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I suppose the clever bit is wagering someone else's 5 million quid.

Yes, agreed. It is just an extraordinary statement. The false and misleading one about his interests may yet cause problems for him, but in many ways that bit about 'equipoise' is more damning.

Yes, @Sbag those are the letters.

Yes, it reads oddly and confused, part rehash of protocol, part narrative, part justification. It reeks again of hubris.

Haven't read that paper in a while. It's awful in many ways, but a few things stood out: Despite what they say when dismissing the actigraphy, they clearly set out to improve 'fatigue and disability'. The analysis 'also addressed the potential clustering effects resulting from different...

Thanks.

Yes, I think that's important. They essentially did everything they could to get a positive result and even with everything rigged in their favour, they didn't find anything more than a small, subjective, temporary effect which can be explained by other factors.

Thanks for those replies Lucy. This was their reason given in 'Response to comments on "Protocol for the PACE trial"' 28/07/2008. Although we originally planned to use actigraphy as an outcome measure, as well as a baseline measure, we decided that a test that required participants to wear an...

Would this be referring, for example, to this in Magical Medicine: 'It is Professor Wessely who is in charge of the MRC PACE Clinical Trial Unit.' My reading is that Hooper refers to PACE as 'MRC PACE', so Wessely is in charge of the CTU for the trial (the one at King's which played a leading...

I haven't read these minutes yet as closely as some appear to have done, but my impression is there was no discussion in the TSC of dropping the actigraphy. They have come up with quite elaborate explanations as to why this wasn't carried out at the end. Has anyone seen anything on it...

I don't know if it's possible, but if we could get proper report written and signed by eg the kind of people who wrote open letter to Lancet (ie renowned and respected, not just patients), then I'd go nuclear: send it to Dept of Health copied to all the relevant depts, all the HoC overseeing...

Exactly. But for her and White the point is that they didn't declare any. I think the following is particularly noteworthy: Chalder and White made no statement.

I have been thinking for some time that we need to do something similar, but I think it would be worth waiting a little while yet. I think it will be interesting, for example, to see how the MRC respond to my complaint. The more we get, the better the case. My view is that before the end of...

It is an extraordinary statement. We know he did have a financial COI as well. At the very least he was getting royalties from his book, first published in 2000 and still paying him royalties in 2010 when he declared them to The Lancet in the TMG COI statements.

Yes, sounds a good idea.

Thanks. Very interesting. Hooper did an amazing amount of work. It's disgraceful how it was all ignored. I read it a couple of years ago, but I need to read that again.

Update: the appeal is underway. In the mean time, as was pretty predictable, KCL has turned down my request after review and I shall be referring the matter to the ICO

I think what is interesting about these TMG statements is that they are for publication of the paper. In other words, no statements were taken before the trial started. See also this thread on the TSC COI statements...

The minutes for the first two meetings of the TSC (attached) have been available for some years. I was always struck by the entries on COI. All agreed they had none. We know that the PIs had one. Last year I asked QMUL for the statements. They replied with the minute from each of the first two...

I think that's a good point. The suspicion is that the PIs were must have been getting informal briefings on effectiveness.