Trial By Error

Year: 2018

  • Yet Another Letter About the Lightning Process Study

    This morning I sent the following letter to Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of The BMJ and editorial director of BMJ. I cc-d Carol Monaghan MP, Darren Jones MP, and Nicky Morgan MP. ********** Dear Dr. Godlee— More than a dozen years ago, a group of leading medical journals agreed that requiring clinical trials to be prospectively…

  • Three Years On…

    Three years ago this month, Virology Blog published my 15,000-word investigation of the PACE trial, so this seems like a good time for a bit of reflection. I certainly didn’t expect this saga to drag on this long. I’ve kept at it mainly because of the UK academic and medical establishment’s unwillingness to acknowledge what’s…

  • Where’s My Apology, BMJ Open?

    This morning I sent the following e-mail to Dr Fiona Godlee, the editor-in-chief of The BMJ and editorial director of BMJ. I cc’d Professor Vincent Racaniello, the host of Virology Blog, and Carol Monaghan MP, who sits on the House of Commons Health and Technology Committee. ********** Dear Dr Godlee— I am seeking an apology…

  • A Statement in Support of Cochrane

    Cochrane has decided to temporarily withdraw a review of exercise therapies for the illness variously known as ME, CFS, ME/CFS and CFS/ME. The review reported that exercise therapy is effective in treating the illness—a finding that has provided unwarranted support for recommendations that patients should undergo the intervention known as graded exercise therapy. Yet Cochrane…

  • My letter to organizer of 4th Columbia Psychosomatics Conference

    Yesterday I sent an email to Dr. Landa who had previously written to David Tuller about the 4th Columbia Psychosomatics Conference (link to David’s post). Like David, I was unhappy about Dr. Landa’s note so I decided to write her and see if she might respond better to a Columbia colleague. Apparently my faith in…

  • A Reminder about Saturday’s Columbia Protest

    In my earlier post about this issue, I accurately credited #MEAction but did not specifically make clear that Saturday’s demonstration has been organized by the movement’s New York arm. I apologize for the oversight. So here’s an official New York #MEAction announcement about the event. I would be there tomorrow if I weren’t still in…

  • Cochrane Decides to Withdraw Flawed Exercise Review

    *The headline has been changed to indicate that Cochrane has decided to withdraw the review but had not yet done so at time of posting. Cochrane has decided to withdraw, at least for now, its fatally flawed review of exercise treatments for ME/CFS—or CFS, as the review calls the illness. This review, which reported that…

  • ME/CFS is not a psychosomatic illness

    W. Ian Lipkin, Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity and the Center for Solutions for ME/CFS at Columbia University, has written the following letter several days before the Fourth Annual Conference on Psychosomatics at Columbia University this weekend. The original letter can be found at this link. 18 October 2018 Dear Colleagues and Friends, The…

  • The Psychosomatic Conference’s Pathetic Response

    *Please see note at end of post After I posted yesterday’s blog about Per Fink’s upcoming appearance at the fourth annual Columbia Psychosomatic Conference being held this weekend, I received the following e-mail from Columbia’s Alla Landa. She is an assistant professor of “clinical psychology in psychiatry”–whatever that means–and director of the conference. I found…

  • Per Fink in New York

    Someone uninformed or stupid or maybe both decided to invite Danish physician Per Fink to present at a conference on so-called psychosomatic medicine being held this weekend at Columbia University. Fink—I won’t dignify him by using an honorific–is a scary guy. He should never have been provided with this prestigious platform—in my home town, no…

  • My First Post on the IAPT Program

    Since 2008, the English arm of the National Health Service has been rolling out a program called Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, or IAPT. More than 900,000 people now receive IAPT services annually. This program arose out of the notion that many people were suffering from untreated depression, anxiety and other psychiatric disorders, and that a…

  • My Latest Letter to Archives of Disease in Childhood

    I sent the following e-mail today to Dr Nick Brown, the editor-in-chief of Archives of Disease in Childhood, the journal that published the Lightning Process study a year ago. I cc’d Dr Fiona Godlee, editorial director of BMJ, which publishes Archives. ********** Dear Dr Brown— As you know, I have been requesting since January that…