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BMJ: Chronic fatigue syndrome and Long Covid, moving beyond the controversy, 2021, Newman

Discussion in 'Psychosomatic news - ME/CFS and Long Covid' started by Wyva, Jun 24, 2021.

  1. MSEsperanza

    MSEsperanza Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  2. Jonathan Edwards

    Jonathan Edwards Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I hadn't thought about this before but it seems odd that a freelance journalist should be writing for the BMJ. Traditionally medical journals have taken material submitted by doctors and scientists without payment. More recently authors have often had to pay to publish. Editorial pieces were produced by the journal editorial staff from time to time but most editorial was solicited from people in the field and unpaid.

    Surely Newman would only write for BMJ if being paid for the assignment?
    Why would a medical journal pay a journalist to write commentary?
    My guess is that this has something to do with a drive to be more accessible - with more 'public engagement'.

    But who is going to be impressed by something that looks to be out of a tabloid and gets everything muddled up?
     
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  3. MSEsperanza

    MSEsperanza Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Don't feel up to write a comment myself.

    In case it could be helpful -- here are the references to Trish's response to and comment on some of Garner's BMJ pieces:

    1) response: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3026/rr-7

    2) comment: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/25/paul-garner-on-his-recovery-from-long-covid/#comment-5242526040

    short link to 2) http://disq.us/p/2ep9izc
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2021
    alktipping likes this.
  4. Caroline Struthers

    Caroline Struthers Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  5. MSEsperanza

    MSEsperanza Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Information below the article:
    • Competing interests: None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    It's clear from her Tweets that she was 'briefed' for her article.
    Code:
    https://twitter.com/Melanie_Newman/status/1408039875656491015
    It seems odd to me that she's retweeting some angry comments she gets, e.g.:
    Code:
    https://twitter.com/MatthewJDalby/status/1408018674791878658
    Other articles by the author:

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?cmd=search&term=Newman+Melanie[au]&dispmax=50

    Edit: I'm sure I saw a list of BMJ's freelance authors' declaration of COI on the journal's website when I looked yesterday, but can't find it anymore. Anyway, Melanie Newman wasn't listed there.
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2021
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  6. Dx Revision Watch

    Dx Revision Watch Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Ahead of publication of some editorials, articles, Views & Reviews etc, the BMJ sends out a press release. The BMJ peer-reviewed commentary I co-authored with Prof Allen Frances, MD, in March 2013 (The new somatic symptom disorder in DSM-5 risks mislabeling many people as mentally ill) was press released before publication.

    The BMJ editors also sent a heads-up to Joel E. Dimsdale (Chair of DSM-5 Somatic Symptom Disorder Work Group) and Prof Michael Sharpe (one of two UK members of the DSM-5 SSD Work Group) for their review and response. Which meant that the first comment to be published on the day of publication was a critical response from Dimsdale and Sharpe.

    Apparently, Melanie Newman originally trained as a lawyer.
    Some background here: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/profile/melanienewman
    and here: https://muckrack.com/melanie-newman
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2021
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  7. Caroline Struthers

    Caroline Struthers Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Chew Graham has now been joined by colleagues.... https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/06/2...ications-around-long-covid-can-harm-patients/
    What on earth is going on???
     
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  8. MSEsperanza

    MSEsperanza Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Or perhaps -- just putting all the findings together is really confusing and gives rather the impression that it isn't an organic disease, but sifting those findings, focusing on the very few findings that seem plausible and view them in the context of a clearly observable specific pattern of symptoms, would give a pretty compelling argument that those findings can't be explained by psychological mechanisms?
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2021
  9. Trish

    Trish Moderator Staff Member

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    I think it is clear they now recognise they can't go on openly promoting GET/CBT with the new NICE guideline, so they are re positioning themselves to be at the forefront of a 'new' approach called something like 'individualised rehabilitation' in which the therapist knows best what is right for each patient. Same old same old in new wrappers.
     
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  10. Dx Revision Watch

    Dx Revision Watch Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    My understanding (from published papers) is that Sharpe had been back in Oxford since 2012/2013.
     
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  11. Invisible Woman

    Invisible Woman Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I think this is precisely what they will try to do.

    I also expect to see more gaslighting of the ME community. Poor quality papers & articles have a double benefit for them if we don't challenge the science, then it all.sounds reasonable to the fresh batch of fodder for the clinics.

    If we challenge them it's back to the difficult patient narrative & they live in hope it will put the newly ill off engaging with support groups and knowledgeable patients so the newly ill remain willing fodder for the clinics.

    It's the heads we win, tails you lose strategy all over again.
     
