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Yep :D

A bit like astrology really - make enough sufficiently vague statements applicable to much of the population, and people end up thinking it's science!

I think @Jonathan Edwards is primarily an ally to the truth, wherever it may be found. It is what we all have to be. Why is it not possible that there may be different subgroups?

It makes me think there is probably a serious oversight with regard to sampling theory in a lot of this. In essence your sampling frequency must be at least high enough to not miss signal information that later analysis will assume would not have been lost.

I can't pretend to understand this, but going by @Snow Leopard's post. Is it more that low cortisol salivary levels are anticipatory of the day's activity? And if the activity is similar for two different people, even though the reasons may be completely different, then their levels might be...

Could this also explain the similarity in readings from the A-MDE and CFS groups, albeit for different reasons? Both groups having restricted predicted physical activity, but for psychological reasons in the first case and physical reasons in the second. I don't understand much of this but it...

Sorry, crossed wires on my part.

The trouble is the numbering only really gives an illusion of objectivity, a sort of scientists' comfort factor (certain scientists anyway). Presuming that someone's perception of changes to their perceptions follows a nice linear numerical scale, is a pretty fluffy presumption. And the way...

That might be a bit premature? As I understand it this is high risk surgery at the best of times, even assuming a proper diagnosis has been made and the surgery performed very competently. There may be no one at fault.

Just a thought on safety you need to consider. Castor chairs can move very easily, and you would only have to unwittingly push a little bit to find you have pushed yourself away from the worktop. If you were holding a kettle/pan of hot liquid you might end up with it all over you. Not saying to...

Yes, I suspect people naturally have a poor ability to be consistent over repeated assessments on subjective measures. Some people will be better than others. Any one person will be better at it some times than at other times. Moreover, it is a cognitive endeavour being required of people whose...

I think it is more like "religious truth", the 'truth' being ... whatever you want it to be.

I suspect Howard is well-intentioned but misguided. Subjective outcomes have their place I'm sure, especially in psychology, albeit backed by objective outcomes where blinding is impossible, as will often be the case for psychological interventions. But what is meant by validation? Research...

Yes, exactly - especially when the reason for "not liking" them is because they are flawed, and hence warrant those faults being exposed and discussed. Why would genuine scientists baulk at that?

Badly worded on my part maybe. But the unblinded trials with subjective outcomes may well be relying on inflated results to make them appear to be similar to blinded trials, else they might very well show much poorer results.

A further thought on this. Apologies if it's repetition of anything in earlier posts. The paper alleges to compare the effectiveness of non-blinded trials relative to blinded ones; but of course it is really only comparing reported effectiveness - that is the only data the paper has access to...

Continue to be seriously ill? I wonder just how many of those "many" end up a lot worse than they otherwise might have been, were it not for treatments administered?

I think this paper is based on a flawed premise: That if, on average, blinded trials show broadly similar treatment effectiveness to that shown by unblinded trials, then blinding is potentially superfluous and unnecessary. To me this is akin to saying that if, on average, aircraft with rotor...

You cannot blind to the fact of receiving IV fluids, but you can blind to whether you are being given any active medication or just placebo, same as with other medication.

I don't think the ORs were necessarily insignificant, regarding the trial outcomes. It was the RORs that was apparently insignificant - the ORs of the blinded trials versus the ORs of the unblinded ones. Even if all the ORs had been 10 the ROR's would then have been 1. Unless I'm misunderstanding.