Trial By Error

Year: 2020

  • Professor Chalder’s PRINCE Has Arrived

    *October is crowdfunding month at Berkeley. I conduct this project as a senior fellow in public health and journalism and the university’s Center for Global Public Health. If you would like to support the project, here’s the place: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/22602 So here’s yet another paper with Professor Trudie Chalder of King’s College London as the senior author.…

  • How Professor Lubet’s Nightmare Began…

    A few years ago, my friend and colleague Steven Lubet, a law professor and scholar at Northwestern University, wrote the following account of the start of his struggle with what was then largely called chronic fatigue syndrome. While his story does not directly relate to current events, Steve’s frustrations in his effort to seek a…

  • NICE Draft Guidance on ME/CFS Coming Next Month

    *October is crowdfunding month at Berkeley. I conduct this project as a senior fellow in public health and journalism and the university’s Center for Global Public Health. If you would like to support the project, here’s the place: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/22602 The pandemic has played havoc with everything, including the timeline of the development process for the new…

  • More on the Royal Society of Medicine Webinar

    *October is crowdfunding month at Berkeley. I conduct this project as a senior fellow in public health and journalism and the university’s Center for Global Public Health. If you would like to support the project, here’s the place: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/22602 On September 24th, the Royal Society of Medicine hosted a webinar called “Long-COVID: Understanding the shadow of…

  • That Royal Society of Medicine Webinar on Long-Covid

    *October is crowdfunding month at Berkeley. I conduct this project as a senior fellow in public health and journalism and the university’s Center for Global Public Health. If you would like to support the project, here’s the place: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/22602 Proponents of cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy as treatments for CFS, ME, or their…

  • The CDC’s Stakeholder Meeting

    The US Centers for Disease Control held one of its occasional briefings for ME/CFS stakeholders last week. I was unfortunately busy during that time, but #MEAction has posted a useful account of what was discussed, which you can read here. The #MEAction account includes short, helpful descriptions of a number of CDC initiatives, including efforts…

  • More CBT Research from Sir Simon and Professor Chalder, Part 2

    And now Professor Sir Simon Wessely has popped up again to present more misinformation in a paper produced along with his longtime King’s College London colleague, Professor Trudie Chalder. I wrote about this paper last month, when it appeared in a pre-print version after having been accepted for publication by the Journal of the Royal…

  • A Short Talk for UK Docs and Researchers

    This morning (Wednesday) I gave an informal online talk about the piece of crap known as the PACE trial to a small group of UK doctors, researchers and others. The group had been pulled together by Paul Garner, a physician and professor of infectious diseases at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Garner has written several…

  • UK Docs Speak Up on Long-Covid; Mayo Shifts Gears (a Little)

    Doctors in UK urge caution on long-Covid exercise advice Despite BMJ’s current dereliction of key editorial oversight responsibilities, it has provided a forum for members of the medical community with Covid-19 and post-Covid symptoms to express their strong views. The reference to current dereliction of key editorial responsibilities involves a case I and others have…

  • Some Stuff about Long-Covid, BMJ and ME

    It is clear that there will be much grappling going forward over the similarities and differences between long-Covid and ME (or CFS, or ME/CFS, or whatever this illness or cluster of illnesses is being called). The two entities overlap in some ways, but no one should conflate them. We are past the pandemic’s half-year mark.…

  • What Is the Dynamic Neural Retraining System?

    The Lightning Process, which I have covered extensively, isn’t the only program out there making big assertions about its impact on how the brain functions. These assertions piggyback on the emerging science of neuroplasticity and related concepts and involve the brain’s capacity to generate new neural pathways when it adapts to changes in stimuli. The…

  • The Lightning Process Strikes Again

    The Lightning Process was founded more than two decades ago by Phil Parker, a British Tarot reader and specialist in auras and spiritual guides. The LP, as it is often called, could be described as “a neuro-physiological training programme based on self-coaching, concepts from Positive Psychology, Osteopathy and Neuro Linguistic Programming,” as Parker and colleagues…