leokitten
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/20260601111253/https://www.wired.com/story/the-painful-truth-about-long-covid/
Mind body / brain retraining
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Wired Magazine: The Painful Truth About Long Covid
- Thread starter leokitten
- Start date
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/20260601111253/https://www.wired.com/story/the-painful-truth-about-long-covid/
Mind body / brain retraining
BrightCandle
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Another article dismissing all the science showing abnormalities, completely ignores the presence of the genetic studies and then peddles brain retraining, mind-body and exercise. Same old garbage from the BPS supporters pushing stuff with no evidence of use and quite a lot of reports of harm.
Chandelier
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
More info about the author:
From The Breakthrough Institute
Dr. Alan Levinovitz is an Associate Professor of Religion at James Madison University. He works at the intersection of philosophy, religion, and science, focusing especially on how narratives and metaphors shape belief. He is the author of The Gluten Lie and, most recently, Natural, which explores the danger of turning Nature into God. In addition to scholarly journals, his writing has appeared in Aeon, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, Wired, the Wall Street Journal,and elsewhere.
Other threads mentioning him:
Alan...
He seems to have changed his mind?
From The Breakthrough Institute
Alan Levinovitz
Professor, James Madison University; Writer
@alanlevinovitzDr. Alan Levinovitz is an Associate Professor of Religion at James Madison University. He works at the intersection of philosophy, religion, and science, focusing especially on how narratives and metaphors shape belief. He is the author of The Gluten Lie and, most recently, Natural, which explores the danger of turning Nature into God. In addition to scholarly journals, his writing has appeared in Aeon, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, Wired, the Wall Street Journal,and elsewhere.
Other threads mentioning him:
The Rumpelstiltskin effect: therapeutic repercussions of clinical diagnosis | BJPsych Bulletin | Cambridge Core
The Rumpelstiltskin effect: therapeutic repercussions of clinical diagnosis
www.cambridge.org
The Rumpelstiltskin effect: therapeutic repercussions of clinical diagnosis | BJPsych Bulletin | Cambridge Core
The Rumpelstiltskin effect: therapeutic repercussions of clinical diagnosis
www.cambridge.org
https://www.cambridge.org/core/serv...eutic_repercussions_of_clinical_diagnosis.pdf
The Rumpelstiltskin effect: therapeutic repercussions of clinical diagnosis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 August 2025Alan...
He seems to have changed his mind?
Hoopoe
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
This approach of slow habituation to the thing that's unpleasant was the idea behind CBT/GET. We already know it doesn't work.
The author is not well informed on the topic of placebo effects. Most of what is claimed to be a placebo effect, in the sense as understood here, is actually other things, like reporting bias or bad study design.
For example, comparing a drug against a placebo and interpreting any improvement in the placebo group as being due to some mysterious mind-body effect is a common mistake. Many conditions tend to improve naturally over time. People are less likely to complain or perceive their symptoms as serious when they feel cared for or have the feeling that something was done.
People are also more likely to interpret and view things in a specific way if they are told to expect a certain thing, or that something will happen and so on. Which is exactly what these mind-body therapies do... getting people to believe is a very important part. But this belief is also what make patients lose their objectivity. That's why it is especially important to test these mind-body approaches in a setting where objectivity is maintained. As far as I'm aware, this is never done, presumably because the moment it were done, it would be clear that the approach fails to work.
Indeed, it seems that the continuing and increasingly embarassing lack of credible evidence must be excused by blaming the disbelievers.
They claim something that is close to a miracle: that merely thinking differently can cure a devastating illness. With such an enormous effect claimed, with a treatment that is very inexpensive, it shouldn't be difficult to produce convincing evidence. That's why they need a story about extremists shutting down research.
In a broader context you can also see that mind-body approaches are not used for diseases with clear objective outcomes. This also suggests that they fail to work as soon as they're put to a genuine test.
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Really? What issues did you think were valid?
Whole article to me really emphasizing “if these people would just do exercise and brain retraining they’d be better” and “the crazy’s harrassing researchers and decent advocates are silencing them”. To me it’s an extreme article.
Definition of Long Covid so broad it is difficult to use in research.
