

 

Code:

https://twitter.com/davidtuller1/status/1475597861437915137

PubPeer link: https://t.co/HtczbYSM2J

Thank you @dave30th @Brian Hughes @PeterW

Forum thread about PubPeer here.

 

Brian Hughes and I have heard from Occupational Medicine that it will be publishing our letter, along with a response from the authors, within a few weeks. We haven't seen the Chalder response yet. The journal will not retract the study. It also sounds, remarkably, that the journal will not correct the study either. But it's not clear at this point.

 

"Dear Sir,

Occupational Medicine recently published a paper from Stevelink et al. [1] called ‘Chronic fatigue syndrome and occupational status: a retrospective longitudinal study’. Unfortunately, the paper features major technical and methodological errors that warrant urgent editorial attention."

https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/72/4/e1/6590617

 

And the reply: https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/72/4/e2/6590619

 

Of course. Academia is broken. This is 99% politics and "he says they say we disagree". There is no arbiter, everything is rhetoric and influence. This is a completely broken way of doing things, one that places zero value on outcomes and that this is about real people in real life.