Trial By Error

David Tuller
David Tuller
@david@trialbyerror.org

Senior Fellow in Public Health and Journalism, Center for Global Public Health, UC Berkeley. My academic position is largely funded by donations from patients. This account is an automatic WordPress-to-Fediverse feed; replies here will not be seen.

781 posts
86 followers
Blog

trialbyerror.org

Profile

trialbyerror.org

Homepage

trialbyerror.org

  • An Update on the Missing Ethics Corrections in Multiple Esther Crawley Papers

    In 2019, the University of Bristol and the UK’s Health Research Authority issued a report about their joint investigation of 11 papers. The lead investigator of all 11 papers was Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol’s methodologically and ethically challenged pediatrician and grant queen. The report recommended that Professor Crawley correct the ethics statements in all of…

  • What the Hell is Going on with Cochrane’s Long-Delayed Re-Review of “Exercise Therapies”?

    What is going on with Cochrane’s much-delayed re-review of exercise therapy for the illness the organization is these days calling ME/CFS? It is more than three years since Cochrane announced plans to develop this completely new review, but no one outside the organization seems to have much idea of what’s happening with that project. Maybe…

  • GET/CBT Ideologues Revive 1991 Oxford Criteria as Core Definition for Long Covid Research

    The Collaborative on Fatigue Following Infection, or COFFI, was formed in 2015 to promote the theories and treatment approaches embodied in the now-discredited and arguably fraudulent PACE trial and related research. In a nutshell, PACE and related research promoted the notion that the symptoms of patients with the clinical entity or entities variously called chronic…

  • An Interview with Meghan O’Rourke, Author of The Invisible Kingdom (Reprise)

    Last April, I interviewed poet, journalist and editor Meghan O’Rourke about The Invisible Kingdom, her insightful and affecting memoir of living with chronic illness. The book, a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award, has just been issued in paperback.  So I figured I’d re-post the interview. As the book recounts, O’Rourke initially…

  • After Maeve Boothby O’Neill’s Death, More Concerns About Severe ME Patients at NHS Hospitals

    I recently wrote an article for Codastory.com about Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who died from complications of severe ME in October, 2021, after three separate admissions to her local National Health Service hospital in Exeter, England. During her hospital stays, she and her family fought with the hospital over the need for tube-feeding or an alternate…

  • An Upcoming “Biopsychosocial” Long Covid Conference in Finland

    What is it with the health care establishments in northern Europe? Why are they so devoted to non-evidence-based approaches to treating serious medical conditions? Why do they trust arguably fraudulent research, like the PACE trial and Professor Esther Crawley’s pediatric Lightning Process study? Why are the authors of these studies respected and even esteemed among…

  • Correctives from Putrino & Iwasaki (and Others) to the Long-Covid-Is-Psychosomatic Claims

    When the pandemic began, everyone involved in the ME, CFS, and ME/CFS domain assumed that there would be a wave of post-acute, prolonged complications, since every virus seems to leave in its wake a small but still significant number of people who report a range of non-specific symptoms. It was also widely predicted that many…

  • Once More Regarding Inflated FND Rates–and a Reprise of a Letter to a Yale Neurologist

    Last July, I sent a letter to Benjamin Tolchin, a neurologist at Yale, about the statement, in a 2021 paper for which he was the lead author, regarding prevalence rates for functional neurological disorder (FND). Last month, I sent it again. I’ve still had no response. I am reposting it below because related claims about…

  • A Response to Call for “A New Paradigm” for Long Covid in Lancet Respiratory Medicine

    Update, Feb 3rd: After less than 24 hours, our letter was rejected by the journal. Here’s the message I received: Dear Dr Tuller, Thank you for your recent submission to The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. We have now had time to consider your manuscript and unfortunately, on this occasion, we have decided not to publish it because…

  • My Article About the Life–and Preventable Death–of Maeve Boothby O’Neill

    Last week, Codastory.com published an article I wrote about Maeve Boothby O’Neill, a 27-year-old in Exeter, England, who died in October, 2021, from complications of ME. The specific cause appears to have been malnutrition. Despite being alerted to the seriousness of Maeve’s condition, the local hospital resisted appeals to insert a feeding tube during her…

  • Double Talk on Mind-Body “Dualism” in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research?

    Proponents of the psychosomatic approach to ME and long Covid–as well as the broader range of so-called “functional” disorders and/or “medically unexplained symptoms”–routinely declare that those who disagree with them are engaging in what they dismissively refer to as mind-body “dualism.” The mind and body are not separate entities, they note, and drawing sharp distinctions…

  • After Last Year’s Tub Talk, Here’s an Interview–Clothed–for #MEAction’s Podcast

    The last time I was interviewed about my work, I was sitting in a bubble bath with the guy tossing questions at me. That was, of course, my appearance last April on Tub Talks with Damon, a web series in which my friend Damon Jacobs, a gay, sex-positive psychotherapist in New York City, conducts interviews…