Michael Sharpe skewered by @JohntheJack on Twitter

The man is talking as if he understands nothing. There is nothing matched about two treatments that encourage people to think they are getting better and two protocols that encourage people to think they are going to stay the same. CBT and GET are deliberate placebos. The weird thing is that the deliberate placebo is normally the dummy in a trial. Here it is the treatment under test. The controls are anti-placebos. Doesn't he get that?

 

'Well. You are not going to be convinced I can see. Odd that folk want a trial to be retracted because they don't believe/like the results.'

It seems extraordinary tome that Sharpe does not seem to understand that things have moved on in the last couple of years. Scores of senior academics with no interest in ME and no reason to like or dislike results or to believe them or not have pointed out that the trial is just rubbish. We believe they got the results but they are transparently meaningless.

And his protestations simply confirm to us all that he does not get it - he does not get scientific methodology.

 

For sure. He's still absolutely wedded to the conviction that it was a good trial, and it's just a few people being partisan and emotional that is the problem:https://twitter.com/user/status/1002910068415909888

He knows, he just dismisses the majority of the academics as unqualified to judge, and biased - full (start) of thread for context, not that it makes any difference -
https://twitter.com/user/status/1001796928701583362

https://twitter.com/user/status/1002215159417290753

https://twitter.com/user/status/1002233811659210752

https://twitter.com/user/status/1002531733571596288

I was quite astonished by that remark.

Eta: quote.

 

That David Jameson account comes out with some stuff.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1003678810737336320


PACE did look at employment as an outcome, and found no significant difference between groups:

"There was no clear difference between treatments in terms of lost employment."

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0040808

 

Thanks @Esther12 - I've quoted the quote at them.

Who is David Jameson?

[Aha - https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/30/dont-ignore-facts
Mr Persistent Burnout Theory - http://www.mind-body-health.net/persistent_burnout_theory_2004.html]

Is MS aware he thinks that CBT is merely a placebo?

 

OK, just suppose a PwME also has an element of deconditioning, because they are too ill to do much. So when MS says "the possibility that associated biological processes may be at least partially reversible", let's say he is talking about the deconditioning component of this person's biological issues. Well the reason the person has this deconditioning component, is because their body is too physically ill to recondition, thanks to the ME component of their condition. So to recondition, this person must push themselves very possibly beyond the safe limits of the ME component of their illness. PACE, and the medical doctrine that it has since fostered, pursued this very risky strategy without any real acceptance their could be a non-deconditioning-related physical component as the primary cause of their illness.

 

Surely it is mostly down to being open label with subjective self reported outcomes, compounded by what amounted to selectively applied propaganda.

 

There was a commenter responding to one of @dave30th's blogs (I think), who said they were in the GET arm of PACE, and when their heart rate went through the roof the staff tried to dismiss it as a faulty monitor because that result was not possible. Apparently annoyed when participant would not let them ignore it. As best I remember.

 

As usual, a characteristic partial truth from MS, strongly implying an untruth. True: we reject the findings. Omission: the reason we reject the findings is because the science is dog poo. Implied untruth: we don't like the findings because we are biased.

 

Doctor: "You are mentally ill and you're thinking can be corrected by us the best cure is CBT".

Patient thinks to themselves: I don't think thats true, oh boy I am in danger of being controlled by the state.

Six months later:

Doctor: "Are you still mentally ill".

Patient: "No Doctor"

Didn't they do this kind of thing in the Soviet Union?

 

This is such a flawed notion really. Science is not done by consensus its done by adherence to the scientific method. How does one describe an expert? Is it by quantity or quality of trials etc.

Its not about how many allies one has or how many mates they can get to give them a character reference.

The scientific method and the adherence to it is taught from 11 years of age for a reason.

The funny thing is Sharpe seems to be a lone wolf in this current issue, surely its up to him to bring forward this mass of experts who find it to be a good trial. He is the one currently making the claim they exist.

They seem deadly silent at the moment!

 

'Well a subset of scientists, mostly not experts in trials, at least some of who have pretty strong feelings about the findings. How many trial experts do you think find it a good trial - not perfect but good? '

I think having devised and executed many trials including one where I did both published in NEJM I can consider myself an expert on trials (with absolutely no feelings about the findings, just the way they were obtained). But you do not actually have to be an expert on trials to see that PACE is rubbish - just a bog standard junior registrar who listens at journal club.

I don't know of any disinterested experts on trials who think PACE is competent.

 

Yes, but this is how it has been for him/BPS.
Until now.

 

Agreed. Consensus is a managerial or political process. Its for when you do not have adequate evidence but must act. Its subject to far too much bias and manipulation. When you see a consensus process you are not seeing just science, but it can be scientific managerial, or scientific political. Its similar for medicine.

Sadly this means that our consensus definitions are about managing the situation in the absence of good science. This should make government grants trying to define and diagnose a high priority. As we have seen, over decades, this has not been the case, and while we hope its changing now we can only say that for sure in retrospect, after it has or has not changed.

NICE for example is a managerial process for medicine, and it draws on science, but its not a scientific process. It can also be argued that evidence based medicine is too often not evidence based scientific medicine, but evidence based managerial medicine. It does not have to be this way but often is.

Don't get me wrong, we need both managerial and political processes, but we must not forget they are not just science, but a hybrid application of science, and subject to even more biases.

 

A year one tertiary science student who pays attention and actually reads assigned reading might be able to do it.

 

So Appeal to Authority is now good scientific reasoning rather than well established logical fallacy?

One of the great commandments of science is, "Mistrust arguments from authority." - Carl Sagan

 

Is someone able to reply to this

by reposting this?

 

Assuming there is a plan and goal behind Sharpe's activity on twitter, it's probably related to this (it's today by the way)

https://twitter.com/user/status/1003733239322808327

 

Agree completely, MS and all the main players know exactly what they are doing.