My previous post was a quick overall response to the post. I would like to address some of the misinformation in your post:
I am new to S4ME having come here via googling PG (for work).
You are making all sorts of claims and criticisms. Given that your work has some bearing on Garner's work, I think it would be more honest of you if you said what work this is and who you are, rather than hiding behind a pseudonym. We allow a choice of user name on this forum because sick people are vulnerable and may need to be anonymous. That surely doesn't apply to a professional colleague of someone under discussion who has joined the forum to give them a character reference and to make all sorts of claims about a so called treatment.
I've read a lot about what you're posting about him and I dislike untruths. PG (lazy, so sorry if I call him that) is definitely not being paid for this work. He was successful enough in his career that I doubt he needs the money.
That was raised by me as a question. It was not an untruth, it was a question in the form of 'I wonder if'. I made no claim that Garner is being paid for this crusade he has launched himself on to entertain himself in retirement. As you say, as a retired professor he is much better off than most of our members, many of whom are struggling to feed and care for themselves on very resticted incomes through illness made worse by Garner's chums' influence on ME/CFS treatment.
I don't know him very well but I know him enough to say these friendships run deep.
What has that to do with his scientific integrity? Nobody here is interested in his personal life. We can only judge his character by his actions.
I'm only saying this here because I think it's useful for you to know that as you have such strong negative opinions of him.
It astonishes me that someone with a professional association with Garner would fail to understand why people on a science forum would judge Garner's activities as unscientific and potentially harmful. Many of us here have a negative opinion of Garner's words and actions because he promotes approaches to treatment of ME/CFS that are docomented to cause significant harm, including to many of our forum members. I have a negative opinion of him as a doctor and scientist and supposed expert in evidence based medicine. I have no opinion of him in his personal life, nor should I.
Professionally, other doctors are scared of being seen to support him because of the kinds of posts you write about him. A lot has actually been pushed underground because of this.
That old story. It's amazing just how much publicity Garner and his newish chums like White, Sharpe and others in Coffi and the Oslo consortium manage to get for their claims of being silenced and being threatened. It's all baloney.
I have lost count of the number of times Garner has had a public platform to share his story and his beliefs about what cured him. I have lost count of the number of occasions he has tried to interfere in sound scientifically valid analyses of poor research and in guidelines.
Since you know him, perhaps you could ask him to make public his role in Cochrane's inexplicable about turn on the exercise therapy for CFS review, or his attempts to interfere in the Canadian and probably the Australian guidelines.
To come around to why is he doing this work, I think it is because he wants to help people and he feels strongly this is the way to do it. He gets all these attacks online and it's one of the things I admire about him that he keeps going.
Do you also admire climate change deniers for sticking to thier guns, and vaccine skeptics, and flat earthers? Just because someone works hard at promoting an idea, doesn't make them admirable. Look at all the harm being done in the USA by the hard work of the current health administration there with its anti vaxx and anti science approach. Do you admire them too?
I know of several people who used to have moderate, severe (and very severe) M.E who have recovered through brain retraining who support Paul. They won't speak out publicly because they don't want to be mocked, but they are also working away behind the scenes to help it reach more people.
We don't allow on this forum individuals who have recovered to be mocked. We do allow the questioning of claims about whether a particular treatment will be effective for other pwME, and has scientific evidence to back it. We also examine reports of harm.
Another promoter of brain retraining joined the forum some time ago, bringing with them the same claims of thousands in secret groups recovering, but providing no evidence. I asked them politely to read and respond to the stories of dozens of pwME who had tried the Lightning Process and were either not helped or harmed, some of them seriously both physically and mentally. They never even acknowledged these people's experiences. We have forum members who have been harmed by LP and other brain training programs. Their experience is either ignored, dismissed, or they are told they didn't try hard enough, or for long enough, or chose the wrong program, or didn't want to get better. Do you consider that a humane and valid approach?
Garner keeps banging on that we and health providers must listen to and learn from people who have recovered. But no individual who has recovered knows for sure whether it was the thing they happened to be doing at the time that 'cured' them, or spontaneous recovery. That's why we need properly run clinical trials with all the important features of trials that make them valid. We get confronted with recovery stories frequently, from homeopathy, to ear seeds, to eating a particular food or taking a particular drug or supplement, to bumhole sunning, to breast massage, and many more. Many of us have been hoodwinked into trying them. Do you think we should believe them too?
It's over 20 years since I tried the Gupta and Reverse Therapy programs. As far as I know they are still making money from them but have not run any serious clinical trials. This stuff is not new. And it's still all unevidenced.
Thanks to them there are some key things ahead in 2026 that will help brain retraining get a lot more attention. People are recovering in such big numbers that this is not going away, you just don't see them because they are all networking in private groups online. I am only in 2 and I know there are many more.
What key things? All this ridiculous secrecy and hints is so unprofessional and childish. I don't want unevidenced treatments getting 'a lot more attention'. I want evidence.
I don't think you can see this as anything more than PG being a fly in your ointment. And I know you're all unwell but I don't know how it will feel to see brain retraining get increasing attention and it concerns me. I understand why you are so determined to hate mind-body medicine but in this case, you have got things wrong.
Save your concern for those of us who have been and will be harmed by all this secret activity. No, you don't understand anything of what we feel because you are not listening, you have made up your mind PG is a hero, and we are ignorant or villains. Next thing you will say is we don't want to get better. Try walking a mile in our shoes.
I know you want science to back it up but trials take time. Even the ones we have in the pipeline won't satisfy you as the bias in this community is so strong.
There you go again, insulting us and our scientific integrity. We won't be satisfied by the sort of trials that were used for decades to support the psychobehavioural paradigm with its CBT/GET treatments. We don't support that research because it was so scientifically flawed and at times dishonest that no real scientist would give it a second look. And from the patient's perspective, because it has and continues to cause immeasurable harm. Thousands of people put through GET have been made permanently much sicker. Some have died. Yet PG supports it and its proponents and criticises the NICE guideline in ignorant and insulting ways.
No PG is not on the side of pwME. He is not promoting good science. He is promoting a cult that you seem to think is justified in scheming in secret to push more potentially harmful treatments.
Let him come here and tell us about these supposed trials and plans. Let him respond here to our members who have been harmed by what he promotes instead of sending a friend to give him a glowing reference. He's very happy to he lauded by his new chums and to interfere behind the scences in treatment recommendations. It's time he listened instead of sending a proxy to insult us.
I am writing this lying in bed hundreds of miles from Garner's home. He is in absolutely no danger from me, as he and his new chums like to pretend. Tell him to come and join us and have a proper scientific conversation.
