Oslo Chronic Fatigue Network

OPINION:

Marit Stafseth BOARD MEMBER OF THE NORWEGIAN COVID ASSOCIATION
https://www.sciencenorway.no/covid1...c-fatigue-consortium-enough-is-enough/2503517
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I would like to add that if the members of the consortium were willing to approach this with an open mind and lend me an ear, I could tell them that several patients have told me they benefit from cognitive therapy. Many patients need someone to talk to about how to cope with the illness.

There is nothing inherently wrong with cognitive therapy, but with the content OCFC has chosen to give the cognitive therapy."
 
A recently published scientific paper on a study investigating how doctors manage patients with fatigue confirms that it is inappropriate for primary care doctors to recruit patients to the Fatigue Study. Bizarrely, four out of five researchers in this study are also working on the Fatigue Study (linked to Oslo Chronic Fatigue Consortium).

Read more on my blog (Google Translated):
Newly published article confirms ethical problems with the Fatigue Study

Thread on S4ME about the article:
Physicians’ experiences of assessing and supporting fatigued patients in primary care: a focus group study, 2025, Samuelsson
 
I found the nurse education textbook by Vegard Wyller, and the short snippet on psychosomatic illness is firstly placed under the mental illness category (while OFN also says it’s neither somatic nor psychological), and goes straight for secondary gains like sickleave payments.

That’s great for building a relationship woth future patients I’m sure..
 
Michael Sharpe, who is seen as one of the foremost representatives of consultation-liaison psychiatry in the world
That's just... sad.
In his lecture, Sharpe talks about the patients that consultation psychiatry encounters in somatic care. He emphasizes that it is not primarily about the major psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but more about other causes, such as symptoms that cannot be explained medically and patients who, for various reasons, do not cooperate in treatment.
Again, back to what I said yesterday in another thread: what does psychiatric even mean at this point? It used to mean like he says, the major psychiatric diseases, but now it means... whatever.
The label Sharpe applies to patients who are covered by the mission of consultation psychiatry is “mentally sick.” In this he includes people with physical symptoms where healthcare cannot demonstrate objective findings for physical illness.
Literally whatever.

His own research pretty much proves it's useless: https://www.s4me.info/threads/proac...-in-england-the-home-study-2024-sharpe.39779/.

Literally, HIS OWN RESEARCH, says it's basically useless:
Whilst we found no evidence that any of the inpatient C-L Psychiatry service models evaluated is effective, the sparseness of the literature and its methodological limitations preclude strong conclusions. The trials do, however, suggest that purely consultation-based service models may not be effective. A new generation of robust clinical trials of a wider range of C-L Psychiatry service models is now required to inform future service developments.

Bah, whatever. The problem isn't even them. It's the systems that buy their bullshit. The whole thing is total wishcare, a scam, it's fraud to present any of this as purely speculative wishful thinking.
 
such as symptoms that cannot be explained medically....
physical symptoms where healthcare cannot demonstrate objective findings for physical illness.

Can never demonstrate, or has not yet been demonstrated? Because it is a very critical distinction, which he did not make clear.

In the first interpretation it means that it can never be explained by physical findings, that investigations have been exhaustive and there are no reasonably plausible physical possibilities left to investigate.

The second, of course, means something very different, that if there is underlying primary physiopathology then it simply has not been demonstrated yet. Which situation leads to very different conclusions indeed.

The psychosomatic fan club desperately want to stop any further robust research into physical mechanisms, because they know what the consequences for them and their 'authority' will be if it turns out it is a physical disease.
 
The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions that share similarities: one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial and harder to defend (the "bailey"). The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, insists that only the more modest position is being advanced. Upon retreating to the motte, the arguer may claim that the bailey has not been refuted (because the critic refused to attack the motte or that the critic is unreasonable (by equating an attack on the bailey with an attack on the motte)
motte-and-baileys_sm.jpg
Or, put in more modern memes:
 
The example is pretty fitting as well:
According to Shackel, David Bloor's strong programme for the sociology of scientific knowledge made use of a motte-and-bailey doctrine when trying to defend his conception of knowledge as "whatever people take to be knowledge", without distinguishing between beliefs that are widely accepted but contrary to reality, and beliefs that correspond to reality. In this instance, the easily defensible motte would be the idea that what we call knowledge is what is commonly accepted as such, but the prized bailey would be that scientific knowledge is no different from other widely accepted beliefs, implying truth and reality play no role in gaining scientific knowledge.
 
I'm posting samt thing in three different threads because what's happening in Sweden right now is intertwined and it's hard to know which thread to post in. Moderator is welcome to change if it would be strange.

In parallel with the Stockholm region's training for primary care for "post-infectious conditions" based on the National Board of Health and Welfare's criticized guidelines, there are several courses on exhaustion disorder (ED) (the Swedish diagnosis utmattningssyndrom). Elin Lindsäter is involved in several of them. I have watched an online course where Lindsäter, together with the doctor Mats Adler, teaches based on the Oslo Consortium's ideas, and also refers to the manifesto.

They both start by stating that exhaustion disorder, CFS, ME, post-covid, somatic symptom disorder etc are just different names for the same thing - namely fatigue. This should be treated with positive reinforcement, gradual activation and sleeping at night. It should not be treated with sick leave and patients should not avoid things. PEM is not included in the training at all.

Lindsäter lectures on how poor the evidence is on exhaustion disorder, how few studies there are and how poor the methodology of the various studies has been. At the same time, both lecturers ignore all biomedical research on ME and the criticism of the BPS lobby's junk studies that form the basis for the direction they advocate. ‍

I have written a text where I go through the education which, according to the title, should be about exhaustion disorder but which in practice has consequences for all people who seek care for any type of diagnose that includes fatigue including people with ME and post-covid.

Autotranslated link: The Oslo Consortium's ideology influences education about UMS (ED)

For those who understand Swedish, the training can be viewed in full via this link Utmattningssyndrom - var står vi idag?
 
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