Trial By Error: Professor Sharpe’s Retraction Requests

yes that's it. that's earlier than I thought. I was thinking they were around from like 2015. anyway as I understand it, they'd never heard much of PACE till they were questioned about it last year in front of the Science and Technology Committee by Monaghan etc.
 
Robert 1973 said:
HRA letter to Lamb said: “We have reviewed the concerns about conflicts of interest that were raised with me at the Committee and have found that the declarations were consistent with the contemporary standards.”

This reminded me of Fiona Watt’s letter to Jeremy Quin MP (to which Jonathan Edwards responded) when she wrote: “However, I do believe that the trial was designed, conducted and overseeen in accordance with accepted standards at the time.”

It is notable that neither Watt nor Montgomery say that the standards at the time were acceptable. In other words, it may be that the standards (particularly in the field of psychological medicine) were unacceptably low but – in their view – nobody is really at fault because they were just doing what everybody else was doing at that time. If we could at least get them to admit that the standards at that time were unacceptably low they would be half-way towards admitting that PACE and a lot of other research involving therapist-delivered interventions is flawed.

——

I’ve just been re-reading the HRA letter. The COI bit is such a confused jumble – mixing up concerns about non adherence to the Declaration of Helsinki with concerns about the DWP’s involvement. It’s not clear to me if the HRA didn’t understand the valid concerns that have been raised, or whether it was just trying to brush them aside with a deliberately confused response.

I am minded to write to Norman Lamb to ask if he can request access to the evidence upon which the HRA made its assessment.
Click to expand...
Yes. The very word "standards" is ambiguous, given it can mean officially laid down standards, or alternatively just mean typical conventions. Pretty clear that in this case it means the latter, although the word "standards" may have been chosen as a bit of a smoke screen.
 
Kalliope said:
Click to expand...

That's going to be quite a reckoning for Cochrane. As a charity, it is supposed to be dedicated to the welfare of its beneficiaries, something which has massively failed with us. Their work have lead to serious harm, something that is well-known but batted off simply because it is impossible for this harm to be officially recorded, an unsustainable situation (we didn't find anything because we refused to look is not exactly convincing in sober analysis).

It was technically evidence-based, except the evidence was lousy and people pointed that out. Instead, garbage-tier evidence was laundered and given a gold star of pure, unadulterated perfection and unimpeachable integrity. Technically, patient advocates were supposed to be part of the process, but here an exception was made and advocates were essentially treated as hostile.

So here the two concerns of patient welfare and evidence-based medicine were clearly in opposition, a conflict which resulted in harmful advice. Overall, evidence-based medicine won, despite the evidence being shoddy, unreliable and mostly self-reviewed. Yet the harm was clearly known at the time, in fact it was known even before Wessely's gang took over the field, but they rejected it simply because they didn't like what the research said at the time (something familiar here...).

So something is fundamentally broken with the organisation's model. None of this have risen up yet, it seems to unfold entirely under the radar but since the digital paper trail is extensive and permanent, it doesn't really matter how long it takes for this to become a proper cause of major concern. Mix that with the crisis of replicability and other concerns over how lousy evidence can be laundered by hand-waving (7 wrongs do make a right, apparently), a problem that is itself seeing growing recognition (is all evidence of equal value? clearly not).

Will be very interesting to watch who will replace Tovey, how the process will unfold and whether this problem will be swept away to grow even more malignant, or taken seriously and leading to significant change that may interrupt the psychosocial circlejerk in a major way.
 
Barry said:
I'm really beginning to wonder what the heck it is with UK charities, given the SMC is one as well. Something feels very wrong.
Click to expand...
Charity commission isn’t known for being hot on compliance activity and given that for example private education is full of businesses legally using charity organisational structure to gain tax benefits I’d say the charitable sector isn’t exactly the ethical role model most people assume.
 
rvallee said:
Larun lodged a complaint against Caroline Struthers for sharing an article critical of PACE.

Damn, this vexatious gang is really big on the whole harassment thing. This seems like projection once again.

Can we get a full tally of who they tried to fire or lodge complaints against? It's really time to have this in one place. Is there a thread for this?

I'm joking above about the "whole harassment thing" but this is actually serious stuff they're trying to do, completely unprofessional and it definitely meets most people's definition of harassment and unethical behavior. And they dare speak of people trying to silence good scientists just because we "don't like" their work. This mutual admiration society projects more than an IMAX theater.

Click to expand...

 
Adrian said:
I had assumed that the HRA were basically on the defensive as they authorized or rubber stamped the bad practices that PACE followed. So this is them marking their own homework and trying to avoid the issues.
Click to expand...
This is a theme that re-occurs. For example, the Medical Research Council have defended the PACE Trial at least partly because they funded it. Journals will be reluctant to retract papers as a can look bad on them. Et cetera
 
Last edited:
NelliePledge said:
Charity commission isn’t known for being hot on compliance activity and given that for example private education is full of businesses legally using charity organisational structure to gain tax benefits I’d say the charitable sector isn’t exactly the ethical role model most people assume.
Click to expand...

Yeah - I'd be amazed if the complaint to the charity commission went anywhere. I get the impression that they're more there for fraud from chiarities, rather than just incompetence.
 
Robert 1973 said:
I am minded to write to Norman Lamb to ask if he can request access to the evidence upon which the HRA made its assessment.
Click to expand...
I’ve now written to Mr Lamb via the STC to ask this question.

Dolphin said:
This is a theme that re-occurs. For example, the Medical Research Council have defended the PACE Trial at least partly because they funded it. Journals will be reluctance to retract papers as a can look bad on them. Et cetera
Click to expand...
I made this point in my email – that the problems with PACE are indicative of institutional failures, and that it is therefore unsatisfactory to rely on those institutions to determine whether the investigators have acted properly.

I didn’t detail all the issues with the HRA letter as I’ve assumed others, including @dave30th, have made the STC aware of them.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom