Michael Sharpe skewered by @JohntheJack on Twitter

This goes back to the point by Wessely et al in the 1989 paper when they said something to the effect that people have said that exercise may cause harm in some, that may be true but......

I have suggested elsewhere that that should have placed upon them a duty to ensure some safeguarding procedure was in place.
 
Trolling. And given his track record he's in no position to define what is logical and what isn't.

If the trial had never happened it would be the same.
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If the trial had never happened the denial of treatment & support would not have been the same. The precise purpose of the trial was to make it easier to enable such policies. Otherwise, why else give it to a bunch of brown-nosing clowns so willing to ignore and abuse logic and science to get the result wanted?

And when I say "get the results wanted", don't take it from me, but from our naughty nautical friend of the crew:

Sometimes small corrections to the route will need to be made en voyage.
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But most often the ship does eventually dock in New York, with satisfied passengers, and a tired but relieved crew.
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Small corrections to the route taken were made on the way, but these were of little significance. The fundamental mechanics of the ship remained water tight and at no time were the ship or its passengers in peril until it safely docked exactly where it was supposed to.
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https://www.nationalelfservice.net/...syndrome-choppy-seas-but-a-prosperous-voyage/

And if that wasn't enough freudian slips from one who should know better, there's one more in the title of the piece (hint - it's the adjective in front of the word "voyage").
 
If PACE is of no consequence, then how can he justify wasting so much money and time and advocacy and legal defence on it?

If it is of no consequence, then releasing all the (anonymised) data cannot possibly hurt his reputation.

If it is of no consequence, then he and his co-principal investigators on PACE should be facing fraud charges for the funds they falsely claimed were being spent on productive, indeed important, research.

Of no consequence. What a bunch of crap. :grumpy:

Seriously, Sharpe, is that the best you can come up with? :thumbsdown:
 
Sean said:
If PACE is of no consequence, then how can he justify wasting so much money and time and advocacy and legal defence on it?

If it is of no consequence, then releasing all the (anonymised) data cannot possibly hurt his reputation.

If it is of no consequence, then he and his co-principal investigators on PACE should be facing fraud charges for the funds they falsely claimed were being spent on productive, indeed important, research.

Of no consequence. What a bunch of crap. :grumpy:

Seriously, Sharpe, is that the best you can come up with? :thumbsdown:
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Yes, he is keeping you off balance with bullshit
 
Oh great. SW's joining in now...

swessely_9jun2018.png

Surely that's just it? It hasn't changed clinical practice in the UK. It hasn't stopped #pwme being treated poorly by their GPs and other medical practitioners. It hasn't stopped people treating it as if it were psychological or "all in the mind", despite what Sharpe may say it says in the Lancet paper. It certainly hasn't led to more biomedical funding.
 
Lucibee said:
Oh great. SW's joining in now...

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Surely that's just it? It hasn't changed clinical practice in the UK. It hasn't stopped #pwme being treated poorly by their GPs and other medical practitioners. It hasn't stopped people treating it as if it were psychological or "all in the mind", despite what Sharpe may say it says in the Lancet paper. It certainly hasn't led to more biomedical funding.
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I think the issue is that it didn't change clinical practice. NICE took the PACE authors' positive interpretation of the trial results at face value and chose not to review the NICE guidelines that recommended CBT and GET. A proper, rational reading of the PACE results would have led to CBT and GET being ditched.

So no, PACE didnt change clinical practice when it should have - it should have led to CBT and GET being stopped.

Wessely monumentally misses the point.
 
I certainly think that PACE led to more confident assertions to patients about the efficacy of CBT and GET, and their ability to get CFS sufferers 'back to normal'. Also, I think that the suffering and hardship inflicted upon patients who had the temerity to point out the problems with PACE, and then faced a barrage of dismissive prejudice, should be seen as pretty horrifying.
 
Lucibee said:
Oh great. SW's joining in now...
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What were the 'horrendous consequences' of the trial asks Sir Simon? Well, off the top of my head:

- acres of misleading media coverage of the trial (helpfully co-ordinated by his good friends at the Science Media Centre) that unfairly painted patients as lazy wasters who just needed to pull themselves together and go for a jog,
- the ridiculous - and far more importantly, completely inaccurate - improvement and recovery figures that were subsequently promoted to medical professionals all over the world as a reason to prescribe CBT and GET,
- NICE's use of the trial as part of their justification for not reviewing the ME/CFS guideline in 2011 (seven years later patients are consequently still waiting for this to happen),
- the development of the 'dangerous activist ME/CFS patient' narrative which the PACE team cooked up when they realised that they didn't have any good answers to the criticisms that patients were making of their shoddy methodology and failure to grasp the basics of good trial design.

Feel free to throw any of this back at him @Lucibee.
 
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Esther12 said:
I certainly think that PACE led to more confident assertions to patients about the efficacy of CBT and GET, and their ability to get CFS sufferers 'back to normal'. Also, I think that the suffering and hardship inflicted upon patients who had the temerity to point out the problems with PACE, and then faced a barrage of dismissive prejudice, should be seen as pretty horrifying.
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It also have led to a reinforcement of bureaucratic and insurance practice ... denial of benefits until CBT/GET was used. PACE was part of the whole fiasco, which is in part why DWP funded it. That has spread to other countries, including Australia. It also changed medical culture, reinforcing the previous position. PACE slowed and railroaded change and rational medicine.

So PACE was not solely responsible, but that does not mean it had no impact.

If PACE had no impact surely they would not object to retracting it? [Satirical]
 
Lucibee said:
Surely that's just it? It hasn't changed clinical practice in the UK. It hasn't stopped #pwme being treated poorly by their GPs and other medical practitioners. It hasn't stopped people treating it as if it were psychological or "all in the mind", despite what Sharpe may say it says in the Lancet paper. It certainly hasn't led to more biomedical funding.
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PACE led to a reinforcement of the bad way things were being done. Accurate reporting of the findings would have resulted in change, some of which we are seeing now (despite still being held back by the effects of PACE).
 
Amw66 said:
Made the pursuit of biomedical research more difficult

Facilitated adoption of dubious methodology for other psych studies


Where children are concerned , the combination has enabled families to be split up and iat
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Iatrogenic damage to be done
Comorbid treatable conditions to be disregarded
Other illnesses to be written off without investigation
......
 
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