Chronisches Fatigue-Syndrom, 2026, Alexa Alica Kupferschmitt & Volker Köllner

Thoughts from a lawyer on Bluesky.
Machine translation:
Dr. Daniel Loy @drdanielloy.bsky.social
Statements regarding #ME/CFS were published in a behavioral therapy manual by Springer-Verlag GmbH which, according to the publisher, did not originate from the two chapter authors. An official erratum now clarifies: the published version was unauthorized.

The initial version referred to a "combative and accusatory tone," "patient aggression," and hypochondriacal illness behavior. These passages have since been removed. The revision affects significant portions of the entire chapter text.

According to the erratum, the disputed statements did not originate from the authors and contradicted their therapeutic stance. They were not informed of the "final corrections" prior to printing. The version originally approved by the authors has now been reinstated.

This incident raises fundamental questions. Typically, authors receive page proofs for approval before publication. How, then, could a substantively altered version be published without further consent?

Most importantly: who authored these statements or initiated their inclusion? The editors? The editorial department? Other parties involved? This is relevant because these are independent medical assessments, not mere typos or linguistic corrections.

Furthermore: how could quality assurance fail so significantly? If scientific texts can be substantively altered after author approval without the authors' knowledge, a central safeguard of scientific publication integrity has been compromised.

Even more fundamentally: is this practice limited to this single chapter? Have the remaining chapters of the manual been reviewed? And what is the status of other publications by the publisher that underwent the same editorial or technical production process?

The erratum leaves these questions unanswered. Ultimately, they concern scientific publication integrity. Springer-Verlag GmbH and Springer Nature should investigate the matter and clarify whether further publications may be affected. @springernature.com @springer.springernature.com

Link to the erratum on the publisher's website: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-72268-8_114
Click to expand...
 
Looking at this in a bit more detail:

This appears to be a therapy manual - a practical textbook for health professionals. There are two editors who also make contributions to a large number of chapters - Linden and Hautzinger. I think it is perfectly possible that the editors rewrote sections and added in inappropriate material without the chapter authors knowing. They may have treated the manual as essentially their book, with others invited to fill out areas they were not interested in. That sort of high-handedness is not uncommon in medicine and I suspect might be even more common in fields like psychotherapy.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Looking at this in a bit more detail:

This appears to be a therapy manual - a practical textbook for health professionals. There are two editors who also make contributions to a large number of chapters - Linden and Hautzinger. I think it is perfectly possible that the editors rewrote sections and added in inappropriate material without the chapter authors knowing. They may have treated the manual as essentially their book, with others invited to fill out areas they were not interested in. That sort of high-handedness is not uncommon in medicine and I suspect might be even more common in fields like psychotherapy.
Click to expand...
on the other hand, köllner and kupferschmitt are definitely known for believing such things.
They are the worst.
The question is, if they would write something like that openly, especially now with the Decade.
 
justlxsa said:
on the other hand, köllner and kupferschmitt are definitely known for believing such things.
They are the worst.
The question is, if they would write something like that openly, especially now with the Decade.
Click to expand...

Another possibility, of course, is that one author knew and approved but the other did not!

Either way this needs to be investigated so that the truth of the matter is clear. I think it would be hard for both sides to deny they were responsible.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Book subeditors very often, if not always, do this.
Click to expand...

It has never been my experience that sub-editors are introducing wholesale lengthy passages completely unseen by authors. Nor have I heard of this. They make other mistakes. But I would not pass this off as standard process. If that's what happened, something is very wrong here. And if it didn't happen, the authors are lying.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Looking at this in a bit more detail:

This appears to be a therapy manual - a practical textbook for health professionals. There are two editors who also make contributions to a large number of chapters - Linden and Hautzinger. I think it is perfectly possible that the editors rewrote sections and added in inappropriate material without the chapter authors knowing. They may have treated the manual as essentially their book, with others invited to fill out areas they were not interested in. That sort of high-handedness is not uncommon in medicine and I suspect might be even more common in fields like psychotherapy.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting theory and could be possible. Still seems unlikely to me. If they did do this, I assumed they did so because they knew that the authors agreed and didn't anticipate that passage alone would cause such an uproar. The idea that it doesn't reflect the chapter authors' views, when the rest of the chapter is essentially making the case, also seems far-fetched. In any event, the idea that they think they should correct it without providing an adequate explanation or taking responsibility for it is pretty insulting to readers.
 
dave30th said:
It has never been my experience that sub-editors are introducing wholesale lengthy passages completely unseen by authors.
Click to expand...

I agree this would not be subeditors, looking at the material. But it could be section/monograph contributor/editors. I have authored and edited texts a bit like this with chapters by various clinicians desigend to cover a medical topic. In one case I ended up as the de facto editor for a foursome of authors and had to rewrite some of the chapters simply because they were not readable. These books vary from being written by one or a small group of authors to being collections with many authors, like this. But in the latter case there are often senior editor/authors who contribute to lots of sections and are clearly dictating the overall content - as is the case here.

Whoever is responsible, bot the chapter authors and the two editor/authors should have been very aware of the derogatory material and objected. So in fact both are guilty. But it still matters who actually wrote them and why that has not been made transparent.

Crossed with post #48 - I agree that none of this will wash either way and that they are all guilty of insulting patients.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
and that they are all guilty of insulting patients.
Click to expand...
And far worse than that. They created an official template and excuse for inflicting even more serious harm on an already extremely defamed and abused patient group.

How this was allowed to happen needs to be fully exposed, and those responsible held to full account.

The one possible explanation I seriously doubt is that this was done by a rogue individual. If so then that requires some seriously sloppy and irresponsible publishing practices, and Springer have have been in the game for far too long to have any excuse for that at all.
 
Last edited:
This reminds me of a story from almost 40 years ago, when the NYT wrote a story about lesbians having babies. It included this paragraph:

"But some clinicians speculate that in the long term, girls might have difficulty in intimate relationships with men, and boys might be uncomfortable with their role as males. If lesbian parents are openly hostile toward men, these difficulties could be worsened."

Of course, no evidence was presented that lesbians are more "openly hostile" toward men than straight women. I have known many, many women who are generally "hostile to men" because of men's awful behavior, and most of them are not lesbians. The statement just stood out like a non sequiter, based on nothing. After an uproar, the NYT acknowledged it had been inserted by an editor, not the reporter, and it was removed. This statement was in the correction notice:

"In the absence of evidence that hostility toward men is common among lesbian parents, the reference to such hostility was unwarranted."
 
Last edited:
It looks like they tried to slip in a terribly conceived cover-up where no one was responsible for anything. This is not a credible excuse, but they are under no obligation to actually tell the truth.

Honor systems don't work when there are explicit incentives to dishonor. Humans are only ethical in narrow bounds, and there are just way too many reasons to not bother with that here. All the premises of how those systems are supposed to work are a bunch of lies.
 
rvallee said:
Seems like some printed versions with the original text were distributed. Austrian journalist:
Click to expand...
A good point was raised in the comments:

If these statements truly did not come from Köllner and Kupferschmitt and do not reflect their therapeutic approach, surely they would now have to take legal action to stop this printed version from being circulated, wouldn’t they???​
​

Wenn diese Aussagen wirklich nicht von Köllner und Kupferschmitt stammen und nicht ihrer therapeutischen Haltung entsprechen, dann müssten sie doch jetzt juristisch dagegen vorgehen, dass diese Printversion verbreitet wird???
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom