Search results

Well argued response, Tom and Carolyn. :) I am sure that even Professor Sharpe will see the light! ;)

Solid and scientifically sound criticism of the reporting of harm in GET trials. As always, it is a pleasure to read your papers, Tom! :thumbup:

Even though this is a feasibility study, the lack of control group, blinding, and objective outcomes is a major problem. It is clearly stated in the text that the intention was to evaluate adaptation, acceptability, safety, and preliminary efficacy. The design means that there is no way to...

It reminds me of the comment by Nasim Marie Jafry on the dialogue between James David Chapman and Professor Danny Blanchflower. The Mutual Admiration Society in session ...

I appreciate that figures such as unemployment can be defined in different ways, and that both Blanchflower’s and Guido Fawkes’s statements must be put in a political context. However, I think that we are way off topic now. I didn’t intend to make any political statement, neither left-wing nor...

I would like to add that I agree that no one should attack Professor Blanchflower—or anyone else—on a personal level. One should definitely not try to portray him as incompetent in his field. I think that few of us have the competence to evaluate his merits as an economist—at least I do not...

I am well aware that the blog post on Blanchflower’s predictions only reflects the opinion of the blogger, who may have an agenda of his own. Your point that we shouldn’t pass judgement on Blanchflower as an economist is taken, although my post was intended to be satirical rather than judgemental.

Professor Blanchflower seems to make categorical and ill-conceived statements not only about ME/CFS, but also in his own area of expertise. If he is 100% wrong when he makes predictions in economics, I wonder how wrong his rants about ME/CFS are? :sneaky:

I think that many of us have noticed the presence of Professor Danny Blanchflower on Twitter. He is an old friend of Professor Peter D White and has been aggressively defending the PACE trial. He uses abusive language—for example calls patients with ME/CFS “whiners”—and quickly blocks people who...

Thanks for the info. We have a biopsychosocial fanatic in Sweden, Dr Jörgen Malmquist, who repeatedly has claimed that the name of the illness should be changed from "chronic fatigue syndrome" to "fatigue syndrome", because the term "chronic" suggests that nothing will improve and thus will make...

The relative number of cases that are triggered by an infection is typically in the interval 70–80%. Wessely states 72%, Evengård 80% (2003), and the NIH workshop 78%. There is a study by Palacios among nurses in the US where only 19% of the cases are triggered by infection. I don’t know why...

I agree, she seems legitimate. She has written about ME/CFS on the web page of the National Swedish Television. She says that it is a neurological illness, that the name chronic fatigue syndrome is misleading, and that the National Institutes of Health has upgraded the priority for ME/CFS...

I think it is quite clear that the meaning of the term ME has shifted, and that it originally referred to an acute illness with a strong propensity to trigger the chronic syndrome that we now refer to as ME/CFS. There were many outbreaks of the acute polio-like illness. Although the agent(s)...

I think that the terminology has always been ambiguous. “Graded” does not necessarily mean that the activity level should increase. A paper by Wallman et al in 2004 uses the word graded exercise in the title. However, when the exercise program is described in the text it says: “Subjects were...

I think we need to stress over and over again that the main criticism of the PACE study concerns the basic design flaws. They used subjective outcomes in a study that was not blinded, and they conflated chronic fatigue with ME/CFS. Yes, they also manipulated the results to boost the subjective...

Great article! I am looking forward to the published version. :thumbup: Many thanks to the authors for this important paper! :hug:

I would like an update of the 2006 paper by Anthony Komaroff, "Top Ten Discoveries about the Biology of CFS". It was embedded in another article by Komaroff, "What Causes CFS", which was published in a special issue of The CFIDS Chronicle.

The title says that we should acknowledge good intentions of researchers, but the text implicitly asks us to accept conclusions that are contradicted by the data. Nonresponsive statements of biased parties such as The Lancet or The SMC are not an acceptable rebuttal of criticism. Incorrect...

Suggested alternative title: Tutorial: The Practical Guide How to Create a (Bio)psychosocial Pseudomodel for an Illness of Arbitrary Etiology

For crying out loud. Is the PACE team going to teach us about Structural Equation Models? Embarrassing. Their analysis uses subjective outcomes and excludes all biomedical factors. Talk about begging the biopsychosocial question. Any expert in the field could explain for Goldsmith et al. that...