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Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Occupational Status: A Retrospective Longitudinal Study, 2021, Chalder et al

Discussion in 'Psychosomatic research - ME/CFS and Long Covid' started by Sly Saint, Nov 14, 2021.

  1. Milo

    Milo Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    What is the likelihood that they used the Oxford case definition, which includes patients who may feel tired but turn out to no be true ME patients?
     
    Barry, DigitalDrifter, Wonko and 8 others like this.
  2. Amw66

    Amw66 Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    good point - what was work status over time - full time / part time/ voluntary ????? and average hours worked.
     
    FMMM1, MEMarge, EzzieD and 5 others like this.
  3. Sean

    Sean Moderator Staff Member

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    If just a single doctor had said to me at the start: We really don't know what is going on for patients with this. You are going to encounter some serious hostility and mistreatment from my profession and the world. Downsize your life, dig in, and be prepared for the possibility it might be lifelong.

    Still would not have been easy or fun. But almost certainly would have turned out a lot less worse.

    Medicine is not obliged to have answers. But they are absolutely obliged to admit it, and not desperately fill the knowledge gap with destructive psycho-drama morality-play crap just to avoid having to admit it. That I cannot forgive them for.
     
    Sid, Forbin, FMMM1 and 27 others like this.
  4. Sly Saint

    Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  5. dave30th

    dave30th Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I had this question too. The numbers make no sense.
     
  6. dave30th

    dave30th Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Also, it is rich to have Chalder calling for work-related outcomes given that the PACE authors rejected the objectivity of this measure in the end because it didn't yield any positive results. They dismissed it because economic changes meant that getting back to work was not necessarily just up to patients.
     
  7. Sly Saint

    Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    "Patients fulfilled NICE criteria for CFS [12].
    12. Sharpe MC, Archard LC, Banatvala JE et al. A report—chronic fatigue syndrome: guidelines for research. J Royal Soc Med 1991;84:118–121."
     
  8. Sly Saint

    Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    "Unhelpful beliefs such as fear of activity and exercise and concerns about causing damage, combined with all or nothing behaviour and behavioural avoidance, were associated with not working and are specifically targeted in CBT and, to some extent, GET"
     
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  9. Sly Saint

    Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    upload_2021-12-7_17-19-30.png
     
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  10. dave30th

    dave30th Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Ok, Chalder appears to have mis-written the abstract, judging by the full paper. She did not mean that 53% of those who were in employment at baseline stayed in employment. That's incorrect. According to the actual data, 53% of the entire sample of 316 was employed at both baseline and follow-up--not just 53% of those employed at baseline. This is a case of people so clueless and so indifferent to language and meaning that they don't actually notice that what they write makes no sense.
     
  11. dave30th

    dave30th Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    So they're making up that they used NICE criteria, I guess?
     
    Barry, ukxmrv, ME/CFS Skeptic and 4 others like this.
  12. sneyz

    sneyz Established Member (Voting Rights)

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    Hard to decide if this is incredibly proactive, or if someone just discovered the search/replace function..
     
  13. Trish

    Trish Moderator Staff Member

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    All that stuff about catastrophising etc is so much hot air. The SF-36 physical functioning data show those unable to work were on average significantly more disabled.
     
    Sid, adambeyoncelowe, Barry and 11 others like this.
  14. dave30th

    dave30th Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  15. Milo

    Milo Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  16. dave30th

    dave30th Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Ha! I'm a modest guy!
     
  17. Sean

    Sean Moderator Staff Member

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    Which they downplayed and dismissed.

    Getting damn close to fraud, isn't it. :grumpy:
     
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  18. dave30th

    dave30th Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    in reading it again, it seems they repeat the same mistake about 6% and 9% in the discussion section as well, identifying the wrong denominator. I'd missed that.
     
  19. Keela Too

    Keela Too Senior Member (Voting Rights)

    It’s confusing.

    So 9% of the whole cohort had a change from “not working” to “working”.
    Would this statistic have not looked “better” (from Chalder’s pov) if it had been expressed as the percentage of the “not working” returning to work? Ie the % would have been a higher number.

    Perhaps that error was made so it could also be made with regards to the 6%.

    So, let’s see, 6% of the whole cohort had a change from “working” to “not working”.

    This would also be a bigger percentage if expressed as a percentage of those “working” at the start.

    Actually, IF only 6% of the entire cohort were “working” at the start (sorry I’ve not looked at the actual figures) then this could mean that a full 100% of the working-at-start group had to stop work!

    I wonder what that actual figure is?
    Is that the figure that needed obfuscation?

    Statistics eh!

    PS Okay found some percentages, so it’s not my extreme suggestion. Yet it does seem a weird error to make.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2021
  20. Keela Too

    Keela Too Senior Member (Voting Rights)

    Back of the envelope calculations:

    Am I right in estimating
    10% of the working group had to stop work and
    21% of those not working were able to start work?

    Are these not figures that would look better from her pov?

    What have I missed?


    64A5F7BC-E279-446E-8FB7-31CF25B8E27A.jpeg
     
    FMMM1, MEMarge, Trish and 1 other person like this.

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