Trial By Error

Year: 2020

  • A Response from Dagbladet

    The Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet, taking a page from prestigious UK news organizations, has recently published a series of articles portraying ME patients as anti-scientific and belligerent. As I noted in a letter to Dagbladet two weeks ago, the journalist also misrepresented my academic and professional credentials. Since I didn’t hear back, I recently posted both…

  • A Couple of Blog Posts Worth Reading

    I’ve been writing about so-called “medically unexplained symptoms,” or MUS, for the last couple of years. Much of that has come in the form of critiques of specific studies making excessive claims about the healing powers of cognitive behavior therapy. Recently, a blogger named Goodelf has posted a couple of revealing posts about the overall…

  • Letter to BMJ Paediatrics Open About that CBT-Music Therapy Study

    UPDATE: I sent the following correction to Dr Choonara shortly after sending the letter of concern. Dear Dr Choonara: I wanted to make a slight correction in point #3 below. The first sentence should have read: “Why was the outcome of recovery not mentioned in the trial registration and statistical analysis plan yet still highlighted…

  • Two Letters to Dagbladet About Its ME Coverage

    In recent weeks, the Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet has published a series of articles about ME, which it also calls CFS/ME. These articles have promoted the use of the Lightning Process as an intervention, criticized patients and the Norwegian ME Association for expressing opinions about the Lightning Process and cognitive behavior therapy, and engaged in multiple…

  • Tack’s Take on BMJ’s CBT-Music Therapy “Feasibility Study”

    I have always made it clear that I pay attention when smart patients assess bad research. That’s how I stumbled into this whole mess in the first place–by reading what patients were writing about the PACE trial. (In that case, I at first dismissed the concerns when I read about how participants could get worse…

  • My Letter to Peer Reviewer of BMJ’s CBT-Music Therapy Paper

    I have recently written a few posts–here, here and here–about a study in BMJ Paediatrics Open that appears to be marred by multiple methodological and ethical problems. This is certainly not a one-time occurrence when it comes to BMJ journals. Last week, I sent a letter to the study’s senior author inviting him to send me his response…

  • My Letter to Senior Author of Norway’s CBT-Music Therapy Study

    In the past week, I have written three posts about a Norwegian study of cognitive behavior therapy plus music therapy for adolescents with chronic fatigue after acute Epstein-Barr virus infection–an illness known as mononucleosis in the US and glandular fever in the UK. The corresponding author of the study is Vegard Bruun Wyller, a professor…

  • Norway’s Double Whammy of Fuzzy Science

    Norway’s got a double whammy going on. First there’s the group of investigators that seems to have had trouble determining whether their newly published research on CBT and music therapy was an actual randomized trial or merely a feasibility study. (More on that below.) Then we have Dagbladet, a widely read tabloid, promoting a new…

  • More Strangeness with that Norwegian CBT/Music Therapy Study

    In a well-designed clinical trial, the protocol, the registration and the statistical analysis plan should complement and not contradict each other. Investigators spend huge amounts of time developing clinical trial protocols. These are road-maps to the project, complete with (hopefully) well thought-out and clearly defined primary and secondary outcomes. These documents have to pass muster with…

  • More on that Norwegian CBT/Music Therapy Study

    UPDATE, MAY 16: As I mentioned, the trial registration did not cite “recovery” as an outcome. However, the various study documents include a number of different statements about the status of physical activity, fatigue, and recovery as endpoints. Of four relevant documents besides the trial registration, one included the definition of recovery used in reporting…

  • Today is May 12th and Everyone’s Missing

    Today, May 12th, is International Awareness Day for Chronic Immunological and Neurological Diseases (CIND)—often shortened to International ME (or ME/CFS) and Fibromyalgia Awareness Day. Besides ME, other diseases included in the CIND group, per the May 12th International Awareness Day site, are chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War Syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity. The date was…

  • Valerie Eliot Smith on COVID-19, ME and Legal Repercussions

    I met Valerie Eliot Smith a year or so before I published my 15,000-word investigation of the PACE trial. As an experienced lawyer familiar with how libel and related torts are handled in the UK, she provided invaluable advice on legal issues. (She and her husband also suggested the name “Trial By Error,” for which…