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

Peter Trewhitt said:
I notice there is a Bias Methods Group and an Adverse Effects Methods Group, should we be contacting them given the failure of Larun et al (2019 misleadingly redated 2024) to address either of these issues?

Was the existing CFS Exercise Review and the discontinued replacement review process hosted by any specific Cochrane group, though it seems to have been managed or mismanaged from the Editor in Chief’s office?
Click to expand...
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]


upload_2024-12-28_12-53-32.png
 
Sasha said:
Which suggests to me that it had an effect, otherwise they wouldn't be trying to stop us doing it. It doesn't matter if we don't get a direct response from the people we write to; what matters is that people in the organisation are told what is going on, from patients' point of view, and have their consciences prodded and are put in a position where they can't say, in future, that they didn't know what was happening.

This is assuming that there's anyone in there with a conscience, and who cares about patients being harmed. I find it hard to believe that there wouldn't be.
Click to expand...
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.
 
Trish said:
Paul Glasziou is of particular concern
Click to expand...

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.
 
That would be correct. Cochrane Norway has moved from FHI/National Institute of Public Health where Flottorp works to "Høgskulen på Vestlandet". Physically not that far away from University of Bergen (at least its main campus) so only backwater in that it's not a "proper" university in Norway (but have applied to be).
 
Midnattsol said:
Cochrane Norway has moved from FHI/National Institute of Public Health where Flottorp works
Click to expand...

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???
 
dave30th said:
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???
Click to expand...
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.
 
ME/CFS Skeptic said:
Any articles on this because it seems like a strange decision.
Click to expand...
As far as I'm aware FHI "lost" Cochrane due to lack of funding (there has been a lot of reorganization lately in Norwegian health government, and in what responsibilities public offices like FHI should hold, too). Anything in particular you think is strange and I can try to find if anything is written about it?

That HVL wanted to be host to Cochrane could be part of their work to be seen as more serious together with their university application.
 
Last edited:
From:
Glick M, Verdugo-Paiva F, Booth HA, Liu E, Vandvik PO, Guyatt G,
Carrasco-Labra A, When to conduct a new systematic review or continue updating an existing living systematic review: rationale and considerations, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (2026), doi: https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2026.112504.

3.3. Methodological refinements are incremental.

Small adjustments in framing the question or methods do not alter the fundamental approach. A redesigned search—for example, incorporating new databases, search filters, or terms due to changes in indexing, would not warrant a new review. Similarly, adding or removing an a priori hypothesized subgroup analysis to explain heterogeneity, conducting tests of interaction for all such hypotheses and applying ICEMAN to interaction tests with sufficiently low p-values would also constitute a small adjustment (10). A Cochrane review on exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome has been updated eight times between 2004 and 2024. Over this period, new methodological standards emerged, and the authors adapted their methods accordingly. In one update, they explicitly noted aligning their approach with the recommendations from the 2011 Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. These refinements improvedrigor but did not change the primary aim of the review—showing that such methodological updates do not justify creating an entirely new review (11).

11. Larun, L., Brurberg, K. G., Odgaard-Jensen, J., & Price, J. R. (2017). Exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews, 4(4), CD003200. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD003200.pub7
 
Dolphin said:
These refinements improved rigor but did not change the primary aim of the review—showing that such methodological updates do not justify creating an entirely new review (11).
Click to expand...
Well yes, the primary aim of the review has been pretty clear throughout. i.e. Prop up the idea that exercise fixes those people labelled with 'Chronic Fatigue Syndrome', regardless of the validity of the evidence base.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom