Year: 2018

Last week I admonished the US Centers for Disease Control for including fuzzy language about exercise in its new package of “information for healthcare providers.” The way the Mayo Clinic deals with the illness it calls chronic fatigue syndrome is an excellent illustration of why it is so important for the CDC to stop fudging…

Last summer, the US Centers for Disease Control removed graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavior therapy from its website as recommendations for treatment of the illness it was by then calling ME/CFS. Its stated explanation for the change–that readers had misunderstood the recommendations–was nonsense. Readers understood all too well what the agency meant by GET…

Last week, I noticed that Nick Brown, the editor-in-chief of Archives of Disease in Childhood, had appended an “editor’s note” to the Lightning Process study on June 19th. The note is stunningly inadequate. Here it is: This study was published online in Archives of Disease in Childhood after peer review in September 2017. The trial…

Earlier today, I e-mailed the following letter to the members of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, which has been investigating issues of scientific and research integrity. I thought it would be a good idea to make sure they knew that this quality appeared to be lacking in some studies in the ME/CFS…

This morning I sent another letter to Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief at The BMJ and editorial director at BMJ. Hopefully she will take action soon on the two pediatric papers whose publication has demonstrated that something is seriously amiss at the journals under her stewardship, at least when it comes to this domain of research. The…

Last month, Professor Racaniello sent Lancet editor Richard Horton an open letter about the PACE trial signed by 94 scientists, clinicians, academics and other experts. The letter, a follow-up from one sent in 2016, cited the study’s “unacceptable methodological lapses” and called for a fully independent investigation. Since Dr Horton has not responded, I re-sent…

Professor Michael Sharpe blocked me on Twitter many weeks ago but apparently can’t restrain himself from tweeting at me again. Maybe I’ve gotten under his skin. Yesterday he tweeted what must have felt to him like a slam-dunk question: He wanted to know how many clinical trials I have conducted. The answer is none. But…

Update (7/6/18): I sent a follow-up e-mail to Dr Godlee yesterday to correct an inaccuracy in what I wrote about the 2011 report on PACE in The BMJ. I have included that follow-up e-mail at the end of this post. Earlier today, I e-mailed the following letter to Fiona Godlee, the editor-in-chief at The BMJ…

Update: Lucibee has done what I didn’t want to bother to do. Here’s her annotated version of Professor Sharpe’s statement: https://lucibee.wordpress.com/2018/07/02/sharpes-briefing-on-the-so-called-pace-trial-for-the-21-june-2018-westminster-hall-debate/ Before last month’s hearing in Westminster Hall, Professor Michael Sharpe sent the following briefing notes to Carol Monaghan MP. To anyone who knows the details of the PACE scandal, it is immediately evident that…

I recently wrote to Oxford University neuropsychologist Dorothy Bishop, who had provided a statement to the Science Media Centre about the Lightning Process study. Although she had expressed concerns about the pseudo-scientific nature of the intervention, she found it to be generally well conducted and noted that the findings appeared to be solid. In my…

By Steven Lubet Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, where he specializes in professional responsibility and ethics. Let’s assume that everyone on the PACE team, and all of their colleagues in the biopsychosocial school, always acted in complete good faith. Let’s agree that they all want nothing…

This morning, Professor Racaniello sent the following e-mail to Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet. The subject heading: “Another open letter about the PACE trial.” He cc’d the three lead PACE investigators and the public relations office at Queen Mary University of London. Virology Blog’s previous open letter to The Lancet about the PACE trial…