Nature publishes response from Sharpe et al

Nature published an article on January 3rd, "A reboot for chronic fatigue syndrome research "

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08965-0

Nature has now published a response to this from Professor Michael Sharpe, Professor Trudie Chalder & Dr Jon Stone, titled "Don't reject evidence from CFS therapies"

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01285-x

 

Dear Professor Sharpe,

Kiss my arse.

Love Luther. xo

 

Is this really all they have to declare in this context? This is a genuine question btw, not a rhetorical one. Can we fault them for not mentioning e.g. that M.S. has (according to Coyne) been paid bounties to get people off benefits as an assessor or is this sort of stuff not relevant in this context and/or covered under 'academic writing'?

Even if he may not have to declare this kind of stuff due to hard rules, I somehow feel it gives the proper context to how much he likely actually 'deplores' that people feel 'dismissed by the medical profession'.

Edit: I archived the page as it appears now. This seems pretty serious to me in a broader context. We know that the financial interests these authors have are basically 'their entire careers and also covering our asses from potential lawsuits as soon as anyone notices what we have been doing all this time'. If it is acceptable to Nature that all they declared were some royalties from academic writing and self-help books we would have to re-evaluate everything they publish. I just cannot fathom how the editors could possibly be OK with this.

 

Can we write a response to their response?

 

What evidence? That CBT/GET don't lead to objective improvements in functioning and no difference in self reports at the long term followup in the PACE trial. Sharpe needs to look at the evidence himself.

 

People who are wedded to lies won't accept facts. It would destroy their egos to do so so they must defend their "alternative facts" at any cost
To them, throwing us under the bus may not be a cost at all, it may be a benefit

 

Just so people know, there was some discussion of this in the thread about the Nature article.

https://www.s4me.info/threads/natur...igue-syndrome-research.1766/page-3#post-39446

This bit is particularly absurd:

"We think that patients deserve the best research and treatments. In our view, there is no place for stigmatizing any avenue of research or therapy that might help us to improve the lives of people with this long-term debilitating illness."

It's so annoying how they're able to use Cochrane to present themselves as all 'evidence based' while Cochrane ignores all of the problems with their reviews. So much of 'science' seems based more on brand-names than evidence.

 

Absolutely not. Trudie Chalder is paid a full time salary to be a 'Professor of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy'. Her livelihood is ENTIRELY dependent on showing that CBT is useful.

 

Ye I think they meant to say "we reject evidence from CBT therapies".