Quotes from David Tuller.
I agree.
The article first seems to validate the suffering of patients and a history of neglect and harmful or ineffective therapies based on bad science or weak evidence. I thought it would be an article with a positive impact reaching a large audience. Then the author presents Brain Retraining as the solution and frames patients as censoring this great theory and harassing its proponents! Disappointing. It feels almost strategically evil.
About these claims of harassment:
Claiming these threats occured, whether true or false, has the effect of discrediting an entire group of critics by associating them with the worst behaviour of individuals. It shifts the attention away from valid scientific criticism. If threats occur, it may be fair to publish them, but being threatened can never serve as a defense against scientific scrutiny.
To the audience that sympathises with those who (claim to) receive threats, I would ask to consider where they may come from. In the case of ME/CFS, they arise from decades of neglect, dismissal, harmful treatments, and the psychologisation of an illness that renders the most severely affected unable to speak, read or eat. These patients and their loved ones see the same patterns developing in Long Covid. If threats really do occur, I condemn them, but I empathise.
Sorry if I'm stating what's considered obvious on this forum; I penned down my general position.
About these claims of harassment:
I don't think the best response against these claimed threats is that they are fabricated, even though they may be.
Claiming these threats occured, whether true or false, has the effect of discrediting an entire group of critics by associating them with the worst behaviour of individuals. It shifts the attention away from valid scientific criticism. If threats occur, it may be fair to publish them, but being threatened can never serve as a defense against scientific scrutiny.
To the audience that sympathises with those who (claim to) receive threats, I would ask to consider where they may come from. In the case of ME/CFS, they arise from decades of neglect, dismissal, harmful treatments, and the psychologisation of an illness that renders the most severely affected unable to speak, read or eat. These patients and their loved ones see the same patterns developing in Long Covid. If threats really do occur, I condemn them, but I empathise.
Sorry if I'm stating what's considered obvious on this forum; I penned down my general position.
I didn't claim they are fabricated. I said too much credibility is given to them, meaning too much prominence in order to discredit everyone who critiques brain training and CBT/GET. So I'm agreeing with you.
Thanks for calling me out. Sorry If my wording was too strong. I wasn't really responding to you or Hoopoe. More to this idea in my head.
Hoopoe
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I could see these mind-body approaches being useful in a specific situation: when the person's illness has improved, but their mental framework of who they are, what they can do and how to conduct their daily life is still the old one and the old habits are proving difficult to abandon Then it can make sense to change one's beliefs, to make an effort to believe that more is possible, to believe that health and well-being is a choice. Because in that situation, it is.
People also have a need to feel cared for, a need to have a reason to believe that the future can be better, a need to have a space for their emotions while in a crisis, and the emotions of past crises also tend to surface when the current situation is not good.
But I don't believe it's right to present these mind-body approaches as treatment for the illness and trying to give them credibility in that way. They are a form of psychological support at best.
People also have a need to feel cared for, a need to have a reason to believe that the future can be better, a need to have a space for their emotions while in a crisis, and the emotions of past crises also tend to surface when the current situation is not good.
But I don't believe it's right to present these mind-body approaches as treatment for the illness and trying to give them credibility in that way. They are a form of psychological support at best.
What a bizarre article. Incredibly confused about what is what and barely researched. It's talking about a paradigm that has thoroughly dominated everything for decades, and LC from day one, as this oppressed miracle that wasn't given a fair chance. Frames Sharpe and Wessely as "the old paradigm"? Wut? As if they were just pushing GET for deconditioning and not based on whatever the hell they actually believe about fear. Just completely misrepresents everything they've done. We don't care about their statements, we care about what's done to us and that none of this crap is real.
Opens up with red flags about pseudoscience, and then leans entirely on those? There's a weird bit about how people outside the community are skeptical about this? Good grief. Dude seemed to have talked to a lot of people but didn't listen to a damn thing.
Wired is usually better than this. What an odd article to publish. And the title is just pure propaganda, it's completely ass-backwards. No wonder people don't trust experts. This whole bullshit might as well be the healing power of prayer and nothing would be different.
