Deep phenotyping of post-infectious myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, 2024, Walitt et al

Which we now know is BS, given all the effort preference garbage rolled out by Walitt.

He hasn't earned my respect and trust, in fact he has further reduced mine.

I thought this was independent of the intramural study?

 

this

 

well he's blown his chance then even if he really believes this. He has let himself get persuaded, or maybe was already there himself, but why take lots of research findings that were of the format where small samples did work and then blow them by allowing them to reported under a framework where they'd been crowbarred to fit something that didn't actually have any results in the first place? And the person in charge of it isn't even someone who was an expert in that area, not quite sure how or why Walitt got into all this given his background.

Nath should know better than to not just be able to identify what is potentially 'real' as a finding and put into context what about that is theorising of what it could mean, and what is substantiated about how it could fit together and report appropriately.

 

Hello,

I am writing an article about Effort Preference and would like to interview those who've dug into this paper and are interested in talking whether on background or for quotes. Please DM me to set up on a time to talk. Or we could even set up a Zoom to discuss with multiple people at once.

 

Great idea. I did an intro in the members section. The article will be published in the Sick Times. My goal to dive deep into the EEfRT test results from me/cfs intramural paper, highlight issues, get feedback from me/cfs researchers on whether they view these results as important, and try to understand why the results were so prominently featured.

 

Why do you want to write about Effort Preference?

The main mistake the authors make is looking at any differences and assuming they are maladaptive when evidence shows they are actually positive adaptations.

As Jeannette Burmeister has already written, the "effort preference" claims is a questionable interpretation when patients had better optimised behaviour in terms of monetary gain compared to controls, and improved their behaviour over the trials.

The interpretation of the reduced TPJ activity is similarly flawed, and could instead be interpreted as a positive adaptation:

"Expertise-related deactivation of the right temporoparietal junction during musical improvisation"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053811909009525

In musicians this means the higher levels of the brain are less focused on the precision of motor movement and more focused on the creative aspects of musical improvisation.

And no you can't quote me on this.

 

@Janna Moen PhD

 

There is more info on the EEfRT data in this thread:
https://www.s4me.info/threads/use-o...s-2024-walitt-et-al.37463/page-24#post-520697

Great that you are highlighting this issue. I would like to help out in chat or email to point out the problems but a video call is unfortunately too taxing for me.

I think the main issue is relatively simple: the authors did not control for the fact that patients are ill and that the experiment tasks required more effort from them.

 

And from what I've read from the sharp-eyed folk who combed through it, the claim of a non-null result depended on that data being thrown out.