Trial By Error

Year: 2022

  • My Most Recent Letter to the HRA Related to Ethical Lapses at the University of Bristol

    In 2019, Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s methodologically and ethically challenged grant magnet, was asked to make corrections to the ethics statements in eleven of her papers after a joint report from the Health Research Authority (HRA) and her own institution found deficiencies in her work. (My first post on this matter was four years…

  • So the Dog Ate Professor Crawley’s Corrections AND Her Correspondence As Well

    I’ve been waiting to hear from the UK’s Health Research Authority about why seven papers from Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s methodologically and ethically challenged grant magnet, have not been corrected–as mandated in a joint 2019 report from the HRA and her own academic institution. As many readers are aware, the joint report provided specific…

  • New Study Promotes “Bespoke” Hospital Rehab Program for Kids with ME/CFS

    The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health recently published a paper called “Key Features of a Multi-Disciplinary Hospital-Based Rehabilitation Program for Children and Adolescents with Moderate to Severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome ME/CFS.” The investigators retrospectively reviewed the records of 27 children and young people (CYP) who were treated in a ward-based rehabilitation…

  • Did the Dog Eat Professor Crawley’s Seven Missing Corrections?

    UPDATE on October 25th: To ensure a more complete record of my correspondence with the HRA, I have added to the end of this post a subsequent letter from the agency indicating that they had received a response from Bristol and were considering what to do, and my letter in response to that news–an exchange…

  • Cindy Bateman and OMF Seek to Boost Medical Education About ME/CFS and Related Illnesses

    Medical education in the US has not generally included accurate information about ME/CFS. If medical students learned anything at all about the illness, it is most likely the view that it should be regarded as psychosomatic and that exercise and psychotherapy should be prescribed. The same is true for residencies and fellowships, and for continuing…

  • Update on Professor Crawley’s Uncorrected Ethics Statements

    In August, I alerted both the University of Bristol and the UK’s Health Research Authority about a problem. In a joint report published in 2019, Bristol and the HRA requested that the university’s methodologically and ethically challenged pediatrician and grant magnet, Professor Esther Crawley, correct 11 papers on ME/CFS. (The studies generally referred to the…

  • Mt Sinai’s David Putrino on Long Covid, Post-Exertional Malaise, and Lazy Doctors–Text Version!

    David Putrino is a neuroscientist and physical therapist at Mt Sinai Hospital in New York. He runs a research lab and rehabilitation center that became a magnet for people grappling with what became known as long Covid–or what the US National Institutes of Health called post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC). A native of Perth, Australia,…

  • Berkeley’s October Crowdfunding Campaign

    As in previous years, October is crowdfunding month at the University of California, Berkeley, and I am once again seeking funds to continue my work on ME, ME/CFS, “medically unexplained symptoms,” and now long Covid. (Link here.) These tax-deductible donations to Berkeley will support my academic position as senior fellow in public health and journalism…

  • What I’ve Read Recently–Yong, Jason, Prior & Lowenstein, & Eliot Smith

    Almost seven years ago—in October, 2015–Virology Blog published my 15,000-word investigation of the arguably fraudulent PACE trial. (Thanks, Professor Racaniello!). At the time, no one but patients and a few clinicians cared about ME/CFS—at that point mostly called chronic fatigue syndrome. Besides continuing to blog about it, I’ve published some other articles here and there:…

  • Research From GET/CBT Ideological Brigades Shows No Improvements in Work Status

    Last year, Mark Vink, a Dutch physician with ME/CFS, and Friso Vink-Niese, an independent researcher, published a review of occupational outcomes among ME/CFS patients after treatment with either graded exercise therapy (GET) and cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). The results were not pretty. When viewed specifically through the perspective of employment status, the treatments bombed. This…

  • Brain Publishes Letter About Flawed Study from NYU on ‘Psychogenic POTS’

    When I have previously written about functional neurological disorder, or FND, I have gotten flack from FND patients. I understand from these exchanges that some have taken what I have written as criticizing patients with these diagnoses or dismissing their suffering. That is certainly not my intention. I know these conditions can be extremely disabling.…

  • Psychological Medicine Rejects Letter About Chalder’s Bogus Review of CBT/GET Studies

    Professor Trudie Chalder recently published a systematic review of CBT and GET studies for “chronic fatigue syndrome” in the journal Psychological Medicine, which seems to publish anything from the CBT/GET ideological brigades, no matter how poorly conducted or reported. Not surprisingly, given its provenance, the review was a piece of crap, as I noted in…