Michael Sharpe skewered by @JohntheJack on Twitter

Daisymay said:
Agree completely, MS and all the main players know exactly what they are doing.
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They did but now they are improvising, harassing patients for example does not help a doctor's image.
We can catch them off guard if we play our cards right.
They actions still carry weight but we are closer to the turning point then we ever have been and we need to keep the pressure on.
 
Daisymay said:
Agree completely, MS and all the main players know exactly what they are doing.
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Oh definitely.

The main limitation is that, as it is not possible to hide which treatment they received from the patients, their self-ratings of fatigue and functioning could potentially be biased by their views on the treatment they received.
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Guess who wrote this regarding a Lightning Process study?

Yep. Sharpe.

Sharpe clearly realises that relying on self-reported fatigue or functioning could be problematic due to potential bias.

That being said he did also say that the Lightning Process study was...

This is a robust study because patient were allocated to one of the two treatments at random ensuring that any difference seen in outcome between these treatments, is not due to pre-existing differences in the patients.
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Setting the bar real high for robust studies I see :p
 
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Lucibee said:
Another reminder that this thread is publicly viewable:

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Indeed but i think someone with twitter could reply to MS's reply with this post :woot:

Jonathan Edwards said:
'Well a subset of scientists, mostly not experts in trials, at least some of who have pretty strong feelings about the findings. How many trial experts do you think find it a good trial - not perfect but good? '

I think having devised and executed many trials including one where I did both published in NEJM I can consider myself an expert on trials (with absolutely no feelings about the findings, just the way they were obtained). But you do not actually have to be an expert on trials to see that PACE is rubbish - just a bog standard junior registrar who listens at journal club.

I don't know of any disinterested experts on trials who think PACE is competent.
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Alvin said:
We can catch them off guard if we play our cards right.
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Yep. Just keep quietly but persistently pointing out the methodological issues and poor results with PACE and the BPS approach.

If they are getting up your nose, don't bite. Just walk away from the computer/tablet/phone for a while.

Rick Sanchez said:
Guess who wrote this regarding a Lightning Process study?

Yep. Sharpe.

Sharpe clearly realises that relying on self-reported fatigue or functioning could be problematic due to potential bias.
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Nice catch. There is fun to be had collating and cross-referencing their own words over the years. For those with the stomach and energy.

IIRC, Prof. White did something similar when, in a review of immune findings on CFS that came up null, he 'forgot' to include his own study that reported a immune finding. That absence was noted by Tom Kindlon in a letter to the journal. Which I am sure Prof W. thought was awfully decent of Mr K. I certainly did. :)
 
Sean said:
Yep. Just keep quietly but persistently pointing out the methodological issues and poor results with PACE and the BPS approach.

If they are getting up your nose, don't bite. Just walk away from the computer/tablet/phone for a while.
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I have no twitter so i can't reply, though forget quietly, i don't do quiet well as the many doctors who misdiagnosed me will attest to :D
 
Daisymay said:
Agree completely, MS and all the main players know exactly what they are doing.
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I agree. It seems hard to avoid this conclusion. PACE is just one piece in this story, and by itself could be explained through incompetence and self delusion. There are however many more pieces to this story, and when taken all together it looks more like skillful and deliberate distortion of the truth to influence public perception and policy making on ME/CFS.

The Science Media Center campaign to associate critics of the PACE trial with deranged violent activists was clearly meant to neutralize critics. As were the phone calls to the employers of people who criticized the PACE trial. As was the attempt to prevent publication of the special issue on the PACE trial in the Journal of Health Psychology.

Then there's the whole ties to insurance companies and disability claims aspect. It's not a coincidence that papers such as PACE are useful for insurance companies because it allows them classify ME/CFS as behavioural disorder whose sufferers have no medical reason for being unemployed.

Statements such as "benefits often make patients worse" and "medical investigation causes harm to patients" also serve the agenda of justifying the total neglect of patients.

The PACE authors are also careful to describe the illness in a psychologizing way. That involves total silence on biological abnormalities that are inconsistent with their preferred narrative, and language carefully constructed to suggest that the illness is somehow a product of the patient's psyche. When patients tthey they have an incurable neurological disease, and the PACE authors claim to have evidence showing that merely changing beliefs about the nature of the condition often results in improvement and sometimes even a cure, then (if you believe this claim) it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that this illness is partially or entirely a figment of the patient's imagination. Of course they never explicitly say that and are very quick to play the stigma against mental illness card whenever patients attempt to point out the problems with this thinking. They also feign surprise and shock when patients are treated as delusional and denied medical care, but do nothing to change this.

