Trial By Error

Year: 2025

  • BMJ’s “Commissioned” Propaganda Piece Hijacked Death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill; Boothby O’Neill’s Mum Responds

    Under the editorial leadership of Kamran Abbasi, The BMJ and other journals in BMJ Group have become, at times, mouthpieces for members of the biopsychosocial ideological brigades. That hasn’t been surprising, given his actions during his previous tenure as editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Under his stewardship, the journal published…

  • After ME-Related Suicide, Second Coroner in England Issues “Report to Prevent Future Deaths”

    A coroner in west England has called out the shortage of services for those with severe ME after conducting an inquest into the case of a woman with the illness who committed suicide last summer. The coroner for the Avon area, Debbie Rookes, prepared what is called a Regulation 28 Report to Prevent Future Deaths…

  • Oxford Scholars Blame Biomedical Research Hegemony for Fibromyalgia “Chronicity Rhetoric”

    Social Science & Medicine (SSM) is a prominent interdisciplinary journal that publishes social science research related to health. A recently published SSM paper is called “Chronicity rhetoric in health and welfare systems inhibits patient recovery: a qualitative, ethnographic study of fibromyalgia care.” Part of a larger, multi-partner, Oxford-based project called Patient-centred Care for Fibromyalgia: New…

  • Study Finds Signs of “Functional Limb Weakness” in Patients Not Reporting Actual Limb Weakness

    A recently published study about functional neurological disorder (FND) has reported some perplexing data. Of almost 300 patients diagnosed with Long Covid, 100 were identified as demonstrating one or more “positive signs” for “functional limb weakness,” a form of FND. Yet only 14 of those 100 patients reported experiencing limb weakness in the first place;…

  • Interview with Dutch Journalist Sander Zurhake

    Sander Zurhake is an investigative reporter for Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS), a major Dutch broadcasting organization. On May 30th, NOS released television, radio and online reports about the potential harms of psycho-behavioral treatments for children with ME/CFS. In particular, the stories focused on the kind of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT, although rendered CGT in Dutch)…

  • Updated Medical Textbook Still Promotes Biopsychosocial Ideology

    For decades, Kumar & Clark’s Clinical Medicine has been a standard textbook for medical education around the world. Last month, Elsevier pubished the 11th edition. The miniscule section on what it calls “chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalopathy” is pathetic. This section is in a chapter called “General Hospital Psychiatry,” promotes “psychological symptoms” as a core component…

  • Dutch Journalist Faces Off Against CBT/GET Ideologues

    It began on May 30th with television, radio and online reports from Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS), a major Dutch broadcasting organization. The package of stories focused on the potential harms of psycho-behavioral treatments for children with ME/CFS. In particular, it focused on the kind of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT, although rendered CGT in Dutch) offered…

  • An Interview with Sjoerd Beentjes, Lead Author of Big Data Study on “Blood-Based Biomarkers” for ME/CFS

    Last week, the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine published a paper called “Replicated blood-based biomarkers for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis not explicable by inactivity,” from a team at the University of Edinburgh. (I wrote about it here.) According to a press release from the university, “The largest ever biological study of ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) has identified consistent blood…

  • Edinburgh Study Links ME/CFS to “Blood-Based Biomarkers”

    Last fall, a team from the University of Edinburgh released a pre-print called “Replicated blood-based biomarkers for myalgic encephalomyelitis not explicable by inactivity.” At the time, I posted an interview with the lead investigator, Chris Ponting, a professor of genetics at the university. The peer-reviewed version of the study has just been published by the…

  • Dr Rob Wüst on ME/CFS, Long Covid and Deconditioning

    . DrPH Proponents of psycho-behavioral interventions for ME/CFS and, more recently, Long Covid, have argued–unconvincingly and with a shortage of actual evidence–that the disabling symptoms can be attributed to the effects of deconditioning. Earlier today, I spoke with Dr Rob Wüst, an expert in muscle physiology and metabolism at Vrije [Free] University Amsterdam. Last year,…

  • Canadian GET/CBT Campaigners Publish Propaganda Cosplaying as Research on Twitter Trends

    McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, seems to be Canada’s Ground Zero for psychosomatic theorizing. In March, 2021, a psychiatrist-in-training, Jeremy Devine, published an opinion in The Wall Street Journal titled “The Dubious Origins of Long Covid.” (I wrote about it here.) Devine cited the PACE trial favorably, as if its findings were meaningful. The animating…

  • More on the BMJ Opinion Piece from the Psychobabblers

    When it comes to ME and ME/CFS, The BMJ—formerly called The British Medical Journal but now, like the food franchise once known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, officially reduced to a mere acronym—is a long-time champion of the “biopsychosocial” ideological brigades. (I use the “scare quotes” because the term is a misnomer, given that these experts…