Year: 2019

In an interesting and unexpected development in the ongoing saga of my dispute with the University of Bristol, the chief executive of the National Health Service’s Health Research Authority sent a gracious note about my work to Carol Christ, the chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, on Wednesday, October 31. I did not ask the…

Last November 12, I published a post called “How Bristol Investigators Avoided Ethical Review.” That post addressed the series of eleven studies conducted by Bristol investigators and exempted from ethical review on questionable grounds. The lead investigator of these studies was Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol’s methodologically challenged pediatrician, whose work was the subject of a…

I have sent the following letter to Jane Bridgwater, Bristol University’s director of legal services and deputy university secretary. Jane Bridgwater Director of Legal Services and Deputy University Secretary University of Bristol Bristol, UK Dear Ms Bridgwater: I have raised multiple concerns in recent years about research conducted by Professor Esther Crawley, a pediatrician at…

Last week, the National Health Service’s Health Research Authority published a long-awaited (by me) investigation of 11 studies from Bristol University. All 11 studies were spearheaded by Professor Esther Crawley, the University of Bristol’s high-profile pediatrician. I had flagged these studies as problematic because in every case the Bristol team exempted them from ethical review…

A day of reckoning could be coming for Bristol University and Professor Esther Crawley, the ethically challenged pediatrician whose work has come under official scrutiny (that is, under scrutiny from people with greater authority than me) on multiple fronts. According to the Health Research Authority, the National Health Service unit that oversees research ethics (or…

Cochrane’s republication last week of its seriously problematic exercise-for-CFS systematic review has triggered an outpouring of comment about the organization’s flawed decision-making and low-quality scientific reasoning. One very smart member of the Science For ME forum, Michiel Tack, posted an excellent overview of the changes between the prior version and the one published last week.…

I have repeatedly raised concerns about Professor Esther Crawley’s habit of bypassing ethical review in her research. This issue first came to my attention in connection with a study she conducted about whether school absence could be used to identify undiagnosed cases of the illness she has generally called “chronic fatigue syndrome.” In that study,…

On June 17th, Cochrane announced that it had received a revision of a much-contested review of exercise therapy for treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome (as the organization has long called the illness or cluster of illnesses also referred to as myalgic encephalomyelitis, CFS/ME, and ME/CFS). In a posted statement, Cochrane noted that “the process has…

And now again with BMJ Open. I have written many, many posts about my efforts to get this supposedly reputable journal to acknowledge the issues with Professor Crawley’s school absence study. I won’t recap that unfortunate matter in this post, except to note that I am still waiting for the results from a Bristol University…

In its efforts to save money, the National Health Service has been expanding the program known as Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) by encouraging physicians to refer over all those with so-called “medically unexplained symptoms” (MUS). Under IAPT, the illness referred to as “chronic fatigue syndrome” falls into the MUS category. The program essentially…

I have posted a batch of letters about the Lightning Process study that have been sent to Dr Fiona Godlee, editorial director of BMJ, here, here and here. I have been impressed with how direct these scientists and clinicians have been in expressing their dismay at BMJ’s failure to adhere to its own editorial standards.…

The trickle of letters from top experts to Dr Fiona Godlee about BMJ’s decision to republish Professor Esther Crawley’s Lightning Process study continues. The letters excoriate BMJ’s actions in this matter and urge Dr Godlee to retract the dung-heap otherwise known as “Clinical and cost-effectiveness of the Lightning Process in addition to specialist medical care…