Gravity-induced exercise intervention in an individual with CFS/ME and POTS, 2019, Ballantine, Srassheim, Newton

[Ravn]

I have received feedback that we are too harsh on researchers, and in this case, the author is clearly just starting in the field.

Are we too hard on the researchers or on the research? If you're a researcher whose work is being critiqued it may be a difficult to see the difference - you probably just feel attacked - but it remains an important distinction to make, both by those on the receiving end and by those doing the critiquing.

There is a point though for going a little easy on early-career researchers, not that their work should escape a good dose of constructive criticism if it deserves it.

However, a significant portion of the criticism should also be aimed at their supervisors or mentors. It is they who should have gently guided the young ones towards higher standards - before they submit anything for publication and open themselves up for public scrutiny and criticism.

And lets not forget the journals who publish bad research, early-career or otherwise, and the reviewers who pass pass poor studies for publication...

Maybe we can also try to engage with Julia Newton to prevent this sort of work coming out of Cresta again?

I like your constructive approach.

 

[Sean]

Although this period of ill health is distressing, we hope that you will see that it could in fact be a blessing in disguise - an opportunity to do things a little differently, and to learn things that will stand you in good stead for managing difficulties for the rest of your life.

Garbage research needs to be called out. This isn't kindergarten. This is real and it impacts people's lives. ...much of the criticism is way too generous given the current disastrous state of affairs, where garbage research has impaired progress and caused harm to millions, fatally so in the worst cases.

This is not an area for participation trophies. Good research gets good feedback. Bad research gets angry feedback. That's the deal. It's a fair deal and the only rational one. Most garbage research is done with complete disregard for patient experience. That's a choice, and a bad one. It needs to be called out and forever will be.

This.

 

[Trish]

@Ravn, I agree with you. It's not the fault of a post grad student that their very poor quality work is granted higher degrees and published. They should have been better supervised and this sort of incompetent nonsense stopped before it got anywhere near publication. This isn't a student essay on poetry, it's about harming sick people.

 

[feeb]

Yep, I do feel a little bad for the poor student, but I feel much worse for us patients! That CRESTA booklet wasn't written by the student who did the paper either, and these ridiculous notions have to come from somewhere. They're not being invented by students with no input from anyone else.

 

[Sid]

I don't want to criticise a graduate student too harshly. But this isn't an English literature or business administration degree, it's healthcare. So if your work is not up to scratch, they need to be told this. In a normal environment, this person's work would have been flagged as not being up to scratch early on, long before publication, and this kind of work would never have been awarded a degree or seen the light of day. The failure of supervision is obvious for all to see. This isn't about Newton or anyone else in particular, this is modern academia in general. So many people are being brought into graduate courses despite not having the chops to succeed in research in order to suppress government unemployment figures. There has been a massive degree inflation. People who 30 or 50 years ago would have struggled in a BA are now enrolled in doctoral programmes.

 

[MEMarge]

So @ Trish, are we assuming that someone is getting/has got a PhD from this?!

If so it's a tragedy for all concerned.

 

[Trish]

So @ Trish, are we assuming that someone is getting/has got a PhD from this?!

If so it's a tragedy for all concerned.

There's a link to the thesis on post #28 on this thread. Looks like it was for an MSc in Medical Sciences with Julia Newton as one of the supervisors. So at least he can't call himself Doctor on the strength of this.

 

[chrisb]

One thing that I wonder about is, how does a dissertation for an MSc come to be published in a comic calling itself the International Journal of Therapy and Rehabilitation? Presumably most MSc students have their work buried in decent obscurity in University libraries. It would be interesting to know the process by which this was accepted for publication.

As to the damage that can be done by MSc students I am always reminded of the 1989 Wessely, Butler, Chalder, David paper which set the tone. So far as I can tell Chalder had not yet obtained an MSc. In my innocence I always used to imagine that people would obtain such a degree and then have five to ten years of useful experience before notice would be taken of anything they wrote.

minor edits for typos

EDIT my mistake. This is of course not the MSc dissertation which was referred to above.

 

[NelliePledge]

So if this is 3 years old I wonder what this guy is doing now?

 

[Tilly]

So if this is 3 years old I wonder what this guy is doing now?

Now there is a thought to give you the collywobbles. I dare not look, is anyone brave enough?

 

[Trish]

Now there is a thought to give you the collywobbles. I dare not look, is anyone brave enough?

If you click on his name at the top of the paper you find this:
Correspondence to: Robert Ballantine Email:
E-mail Address: robballantine2@gmail.com
Project officer, Healthy London Partnership, London, UK

Googling gave me this:
https://www.healthylondon.org/

We aim to make London the healthiest global city by working with our partners to improve Londoners’ health and wellbeing so everyone can live healthier lives.

