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"Performance validity" is a concept from neuropsychology. It refers to tests or analyses that are designed to "catch out" people who are faking, or just not putting in the required effort to give a score that reflects their ability. Knoop and chums are trying to justify chucking people out of...

Oh, the irony. He just doesn't seem to see the self-contradiction at all. Fussing about whether a blinded trial was fully blinded when most of his own trials are completely non-blinded and this is never even mentioned in the reports.

Just came across this and thought it might be of interest (its not new, its from 2004) Moncrieff, J., Wessely, S., & Hardy, R. (2004). Active placebos versus antidepressants for depression. Cochrane database of systematic reviews, CD003012.PUB2...

I agree with you, Peter. I don't think its helpful to personify the muddy thinking and glib ideology that characterises psychological approaches to medical illness. The precursors to this ideology are many, and they are spread wide over both space and time, with some of the original roots going...

To me, the main feature of MECFS that makes it hard to explain in terms of some chronic infection is that its features are remarkably similar irrespective of what acute infection triggered it (ones we know of are EBV, Ross River virus, Q fever and of course Coronavirus2). To explain why the...

What's all this talk about entrenched points of view? As if we're talking about a political issues? Where talking about what constitutes reliable evidence for a treatment benefit. A question for you, @Hilda Bastian: if you read a homeopathic study of ME which reported benefits on self-reported...

:rofl::rofl:! I think all of us can hazard a pretty good guess as to why the VO2 max data haven’t been published in this paper.

Eurgh!!! How patronising! "Exercise can feel unpleasant!"

This.

Not again! Please let's not promote this "behaviour of a minority" meme unless we can at least define it, in terms of what actions this appalling group committed, even if not in terms of who they are. You see, this idea of making a split between a "dangerous minority" versus "nice grateful...

It is somewhat interesting to explore MDD people's experience of the body. Or it would be if there wasn't so much nonsense in the piece. Not to mention waffly jargon. What the %$#@? Yes there are some reports suggesting anomalies in the resting state patterns of brain activity in MDD. But we...

What's this "behaviour of a few" I keep hearing about? What did these "few" actually do? I genuinely don't know, but it must be pretty damned awful. Did they try to occupy public spaces, damage property, break into researchers' offices or homes, or place researchers in fear of physical harm or...

That's as may be, but the measure of interest is how the self-reports were affected by the way the cream was presented to the participants - whether as having a direct treatment effect of not. (I have eczema, and moisturiser does f-all. Makes my skin actually hotter and more itchy for the first...

I'm not clear from the article - is this naturopaths who trained in naturopathy or GPs who've developed an interest in naturopathic medicine? I think a lot of trained GPs turn to frameworks like naturopathy and functional/integrative medicine because they are frustrated with the impotence of...

PS I am a little uneasy about some of the analyses they did to demonstrate the self-reported benefits as well. There seem to have been a lot of covariates included in the analysis, and this is a technique that can sometimes be used retroactively, to "clean up" the results of an analysis that is...

Darragh, M., Chang, J. W.-H., Booth, R. J., & Consedine, N. S. (2015). The placebo effect in inflammatory skin reactions. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 78(5), 489–494. doi:10.1016/j.jpsychores.2015.01.011 ResearchGate link here Scihub link here This study found that a placebo cream...

With you, @Wonko. We can't get anywhere dealing with "suicidal ideation" until we recognise the grim reality that is faced by some people with chronic illness, what an extraordinarily low quality of life they have. I don't see full acknowledgement of this reality anywhere in the article, so it...

When I first got sick in the early 90s, I got full testing for other things (before the CFS diagnosis). When the tests came back negative, the registrar in charge of my case says "well, its really difficult to find what's wrong, because your symptoms are nonspecific like fatigue". And I...

Strange character. Seems sort of hugely self-confident but at the same time slightly muddled. Maybe that's a psychiatry thing.

Yes, and things like accident-related, violence-related and alcohol and (illicit) drug-related admissions are way down, so that leaves higher percentages for all remaining things. NZ escaped lightly from Covid, with only six weeks of lockdown in total in my city, but it was a massive boon to...