This LP thing is really starting to give very strong Scientology for physicians vibes, even weird infiltration in places that exist to guard against nonsense like this. Ghosts of aliens past. Conversion disorder is basically some "ghost in the machine". Same coin with two identical sides. They're both narrative-driven, though only one has an action sci-fi movie (Battlefield Earth).
I partly wonder whether some of the issues with these things having had the 'support' they have (I'm guessing there must be some allied to professions somewhere who mightn't believe in it but can see its use agenda-wise so allow it to exist) is because ME and its
PEM has represented a 'glitch in the matrix' for a medicine that wants to move to assuming most illness is tackled by telling people to exercise and eat healthily.
Funnily, I suspect it really isn't the only illness that has PEM, or certainly some of the systemic issues meaning that the 'treat the symptoms' behavioural depts are actually an expensive as well as in/less effective way of going about too many illnesses and structure. Imagine if they treated heart problems as something that sent people off to the meditation dept back in the day, dietician, and then maybe exercise based on the assumption that their not being able to do so without symptoms was cart before horse etc.
But to the outside it seems like historically there was one 'year' when any illness/medical area that hadn't already scraped in under the bar suddenly got treated in this paradigm.
And that is rather supply-led. I can't help but wonder when an area is supply-led you end up with people who can cherry-pick jobs and their preferred part of it. I worked in a different area, but this is common everywhere and you see people turn up trying to palm off involvement in the core of their role and simply twist whatever their post is into/by doing their fave bit. Every job has more interesting or indeed less arduous (or whatever the issue is) parts to it and every organisation has some roles than some see as 'cushy numbers' by their own preferences/needs (fortunately these tend to even out across people with different things they want out of a job).
And of course all the symptom addressing stuff is based on generic heterogenous, therefore lowest-common denominator studies - they are therefore aiming to 'make people
average' in all these things - because the nature of their inference-based stuff inc. reference ranges is that these don't represent what is 'best' health-wise but normal-distribution. If most of the population is ill then effectively research based on this would be perpetuating treatments to make people who were less ill more 'average and therefore less well'. Or who you define or pick as your cohort defines it another way.
I diverge into philosophical but the lack of 'deduction' as part of the scientific process in medicine is a blatant issue - it isn't science technically without this. I also don't understand how a whole area has iterated in the same spot for decades to the point one could describe it as 'stuttering' (or spluttering). It sort of makes the case for the declared reason for why the academic research/literature process - with debate back and forth to the end etc and it moves things forward not working in itself. If there is no override or jumpstart mechanism for when quits are called on a rut.
Add in the fact there is no scientific plan or strategy behind what is funded for research and not, you have teh same supply-led issue on those who sign off and those who sign up to do studies.
I can sort of see how the issue you've mentioned, which is fair, marries into this context/environment. I forgot to add:
because it solves the cognitive dissonance that the 'beliefs and set-up' needing to not change vs the challenge that ME provides to that with PEM is causing.
