Physical function and psychosocial outcomes after a 6-month self-paced aquatic exercise program for individuals with [ME/CFS], 2025, Broadbent+

[Hutan]

Yes. And it's so much more career enhancing to say 'This RCT provides evidence of efficacy and safety for low-intensity aquatic exercise rehabilitation rather than 'this RCT provides evidence that our expensive intervention is no better than doing nothing'.

 

[rvallee]

Six months of self-paced, low-moderate aquatic exercise significantly improved fatigue, depression, walk distance, lower limb strength and peak expiratory flow

It's so misleading to use terms like this knowing that they mean something very different in a press release. They mean statistically significant, and even where sometimes it's clinically significant, it's always the barest blip above it, or often even right on it. Nothing in "Imagine a world"-based medicine rates above the smallest most trivial outcome.

But in a press release saying that something is improved significantly is interpreted as meaning "a lot". Most people would probably rate this as meaning a huge difference.

So is this:

Since there are few recent robust controlled physical activity intervention studies

None are adequately controlled. None are robust. But they use robust to signify that this is indisputably beneficial.

Very dishonest. About as deceitful as "Now with 35% more", when the company decides the base quantity, and could just as well make it 5% and call it 20x in bonus. Means absolutely nothing.