David Tuller - Trial By Error: The Dutch Review; My Trip; Bristol's Silence

And now some potentially good news from the Netherlands.

Two years ago, the Dutch parliament asked the Health Council—an independent scientific advisory body—to review the state of evidence related to the illness generally called chronic fatigue syndrome in the Netherlands. That review was to include the evidence for rehabilitative treatments like cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy. The Netherlands, of course, has its own chapter of the CBT/GET ideological brigades. These researchers, like their close colleagues the PACE authors, have published methodologically problematic studies that have appeared to affirm the efficacy of CBT and GET.

I have seen a copy of the committee’s draft report (in Dutch), which was distributed to stakeholders in November for comment. The final report based on that draft is scheduled to be released next week. Despite concerns expressed at the beginning of the process that the biopsychosocial forces might dominate the proceedings, the draft report significantly downgraded the current recommendations for rehabilitative therapies, so here’s hoping few or no changes were made in the final version.

The draft stated flatly that, based on the evidence, “the committee sees no reason” for GET to be used in the Netherlands. As for CBT, the draft noted that “a small majority” of committee members believed it could be helpful for some patients. But those in this group also acknowledged that patients also reported having been harmed by the approach, and they suggested that the treatment should be pursued with care. The other committee members objected to any use of the kind of CBT designed for ME/CFS, in part given the therapy’s reliance on the theory of misguided illness beliefs. In any event, this split decision was hardly a full-throated endorsement of CBT.
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Let's hope the final version is close to the draft
 
Intriguing news from Holland from David.

I feel I should correct David on two technical points, though. Firstly, however much they think they do, Australians do not live in tomorrow. The time shift from SF to Melbourne is 6 hours - less than to London. No sweat David.

Also they do not drive on the wrong side of the road - that is what people do in the USA and on the continent. They even have cars with the steering wheel on the wrong side I am told.
 
Wow. If there are no changes in the final report, that is a very very encouraging news. Especially given the number of psychobabblers in the Netherlands.

That makes the German guidelines produced not a long time ago look even more stupid and disconnected than before...
 
To my friend Professor Edwards' points--I have to look at the hours again, but it's now 9:35 am Monday morning in SF and 3:35 am Tuesday morning in Melbourne. And we just moved ourselves forward an hour this past weekend, so I'm confused about the time shift. Why isn't that 18 hours ahead? Do we not count the international date line crossing? But numbers are not my strong point. About the other point, I specifically wrote the "other" side of the road, not the "wrong" side of the road.
 
So that's the difference between 9.35 and 3.35 which is 6 hours backwards. Tuesday is merely an arbitrary cultural construct whereas the height of the sun in the sky is physics and biology. You might be surprised to find they do not empty the recycling bins the day you arrive, but that is about the only thing to make it Tuesday. You are more likely to be surprised by the general behaviour and dialect of these antipodean folk. You might need a phrase book if you haven't packed one

I fear I am off topic!
 
dave30th said:
To my friend Professor Edwards' points--I have to look at the hours again, but it's now 9:35 am Monday morning in SF and 3:35 am Tuesday morning in Melbourne. And we just moved ourselves forward an hour this past weekend, so I'm confused about the time shift. Why isn't that 18 hours ahead? Do we not count the international date line crossing? But numbers are not my strong point. About the other point, I specifically wrote the "other" side of the road, not the "wrong" side of the road.
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I think I have to agree with you on this one @dave30th ...
upload_2018-3-12_17-39-8.png
But I think I'll go with @Jonathan Edwards re side of the road, because what you actually wrote was ...
There’s the queen stuff, of course. They also drive on the other side of the road.
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... where, to me, your first sentence sets up the meaning of 'other' in your second sentence ;):).
 
Why do some countries drive on the left and others on the right?
About a 35% of the world population drives on the left, and the countries that do are mostly old British colonies. This strange quirk perplexes the rest of the world, but there is a perfectly good reason. Click here for a world map and a full list of all countries of the world and the side of the road on which they drive.
In the early years of English colonisation of North America, English driving customs were followed and the colonies drove on the left. After gaining independence from England, however, they were anxious to cast off all remaining links with their British colonial past and gradually changed to right-hand driving. Incidentally, the influence of other European immigrants, especially the French, should not be underestimated.
https://www.worldstandards.eu/cars/driving-on-the-left/
 
Striving to get back on track again ...

