Paul Garner on Long Covid and ME/CFS - BMJ articles and other media.

rvallee said:
Garner is making himself a loud representative with media presence, and is putting his personal anecdote at the forefront. Which should be mostly disqualifying, but given that he centers his claims on his story, obviously it becomes relevant for criticism.
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Yep. If you are going to be basing your claim on your own personal anecdote, then that data is as subject to scrutiny and criticism as any other form of data.

And your methodology even more so.
 
Sean said:
Yep. If you are going to be basing your claim on your own personal anecdote, then that data is as subject to scrutiny and criticism as any other form of data.
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Further, he is using his personal story to argue for a specific range of treatment programmes (am I being fair, I suspect I am as though he does not always name programmes himself, he does lend his support to individuals and articles/events that do), none of which he actually undertook.

If he believes that his running and scuba diving in the Bahamas was part of his ‘cure’, he still needs to justify how that can be generalised as evidence for formal GET under an ME/CFS or Long Covid service in the East Midlands say, also if his belief that he could will his own recovery arose from a St Paul on the road to Damascus moment through a phone conversation to a Lightening Process practitioner in Norway, he needs to explain how that can be generalised to believing others should undertake formal CBT or attend an LP course in down town Michigan, none of which he has experienced.

From the start his ‘illness’ was played out in social media, as a grand tragedy where ME/CFS was destroying his life, but as far as we can tell this was a self diagnosis. After having had the initial revelation of the possibility of PEM, he first lauded the online ME/CFS as a super support. Whilst supposedly pacing he was simultaneously ramping up military style training till believed he was better, then turned on that same online community as harmful for blocking his recovery by supposedly believing such individual recovery was impossible. This may tell us more about his own psychological state, his own saviour complex, than anything extant in the real world. He needs to explain how he is different to any of the many quack snake oil salesmen using a personal story to market their treatment programmes. If the evil ME/CFS community is supposedly preventing thousands if not millions from recovering by spreading false information, how is it that he was different to all the others.

For an Professor who is a retired consultant in Public Health he seems to miss the whole point of what constitutes evidence in medicine.

All he can say is that he recovered from some form of Long Covid, using the term in its loosest sense, but given he was self diagnosed and the data he presents is personal anecdote rather than a documented case study, we do not even know with certainty if would have met the formal diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS or ME type Long Covid. He believes his recovery came from a personal realisation that he could recover by force of will, but uses nothing but anecdote to justify this or explain how he is not either one of the many who spontaneously recover from simple post viral fatigue or one of the very few (the 6%?) who epidemiological studies report spontaneously recovering from ME/CFS.
 
Peter T said:
This may tell us more about his own psychological state, his own saviour complex, than anything extant in the real world.
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For an Professor who is a retired consultant in Public Health he seems to miss the whole point of what constitutes evidence in medicine.
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He is an epidemiologist, was a professor in evidence synthesis for two decades, and is currently an emeritus prof in the same position, and has done a lot of work on systematic reviews and with the WHO, etc.

He of all people should know what constitutes robust methodology. He has no excuse whatsoever for his grotesque behaviour.
 
Sean said:
He is an epidemiologist, was a professor in evidence synthesis for two decades, and is currently an emeritus prof in the same position, and has done a lot of work on systematic reviews and with the WHO, etc.

He of all people should know what constitutes robust methodology. He has no excuse whatsoever for his grotesque behaviour.
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Perhaps this says a lot about the subject of evidence synthesis - I'm not sure they ever really talk about robust methodology just how to tabulate things in other papers and add up the numbers. They don't even seem to check that the stuff they are adding up has the same intervention and hence can be combined.
 
Peter T said:
Further, he is using his personal story to argue for a specific range of treatment programmes (am I being fair, I suspect I am as though he does not always name programmes himself, he does lend his support to individuals and articles/events that do), none of which he actually undertook.
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This emphasizes how morally and intellectually bankrupt the whole psychobehavioral project is. Ideologues have for decades 'tried' every possible variation and combination of modalities and approaches, treating them as if they all need to be independently checked (and then compared, then all summarized under a single generic label, showing how they know it's all pretend BS).

And yet when it comes down to it, all of them find no problem with just generally recommending any of them, doesn't matter what's in it, even based on a personal anecdote of someone who didn't even use any of those. The way Garner explains it, it's clearly a simple matter of belief. He says that first he believed he would not recover, then he did, and he recovered, even though by his own account he had been very active for months by then.

It's a completely generic approach where the details absolutely don't matter, but every imaginable combination of details has to be checked, ten times at a minimum, then twice more again, as long as it takes. Even though to them it literally doesn't matter, they couldn't care less whether someone faithfully applies the LP, or Gupta, or does mindful yoga, it's all just the generic idea of... some kind of fear avoidance / stress reduction, or whatever.

Every one of those, and they keep creating new ones, all identical to every other one, has to be checked for all possible combinations, individually and in group, in person or through an app, intensive or leisurely, focused on fitness or maybe enjoyment. But everyone involved in this truly doesn't care, worst case they'd advise to try them all, it's not as if it makes any difference. Some years ago Chalder even said that, that she doesn't care what helps someone, they're not just agnostic as to cause, they're completely agnostic as to the process itself, as people who create, sell and promote processes.

