Michael Sharpe skewered by @JohntheJack on Twitter

[Webdog]

I am wondering whether he formally minimized his involvement to protect himself, while letting others do the dirty work of carrying out a clinical trial that he knew was flawed and biased. He is credited as having advised them on clinical trial design.

Just enough involvement to take any credit. Little enough involvement to deny any responsibility.

 

[TiredSam]

In my previous post I managed to restrain myself from typing "it can't be long now before Simon decides it's time to shit all over the PACE team".

And what do you know? 5 minutes later he's back on twitter with this:

You may also by now have picked up that there are very strong feelings now on both sides It’s hard to see these being reconciled. I moved away from this field some years ago because of this, feeling I could no longer contribute. The PACE team stayed .

Read you like a book Simon.

 

[Indigophoton]

Wessely's involvement in PACE as summarized by Keith Geraghty in response to SW and Godwin,

 

[alex3619]

Godwin responds to Sharpe:

This is a key feature of falsifiability, the core idea behind the dominant scientific philosophy, though not apparently in psychiatry, and this philosophy is critical rationalism. Anything which does not fit this idea was dubbed nonscience by Popper, and later people started calling it pseudoscience.

 

[alex3619]

@Esther12 What design do you think would have? It always seemed to me that if they had published honest results, it would have been like the reanalysis paper--end of story. CBT/GET don't work except to produce transient subjective reports of improvement. The trial would have served its proper purpose.

Yes, and this demolishes any use of such therapy as a means to get people back to work.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I wonder who actually reviewed the PACE manuscript for the Lancet?

 

[dave30th]

I wonder who actually reviewed the PACE manuscript for the Lancet?

That's been the question! The Lancet of course won't say. One notion has been that perhaps the Dutch colleagues who wrote the commentary were involved. Maybe Sir Simon? Who knows? In any event, we know it was "fast-tracked" so it likely didn't go through anything particularly rigorous. Of course, in an Australian radio interview after the publication, Richard Horton claimed it had gone through "endless rounds of peer review." He has never explained how this squares with fast-tracking to publication, although perhaps he meant it had previously been through review by the ethics and oversight committees etc and at various levels before the draft ever got to The Lancet. In any event, it would be very revealing to see details of how the journal peer-reviewed the paper.

 

[alex3619]

No, Michael Sharpe, we did not pay David Tuller to trash you, we paid David to investigate and bring to the attention of the public and the relevant authorities the way you and your cronies have trashed the lives of pwme for 30 years by doing bad science.

Actually I disagree, though David can speak for himself. He was funded to investigate and bring the relevant facts to light. It happens this includes bringing those other things to light, but I think he has the integrity to report on what he finds, no matter what it is, even if it turns out to go somewhere else.

MS's comment also ignores the long time David spent investigating with no funding.

This is classic dirty politics from MS - isolate one key point that can be distorted or misinterpreted, and then sounds bad, and then run with that.

 

[Graham]

Simon Wessely said "That’s not true. We started with Oxford and then added CDC 1994 when it appeared. Look at 1997 CBT trial, 1999 trial etc. We even compared the 2 in various papers. It didn’t make much difference to the results. it’s all here if you actually want to check"

If you look at the PACE reanalysis of the improvement rates after they were forced to release the data, you will see a similar statement about it not making much difference. The rate dropped from 60% to 20% (approx). How can that not be a substantial difference? Simply because they argued that the CBT group still did better (on the questionnaires) than the group that had no therapy.

So when they assert that it didn't make much difference to the results whether patients satisfied the Oxford criteria or the CDC ME criteria, they could easily be using language the same way. There may well be a big difference in the CBT group between those with ME and those without, but as long as both had better scores than the group without CBT, that was all that mattered.

Their use of English is as creative as their use of statistics, and neither move the truth forward.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

He has never explained how this squares with fast-tracking to publication, although perhaps he meant it had previously been through review by the ethics and oversight committees etc and at various levels before the draft ever got to The Lancet.

I have run that clip a few times and I think it is reasonable to interpret him as intending to be understood as referring to all the prior peer review rather than at his office. It would certainly make sense if one of the Dutch team was asked.

 

[Indigophoton]

In any event, we know it was "fast-tracked" so it likely didn't go through anything particularly rigorous.

@Lucibee, who should know, tweeted this earlier,

 

[JaimeS]

He's actually paid to research this trash.

Excellent, sir.

 

[BurnA]

Not really. If you are pre-awarded Fast Track review, you get to choose your favoured reviewers too. Bonus!

Wow. Did we know this?
Bit like choosing your buddies to mark your homework.

 

[Keela Too]

Their use of English is as creative as their use of statistics, and neither move the truth forward.

I LOVE this!

 

[Lucibee]

@Lucibee, who should know, tweeted this earlier,

Well, err, I was trying to provoke a denial, but I'm not sure anyone's listening (or going to talk). I suspect that Knoop and Bleijenberg reviewed it, but who knows whether we will ever find out. But what we do know is that the field has been clique-ified for decades - as long as the research is presented within a "psychological" framework, they know they can get the "right" reviewers for their work.

 

[TiredSam]

I don't remember seeing this tweet (from Friday 15th, writing to Simon Wessely) on this thread yet:



Since then of course Mike Godwin has learnt of Simon's involvement in the trial, and has had the privilege of an exchange with one of the co-authors.

 

[large donner]

Simon Wessely@WesselySYou may also by now have picked up that there are very strong feelings now on both sides It’s hard to see these being reconciled. I moved away from this field some years ago because of this, feeling I could no longer contribute. The PACE team stayed .

"Nothing to do with me Mike I didn't do PACE ", now that the shit is really hitting the fan. Except that's not strictly true he was involved in PACE, aswell as other things, he recruited patients to it and lets not forget his follow up statements about PACE being "a thing of beauty".

Both things confirmed right here in his very own blog...

https://www.nationalelfservice.net/...syndrome-choppy-seas-but-a-prosperous-voyage/

 

[TiredSam]

Nothing to do with me Mike I didn't do PACE

I wonder how Michael Sharpe felt reading that? He'll know it's a huge porkie, and that he's being abandoned.

 

[inox]

I don't remember seeing this tweet (from Friday 15th, writing to Simon Wessely) on this thread yet:

View attachment 3339

Since then of course Mike Godwin has learnt of Simon's involvement in the trial, and has had the privilege of an exchange with one of the co-authors.

"....it is with some relife that I learned you weren't a co-author."

 

[Allele]

I bow at Mike G's lotus feet for so many reasons, but that he acknowledges the public policy dimension has me prostrate on the floor with gratitude