Trial By Error

Category: Syndicated

  • Some Things I’ve Read Recently…

    With so many people impacted by Long Covid and ME/CFS, it is impossible to keep up with all the non-academic articles, posts, and commentaries out there. The gusher of material is really overwhelming. Given that, sometimes it seems worthwhile to highlight a few things worth reading. (Note: Recommending something as worth reading should not be…

  • Trudie Chalder Is Co-Author on Another Bad Exercise Paper

    It is a truth universally acknowledged (or at least universally acknowledged by smart researchers), that if the list of authors on an article includes Trudie Chalder, King’s College London’s mathematically and factually challenged professor of cognitive behavior therapy, then the article in question should most assuredly be expected to be short on, or utterly devoid of, intelligence and logical reasoning.…

  • A Letter to Cochrane’s Editor-in-Chief

    This morning, I e-mailed the following letter to Dr Karla Soares-Weiser, Cochrane’s editor-in-chief, about the decision to abandon a planned update of a review of exercise therapy for ME/CFS. (I cc’d Toby Lasserson, Cochrane’s deputy editor-in-chief.) That decision was made public in an abrupt announcement dumped on the patient community right before the Christmas holidays.…

  • GET Ideologues Try to Rebut Muscle Abnormality Study–and Fail

    It is a pleasure to read a pointed and effective smack-down of an ill-informed argument, especially when the argument is pushing the graded exercise therapy/cognitive behavior therapy (GET/CBT) paradigm for ME/CFS, Long Covid and related illnesses. That’s how I felt about the excellent rebuttal this week to a letter from some of the usual GET/CBT…

  • Some Things I’ve Read Recently…in STAT, The Sick Times, Van Der Zee’s Blog

    Embedding ME/CFS in NIH’s RECOVER initiative Ian Lipkin is a well-known professor of epidemiology at Columbia University and director of the Center for Solutions for ME/CFS, funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). In a recent opinion piece for STAT, he and ME/CFS patient advocate Elizabeth Ansell, the founder and executive director of…

  • My Article on the Cochrane Mess in The Sick Times

    In November, 2023, journalists Betsy Ladyzhets and Miles Griffis launched The Sick Times, a publication whose tagline is “chronicling the Long Covid crisis.” Since then, the publication has diligently tracked the political and medical developments of this post-pandemic pandemic and has become a go-to source for intelligent reporting on the situation. I have previously posted…

  • Professor Edwards’ Letter to BMJ on the Cochrane Mess

    The Cochrane mess, which I wrote about the other day, is threatening to take on a life of its own. Perhaps Cochrane thinks the fuss over the big Christmas “fuck you” it delivered to members of the ME/CFS community will blow over quickly. That could happen, I suppose, but I suspect this issue will continue…

  • Norwegian Long Covid Rehab Trial Misrepresents Clinically Insignificant Findings As “Effective”

    If the results for a trial’s primary outcome do not meet the threshold for what is considered a “clinically significant” benefit, it goes without saying—or at least it should–that investigators have no legitimate grounds for promoting their intervention as “effective.” This is especially true when the trial in question is unblinded and the measure involved…

  • Cochrane’s Decision on Exercise Review is Hurting Patients, Says Longtime Insider

    I have written frequently about Cochrane, the organization renowned for its systematic reviews of medical interventions, and its deeply flawed review of exercise therapies for ME/CFS–including its decision last month to abandon its commitment to produce a new version. Now Hilda Bastian, an Australia health consumer advocate and longtime Cochrane insider, has posted a blog…

  • Interview with Betsy Ladyzhets and Miles Griffis, Founders/Editors of The Sick Times

    In November, 2023, journalists Betsy Ladyzhets and Miles Griffis launched The Sick Times, a publication devoted to, per its tagline, “chronicling the Long Covid crisis.” Both of them had been covering the pandemic, and Griffis had written of his own Long Covid experience. The Sick Times has gained both readers and funders over the last…

  • BMJ Has Corrected the REGAIN Trial Paper–But Not the Editorial or Systematic Review Touting REGAIN’s Findings

    Last February, The BMJ published a paper called “Clinical effectiveness of an online supervised group physical and mental health rehabilitation programme for adults with post-covid-19 condition (REGAIN study): multicentre randomised controlled trial,” from McGregor et al. The study purported to have proven that this multi-disciplinary intervention was “clinically effective” in reducing symptoms associated with Long…

  • Video of October Talk in Ireland on How “Biopsychosocial” Research on ME, Long Covid, and Related Illnesses Harms Patients

    In October, I spent 10 days traveling around Ireland and giving a talk called “Bad Science, Bad Medicine: How Flawed Biopsychosocial Studies on ME, Long Covid, etc Harm Patients.” (I wrote about the trip here.) I came as a guest of the Irish ME/CFS Association, which had previously arranged similar tours with two physicians who…