Wow that is news to us, the people who keep getting bombarded with its dominant nonsense.
Opens up with red flags about pseudoscience, and then leans entirely on those? There's a weird bit about how people outside the community are skeptical about this? Good grief. Dude seemed to have talked to a lot of people but didn't listen to a damn thing.
Oh, yes, absolutely, if you promote psychological treatments your career is basically over. No money there, institutions will stop communicating with you, fellow physicians will chase you down the halls, no clinic will hire you. No difference between lying and delusional here. Even by the standards of clumsy authoritarian regime propaganda, this is very clumsy.
Wired is usually better than this. What an odd article to publish. And the title is just pure propaganda, it's completely ass-backwards. No wonder people don't trust experts. This whole bullshit might as well be the healing power of prayer and nothing would be different.
Oh, that's ironic, because what he's discussing is definitely at the intersection of science and religion, specifically a split point between both. Do people prefer to go with hopeful beliefs, in which the problem is not only solved but doesn't really exist in a meaningful sense, or would rather go with, ironically, the painful truth that there is a lot of work to be done and until then people will suffer greatly? So far everything has been put towards the false hope pseudoscience, blocking the real problem from being solved. And would you look at that: it hasn't been solved, not even seen any progress. Entirely as expected when one stakes everything on a pipe dream.
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Nightsong
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Yes, completely bizarre. Almost every NHS CFS & LC clinic is run along psychobehavioural lines; the same in other European countries. The UK charities seem to support this. Psychobehavioural views of LC & ME/CFS are promoted & parroted by major medical institutions, societies, and Royal Colleges. While psychobehaviouralism seems slightly less common in the U.S., this is only because the commercial and decentralised nature of medicine there results in patient satisfaction being a higher priority; nonetheless, if you look through U.S. medical textbooks, the default position when it comes to ME/CFS is the psychobehavioural one. A few minor advances of recent years aside, it remains by far the dominant & established position in medicine. The alternative "biomedical" view is very much that of a beleaguered minority, and yet this article portrays it falsely as the mainstream, established & accepted position.
Has anyone actually documented a death threat, or serious threat of harm, from any verifiable ME/CFS or LC patient at any time? After all this time, if such threats were so pervasive, should there not be one documented conviction, court case or police report? It all seems to be in the territory of whispers and rumours (no doubt goosed along by SW & friends) but with no verifiable evidence of any kind.
I recall that it was reported that when Chalder was asked about claims of such incidents at the PACE ICO tribunal the only one she was able to describe was once being heckled at a lecture - and that kind of engagement with their ideas is something that many academics would honestly welcome.
I was wondering why Sarno's theories were mentioned at all - they're such obvious & blatant pseudoscience, and then I saw this sentence:
Has anyone actually documented a death threat, or serious threat of harm, from any verifiable ME/CFS or LC patient at any time? After all this time, if such threats were so pervasive, should there not be one documented conviction, court case or police report? It all seems to be in the territory of whispers and rumours (no doubt goosed along by SW & friends) but with no verifiable evidence of any kind.
I recall that it was reported that when Chalder was asked about claims of such incidents at the PACE ICO tribunal the only one she was able to describe was once being heckled at a lecture - and that kind of engagement with their ideas is something that many academics would honestly welcome.
I was wondering why Sarno's theories were mentioned at all - they're such obvious & blatant pseudoscience, and then I saw this sentence:
I wonder if therein lies the genesis of this article?
Chandelier
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
The only proof that I know of is this picture that allegedly was sent to Paul Garner:
Relevant discussion:
Valerie Eliot Smith saw a video in 2011 that had been sent to Wessely, and she said it could easily be interpreted as a death threat. I believe her on that one. Now, that doesn't mean the whole thing wasn't exaggerated and hyped etc etc. But I count that as at least one actual "death threat." I also wouldn't be surprised if there were others. But that's the only one I know that's been confirmed.
InitialConditions
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
What 'neuroscience' is this then? If this 'faulty alarm signal' / 'fight or flight' loop is your preferred hypothesis, that's fine. But what neuroscience backs up this explanation? And why wasn't this claim challenged?
Jonathan Edwards
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
None.