Trial By Error

Year: 2020

  • Merck Manual Still Disseminates GET/CBT Advice

    The graded exercise therapy/cognitive behavior therapy treatment paradigm for chronic fatigue syndrome—also imposed on those diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, CFS/ME, ME/CFS, and other variants–is like the undead. This concept keeps reemerging from the fetid intellectual swamplands that spawned it, no matter how many times it is revealed as nonsense. Although the US Centers for Disease…

  • My Letter to IBS Study’s Corresponding Author

    I am slowly getting back to my efforts to highlight Mahana Therapeutics’ continuing misrepresentation of its new web-based cognitive behavior therapy program for irritable bowel syndrome. In January, the start-up company that it had licensed the program from King’s College London, based on a high-profile study published last year in Gut, a BMJ journal. The…

  • Norway’s Proposed Lightning Process Trial

    Last year, Archives of Disease in Childhood slapped a 3000-word correction on a University of Bristol study of the Lightning Process. The lead investigator was Bristol’s ethically and methodologically challenged pediatrician, Professor Esther Crawley, who failed to disclose to the journal that the study had violated core scientific principles. As I have previously stated, the…

  • Oxford Health’s Response to My Freedom of Information Request

    A few weeks ago, the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust posted a pamphlet about coronavirus and fatigue that could have been written by the GET/CBT ideological brigades in the 1990s. It was attributed to–or blamed on?–a mysterious entity called the “psychosocial response group.” No information about these psychosocialists was available on the trust’s website, as…

  • A Letter to Mahana’s NHS-Linked Business Adviser

    One of Mahana Therapeutics’ business advisers is Dr Harpreet Sood, identified as the National Health Service’s associate chief clinical information officer. (Actually, Mahana seems to have it wrong; it looks like Dr Sood is still be at the NHS but moved on a while ago to another position. I guess accuracy isn’t Mahana’s strong suit.…

  • Another Nudge to Mahana’s Gasteroenterology Advisers

    Back in February, I wrote to some science advisers to Mahana Therapeutics to alert them to the company’s unjustified claims about the impact of its web-based program on the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Two of them–Dr Peter Lu and Dr Carlo di Lorenzo–are gastroenterology specialists at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, a renowned…

  • More on the Mahana Mess…

    If you appreciate this piece and/or my work in general, here’s a link to my current UC Berkeley crowdfunding effort: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/20159 Today I sent a third letter to Dr Mel Heyman, a prominent gastroenterologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr Heyman is one of Mahana Therapeutics’ science advisers. I’ve been trying to understand why…

  • My Follow-Up Freedom-of-Information Request to Oxford Health

    Given that Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust has removed the coronavirus-and-fatigue pamphlet containing the antidiluvian medical advice, I have sent a freedom-of-information request to follow up on one I sent the other day. Dear FOI office: I am a public health researcher and journalist at the University of California, Berkeley. I recently filed a freedom of information…

  • Oxford Health Blinks, Removes Pamphlet on Post-COVID Illness

    In this traumatic time, small victories should be savored. Last week, I noticed a tweet from patient and advocate Tom Kindlon about a pamphlet from the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, the entity that oversees NHS services in the Oxford region. Other patients and advocates also flagged it on social media and sent it to…

  • My FOI Letter about Oxford’s Post-COVID-19 Fatigue Pamphlet

    If you appreciate this piece and/or my work in general, here’s a link to my current UC Berkeley crowdfunding effort: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/20159 As I reported yesterday (oops!–it was Thursday, not yesterday–this is a correction made a few minutes after posting!), the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, which oversees NHS services in the area, recently published a pamphlet…

  • A Follow-Up to the Follow-Up Letter to Mahana

    On the Mahana Therapeutics website, Robert Paull, the CEO and co-founder, explains in a statement that his personal interest in developing treatments for GI problems arose out of the longtime suffering of a family member. His account is heartfelt and compelling. Unfortunately, Mr Paull and his company have placed their bets on the wrong horse.…

  • Oxford-NHS Recommends GET/CBT for Post-COVID “CFS” Patients

    If you appreciate this piece and/or my work in general, here’s a link to my current UC Berkeley crowdfunding effort: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/20159 Since the coronavirus epidemic hit, people with ME have been concerned about the possibility of a secondary wave of post-COVID-19 cases of prolonged disease–especially given emerging evidence of neurological complications of the illness. Key investigators…