I don't think they mind controversy at all. That controversy exists means they are successful in creating doubt and confusion which delays the progress that will eventually see patients vindicated, as happened in so many other conditions.
 
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Daisymay said:
Agree completely, MS and all the main players know exactly what they are doing.
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My issue with this claim is not that it is not true, but that we cannot prove it. I mean, 37 (?) major problems with PACE, and counting, and we can only prove one is deliberate. Its exceptionally unlikely that many or most or even all are not deliberate, but we cannot prove that. I like to stick to what can be proved. What we can show however is how bad it all is. That raises questions about the methodology used, and the acceptance of poor methodology in psychiatry, and medicine in general. If its bogus research, then whether or not its deliberate its still bogus research.

The deliberate misuse of statistics, resulting in a deliberate biased outcome, is however something provable that we can pursue, and by itself should be enough to show scientific misconduct. Given its such an obvious and simple thing to see then we can also show that all the reviewers and supporters of PACE failed to spot the obvious. (Obvious to anyone who has had even a couple of lectures on statistics.)
 
strategist said:
There are however many more pieces to this story, and when taken all together it looks more like skillful and deliberate distortion of the truth to influence public perception and policy making on ME/CFS.
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Its zombie science, science promoted not by sound experimental evidence but through funding and political influence. I have a blog on this on PR.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
But you do not actually have to be an expert on trials to see that PACE is rubbish
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I'm not the slightest bit expert on trials nor medicine, but from what I've learned from this forum and PR, it really doesn't take too much nous to see some of the most blatant flaws that have been highlighted in PACE. And that's not at all just blind acceptance of what others have said. The more heavy duty science and math, where I'm out of my depth, I defer to others, but much of the poor science (poor common sense in fact) is very shallow indeed.
 
BruceInOz said:
So Appeal to Authority is now good scientific reasoning rather than well established logical fallacy?

One of the great commandments of science is, "Mistrust arguments from authority." - Carl Sagan
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Yes, using Sharpes logic government must always be right because they got the most votes in the last election. No need for scrutiny on policies practice and economical management then, the leader can just stand up and say, "look how many people are on our side and all of my cabinet agree with me".
 
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michael sharpe@profmsharpe'He does not get scientific methodology' What a bizarre and offensive comment for a (long retired) medical academic to make about any colleague.
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What does "being a colleague" have to do with anything? He just doesn't get that science is not done by an old boys network its done by critique and debunkment that's the whole point of the scientific process.

Isn't Peter White now claiming to be retired also, does Sharpe automatically dismiss Whites arguments now?
 
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retweeted by Simon Wessely:


again........as with Sharpe quoting Feynman....
"
The scandal of poor medical research
D G Altman

We need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons

What should we think about a doctor who uses the wrong treatment, either wilfully or through ignorance, or who uses the right treatment wrongly (such as by giving the wrong dose of a drug)? Most people would agree that such behaviour was unprofessional, arguably unethical, and certainly unacceptable.

What, then, should we think about researchers who use the wrong techniques (either wilfully or in ignorance), use the right techniques wrongly, misinterpret their results, report their results selectively, cite the literature selectively, and draw unjustified conclusions? We should be appalled. Yet numerous studies of the medical literature, in both general and specialist journals, have shown that all of the above phenomena are common.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 This is surely a scandal.

When I tell friends outside medicine that many papers published in medical journals are misleading because of methodological weaknesses they are rightly shocked. Huge sums of money are spent annually on research that is seriously flawed through the use of inappropriate designs, unrepresentative samples, small samples, incorrect methods of analysis, and faulty interpretation. Errors are so varied that a whole book on the topic,7 valuable as it is, is not comprehensive; in any case, many of those who make the errors are unlikely to read it."

https://www.bmj.com/content/308/6924/283
 
Skycloud said:
I think it's best to stick to the science and other objective facts rather than motives and anything like ad hominems. Just a general comment from reading the thread; not directed at anyone in particular.
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Can you elaborate on what you mean?
 
large donner said:
What does "being a colleague" have to do with anything? He just doesn't get that science is not done by an old boys network its done by critic and debunkment that's the whole point of the scientific process.

Isn't Peter White now claiming to be retired also, does Sharpe automatically dismiss Whites arguments now?
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Didn't he make some very offensive comments about the researchers criticizing PACE himself just about a page back on this thread?
 
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