Trial By Error, by David Tuller
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An Interview with Sjoerd Beentjes, Lead Author of Big Data Study on “Blood-Based Biomarkers” for ME/CFS
Last week, the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine published a paper called “Replicated blood-based biomarkers for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis not explicable by inactivity,” from a team at the University of Edinburgh. (I wrote about it here.) According to a press release from the university, “The largest ever biological study of ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) has identified consistent blood…
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Edinburgh Study Links ME/CFS to “Blood-Based Biomarkers”
Last fall, a team from the University of Edinburgh released a pre-print called “Replicated blood-based biomarkers for myalgic encephalomyelitis not explicable by inactivity.” At the time, I posted an interview with the lead investigator, Chris Ponting, a professor of genetics at the university. The peer-reviewed version of the study has just been published by the…
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Dr Rob Wüst on ME/CFS, Long Covid and Deconditioning
. DrPH Proponents of psycho-behavioral interventions for ME/CFS and, more recently, Long Covid, have argued–unconvincingly and with a shortage of actual evidence–that the disabling symptoms can be attributed to the effects of deconditioning. Earlier today, I spoke with Dr Rob Wüst, an expert in muscle physiology and metabolism at Vrije [Free] University Amsterdam. Last year,…
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Canadian GET/CBT Campaigners Publish Propaganda Cosplaying as Research on Twitter Trends
McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, seems to be Canada’s Ground Zero for psychosomatic theorizing. In March, 2021, a psychiatrist-in-training, Jeremy Devine, published an opinion in The Wall Street Journal titled “The Dubious Origins of Long Covid.” (I wrote about it here.) Devine cited the PACE trial favorably, as if its findings were meaningful. The animating…
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More on the BMJ Opinion Piece from the Psychobabblers
When it comes to ME and ME/CFS, The BMJ—formerly called The British Medical Journal but now, like the food franchise once known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, officially reduced to a mere acronym—is a long-time champion of the “biopsychosocial” ideological brigades. (I use the “scare quotes” because the term is a misnomer, given that these experts…
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BMJ Publishes New Propaganda Piece on Severe ME/CFS
Last week, The BMJ published a commissioned propaganda piece—er, “opinion”—written by confirmed members of the cognitive behavior therapy/graded exercise therapy/Lightning Process ideological brigades. The title: “Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care.” It repeats all the usual blah blah, along with the unwarranted assertions and evidence-free arguments about patients’ “beliefs” as a…
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Pushback on “Brief Outpatient Rehab” Trial for Long Covid from Norwegian Ideological Brigades
I often find myself responding to crap studies–such as a Norwegian study called “Brief Outpatient Rehabilitation Program for Post–COVID-19 Condition: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” from Nerli et al., published last December by JAMA Network Open. The senior author was Professor Vegard Wyller, the dean of the Norwegian wing of the CBT/GET/Lightning Process ideological brigades. The…
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A Letter Seeking a Correction in FMD Physiotherapy Paper
I have recently written about a trial of an intervention for functional motor disorder (FMD) that had null results for its primary outcome—physical function as rated by the SF-36. The study–“Specialist Physiotherapy for functional motor disorder in England and Scotland (Physio4FMD): a pragmatic, multicentre, phase 3 randomised controlled trial,” published by The Lancet Neurology—had some…
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When Primary Outcomes Yield Null Results in Clinical Trials, FND Experts Prefer Their Secondary Outcomes
In 2020, the CODES study of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, also known as dissociative seizures, reported null findings for its primary outcome—the number of seizures per month one year after the start of therapy. This was a disappointing result for an ambitious effort to seek an effective treatment for a disabling…
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Australian GPs Keep Promoting Exercise Treatments for ME/CFS
When it comes to treatments for ME/CFS, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) has long endorsed the graded exercise therapy (GET)/cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) approach. Last April, the organization published an “updated” article in its Handbook of Non-Drug Interventions (HANDI) advocating “incremental physical activity” for what it called CFS/ME. “Incremental physical activity” was…
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Andrew Ewing & David Joffe on Just-Published “Global Expert Consensus” on Long Covid
Last week, the journal Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials published the results of a major effort to collate international expertise on Long Covid. The article–“Long COVID clinical evaluation, research and impact on society: a global expert consensus”—was produced under the auspices of the Long COVID Advisory Group of the World Health Network, a global…
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#MEAction’s Jaime Seltzer on Where We’ve Been, What We’ve Learned, and Where Things Are Now
It’s been five years, more or less, since the start of the coronavirus pandemic–and the subsequent wave of Long Covid. I spoke earlier today with Jaime Seltzer, #MEAction’s scientific director, about how early links were forged between advocates for people with ME and those experiencing what became known as Long Covid, what we’ve learned since,…