Trial By Error

Author: David Tuller

  • My Visits with Alem Matthees, 2025

    In 2018, I spent six weeks in Australia, visiting multiple cities on a kind of “chronic fatigue” tour around the country. (In Australia, doctors and patients more often than not referred to the cluster of overlapping illnesses now generally being called ME/CFS as simply “chronic fatigue.”) Near the end, I spent five days in Perth.…

  • A 2015 Letter from the Countess of Mar to Suzanne O’Sullivan

    Before she retired from the House of Lords a few years ago, the Countess of Mar was a steadfast supporter of people with ME/CFS. When neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan, a champion of psychosomatic explanations for unexplained symptoms, published her first book in 2015—“It’s All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness”–the Countess sent her a…

  • Suzanne O’Sullivan’s “Psychosomatic” Mis-Diagnoses

    Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan has been conducting a media blitz for her new book, “The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker.” The Guardian ran a lengthy excerpt in early March. O’Sullivan appeared on the popular podcast Freakonomics. Multiple publications have published profiles of her, with credulous assessments of her…

  • Some Things I’ve Read Recently…

    Lisa McCorkell leaves Patient-Led Research Collaborative after five years… Way back in 2020, when it became clear that some people were experiencing prolonged symptoms after an acute bout of COVID-19, Lisa McCorkell helped found the Patient-Led Research Collaborative (PLRC). The organization grew out of an online health-related support group, which published the first survey on…

  • Lancet Letter Exchange on Claimed Success of “Persistent Physical Symptoms” Trial Despite Clinically Insignificant Findings

    Last year, The Lancet published a paper from Christopher Burton and colleagues called “Effectiveness of a symptom-clinic intervention delivered by general practitioners with an extended role for people with multiple and persistent physical symptoms in England: the Multiple Symptoms Study 3 pragmatic, multicentre, parallel-group, individually randomised controlled trial.” Per the norm for research on psycho-behavioral…

  • New Study Documents Iatrogenic Harm from Perceived Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Misdiagnoses of Rheumatic Diseases

    In 2020, I wrote a post about a paper, published by the journal Rheumatology Advances in Practice, called “Medically explained symptoms: A mixed methods study of diagnostic, symptom and support experiences of patients with lupus and related systemic autoimmune diseases.” The corresponding author was Melanie Sloan, a researcher in the Department of Public Health and…

  • BMJ’s Strange Response to Our Letter of Concern Regarding “Living Systematic Review” of Long Covid Interventions

    In December, I sent a letter, co-signed by 18 colleagues, to The BMJ‘s editor in chief, Dr Kamran Abbasi. The letter requested a correction to a problematic study called “Interventions for the management of long covid (post-covid condition): living systematic review.” According to this review, there is “moderate certainty evidence” that a physical and mental…

  • A Reprise of a 2018 Post on My Visits with Alem Matthees

    In 2018, I spent six weeks in Australia, visiting multiple cities on a kind of ME/CFS tour around the country. Near the end, I spent five days in Perth. The local patient and advocacy organization arranged for me to give a talk, do some lobbying with local government, and so on. But my main motivation…

  • Our Presentation at the University of New South Wales

    On Tuesday, I gave a presentation at the Kirby Institute, a renowned research center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, along with my friend and colleague Dr David Joffe, a respiratory medicine specialist. David spoke about the pathophysiology of Long Covid as well as the enormous economic burden of the disease. I spoke about…

  • My 2018 Post on Andrew Lloyd’s Memory Lapses, Revisited

    Yesterday, in Sydney, I gave a presentation at the Kirby Institute, a renowned research center at the University of New South Wales, along with my friend and colleague Dr David Joffe, a respiratory medicine specialist. David spoke about the pathophysiology of Long Covid as well as the enormous economic burden of the disease. I spoke…

  • A Bogus Request for Corrections to Recent Post on a Long Covid Exercse Study

    Zachary Grin is a physical therapist in New York City who specializes in functional neurological disorder. Over the years, we had what I considered a good-natured, generally respectful exchange of views. As a gay man, I felt empathy for him—he posted about having difficulties with his parents after he came out. But I blocked him…

  • Australian Survey Seeks Input for New ME/CFS Guidelines

    Australia’s National Medical Health and Research Council (NMHRC) recently released what it calls a “scoping survey” as a first step in developing new clinical practice guidelines for ME/CFS. The survey was posted online on February 21st; the deadline for responding is April 27th. The plan calls for the new guidelines to be published in three…