UK: Paul Little

Hutan

Hutan

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Some background on Professor Paul Little:

Professor of Primary Care Research within Medicine at the University of Southampton

He gave his stamp of approval to a very bad case study of CFS/ME written to educate New Zealand doctors by Professor Bruce Arroll (who has been helping to promote the Lightning Process) RNZCGP GoodFellow Unit MedCases CPD Sept 2023: Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis

He was an Executive Board member of the UK CFS/ME Research Collaborative in 2016 - 2018 when Holgate was Chair. I can't find who is currently on the board of the research collaborative.

He is a member of COFFI


He was a signatory, along with Holgate, to a letter to the Independent in 2012 alleging that CFS researchers had been subjected to harassment. I note that both Holgate and Little have been based at the University of Southhampton.
2012 Letter to the Independent on harassment of researchers

He was a co-author of this paper:
A meta-ethnography of people with chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) and their support needs, 2020, Pilkington et al. It could, perhaps uncharitably, be characterised as 'how can we tweak our BPS offering so that the patients accept it better?'. Part of the conclusion was that symptoms needed to be accepted as real.

And he's one of the 51 co-authors of Anomalies in the review process and interpretation of the evidence in the NICE guideline for (CFS & ME), 2023, White et al
 
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PROFESSOR PAUL LITTLE AWARDED 2020 MAURICE WOOD AWARD FOR LIFETIME CONTRIBUTION TO PRIMARY CARE RESEARCH, 2021
The Maurice Wood Award for Lifetime Contribution to Primary Care Research is given annually to honor a researcher who has made outstanding contributions to primary care research over the course of a lifetime.
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Widely recognized, Professor Little was the first general practitioner to be awarded an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship in 1998. In 2011 he was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a group that includes few GPs. Additionally, Professor Little is one of the few GPs to have been given 2 terms as an NIHR Senior Investigator. More recently, Professor Little was named a Commander of the British Empire by her majesty Queen Elizabeth for services to general practice research in 2018. And last year, Little received the Discovery Prize from the Royal College of General Practitioners. Clearly, Professor Little has had a deep and wide impact on primary care research and practice, and is most deserving of the NAPCRG Wood Award.
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For all that, I can't see that he has actually done much work on ME/CFS or even CFS/ME. I'm not sure why anyone would think that Professor Paul Little is an authority on ME/CFS treatment. I have no idea what he was doing on the CMRC.

He's definitely in with the COFFI crowd, see here, a COFFI Review:
Long COVID and Post-infective Fatigue Syndrome: A Review
Carolina X Sandler 1, Vegard B B Wyller 2 3, Rona Moss-Morris 4, Dedra Buchwald 5, Esther Crawley 6, Jeannine Hautvast 7, Ben Z Katz 8 9, Hans Knoop 10, Paul Little 11, Renee Taylor 12, Knut-Arne Wensaas 13, Andrew R Lloyd 1

His 'citation upon election' as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences was
Paul Little is Professor of Primary Care Research at the University of Southampton. He has generated much needed evidence to underpin the management of clinical problems such as common infections, back pain and obesity. His discoveries relating to the management of infections, including the merits of delaying the use of antibiotics, led to the production of NICE guidelines, which have helped to reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescribing in primary care. Central to his research is a recognition of the importance of patient beliefs and behaviour in determining responses to treatment and clinical advice for much of the illness that is encountered in primary care.
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Hutan said:
PROFESSOR PAUL LITTLE AWARDED 2020 MAURICE WOOD AWARD FOR LIFETIME CONTRIBUTION TO PRIMARY CARE RESEARCH, 2021





For all that, I can't see that he has actually done much work on ME/CFS or even CFS/ME. I'm not sure why anyone would think that Professor Paul Little is an authority on ME/CFS treatment. I have no idea what he was doing on the CMRC.

He's definitely in with the COFFI crowd, see here, a COFFI Review:
Long COVID and Post-infective Fatigue Syndrome: A Review
Carolina X Sandler 1, Vegard B B Wyller 2 3, Rona Moss-Morris 4, Dedra Buchwald 5, Esther Crawley 6, Jeannine Hautvast 7, Ben Z Katz 8 9, Hans Knoop 10, Paul Little 11, Renee Taylor 12, Knut-Arne Wensaas 13, Andrew R Lloyd 1

His 'citation upon election' as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences was
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Am I getting confused but I thought in academia people joined groups based on a belief in methodology and research strategies or robustness, not just the dib-dib-dob-dob I swear I believe it's a tendency to be a bit hysterically thinking wrong making them think they are ill and will only ever look at their behaviour as wrong and in the light of 'false beliefs'.

Because er well... that, without the progressing knowledge or wanting the academic literature to land where the chips may despite your best guesses, well it is something else entirely - and is more swearing into something political, religious or other type of action-based organisation isn't it?

And they can claim 'research' they do is 'research' but it isn't even as regulated as the research marketers would do as part of their marketing plans where they'd actually have to be above board and reliable in showing if something was just coerced by design to get a bunch of people who hadn't dropped out saying what they require them to say. And it doesn't seem to be either knowledge, experience with patients or learning from the job as per a specialism.

As you say, this guy doesn't seem to do either - so what actually is COFFI because I think it is worth looking up these technical terms to just see whether they are basically fitting more the definition of 'lobbyist' 'commercial interest group', 'political group', I don't know whether there is somewhere the definitions of these is clarified because it would be interesting as we come across each to use such a framework to define said groups appropriately?

Given what they want taught on their 'courses' in my mind would be categorised as disability bigotry, just plain disability bigotry by pretending you can't see the disability when you can see it and then inferring you as an ignorant with no experience could 'give em some tips on how to be more tenacious' - which to me sounds like the classic idiot watching a wheelchair user struggle with steps and thinking they can offer advice on 'why don't they try wheelie-ing' and telling women to 'smile more' and 'maybe you'd feel better if you didn't think about it' (even when people don't 'think about it'). And that they are as keen to distribute their message to those who don't have the condition, I think this is a distinction that needs to be defined if it isn't already.

Particularly if Sharpe's talk where he intends to take this orthodoxy to most disability and illnesses - having picked on the most vulnerable condition first - perhaps was always the 'belief system' being sold anyway... I think it is worth viewing how different things look in that light (whilst those conditions are still seen as the reality they are) of what these individuals specifically would like to deliver on these courses and their end-game for if they believe in any other treatment or adjustments etc.
 
Such clinical groupings are not inherently negative. They can also serve to share good practice and promote good research. We are seeking to do the same when encouraging understanding of such as PEM and backing biomedical research into the same.

The problem is when they serve to enforce a belief system, stifling dissent and silencing a whole patient group. The relevant questions about the BPS/psychogenic grouping is not about their links and information sharing, which is inevitable in relatively small clinical fields, but rather about how they became proponents of an ideology rather than problem solvers, why they sought to exclude dissenting colleagues and actively devalue the patient perspective as a deliberate strategy.
 
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