Response: Sharpe, Goldsmith and Chalder fail to restore confidence in the PACE trial findings

Good point, @Sean.

 

What a shameless liar.

 

@Tom Kindlon @Carolyn Wilshire Thank you.

 

As I said on the other thread, I think @Tom Kindlon and @Carolyn Wilshire ’s response is perfect. Thanks again to both of you.

I’ve shared the PACE authors’ admission with Tim Hartford (BBC More or Less) and David Colquhoun on Twitter. Can anyone think of anyone else it might be worth sharing with? I’m assuming it’s a waste of time trying to engage Ben Goldacre again but, as with dropping actigraphy, it is so blatant I can’t believe that it wouldn’t immediately ring alarm bells for anyone with any understanding of clinical trials.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1110877237413376000


Also shared @Graham ’s excellent PACE videos with Harford:
https://twitter.com/user/status/1110873748792582145

 

I don't think they can, unless our whole scientific establishment is rotten to the core ... which I cannot imagine to be the case. The more they expose themselves in this way, the more they allow real scientists (and other people too with a degree of nous) to see them for what they are. That statement will probably go down in history as one of the most revealing. Not even a throwaway statement, but in a written rebuttal. They could not be leaving a clearer, more solid evidence trail if they tried. To me, the very fact they lack the critical thinking to appreciate they are doing this to themselves, itself supports the notion they lack the critical thinking to run clinical trials.

 

I had pondered this myself; felt need to be very cautious given there is so very much to learn with PACE, and the BBC have such a track record of going off half-cocked when it comes to getting under the skin of such things. Last thing you want is for something like More or Less to do a half-baked analysis, and then make some wiffley waffley proclamation that does more harm than good. But on the other hand, if they could be trusted to get it right ... that would be excellent.

 

From the rejoinder of the recovery reanalysis:

 

Sharpe is apparently blocking everyone on Twitter that shares this article.

 

Baaaaahhhh!

 

Twice as many people are cured of cancer using reiki as opposed to homeopathy.

Under one analysis when we changed the recovery definition halfway through the trial from the original protocol it was 80% versus 40%.

Under the second anaylsis with the original protocol it was 2% versus 1%.

As you can see this is twice as much in both analysis. So that is the same fing.

We do prefer the first analysis cos it is more inline wif what other reiki and homeopathy people what did study the same things did say.

All objective measures was dropped and our analysis is the best cos the other analysis did not have access to all the data so they don't know what we do know.

Our trial is definitive cos after we changed the recovery definitions halfway through the trial and magically matched the results of other studies that were not definitive and gave us the justification to run this trial costing £5 millon.

This trial was really bootiful!!

 

Sharpe/Chalder/Goldsmith made no real arguments in their paper (other than the point they got wrong about APT being excluded from the analyses) so this feels more like a flogging than a debate. It's pretty depressing how little this seems to matter.

Things have to be pretty rotten to have gotten to this point imo. UK science seems to really encourage and reward people who just suck up to authority.

 

@large donner - Have you considered taking up the 'patient involvement' opportunity to 'co-produce' the Plain English summaries for NIHR and MRC research projects?

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1110954500565753856

 

That's an interesting idea. I don't think its very difficult to summarise an opponent claiming to be scientific when in actual fact they operate via a parody of themselves and seem to have invented a new meme of "uncommon sense".

 

Oh dear, I thought I shared the article, but not blocked yet... Obviously I need to share it again!

 

I must admit when I read about it that I briefly considered joining, and learning to drive, twitter, just so I could be blocked by him lol

But something else happened, or I forgot, or maybe I did so and I've forgotten about it.

Does anyone know?

 

Sharpe science.

 

Sharpe is behaving like he's in kindergarten.

 

He just wants to make sure people viewing his timeline don't see it.

Which is very telling. He knows the facts are against him and still continues to peddle his nonsense. They all know they're harming us and put their career ahead of the lives of millions. Reckless and irresponsible.