Our partners include the NHS in London (Clinical Commissioning Groups, Health Education England, NHS England, NHS Digital, NHS Improvement, trusts and providers), the Greater London Authority, the Mayor of London, Public Health England, London Councils.

 

[chrisb]

God, it's so depressing to read the "aspirations" of that organisation www.healthylondon.org/about/aspirations/

Platitudes. Duck-billed patitudes.

 

[rvallee]

God, it's so depressing to read the "aspirations" of that organisation www.healthylondon.org/about/aspirations/

Platitudes. Duck-billed patitudes.

Those aspirations mostly only apply to healthy people so they remain healthy. They're not bad, they just don't apply to the sick. Which is a recurrent theme in health care. Already sick? Oh, well, good luck with that I hope you get the help you need (but, no, we're not going to do that so stop asking, also have you tried yoga?).

 

[Little Bluestem]

Although this period of ill health is distressing, we hope that you will see that it could in fact be a blessing in disguise - an opportunity to do things a little differently, and to learn things that will stand you in good stead for managing difficulties for the rest of your life.

I give up.

I throw up.

I misread this as "... and the deliberate discomfort it has caused them".

I think that is what they meant and what was printed was a type.

I realise I have added to the flippancy so apologies for that

No need to apologize. If we didn't deal with this with some flippancy, we would all go insane.

 

[Mithriel]

Remember that the McEvedy and Beard paper, a PhD dissertation which claimed that the Royal Free epidemic was mass hysteria, was on the cover of Time magazine within a few months never mind in a scientific journal!

It is in someone's best interest that ME is downgraded and the patient's fault.

 

[rvallee]

Remember that the McEvedy and Beard paper, a PhD dissertation which claimed that the Royal Free epidemic was mass hysteria, was on the cover of Time magazine within a few months never mind in a scientific journal!

It is in someone's best interest that ME is downgraded and the patient's fault.

Uh. No kidding. Not the cover, though: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601700126,00.html.

Behavior: Mass Hysteria: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878745,00.html

The epidemic that struck the staff of London's old Royal Free Hospital in 1955 was explosive. Within two weeks, the number leaped from five victims to more than 100. The hospital had to be closed to new patients on July 25, and it stayed shut until October. More than 300 cases were recorded, two-thirds of them severe enough to require hospital treatment. Virtually all of the physical symptoms fitted the concept of an infectious disease: headache, sore throat, malaise, dizziness, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea. Since the Royal Free's expert microbiologists could find no bacteria to blame, they concluded that the cause...

Also found this from the time of the epidemic, August 1955: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,807425,00.html

The Royal Free Hospital on Gray's Inn Road set a notable precedent only four years after its opening in 1828: it became the first hospital in London to accept patients with infectious diseases, at a time when other hospitals still shunned them. But last week the Royal Free Hospital was closed on account of illness. The illness: an infectious disease, which had crippled its staff.

First to fall ill was a Cleveland social worker. Her symptoms fitted infectious mononucleosis. also called glandular fever. This is a little-understood (presumably viral) infection that is maddeningly persistent but rarely fatal, sometimes runs like a plague...

Everyone has screwed up in their life. But have you screwed so bad you basically condemned tens of millions to a life of misery, suffering and insult? Those jerks did. Top that.

 

[Forbin]

Not the cover, though: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601700126,00.html..

There was a video in which Dr. Hyde referred to the story as being "on the front page" of TIME magazine. I don't think he ever said it was "on the cover." He may have been referring to the "Table of Contents," which could well have been the first page opposite the cover when you opened the magazine. Not that it's all that important. I think his point was how quickly the story showed up in TIME. The paper was published on January 3, 1970 and the TIME article appeared just three weeks later on 1/26/70*. TIME may have had foreknowledge of the story, but it was/is a weekly magazine, so it would not have been unusual for it to cover very recent events.

[*Possibly earlier. Magazines are often on sale a week or so before their official publication date.]

 

[Little Bluestem]

Since the Royal Free's expert microbiologists could find no bacteria to blame

So these expert microbiologists had never heard of viruses?

 

[Mithriel]

So these expert microbiologists had never heard of viruses?

I don't know what the article was going on to say but the Royal Free experts like Ramsay were convinced it was an enteroviral infection. In 1955 it was very difficult to grow viruses in the lab as they will only grow in living tissue. Even in the 1970s they still used eggs. Enteroviruses also spend most of their life cycle inside cells so they are not free in the blood to be found.

In answer to the accusation it was hysteria they said something like "We considered hysteria but the physical signs that were apparent showed it was a physical disease"

The only thing wrong with doctors like Ramsay were that they were on the side of their patients with a lack of political savvy so they were talked over by people with an agenda and no scruples.