Trött Hela Livet sjukdomen ME, Jörgen Malmquist's book on ME/CFS:

[Obermann]

I have just received a copy of Jörgen Malmquist's book on ME/CFS, "Trött hela livet. Sjukdomen ME". In English: "Tired all life. The illness ME". I have just glanced through the text, but I directly noticed that it is full of straw men. He attributes weird statements to opponents, doesn't provide any reference, and then rebuts the statement—as if he thereby has shown that his opinion about ME/CFS is the correct one.

For example, he says that the patient organisations in the Nordic countries are "totally committed to the neurological explanatory model". To my knowledge, there is no explanatory model for ME/CFS and the Swedish ME Association has never claimed that there is one. There is no reference, no quotation that tells us why Malmquist has concluded that Nordic ME associations have such beliefs.

Another example is the IOM/NAM report from 2015. Malmquist writes: "The report doesn’t give any acceptable support for the expert committee’s description of the illness as physical-biological-somatic. In spite of this, the report claims that the illness is entirely of such a nature.”

That is not how I understand the conclusions in the report. I emailed Professor Clayton and asked if she thinks that this is a fair representation of the conclusions, and she categorically responded: "No, it is not a fair assessment."

I think it is very disturbing that Malmquist starts a pseudo-debate about claims and statements that no one has ever proposed.

 

[Snow Leopard]

This wouldn't be the first self-declared expert to have failed to listen and understand the views of patients and to go on and mischaracterise patient views in scholarly literature.

I note this (English) review by Sten Helmfrid and Johan Edsberg:
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...t-Paints-an-Ideological-Picture-of-ME-CFS.pdf

There have been attempts to use multivariate path diagrams as explanatory models for ME/CFS [35]; but apart from numerous shortcomings of these studies [36], it is not possible to infer causality from path diagrams [37]

I'm not sure how this point reflects the content of the book, but I found their comment amusing - politely saying that drawing a bunch of boxes with lines and arrows is not a causative model!

 

[rvallee]

There's a long tradition of that. Especially in the early days, so many papers filled with completely imaginary quotes that no one has ever said. Absolute cartoon caricatures made up by clowns.

This is a political position, has nothing to do with medicine and even less with science. Stan Helmfrid has engaged a bit with this guy, total lost cause, completely delusional about this issue.

Anyway this exact book has pretty much been written multiple times, always the same BS arguments.

 

[Trish]

Does the author reach any conclusion at the end of his pseudo debate?

 

[Peter]

You both have to laugh and cry, when the author gets it all completely wrong in the title of the book. Tired all life..? What’s that? It’s not ME. A fundamental misunderstanding, and says a lot about lack of knowledge and poor quality.

 

[Hoopoe]

What a sad person to write a book attacking patient's credibility.