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  12. Kitty

    Kitty Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I've been wondering what the new approach will be, given that the draft guideline only makes recommendations against treatments. That's sound enough, as we don't have any evidenced treatments, but it leaves patients in a zero-option limbo that's particularly difficult for the newly-diagnosed.

    We all still need support, and much of what's required does fall within the remit of NHS GP clinics. Given the recruitment and retention crisis, we're unlikely to see the development of an ME nursing specialism anytime soon – but I still think it's a safer option than all the 'therapists' with their opaque qualifications and professional standards.
     
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  13. MSEsperanza

    MSEsperanza Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Has this been posted yet?

    Godlee F. How can we manage covid fatigue? BMJ 2021; 373 :n1610 doi:10.1136/bmj.n1610
    https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1610

    Over to Postcovid & ME:

    "Up to 376 000 people in the UK have reported ongoing symptoms more than 12 months after contracting the virus, with persistent mental and physical fatigue a troubling reality for many (doi:10.1136/bmj.n1559).2

    "This presents clinicians with a range of challenges.

    "Should patients with fatigue follow the dominant advice of the CFS/ME communities: that pacing rather than graded exercise therapy is the safest route, as is now also recommended in controversial draft guidance from the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence?

    "Or does this risk sentencing patients to a lifetime of symptom monitoring and long term disability?

    "What of the researchers braving this often toxic academic terrain?"
     
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  14. Invisible Woman

    Invisible Woman Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Edit - from MSEsperanza's post above

    So the old guidelines that left the majority of patients exposed to risk of harm weren't controversial because a small number of well placed people were happy. The new draft guidelines that rated the evidence properly, agreed about the risk of harm but annoyed a small number of well placed people is controversial?

    As long as they're not trying to rerun the same or very similar trials over and over, design the trials properly and report them honestly and without spin I don't see why they should have a problem.

    Edit - autocorrect
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2021
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  15. Sean

    Sean Moderator Staff Member

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    "What of the researchers braving this often toxic academic terrain?"

    If they do their job competently and honestly, they will not have a problem. And vice-versa.

    FFS, it is not difficult to grasp this. If you pervert and abuse the scientific process, smear and malign your critics, and harm your patients for decades, they are hardly likely to be grateful to you, do have every right to strongly criticise you, and they certainly do not owe you a shred of apology about anything.

    –––––––––––––––––

    My view is that they are now aware that they have lost the basic scientific and ethical arguments, and are trying bargain their way out behind this smokescreen of smear. They are trying to get us to apologise in some way so they can save face on their way out.

    Under no circumstances should we do so until it is proven we have done anything serious to apologise for.

    Now is the time to start demanding that the UK authorities set up a proper formal inquiry, with full legal teeth, to transparently investigate exactly what the real situation is regarding the alleged 'harassment and threats', including its full context.

    My prediction is that the likes of the BMJ and Lancet and senior BPS crowd will run a mile from it, because they know they will not be able to defend their grotesquely hyperbolic claims under rigorous public scrutiny.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2021
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  16. Sly Saint

    Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  17. Wonko

    Wonko Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    That sounds awfully expensive and time consuming.

    Can't we just chuck them into a very deep pit full of people to help them get over their dysfunctional delusion that they have been thrown into a very deep pit?

    If it was good enough for 'us'.....
     
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  18. Adrian

    Adrian Administrator Staff Member

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    Maybe we should apologise along the lines of we are sorry for pointing out the methodological flaws, spin and data hiding issues behind some research into ME. We realize that it is particularly distressing for researchers to have the flaws in their work picked apart by patients whose place it is to receive treatments that established authorities believe in even when other patients report no gain of significant harm. We now realize that science in this community does not progress through an assessment of the evidence but rather by unevidenced statements from established authorities.
    But perhaps the BMJ should be more honest about this rather than claiming to support evidence based medicine and patient involvement in research.
     
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  19. rvallee

    rvallee Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Somehow, Fiona Godlee has published an op-ed (it's linked a few comments down) with no purpose other than to attack us. Just like there is no clear point being made in this commissioned text here, Godlee's text has no point or substance, seems only to be a vehicle to attack us.

    None of this is normal, it's nakedly political and what's far worse is that the reception to this is that it's basically normal. No one seems to question substance anymore in medical research, it's just a mutual admiration society where people build status and brown nose.
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2021
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  20. rvallee

    rvallee Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    It's marked as commissioned to the BMJ so they had to solicit and pay for it, no other explanation. Which itself is inexplicable given how poor of a job it does at summarizing the facts, this is not journalism, not the regular kind and even less scientific.

    But more importantly it is also marked as being peer-reviewed and that just makes a mockery of the entire system. Why even pretend that this is a scientific article when it is obviously a commissioned editorial pushing an obviously political agenda?
     
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