Paul Garner has shared Live Landmark's opinion piece on twitter with the following text:
Nice Guideline for CFS/ME derived from activism, not research-from a recovered patient. I have never seen such a corruption of the evidence-informed guideline process. Nice should hang its head in shame #CFS
Prof Garner tweets “
Nice Guideline for CFS/ME derived from activism, not research-from a recovered patient. I have never seen such a corruption of the evidence-informed guideline process.” Though what follows is my attempt at teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, I think it is worth repeating some very basic points about scientific methodology.
Though in medicine single case studies may form a basis for developing research proposals, in themselves they are never conclusive evidence for a generalisable theory. That indeed would be the textbook logical fallacy of ‘going from the specific to the general’. No rational experimentalist or even first year philosophy undergraduate would support this approach. This is on a par with saying ‘My friend has red hair and speaks Basque, therefor all people with red hair speak Basque’.
Yet here Prof Garner is not even arguing from published documented single case studies as a basis of justifying the Lightning Process, but rather personal testimony. Historically we see the use of personal testimony by religious cults and snake oil salesmen. How can we take seriously someone who places the tactics of a snake oil salesman above objective analysis of the experimental evidence by a group independent scientists.
Prof Garner implies the conclusions of the independent evidence review was driven by activism, which the cited Norwegian opinion piece attributes to an imbalance of lay members on the committee. However, as already pointed out here these patients/patient advocates formed a minority, one in four of the ME/CFS NICE guidelines committee, and the evidence review was undertaken independently to the committee itself. Yet Prof Garner, seems to believe that this minority somehow overruled the separate panel of independent experts that undertook the extensive evidence review and the much larger number of academics and clinicians on the guidelines committee, in relation to the Lightening Process.
I am mightily impressed that these five individuals managed to influence (presumably telepathically) the independent group of experts, who they never met face to face, that undertook the evidence review, and to also over rule the senior academics and clinicians that made up three quarters of the committee.
Presumably Prof Garner is following on from the beliefs of Phil Parker, the creator and owner of the Lightening Process, who has made use of telepathy as part of his previous faith healing and advocates that your personal beliefs if strong enough can change external reality.