Gravity-induced exercise intervention in an individual with CFS/ME and POTS, 2019, Ballantine, Srassheim, Newton

Are we too hard on the researchers or on the research? If you're a researcher whose work is being critiqued it may be a difficult to see the difference - you probably just feel attacked - but it remains an important distinction to make, both by those on the receiving end and by those doing the critiquing.

There is a point though for going a little easy on early-career researchers, not that their work should escape a good dose of constructive criticism if it deserves it.

However, a significant portion of the criticism should also be aimed at their supervisors or mentors. It is they who should have gently guided the young ones towards higher standards - before they submit anything for publication and open themselves up for public scrutiny and criticism.

And lets not forget the journals who publish bad research, early-career or otherwise, and the reviewers who pass pass poor studies for publication...

I like your constructive approach.

 

Yep, I do feel a little bad for the poor student, but I feel much worse for us patients! That CRESTA booklet wasn't written by the student who did the paper either, and these ridiculous notions have to come from somewhere. They're not being invented by students with no input from anyone else.

 

I don't want to criticise a graduate student too harshly. But this isn't an English literature or business administration degree, it's healthcare. So if your work is not up to scratch, they need to be told this. In a normal environment, this person's work would have been flagged as not being up to scratch early on, long before publication, and this kind of work would never have been awarded a degree or seen the light of day. The failure of supervision is obvious for all to see. This isn't about Newton or anyone else in particular, this is modern academia in general. So many people are being brought into graduate courses despite not having the chops to succeed in research in order to suppress government unemployment figures. There has been a massive degree inflation. People who 30 or 50 years ago would have struggled in a BA are now enrolled in doctoral programmes.

 

So @ Trish, are we assuming that someone is getting/has got a PhD from this?!

If so it's a tragedy for all concerned.

 

One thing that I wonder about is, how does a dissertation for an MSc come to be published in a comic calling itself the International Journal of Therapy and Rehabilitation? Presumably most MSc students have their work buried in decent obscurity in University libraries. It would be interesting to know the process by which this was accepted for publication.

As to the damage that can be done by MSc students I am always reminded of the 1989 Wessely, Butler, Chalder, David paper which set the tone. So far as I can tell Chalder had not yet obtained an MSc. In my innocence I always used to imagine that people would obtain such a degree and then have five to ten years of useful experience before notice would be taken of anything they wrote.

minor edits for typos

EDIT my mistake. This is of course not the MSc dissertation which was referred to above.

 

Now there is a thought to give you the collywobbles. I dare not look, is anyone brave enough?

 

God, it's so depressing to read the "aspirations" of that organisation www.healthylondon.org/about/aspirations/

Platitudes. Duck-billed patitudes.

 

Those aspirations mostly only apply to healthy people so they remain healthy. They're not bad, they just don't apply to the sick. Which is a recurrent theme in health care. Already sick? Oh, well, good luck with that I hope you get the help you need (but, no, we're not going to do that so stop asking, also have you tried yoga?).

 

I throw up.

I think that is what they meant and what was printed was a type.

No need to apologize. If we didn't deal with this with some flippancy, we would all go insane.

 

Remember that the McEvedy and Beard paper, a PhD dissertation which claimed that the Royal Free epidemic was mass hysteria, was on the cover of Time magazine within a few months never mind in a scientific journal!

It is in someone's best interest that ME is downgraded and the patient's fault.

 

Uh. No kidding. Not the cover, though: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601700126,00.html.

Behavior: Mass Hysteria: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878745,00.html

Also found this from the time of the epidemic, August 1955: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,807425,00.html

Everyone has screwed up in their life. But have you screwed so bad you basically condemned tens of millions to a life of misery, suffering and insult? Those jerks did. Top that.

 

There was a video in which Dr. Hyde referred to the story as being "on the front page" of TIME magazine. I don't think he ever said it was "on the cover." He may have been referring to the "Table of Contents," which could well have been the first page opposite the cover when you opened the magazine. Not that it's all that important. I think his point was how quickly the story showed up in TIME. The paper was published on January 3, 1970 and the TIME article appeared just three weeks later on 1/26/70*. TIME may have had foreknowledge of the story, but it was/is a weekly magazine, so it would not have been unusual for it to cover very recent events.

[*Possibly earlier. Magazines are often on sale a week or so before their official publication date.]

 

So these expert microbiologists had never heard of viruses?

 

I don't know what the article was going on to say but the Royal Free experts like Ramsay were convinced it was an enteroviral infection. In 1955 it was very difficult to grow viruses in the lab as they will only grow in living tissue. Even in the 1970s they still used eggs. Enteroviruses also spend most of their life cycle inside cells so they are not free in the blood to be found.

In answer to the accusation it was hysteria they said something like "We considered hysteria but the physical signs that were apparent showed it was a physical disease"

The only thing wrong with doctors like Ramsay were that they were on the side of their patients with a lack of political savvy so they were talked over by people with an agenda and no scruples.