Trial By Error

Category: Commentary

  • My Letter to Peer Reviewer of BMJ’s CBT-Music Therapy Paper

    I have recently written a few posts–here, here and here–about a study in BMJ Paediatrics Open that appears to be marred by multiple methodological and ethical problems. This is certainly not a one-time occurrence when it comes to BMJ journals. Last week, I sent a letter to the study’s senior author inviting him to send me his response…

  • My letter to organizer of 4th Columbia Psychosomatics Conference

    Yesterday I sent an email to Dr. Landa who had previously written to David Tuller about the 4th Columbia Psychosomatics Conference (link to David’s post). Like David, I was unhappy about Dr. Landa’s note so I decided to write her and see if she might respond better to a Columbia colleague. Apparently my faith in…

  • More on Graded Exercise from Peter White and The Lancet

    [June 30, 2017: This post has been corrected and revised.] Professor Peter White and colleagues have published yet another study in The Lancet promoting graded exercise as an appropriate intervention for the illness they refer to as “chronic fatigue syndrome” but that is more appropriately called “myalgic encephalomyelitis.” (Two compromise terms, ME/CFS and CFS/ME, satisfy…

  • Is PACE a Case of Research Misconduct?

    [June 25, 2017: The last section of this post, about the PLoS One study, has been revised and corrected.] I have tip-toed around the question of research misconduct since I started my PACE investigation. In my long Virology Blog series in October 2015, I decided to document the trial’s extensive list of flaws—or as many…

  • University of Bristol Responds, Sort Of

    Last week, I e-mailed a letter to Sue Paterson, director of legal services at the University of Bristol, to express my concerns about Professor Esther Crawley’s false claim that I had libeled her in reporting on her research for Virology Blog. On Friday, I received a two-sentence response from Ms. Paterson. She addressed it to…

  • My “Tear It Up” Talk at Invest in ME

    First, since I’m in London at the moment, I need to say that it feels weird and even wrong to be posting about PACE-related issues right after Saturday night’s terrible events. But in our fked-up world, life goes on for everyone else, including ME/CFS patients, and my job is to report this stuff, and so…

  • David Tuller’s Fundraiser

    If you appreciate the articles written here on ME/CFS, please consider supporting him financially at Crowdrise. David is an investigative reporter with a doctorate in public health from the University of California, Berkeley. Since the fall of 2015, David has waged a determined effort to expose the methodological and ethical problems with the PACE trial for ME/CFS.…

  • ME Research UK Drops Out of CMRC

    I have spent two weeks hammering the CFS/ME Research Collaborative about “Renal-gate”—that is, vice-chair Esther Crawley’s recent lecture at a conference of kidney disease experts, in which she falsely accused me of writing “libellous blogs.” The CMRC’s chair, Stephen Holgate, recently assured me that Dr. Crawley had the “full support” of the executive board—a statement…

  • The CMRC Affirms Full Support for Libelous Esther

    For the last couple of weeks, I have been hammering the CFS/ME Research Collaborative to take a position on the actions of its deputy chair, Libelous Esther—better known as Dr. Esther Crawley. As I reported in several previous posts, Dr. Crawley falsely accused me of writing “libelous blogs” and Dr. Racaniello of posting them. To…

  • CMRC to Virology Blog: “F**k Off!”

    Well, not in those words, of course. It was all very polite. But that was the message. Here’s what happened. On Monday, I posted an open letter to the members of the board of the CFS/ME Research Collaborative. The letter involved the false accusation of libel that the CMRC’s deputy chair, Esther Crawley, disseminated against…

  • An Open Letter to the Board of the CFS/ME Research Collaborative

    To Members of the Board of the CMRC: Not long ago, at the annual conference of the British Renal Society, your deputy chair disseminated the false accusation that I had libeled her. As a corollary to that, she also disseminated the false accusation that Dr. Racaniello, the Columbia University microbiologist who hosts Virology Blog, had…

  • My Libelous Blogging on Virology Blog

    During a recent talk at the annual conference of the British Renal Society, pediatrician and staunch PACE proponent Esther Crawley accused me of libeling her. I wasn’t at her presentation, but her slides were captured and tweeted. Dr. Crawley’s lecture recounted her heroic struggle against the dark forces of anti-science—presumably, those pesky ME/CFS advocates who…