Alvin
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Thats the thing a debate on whether or not to reproduce fraud would be a fiasco. Also that would stimulate great "revelations" and the methods used and the biases and broken protocols would be argued greatly. This benefits us, mainstream scientists arguing en masse whether or not to commit fraud would make PACE untenable. Today its a small group arguing the science, if it became a huge public spectacle we would win. And thats what we want i assume.If the PACE trial was replicated then I expect that we would end up with similar results: CBT/GET leading to slight improvements in subjective self-report outcomes, but not more objective outcomes (aside from people in GET who focus on walking having a slight improvement in walking speed). The problem with PACE was more that it's design had a high risk of bias built in which meant that these results did not show that CBT/GET led to real improvements in participant's levels of fatigue and physical functioning, and could just be down to bias.
The problems with PACE were more down to poor design and spun results and replication wouldn't do much to help us understand the problems there.
Any attempt to conduct a 'new' PACE would need a quite different design, and given that even with the inbuilt biases of the PACE trial CBT/GET only led to small and transitory changes in how people report their symptoms, I don't think spending £8 million on a 'new PACE' will be seen as a wise use of limited resources.
It also used oxford criteria and rewrote improvement criteria and boasted in newsletters to influence patients and doctors pressured patients to claim improvement. Let that become part of the very huge public spectacle
I understand the urge to stay below the radar but thats not working. So lets go big and get results. Fortune favours the bold.
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