Category: ME/CFS
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What I’ve Read Recently–Yong, Jason, Prior & Lowenstein, & Eliot Smith
*October is crowdfunding month at UC Berkeley. If you like my work, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Berkeley’s School of Public Health to support the Trial By Error: project: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/33528 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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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Journalist Ryan Prior Discusses His Upcoming Book on Long Covid, The Long Haul
CNN journalist Ryan Prior is the author of an upcoming book on long Covid called The Long Haul: Solving the Puzzle of the Pandemic’s Long Haulers and How They Are Changing Healthcare Forever. Ryan, who is 32, has struggled with ME/CFS for half of his life—he first got sick in October, 2006, just before his…
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My Exchange of Letters With Bristol About Professor Crawley’s Uncorrected Ethics Statements
I recently reported that seven papers from Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s methodologically and ethically challenged pediatrician and grant magnet, do not appear to have been corrected, as requested almost three years ago by a report of an investigation into her work. The investigation was commissioned by Bristol along with the UK’s Health Research Authority,…
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My Letter to Psych Medicine About Professor Chalder’s Flawed Systematic Review
Earlier this week, I wrote about the bogus systematic review of treatment trials for “chronic fatigue syndrome” published this month by Professor Trudie Chalder in Psychological Medicine. In many respects, as I noted, this journal functions a an in-house marketing or public relations organ for members of the CBT/GET ideological brigades, of which Professor Chalder…
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Another CBT/GET Marketing Document Masquerading as Research from Professor Chalder
It’s another month, and here’s another worthless paper from Trudie Chalder, King’s College London’s factually and statistically challenged professor of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). In her desperate effort to prove that the treatment paradigm for ME/CFS combining CBT and graded exercise therapy (GET) is evidence-based, she has now published a paper called “A systematic review…
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A Few Things of Interest I Read This Week
Miriam Tucker on Long Covid in WebMd The always reliable Miriam Tucker, who has frequently covered ME/CFS for Medscape and other publications, has just written a piece for WebMD called “Long COVID Mimics Other Post-Viral Conditions.” The article covers some of the similarities in symptoms between long Covid and ME/CFS and highlights advocacy efforts to…
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Ryan Prior on Biden’s Plans; Physician with Long Covid; Writers Discuss ME’s Impact
I’ve sometimes highlighted interesting or enlightening articles, blog posts, and podcasts I’ve read or heard/watched. I’m trying to make sure to keep up with that effort. That’s not always easy, given the volume of material now being produced about ME/CFS, long Covid, so-called “medically unexplained symptoms,” and related issues. But here are a few more.…