I don't think this is what happened, as they started with 33 participants and 3 dropped out.
Preprint Microtesla Magnetic Therapy for cognitive impairment in post-acute sequelae of SARS CoV-2: A randomized controlled feasibility study Canori Putrino
It's a bit hard to know if the screening and enrolment was all done at one time, or if it was a process.
Often recruitment is a process done over months. If a participant started but dropped out, it is possible that they kept screening in order to ensure they got the planned 30 participants completing the treatment. I don't know though. Do you know what actually happened?
Especially the decrease on the SF-36 Emotional Well-Being and PROMIS fatigue in controls is quite remarkable.
The most fascinating effect to me is how little placebo-like effects some clinicans are able to produce for example compared to the Norwegians and many other clinicans in the field when it comes to the placebo-group improvements that we've seen. Is it that some people are uncompassionate and uncovinvicing that they can't generate small Hawthorne effects or why is that?
@dave30th when was the last time a major BPS researcher published a study with such apparent methodological flaws and then reported efficacy and went onto the internet to boast about efficacy, possible FDA approval and speculated about mechanisms for which only negative evidence exists?
Last edited:
Here’s Hannah Davis, an expert in “bias in data sets” hyping the study
en.wikipedia.org
“New paper shows an MMT (Microtesla Magnetic Therapy) device improves memory, verbal learning, processing speed, and more in #LongCovid patients with objective cognitive impairments.Some of the most hope I've felt in forever - thank you so much @PutrinoLab and team for this!!!!”
Hannah E. Davis - Wikipedia
“New paper shows an MMT (Microtesla Magnetic Therapy) device improves memory, verbal learning, processing speed, and more in #LongCovid patients with objective cognitive impairments.Some of the most hope I've felt in forever - thank you so much @PutrinoLab and team for this!!!!”
Felis Catus
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Here’s Hannah Davis, an expert in “bias in data sets” hyping the study
Hannah E. Davis - Wikipedia
“New paper shows an MMT (Microtesla Magnetic Therapy) device improves memory, verbal learning, processing speed, and more in #LongCovid patients with objective cognitive impairments.Some of the most hope I've felt in forever - thank you so much @PutrinoLab and team for this!!!!”
So cringy.
Not sure I can face opening LC groups this week. It's going to be all the rage.
The author's social media post doesn't include any qualifiers like "suggests". It just directly says the therapy is effective:
rvallee
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
By the usual standards of 'pragmatic' evidence-based medicine, this is relatively high quality. Which is a low bar, the lowest bar imaginable. Not at the level of a basic drug trial, but far better than usual. It's actually controlled and double-blinded. It has no plausible working mechanism, though, and no prior evidence in its favor.
From this, I don't see the point of going any further. This is a null result. You could easily get similar results from expensive shaken water.
This actually got me thinking, has it ever happened that a purely pragmatic non-pharmaceutical trial of this sort worked out? Even once? Obviously we have a certain bias in that we deal with chronic illnesses and health problems with no treatments, so by definition it can't have happened. But has it ever happened in other conditions? About treatments that aren't drugs or surgeries? Or maybe something like just avoiding the problematic cause, such as avoiding allergens? I would pretty much assume no, but would love to be proven wrong. Of course proven wrong as a general case would require far more than one example, but I doubt this has ever happened once.
It's so bizarre how medication has gotten such a bad reputation for reasons mainly having to do with economic policies around patents, when they are, by far, the most effective thing medicine has ever done. Drug trials need only to fail once. We can have 500 trials about yoga and similar ritual nonsense and it's basically never considered to not ask for more. What a bizarre species we are.
From this, I don't see the point of going any further. This is a null result. You could easily get similar results from expensive shaken water.
This actually got me thinking, has it ever happened that a purely pragmatic non-pharmaceutical trial of this sort worked out? Even once? Obviously we have a certain bias in that we deal with chronic illnesses and health problems with no treatments, so by definition it can't have happened. But has it ever happened in other conditions? About treatments that aren't drugs or surgeries? Or maybe something like just avoiding the problematic cause, such as avoiding allergens? I would pretty much assume no, but would love to be proven wrong. Of course proven wrong as a general case would require far more than one example, but I doubt this has ever happened once.
It's so bizarre how medication has gotten such a bad reputation for reasons mainly having to do with economic policies around patents, when they are, by far, the most effective thing medicine has ever done. Drug trials need only to fail once. We can have 500 trials about yoga and similar ritual nonsense and it's basically never considered to not ask for more. What a bizarre species we are.
Felis Catus
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Thanks for sharing. I don't have twitter, so I can see only the first message, the one marked as "1/" starting with:
Would you or someone else mind copy-pasting or screenshoting the rest?
ChronicallyOverIt
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Let’s say the magical device actually emits 27.12mHz is this actually something you want around your eyes as they are mostly fluid and would heat up potentially. Secondly can this even penetrate though skull, sounds like this stops in fatty layers. Is this really something you should be doing everyday:
Shortwave Diathermy | Therapeutic Modalities, 4e | F.A. Davis AT Collection | McGraw Hill Medical
https://fadavisat.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?bookid=2659§ionid=218372884#218372895
Protection of Workers Exposed to Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields: A Perspective on Open Questions in the Context of the New ICNIRP 2020 Guidelines - PMC
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9215329/
I’m not convinced with the study designed so poorly any safety has been done. Anyone know if this thing has ANY additional testing? Maybe it actually a good thing it’s a null result. Who knows what this thing is actually producing
Shortwave Diathermy | Therapeutic Modalities, 4e | F.A. Davis AT Collection | McGraw Hill Medical
https://fadavisat.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?bookid=2659§ionid=218372884#218372895
Protection of Workers Exposed to Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields: A Perspective on Open Questions in the Context of the New ICNIRP 2020 Guidelines - PMC
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9215329/
I’m not convinced with the study designed so poorly any safety has been done. Anyone know if this thing has ANY additional testing? Maybe it actually a good thing it’s a null result. Who knows what this thing is actually producing
Last edited:
OrganicChilli
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Maybe it fries your brain cells so you can no longer tell if you have brain fog.
I'm not a physicist and limited in knowledge but according to Putrino the strength of the magnet is 1/100,000th of the strength of magnet used in TMS (which is roughly 1-3 Tesla) and it generates a continous field rather than an oscialliting or pulsed one (as for TMS). That means the magnetic field of the device would be comparable to that of earth's own magnetic field or just holding a phone, radio next to your face or sitting by your fridge.
According to the website the purpose seems "time-varied electromagnetic fields" with no indication of timeframes. In either case you will never get any neurons firing directly, but I guess you get some extra ion channels opening here and there and that sort of stuff or maybe you get absolutey nothing if the time-horizon is long.
ChronicallyOverIt
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Ah yes gotcha. Yeah would have to see some power it’s emitting. Honestly probably not worth the effort of figuring this out, but yeah at that power range quoted it’s less than the earths magnetic field haha
Liface
New Member
Thread by @PutrinoLab on Thread Reader App
@PutrinoLab: I want to thank everyone for the interest in this work that we completed in a #LongCOVID cohort with this novel device. I always appreciate feedback and want to thank folks for holding me accountable...…
threadreaderapp.com
Here is the full thread.
Felis Catus
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Thank you very much!Thread by @PutrinoLab on Thread Reader App
@PutrinoLab: I want to thank everyone for the interest in this work that we completed in a #LongCOVID cohort with this novel device. I always appreciate feedback and want to thank folks for holding me accountable...…
Here is the full thread.
From the thread: