Cochrane Review: 'Exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome', Larun et al. - New version October 2019 and new date December 2024

It was taken away from the "Common Mental Disorders Group" and moved to under the "control" of the Editor in Chief. She was advised by Chris Eccleston from the Pain and Palliative Care group who is a psychology professor specialising in psychological therapies for chronic pain. So he's well used to (and way too tolerant of) crappy unblindable studies with subjective outcomes. Even he questioned the fact the review authors had ignored the drop outs. This is the first time Ecceleston is mentioned in the email of 24 May 2019 where Tovey tries again to tell them Cochrane can't publish the review. Eccleston is copied into the rest of the correspondence from then on as he said he was prepared to sign off on the review....I'm not sure he was actually asked to take responsibility in the end. [https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:99e5bf24-7a60-4d5a-84bf-a19b7024c265]

 

Also a notable interpretation of their comment is that there is no need to complain to them or anyone involved underneath them, so those complaints should be directed to other entities, preferably those with some level of oversight or funding over them. And there should be loads of it. So for example the petition should be used when commenting to other entities pointing out how how Cochrane walks has nothing to do with how their talk, how their entire business model is a sham: they don't care about quality or relevance of their reviews, and they especially don't want to do any real consumer engagement, even at several arms' length.

Which is definitely sound advice, there is clearly no point addressing any complaints to them about the mediocrity of their work and the harm it causes, they don't give a damn, never have and never will until authorities above them make them care about those. But of course one reason why any medical or public health authority offloads their authority to Cochrane is because they have no responsibility over anything they produce. It's all power no responsibility, and they are very content abusing this toxic combination.

 

sorry, I know this has probably already been covered somewhere, but do we know who these 3 senior colleagues, or the members of DTs internal team were?

 

I don't this has ever been revealed.

 

Glasziou called my initial investigation of PACE an "ad hominem" attack. It was harsh but there was no name-calling. He made a show on Twitter of being open-minded about wanting to hear criticism of PACE but then ignored what he was sent. Yes, this decision certainly has his fingerprints, Garner's, etc. all over it.

 

what do you mean, Signe Flop's unit was disintegrating?

 

My memory is that it got defunded and moved to some backwater college amongst fir trees or some such.

 

I met up with Atle Fretheim when I was there--and someone else. Both were in positions superior to Larun. I guess that was NIPH?? So it's Cochrane that's moved. And why was that, do we know? I understand Atle moonlights also as a stand-up comic!! Has anyone seen him perform???

 

FEMI. Standup-show med Atle Fretheim, Kulturbrakka på Ås, 2022

 

I think Cochrane probably moved because of this whole palaver. It would be possible to get correspondence about it via FOI. That's how we got the emails between Fretheim and Cochrane because NIPH is a public body and Cochrane is a charity and so is not subject to FOI.