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I remain unconvinced about that. There might be, or might not. Just isn't enough evidence either way, at this point. I fear you under estimate Cochrane's demonstrated ability and preparedness to do exactly that. Exactly. The assigning of that causal pathway is arbitrary, and inappropriate for...

Chronic conditions, sometimes referred to as functional somatic disorders, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), and more recently, long COVID (LC), affect millions of people worldwide. Yet, after decades of research and testing, the etiology...

I am very skeptical of any ME study that fails to find any evidence of hemodynamics problems, especially one that did not control for PEM. That is a huge red flag for me.

"No peer-reviewer should have allowed a claim of clinical effectiveness to pass unchallenged." Peer-review is clearly broken in this area of medicine, and the profession itself is clearly incapable of reforming it. Reform is going to have to be imposed upon them from outside.

even though the study was designed in a way guaranteed to generate an unknown amount of bias, This is the core problem running through all these types of studies. It is not that there is bias. While bias should ideally be removed in the design of the study, that is not always possible. But...

I’m afraid that getting these sort of things changed by NHS bureaucracy is often a very frustrating business. Especially when one the main figures in the disaster is currently an NHS commissioner hell bent on preventing appropriate change.

Or just drop the the program completely. Leave that profiteering crap to the commercial networks.

It requires a certain amount of background knowledge to grasp the problem. Both the technical stuff and the broader socio-political history of how it has been (mis)handled and developed. No way round that. This is a critical part of it. But also fair to say that it takes a multitude of...

Which is the real psychosocial pathology for this disease. The most important feature of which is that it is entirely secondary and contingent – that is, completely unnecessary. And, of course, cruel beyond words. When are those responsible for creating this horrendously inhumane situation...

One small admin detail, just for clarity: When referring to Sean O'Neil could people use his full name or Sean O, or similar? Gets a bit confusing to me at least about which Sean is being referred to. Good line.

With the proviso that I noted before about needing to tweak the details. In this case the rice-water ratio, depending on much steam escapes from the cooking container. A bit more water for a loose fitting lid, a bit less for a more snug fit. The basics of steaming rice is dead easy. Success is...

This paper, like so many psych papers on ME, is soaked to the gills with the arbitrary assumption of psycho-causation.

Empire building, par excellence. Hickie is also responsible for the equally bad SPHERE check list. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.5694/j.1326-5377.2001.tb143784.x https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-017-1420-1

By which they most likely mean when the clinicians' rigid thinking and prejudice about the existing symptoms changed.

That is unfair. They are also doing it for power, glory, and income.

Let me guess: It ain't novel. Nor delivers much actual care.

Another paper. From Hutan's post above (#75): A Case of Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Presenting as Conversion Disorder

I get nice fluffy rice every time. I have been doing it in the microwave for decades, so had quite a bit of practice.

This case challenges our perception of conversion disorder as an entirely psychological phenomenon and neurological disease as entirely biological [5]. No, it exposed the FND diagnosis for the cruel sham it is. If disease can exist in an immaterial, “functional” realm, how then can it...

Meta-analyses of the case-control studies found patients with SSD to be more impaired by depression (SMD = 1.80), anxiety (SMD = 1.55), health anxiety (SMD = 1.31) and alexithymia (SMD = 1.39), compared to healthy controls. So, people with serious health problems that are undiagnosed or...