Year: 2019

Let me say this directly: It is way past time for Archives of Disease in Childhood to consign the pediatric Lightning Process study to the trash bin. As I have pointed out repeatedly, the Bristol University investigators recruited more than half their participants before trial registration, swapped outcome measures based on the early results, and…

On Friday, I sent the following request to the University of Bristol. I cc-d Sue Paterson, the director of legal services. I received an automatic reply alerting me that Bristol was behind in responding to FOI requests, meaning that a response is unlikely within the mandated period of twenty working days. One point of this…

On May 15th, I sent a letter to Dr Fiona Godlee, BMJ’s editorial director, alerting her that a new review in Current Opinion in Pediatrics had highlighted the Lightning Process as an “effective” treatment, based on a flawed study in one of her journals–Archives of Disease in Childhood. The subject line: “a plea about addressing…

This week I’ve been taking some days for family stuff. But I have a minor victory to report. After a series of e-mails with the British Journal of General Practice about a false statement concerning the cost of “medically unexplained symptoms” to the UK National Health Service, the editor has agreed to make a correction.…

Update: May 23, 2019 I received a response today from Dr Terry Segal, the senior author of the review in Current Opinion in Pediatrics that claimed the Lightning Process had been shown to be “effective.” Dr Segal was not responding to the e-mail I sent her directly last week but to one I sent yesterday…

BMJ seems to be in a state of paralysis over what to do about the Lightning Process study. The fact that this study was cited positively last month in a major review of pediatric CFS/ME (as the review called the illness) raises the stakes all around. The other day I sent the following letter to…

Two weeks ago, I exchanged e-mails with Professor Roger Jones, editor of the British Journal of General Practice. I asked him to correct a false statement in an editorial about the cost of so-called medically unexplained symptoms to the National Health Service. In response, he invited me to send in “one or two short sentences”…

On Wednesday, I sent the following to Dr Fiona Godlee, editorial director of BMJ. The topic, once again, was the ethically and methodologically challenged Lightning Process study, which was published two years ago in Archives of Disease in Childhood, a BMJ journal. My letter was prompted by the recent appearance of a review paper that…

This wrap-up is almost two weeks late, but things keep cropping up! It goes without saying that I am extremely gratified by the support for my April crowdfunding on Berkeley’s in-house platform. The university received 1025 donations totally $103,283 for “Trial By Error.” Of those donations, the most–384–came from the UK. That was more than…

Last month, I sent Sue Paterson, Bristol University’s director of legal services, a couple of e-mails seeking answers to several questions. Those e-mails can be read here and here. I cc-d a few other people. On Friday, May 10, I received a response. This morning, I wrote back. I cc-d those I had previously cc-d,…

Update: Not long after I posted this, I sent the following short follow-up note to Dr Jones and the others I’d cc-d: Dear Dr Jones– In re-reading my response to you, I noticed that I made an error in the third paragraph when I referred to the “Improving Access for Psychological Therapies” program. The proper…

Reuters reporter Kate Kelland informed me in January that my habit of routinely sending open letters to researchers and journals to expose what I consider to be bogus studies was “harassment,” according to those who perceive themselves as my victims. Whatever. I disagree that writing lots of letters about violations of core methodological and ethical…