Rethinking the treatment of CFS — a reanalysis and evaluation of findings from a recent major trial of GET and CBT (2018) Wilshire et al.

Michael sharpe@profmsharpe

Thanks I am afraid that would be a very long tweet! Please read the actual papers - the trial paper and the published analysis plan as well as the 'reanalysis'. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/wolfson/research-projects-a-z/current-projects/pace-trial/ … And google all the reanalysis authors to see how objective they are.

10:08 AM - Mar 26, 2018

Yes, Dr Sharpe, we have read all the papers and know the reanalysis authors well and find them totally objective. We don't need a long tweet, just some inkling as to why we should not in fact consider the re-analysis study to be bending over backwards to be fair.

 

That's the funniest thing I've heard in ages a psychiatrist involved in PACE used the word objective.

 

It would be good if some local papers from the Sussex, Kent and Bristol areas pick up on this.

 

Keep the bullshit coming Mr Sharpe. When Sharpe and Wesseley get rattled the first thing they do is throw out a string of petards by which they may be hoisted.

 

I cannot like that statement highly enough. I see precisely zero shame in mental illness and would be thrilled if there was good, objective evidence demonstrating that 60+% of patients get a lot better with current treatment of choice on the NHS. My objection to PACE has nothing to do with whether this illness lies in the brain vs body, and I think the vast bulk of ME/CFS campaigners are the same.

I want something that works, and couldn't give a monkey's as to the pathology behind that. PACE took us further away from that goal and that is the reason it deserves the derision it is now getting.

 

Retweeting ammunition
@Carolyn Wilshire

Didn't Trudie Chalder testify in court at the FOI hearing that the Cochrane review wasn't independent because three of the PACE investigators were on the Cochrane review. She stated that in her position to back up the claim that they hadn't previously given data to other groups in an attempt to claim the data requested should not therefore be released.

 

More ammunition for @Carolyn Wilshire - it's unfortunate for Michael Sharpe that the PACE TSC minutes show that their real concern wasn't 'patient consent' or 'ethical constraints'...

"Policy for third party access to data
The intention to publically release PACE data to legitimate researchers inline with the MRC policy on data sharing was discussed. It was agreed the first priority is to release the results of the trial into the public domain. The trial team could then consider releasing part or all of the dataset to external third parties however it was noted that coming to a dataset cold with no access to the trial team for clarifications would be difficult. There could be more potential for harm than good if the data was analysed incorrectly or misinterpreted. There would also be a cost associated with data extraction."​

(Minutes from the joint meeting of the Trial Steering Committee and Data Monitoring and Ethics Committee, 10 September 2010, Page 7)

 

I was wondering exactly what a petard was. I thought it might be a flagpole or the halyard used to raise a flag on it. So I looked up uncle Google.

It seems that a petard or petar was a small bomb-in-a-box used for blowing holes in walls. The French also used petér to mean fart. So presumably to be hoist with one's own petard was either to be blown through the pearly gates by gunpowder, or possibly by more biological propulsion.

This makes a string of petards seem at risk of mixing metaphors, particularly coming after cattle manure.

Nevertheless, the sentiment seems admirable and poetically expressed.

 

I confess to googling it too before I posted, and got as far as Hamlet. Apparently Shakespeare's use of peter rather than petard may have been a deliberate pun. I regret my use of "string", and see now that it was a word chosen with undue haste, nay recklessness. Perhaps "cluster" of petards, or even a "thunderclap" would have been better.

In fact as far as "poetically expressed" goes, I find "throw out a thunderclap" hard to beat - not only is it pleasingly alliterative but it also makes splendid use of dactylic dimeter, the scansion of Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade:

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Threw out a thunderclap;

Yep, it works.

Sorry, nothing else to do, someone cancelled a lesson.

 

Can we tempt you into the poetry thread @TiredSam? All artistic artillery and alliterative accomplishments applauded.

 

Amazing reanalysis. Thank you, a thousand times, to all involved, including the tragically departed.
This is a stamp of logic, reason, and science on a sea of quackery and bias and bull.
Surely this report will go down in history! Every word was expertly crafted. strictly biz. 100% reason, 0% ad hominem
No agenda, no militancy, no assassination. Just numbers and facts.
As someone who’s been lumped with the very worst of the BPS brigade since literally day one of this hideous illness, thank you. <3

 

Exactly. It would be fan-fucking-tastic if they worked!

 

Here's a cluster of petards - very useful for getting rid of moles and other nuisances and give off quite a thunderclap :

 

Yeh, a bunch of us even tried it with the hopes of getting better. It's the finding out we'd been duped and made sicker while also cutting us off from other help that got our collective goat.

 

Shakespeare's humour might also have intended the notion of farting with no cares to inflicting its horrors on someone else, but in fact becoming stricken by it yourself.

 

Hence Le Pétomane ('Fartomaniac'), the famous French flatulist.

Though this probably wasn't the kind of thing you were thinking of.

 

I read "French flautist" and thought it was ironic.

EDIT: I've just read the link. My brother can do that.

 

I think he also was hoisted by his own petard later in life, as started to follow through on stage! Maybe that is quite symbolic of what the BPS crew are about at this time.