David Tuller links to his earlier blog post re Knoop's deceptive PACE commentary, and in there says ...
Thanks to this inaccurate account of the PACE study’s reported findings, the claim of a 30 percent “recovery” rate dominated much of the news coverage. Trudie Chalder, one of the key PACE investigators, reinforced the message of the Lancet comment when she declared at the press conference announcing the PACE results that participants in the two rehabilitative interventions got “back to normal.”
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This, to me, highlights one of the most disgraceful breach of ethics by the PACE authors, that I would like to see addressed in more detail at some point, because to me it shows clear and unequivocal misrepresentation. I'm not sure if it maybe leans towards the fraud issues that are underway.

We have here an unambiguous case of a supposedly dedicated scientist, Trudie Chalder, clearly endorsing and reinforcing a claim based on her own research, which even exaggerates what she and her co-authors already exaggeratedly claimed - recovery instead of improvement. Any scientist with the slightest inclination to rigour and integrity, would have picked up on and corrected that instantly; but instead seemed to scavenge on the additional morsel that appeared for the taking. This I think has been a strategy adopted time and time again, and though easily overlooked, is I think a major and incredibly easy to prove malfeasance on the part of the PACE authors. There must be plenty more of these easy wins to pick up on.
 
Looking at what they did and at that statement by Chalder, it is clear that they manipulated what they said to exaggerate the claims. Given that Chalder has never publicly, as far as I have seen, explained or retracted that comment, it is fair to hold her to it. They colluded with each other and the Dutch authors of the commentary on how to do this. Whether they did it "intentionally" will be for some panel ultimately to decide, whatever I might think.
 
dave30th said:
Looking at what they did and at that statement by Chalder, it is clear that they manipulated what they said to exaggerate the claims. Given that Chalder has never publicly, as far as I have seen, explained or retracted that comment, it is fair to hold her to it. They colluded with each other and the Dutch authors of the commentary on how to do this. Whether they did it "intentionally" will be for some panel ultimately to decide, whatever I might think.
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Just stepping back from PACE etc, and just imagine a normal human interaction, in a pub, within a family, at work, whatever. If something you have said is being grossly misrepresented, and that misrepresentation clearly is to someone else's disadvantage but to your advantage, then what would normal decent people think of you it you didn't pipe up and say "No, much as I appreciate the thought, that is not correct I'm afraid".

Edit: Dodgy grammar.
 
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Barry said:
Now that is something I can certainly identify with - never driven on t'other side of road.
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It's actually not that bad. The brain just tends to flip the definitions of left and right. I remember doing a lot of pointing left and saying right etc. The trickiest thing is driving a left hand drive car on the left side of the road (or, I imagine, a right hand drive on the right). Did that while visiting the UK while living in Germany.
 
Thanks for the updates - fingers crossed that the final report is a step in the right direction.

This commentary declared that participants in the CBT and GET groups had met a “strict criterion” for recovery—a declaration that was transparently false on two fronts.
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I vaguely remember there having been some official complaint to Knoop's institution about this - does anyone know what happened about that?
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Firstly, however much they think they do, Australians do not live in tomorrow.
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Correct. We are currently barely managing to live in today.

I wish that was a joke.

Barry said:
This, to me, highlights one of the most disgraceful breach of ethics by the PACE authors, that I would like to see addressed in more detail at some point, because to me it shows clear and unequivocal misrepresentation. I'm not sure if it maybe leans towards the fraud issues that are underway.
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Chalder's behaviour at the original PACE media conference, and the complicit silence of her fellow PACE and BPS cultists over her remarks, is way past recklessness and incompetence, and well into sustained systemic fraud. Not to mention cowardice, and sheer cruelty.

Jonathan Edwards said:
We are planning a bit more addressing in fact and this is a good one to flag up.
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Excellent.

Chalder (like Lloyd and Hickie here in Oz) has managed to avoid a lot of the heat so far. But she is as culpable as anybody in the PACE/BPS cult. Besides being a lead investigator on PACE, she was in at the ground level back in the late 1980s pushing the psycho-social approach with Wessely, including as co-author on the original papers kicking off all this madness, and has been at the forefront of pushing it ever since.

I look forward to seeing that poisonous mediocrity taken down and disgraced.
 
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