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Not that I am aware of. Good scientists nearly always get their grants rejected anyway - in any field. You learn to get money in for irrelevant projects that sound good and then work on what is important. Pretty much all my applications were rejected. We made progress in RA on the side. For a...

The history of science is against you though. Einstein produced the theory of relativity and the basis for quantum theory as well, while an impecunious clerk with no practical science job when grand physics institutions were getting nowhere. And I said. The money is there - on offer. It is just...

Isn't that more of the same disingenuousness? we want to clarify that we have not published any data supporting plasmapheresis as a treatment for PCC. The paper mistakenly links our research on amyloid fibrin(ogen) to the endorsement of plasmapheresis without any evidence that we have done so...

But isn't that just the point being manipulated here? As far as I remember Kell spent much of his career in the same sort of unaccountable position of power he is griping about with editors and Cochrane - as the CEO of a major funding body, deciding whose research survived and whose not. His...

I just think you have got this wrong @butter. As I have mentioned before, not so very long ago, I, together with two other 'international experts' was approached by the biggest research funder in the UK. We were effectively asked 'if you had as much money as you like what would you suggest we...

Just that the method of measurement may be unreliable - for a hundred different reasons. We have seen how consistent.y poor methodology is in the psychiatric sector. I am afraid to say that it tends to be almost as bad in this sort of biomedical area. Everyone wants to report a positive result...

Doesn't this just show that parents who take their children relatively often to the doctor about intermittent ailments aged 0-4 continue to take them to the doctor more often 5-7 for such ailments? Does a six year old say to a parent - "you always used to take me to the doctor with tummy ache...

Spot on @Trish

But they aren't wispy. We have seen them on immunofluorescence and they are lumps. They are solid protein, so a lot higher density than cells, and they are as big as monocytes. The only thing that would stop these falling to the bottom of the tube even without centrifugation is the red cells -...

This is the interesting question. It might be that a shift in concentration or activation of amyloid-forming proteins occurs in LC and ME/CFS and that this assay is a way to show that, but nothing to do with circulating micro clots in people blocking vessels. The use of the previous ME/CFS...

I have not read the paper but there still seems to be no acknowledgement that particles of this size, if present in vivo, would have been removed by centrifugation? The sizes they quote are about monocyte size and would be removed by a brief low speed spin - much faster than red cells would...

Indeed. I am bid 40%, 40% it is, any more on 40%, do I hear 41%? anyone for 41%, yes the professor of GP in the check shirt over there, 41%, do I hear 42?..... the emeritus in the scuba diving kit over there at 65%. 65% it is. Now, come on let's have 100%, anyone for 100%? Worth every penny.....

Have you ever done experiments on pain sensitivity in mice, Chris? To me this is far too good ever to be true. And it doesn't really add up if you look at detail as ever. To get a meaningful result with a system like this you would need a drug company unit running fresh experiments every...

I always used to prefer the Archimedes technique. A hot bath - with a bit of the water drained out because my wife has a smaller volume so if I got in after her I displaced too much water.

I wasn't implying that, or at least intending to. I was simply questioning the implication that there are specific treatments that are available outside the NHS that are not being provided. I include pacing under advice and support.

I think in this context the standard paediatric centile height charts would be adequate. They derive from vast amounts of data on normal children. A height of 5 foot ten in a twelve year old girl is going to be in a high centile (i.e. statistically at the very top end). There will be centiles...

IiME have in the past invited people they do not necessarily agree with. That was one of the things that impressed me about the meetings.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people with ME/CFS all of the time - in fact hardly ever. Walitt seems to be majoring on petulance.

It would be interesting to know if there is in fact any association with height or span. (Marfanoid of course does not particularly imply hypermobility. It would be a separate association, which starts to get complicated.) A paediatric service could check through the height statistics for its...

My reservation about looking at metabolism in circulating immune cells is that circulating cells are more or less by definition doing nothing useful or important. Once they are out of the body and cultured whatever might have been affecting them may be lost. They might be providing clues as to...