All of this is blatant fraud. They are stealing scarce research funding to do something they know is performative BS. They know it makes no difference, they all personally don't even care. But they'll keep going, will keep lying and stealing and harming, until the very last second, when the giant castle of cards they built just collapses from a simple whisper: "we found it, we found the cause, we know what happens".
 
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Not many clearer signs of professional failure when right-wing grifters agree with you, for the same reasons and using the same, uh, reasoning. It's like a giant red flags made entirely out of medium red flags, which are all entirely made of small red flags, and so on down several levels. Also trolls and people who enjoy making other people mad.

There's a natural alignment here. Damn, I wish facts mattered even a little. But, no, of course not. :rolleyes:
 
InitialConditions said:
Garner is now retweeting Science Denier in Chief Toby Young claiming POTS is basically social contagion/hysteria and attention seeking.
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Oh, ffs. Has he run out of vaguely medical people to quote that he now has to sink so low? The only good thing about this is it makes all Paul Garner's claims to medical credibility look ludicrous if he starts treating this person as an expert.
 
Mij said:
We have Paul Garner 'jumping the shark' in Canadian waters via emails here
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Damn, those activists sure are busy doing everything they accuse us of. It looks mostly to be him and Signe Flottorp, speaking for their Oslo thing.

What he says is absolutely ridiculous, and there is zero indication in the messages that it is treated as such. Very disturbing stuff. His email signature is mainly links to the stuff he's pushing. Dude is absolutely obsessed here. Seems even more fanatical than the weird dude on twitter, the one who keeps posting every day.

Although given everything I've seen out of this network and the McMaster stuff, it's not as if there's a need to influence anything. But he's still at it anyway.

Just seriously unhinged stuff concerning us, happening in secret, behind closed doors:
Paul Garner said:
I found classical conditioning really important in understanding the “kickbacks”-with the reimbodied symptoms coming back after over doing it, called by ME/CFS and Long covid groups as “post-exertional malaise”. Part of recovering from this is “reclassifying” it in your head as normal, not as
some medical condition.

Do let me know how we can help. If we can find more practitioners and recovered patients we will come back to you !
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There's actually some oddly funny stuff where they give away that they know the whole need for extensive physical therapy:
You will also be aware that the long covid groups will try and stop you exploring options related to mind-brain-body mechanisms. Yet things like Gupta, DNRS, Nicole Sachs, psychophysiologic retraining (by Mike Donnino), Nuffield Programme all draw on this. Trials in these areas are incredibly difficult to undertake mainly because the activists stop them.

Yet if you look at Recovery Norway for example it’s clear some of these approaches take people that have been in bed for years in the dark tube fed and they get UP within 24 hours and are recovered quite quickly. I have been trying to persuade people this is pretty solid evidence as the effects are so large but no-one is prepared to do the primary data collection. Anyway do keep this in mind.
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So basically he is completely obsessed with the CBT and "brain retraining" side of things, dismisses any of the GET stuff, which has been the main idea. Odd bedfellows.
 
Mij said:
We have Paul Garner 'jumping the shark' in Canadian waters via emails here
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So bit more about those emails, I went through most of it.

Basically he is obsessed with the notion that this is a fear/nocebo response, strictly psychological, and doesn't care about any of the traditional GET stuff. To him this is 100% mind-body delusion, treated by CBT or other brain retraining woowoo. He clearly doesn't agree with the deconditioning nonsense, to him it's strictly mindset and beliefs, so the original version Wessely and his gang pushed.

He is speaking almost entirely based on his personal anecdote, and many times is pushing for other anecdotes, as well as commercial programs. Many places he admits there is no evidence for any of it, strictly anecdotal, and for sure they need to keep away all the nasty activists (he means those who don't recover) with their anecdotes about not recovering. They need to hear from recovered people. Especially him. He has trouble finding some, he will try to find some more.

In some places he speaks of how there is good evidence, mainly the awful Knoop CBT study, and that there are good trials taking place. In other places he speaks of how nasty activists are making it impossible to hold trials, and we are terrible, terrible people who harsh his vibe. Or something like it. I don't know what it says about all the trials that happened before, especially SMILE. I guess either they didn't happen, or they were not good.

Frankly this is massively embarrassing for everyone involved. I'm thinking that is one reason why everything about us happens in secret, behind closed doors. This makes us look like serious professionals by comparison.

I kind of feel like writing to this group, how they look like a bunch of completely unserious clowns. This is one British person speaking anecdotally, along with the scientific [sic] director of Norwegian medical research (IIRC, Flottorp),on behalf of a group of mostly European quacks. This is a Canadian-funded thing, which has taken comments from the public for many years now, none of these people have any business being involved in this.

Not that I've seen anything good out of this awful program. I doubt this is the reason, they seem like a bunch of unserious clowns, and this only confirms it.
 
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There’s a lot which is curious about the story, but firstly why couldnt he just have had Post-Viral Fatigue? There’s no shame in it, and with C19 being new, and quite overpowering in its first wave there’s even less shame. He is literally an epidemiologist. I guess there’s no headpats or clout in it being ordinary.
 
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