Chronicity rhetoric in health and welfare systems inhibits patient recovery: a qualitative, ethnographic study of fibromyalgia care, 2025, Cupit

Two more thoughts:

To what extent is it appropriate, in a supposedly scientific paper, to give your "informants" space to complain about an organisation - the MEA - that has nothing to do with the subject of your paper (supposedly fibromyalgia)? I haven't heard of any research team doing this before. If this had been a piece of mere journalism, they would have been afforded the right of reply. There have certainly been many problems with the MEA's direction of late but complaining about pseudoscience in NHS clinics is a valuable public service.

Secondly, I think Versus Arthritis and Fibromyalgia Action UK should be asked to what extent, if any, they associate themselves with the conclusions these "researchers" have drawn, and, if they do not, why it is that they are assisting them. I'm sure a number of FMAUK's members would not appreciate them associating themselves with the position that the benefits on which they depend are prolonging their illness.
 
Clinical trials cannot account for, or control for, such diverse social challenges or the individual neurobiology that may be involved in addressing them.

If it can be done in the clinic, then it can be done in a clinical trial.

It's just an excuse for the lack of effect, which reveals that the clinic has little to offer beyond fulfilling the desire to receive treatment, be listened to, etc.

Also, if they were good at actually understanding the psychology of chronic illness they would understand that what they consider "chronicity rethoric" is part of the adaptation to the illness that has the function of allowing people to live better with the illness. To manage a problem you must be aware of it, understand the risks and challenges associated with it and have realistic view of what is possible and what is not. That these things are considered a negative attitude reveals that these people are seriously underestimating the illness.

A bit of humilty would do them good. Patients live with the illness every day and often had many years to learn about all the intricate details of it (including "diverse social challenges" and "individual neurobiology").
 
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Garner's a big fan of this paper


It's a small detail that I missed, though it really speaks to how absurd these people are, that the part quoted by Garner mentions how we exclusively fund "pharmaceutical research". Now, I'm pretty sure that the authors of this sad excuse for a paper know that this is false, and that Garner does too. They know what pharmaceutical research means, which is the research, development and testing of new drugs, and that it is not the same thing as doing basic biomedical research, which is what we mainly fund, and is in fact the bulk of research (by funding, though not volume, since BPS garbage is cheap).

But they say this to sort of hint like we side with the powerful pharmaceutical industry, which has so far explicitly refused to even try, mainly because they literally cannot do anything until a biological target is identified by basic biomedical research, while they are the smol bean underdogs fighting for the little guy, only to be beaten back by the big bad patient lobbies working in tandem with giant corporate interests. Or whatever. Pure fantasy.

Their lies are so absurdly over-the-top that it more closely resembles the sewers of the internet than anything having to do with academia. Our civilization is collapsing under all the lies and corruption, so much that it has so thoroughly infected even the medical profession, where egregious lies are rewarded. Our species is really heading strong towards self-collapse, and biopsychosocial medicine and 4chan are two prongs of the horseshoe politics regressing health care.
 
It's a small detail that I missed, though it really speaks to how absurd these people are, that the part quoted by Garner mentions how we exclusively fund "pharmaceutical research". Now, I'm pretty sure that the authors of this sad excuse for a paper know that this is false, and that Garner does too. They know what pharmaceutical research means, which is the research, development and testing of new drugs, and that it is not the same thing as doing basic biomedical research, which is what we mainly fund, and is in fact the bulk of research (by funding, though not volume, since BPS garbage is cheap).

But they say this to sort of hint like we side with the powerful pharmaceutical industry, which has so far explicitly refused to even try, mainly because they literally cannot do anything until a biological target is identified by basic biomedical research, while they are the smol bean underdogs fighting for the little guy, only to be beaten back by the big bad patient lobbies working in tandem with giant corporate interests. Or whatever. Pure fantasy.

Their lies are so absurdly over-the-top that it more closely resembles the sewers of the internet than anything having to do with academia. Our civilization is collapsing under all the lies and corruption, so much that it has so thoroughly infected even the medical profession, where egregious lies are rewarded. Our species is really heading strong towards self-collapse, and biopsychosocial medicine and 4chan are two prongs of the horseshoe politics regressing health care.
Not to mention that Vogt & Co tried to get the cyclo study cancelled, and that so far, every application for funding for Dara p2 has been turned down.

And Wyller got 12M NOK (~half of Dara p2’s budget) for his off-brand LP + Nicotinamide Ribosine for LC study (MINIRICO).
 
If it can be done in the clinic, then it can be done in a clinical trial.

It's just an excuse for the lack of effect, which reveals that the clinic has little to offer beyond fulfilling the desire to receive treatment, be listened to, etc.
There's a deeper, and funnier, though in a very bad way, implication of this weak argument, and it's: then why bother doing trials at all? Because for years when the fake trials they set up were accepted as indisputable, well, they were indisputable. It wasn't them simply saying that (it totally was), they had trials proving it (and you should just ignore the fact that the assertions predated the trials by many years). I certainly agree that pragmatic trials like this are entirely useless, but for very different reason than they are pretending to argue here.

So, now those trials cannot cover the complexity of the factors involved. From one side of the monster's mouth, out the other it's the same old BS about some trials proving it, and always needing more and more of them, to infinity and beyond. So, then, why do those clinical trials at all? Because they are basically 80-90% of what they do. And, sure enough, they are incompetent at proving or informing about anything, but that's entirely by choice. The same kind of choice that made Uri Geller only "bend" spoons he brought himself, made of a special alloy that softens on contact with body temperature. And, because it's a fitting comparison, when he was exposed by Jonny Carson, who asked him to bend normal spoons, his popularity actually rose. Didn't change a thing. Despite James Randi offering $1M for such a demonstration.

Anyway, these people don't even believe in their arguments so it doesn't really matter that they contradict themselves, yet again, but it's still absurd how total the collapse of their systems are, not only completely incapable of solving such problems, but incapable of adjusting to failed outcomes, working instead to cover things up as long as they can get away with, and just generally lying about everything they do and why.
 
It's a small detail that I missed, though it really speaks to how absurd these people are, that the part quoted by Garner mentions how we exclusively fund "pharmaceutical research". Now, I'm pretty sure that the authors of this sad excuse for a paper know that this is false, and that Garner does too. They know what pharmaceutical research means, which is the research, development and testing of new drugs, and that it is not the same thing as doing basic biomedical research, which is what we mainly fund, and is in fact the bulk of research (by funding, though not volume, since BPS garbage is cheap).

In terms of ‘us and them’, in so much as there are coherent groups making up ‘us and them’, rather it is them that exclusively research treatment and make no meaningful attempts at evaluating their etiological beliefs. We would like treatment but we also want an evidenced understanding of our underlying condition.

Indeed the main unifying factor for ‘them’ is the belief that psycho behavioural interventions can cure us if only we would be well behaved and do what we are told, and that this is a self evident truth that needs no evaluation. Research is only needed to tweak the finer detail of that intervention.
 
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