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It is interesting to note that there has been a study where ME/CFS patients were treated with homeopathy. It is difficult to compare the results directly with the PACE study, as Weatherley-Jones et al used the multidimensional fatigue inventory (MFI) for outcomes. However, if the improvement is...

Melvin Ramsay wrote in his account of the Royal Free epidemic: "So radically did McEvedy & Beard influence medical opinion that when I attempted to put the case for an organic explanation of the disease to younger present-day consultants I have encountered an attitude of pitying disbelief and...

Agreed. Most propositions like the biopsychosocial model don't appear in a vacuum, but are developments and refinements of older ideas. Engel started to discuss the topic already in 1960. However, his paper in 1977 was influential and is usually quoted as the starting point of the...

I think that the main concern here is bad scientific practices in psychology, rather than the personality of Sir Simon. He didn’t invent anything himself. The biopsychosocial paradigm was proposed by Engel in 1977. The precursors of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) had been around for a long...

I think that Sir Simon's career has been shaped by a blend of rationalization, opportunism, and neglect in unknown proportions. Sloppy scientific practices were not introduced by him or his coworkers, but are widespread within psychology. It is hard to believe that Sir Simon intentionally...

As Sir Simon is as comfortable with poetry as pathology, I would like to recite another poem in his honour. This is a variation of a classical limerick by Thomas Thornley: A candid Sir Simon confesses that the secret of half his success is, not his science as such, nor his marvels so much, as...

A poetic celebration of Sir Simon, Regius Professor at King’s College London, who thinks with his soul and feels with his mind! There was a professor at King’s who thought of the matter of things. He noticed his mind was nowhere to find; the soul much more clarity brings!

It is abundantly clear that the psychiatrists who developed the biopsychosocial illness model for ME/CFS did not use their minds to think. It is good that Sir Simon finally acknowledges this. It is also good that he is comfortable with the poetic justice that inevitably will follow when the PACE...

You are absolutely correct that she is not directly pointing fingers at ME patients. She is talking about those who are against research—her research—and she is representing them as a small(?) group of militants with an anti-psychological agenda. However, as most ME charities and most patients...

If I should be ironic here, I must point out that Prof. Crawley uses guilt by association to make all ME patients responsible for the actions of a few. However, since there are no police reports, no evidence, and no information about the perpetrators, how do we know that they in fact have ME...

The most important point to make about the term “medically unexplained symptoms” (MUS) is that it names a social and clinical predicament, not a specific disorder (Kirmayer et al, Can J Psychiatry, 2004). A clinical entity with unknown pathology is typically defined by a set of symtoms and a...

Thank you, @Cheshire, for pointing out an interesting paper. Does anyone know if a similar study has been done for CBT? It seems that the problem with subjetive outcomes was pointed out already in 2001 (Whiting et al, JAMA), but has been systematically neglected in CBT studies based on the...

Prof. Gottfries and Dr. Zachrisson have been working with ME/CFS for over 20 years. Prof. Blomberg is a well-renowned virologist, who entered the field during the XMRV debacle. Jonas Bergquist is a professor of analytical chemistry. He was coauthor of a paper that demonstrated proteomic...