Trial By Error: Cochrane Update, and Caroline Struthers’ Latest Letter

Andy

Andy

Retired committee member
The situation at Cochrane appears to remain fluid. Last week, the organization posted a notice that it is seeking a new editor-in-chief. The current occupant of the position, Dr David Tovey, is leaving the position in May. Dr Tovey has been at Cochrane for a decade, so this move could easily have been a long-planned departure.

Since last year at least, Dr Tovey has been grappling with the fate of the contested review of exercise treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome, as Cochrane has called the illness. The announcement of this change comes while the situation with the exercise review is still uncertain. So is the overall disposition of the illness within Cochrane, which has housed it in the Common Mental Disorders section. Perhaps Dr Tovey will be able to set matters on a more fruitful path before he takes his leave.
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http://www.virology.ws/2019/02/20/t...-update-and-caroline-struthers-latest-letter/
 
I have given up trying to predict what will happen next.

The BPS cult are obviously now engaged in a full scale rear guard action. Perhaps it is understandable that they are so committed that they can not step back, but why do so many others in the British (and to a lesser extent the international) medical/academic establishment still support them?

A lazy deference to eminence might explain an initial knee jerk defence; if Cochrane and NICE agree then these good chaps must be right. However, the longer this goes on, this is not a plausible explanation for the establishment's circling of the wagons to protect this bad science.

That it's the patients' fault, if only they would just consume those neat marketable packages of CBT/GET and get better, fits well with our current political zeitgeist, is attractive to post Thatcher post
Blaire neoliberal philosophy, but is this enough to explain the hold of this distortion of the scientific method?
 
Peter Trewhitt said:
I have given up trying to predict what will happen next.

The BPS cult are obviously now engaged in a full scale rear guard action. Perhaps it is understandable that they are so committed that they can not step back, but why do so many others in the British (and to a lesser extent the international) medical/academic establishment still support them?

A lazy deference to eminence might explain an initial knee jerk defence; if Cochrane and NICE agree then these good chaps must be right. However, the longer this goes on, this is not a plausible explanation for the establishment's circling of the wagons to protect this bad science.

That it's the patients' fault, if only they would just consume those neat marketable packages of CBT/GET and get better, fits well with our current political zeitgeist, is attractive to post Thatcher post
Blaire neoliberal philosophy, but is this enough to explain the hold of this distortion of the scientific method?
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I am reminded of these articles which basically say old habits die hard.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/20/18148963/yogurt-dairy-fat-america
https://www.vox.com/2015/11/24/9782098/dietary-fat-saturated-fat-good-or-bad

Once you build a culture around something tearing it down is a big deal. People resist change and corporations have made business plans around the lie. Or in our case governments deny benefits that they would now have to pay if they acknowledge reality and would have to fund biomedical research.

Big reasons to stick with the lies.
 
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Once again follow the money. If BPS is shown to be flawed then DWPs budget will increase, with no ‘treatment’ to push on to claimants - and with the harm of GET which is yet to be acknowledged. This leaves the DWP exposed. If IAPT looks as if it might also be based on the same nonsense, then its medical provision in the uk is of questionable ethics. Of course this neglects the insurance companies involvement, whom reject ill health pensions due to the Pace findings.
The loss is too large to countinance here in the uk. Hence the stubborn behaviour of the uk groups.
 
One of the things that chilled me this week was when Diane O'Leary said that there seems to be a taboo about discussing ME even among the ethics community. It brought to mind a book I read by a retired businessman. He said that he was on a walking holiday when he got friendly with Robert Macnamarra the US politician who was a close colleague of President Kennedy. Curious, he asked what he thought about the controversy about the assassination.

To his amazement, Macnamarra said he had made a point of never reading anything about it because he did not want to know in case he found something that challenged the establishment view. Not knowing kept his conscience clear.

I think this wilful blindness surrounds ME.
 
It seems to me the struggle at Cochrane over the PACE reviews (exercise and individual data) and their fate along with moving them from common mental health group is one of trying to keep this trial as viable evidence for some of those at the NICE review to point to.

We know they can't defend it there either but that seems to me to be the underlying motivation.

I have no doubt that there have been/are ongoing communications regarding how those from the BPS camp can still spin the web of disingenuous PACE data into something beautiful at the NICE review.

Edit: fix typo
 
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There is a tacitly within the establishment and governance in this country that means wrongdoing is never exposed until people have died or retired. Unless caught in the very act.

Blood, Birmingham 6 and Hillsborourgh at one end of the scale all the way down.

What I don't understand is why US organizations in particular, stonewall on their behalf?
 
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