David Tuller - Trial By Error: The Shopping Bag Study; and New York State’s Revamped Website

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Eagles

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Trial By Error: The Shopping Bag Study; and New York State’s Revamped Website

24 April 2018

By David Tuller, DrPH

http://www.virology.ws/2018/04/24/t...g-study-and-new-york-states-revamped-website/

And now, from our good friends in the psychology department at the University of Bath, comes the shopping bag study we’ve all been waiting for. Here’s some information recently disseminated by the university:

The purpose of this study is to look at how people with CFS/ME respond when asked to do a physically exerting task, and what thoughts and feelings they have while they are doing the task. We would like to compare responses to people without CFS/ME…

If selected, you will be asked to complete some questionnaires. These questionnaires will ask you about various things such as fatigue and mood. You will be given the choice to complete them online or have paper copies posted to you…

You will also be asked to attend a one-off testing session which will last no longer than an hour and during which you will be asked to complete a practical task. The task will involve carrying a shopping bag. This will be recorded and you will be asked to watch this back and answer some questions about it…
 
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I love the hard hitting bluntness of David's articles, these paragraphs stood out in that regard

The mention of the CDC is interesting, because when it comes to this illness the agency has been a disgrace . At some point the CDC removed most references to PACE from its website while keeping the GET and CBT recommendations. Officials explained this away by claiming that the recommendations now had nothing to do with PACE and that the treatments were being suggested as generic management strategies. This was of course a lie—a face-saving way for the agency to avoid having to admit that it had gotten things terribly wrong by citing PACE in the first place.

Once the agency removed the recommendations last summer, it didn’t bother to announce the change. I asked the CDC about it after noticing a mention on one of the forums (I think–I can’t quite remember now). I was sent a statement maintaining that the change had been made because people misunderstood the recommendations about exercise and psychotherapy. This was, of course, nonsense–another face-saving untruth. The CDC presumably revamped its information because someone there finally recognized that continuing to promote these discredited treatments, even as generic management strategies, was damaging the agency’s already diminished reputation.
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Have the inherent risks of shopping bag research taught us nothing?

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Gday! said:
http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://wames.org.uk/cms-english/2017/03/is-health-anxiety-aka-hypochondria-common-in-people-with-cfs/&h=ATOAzEJmjrdXDP0y71BfKoJfbQ8oTCMME33yMCkoOxB5yDVcHEKxMo6zMzC0glOI8Tkvi4wwH7NcPGXHTQYMiULsYEKlXOKFvy4Kk6oO0lj83ZQ&s=1

The author of this trial is supervising the handbag trial!! They refer to ME patients as hypochondriacs .
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Above link is to http://wames.org.uk/cms-english/201...y-aka-hypochondria-common-in-people-with-cfs/
Abstract:

Objectives:
There is a lack of research examining the incidence of health anxiety in chronic fatigue syndrome/ myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME), despite this being an important research area with potentially significant clinical implications. This preliminary study aimed to determine the incidence of anxiety and depression, more specifically health anxiety, in a sample of CFS/ME patients over a 3-month period.

Design:
The research was a cross-sectional questionnaire-based study, using a consecutive sample of patients who were assessed in a CFS/ME service.

Method:
Data were taken from the Short Health Anxiety Inventory and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale to identify incidence of anxiety, depression, and health anxiety.

Results:
Data were collected from 45 CFS/ME patients over the sampling period. Thirty-one patients (68.9%) scored above the normal range but within the subclinical range of health anxiety, and 19 patients (42.2%) scored within the clinically significant health anxiety range. Anxiety and depression were common, with prevalence rates of 42.2% and 33.3% respectively, which is comparable to data found in a recent large-scale trial.

Conclusions:
Health anxiety in CFS/ME patients is likely to be common and warrants further investigation to provide a better insight into how this may influence treatment and symptom management.
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Study paywalled at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/papt.12118
 
chrisb said:
To the ignorant it appears that 50 of the 45 people studied had above normal levels of anxiety.
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Results:
Data were collected from 45 CFS/ME patients over the sampling period. Thirty-one patients (68.9%) scored above the normal range but within the subclinical range of health anxiety, and 19 patients (42.2%) scored within the clinically significant health anxiety range.
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If I'm reading that correctly, those figures are for the same test and same set of data and no patient can belong to both groups, since you can't be at the same time in the clinical and subclinical ranges, unless these overlap??? So they appear to have performed the miracle of spontaneous generation and created 5 patients out of thin air.
 
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