Trial By Error, by David Tuller
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My Letter Responding to Norway Health Leader’s Efforts to Denigrate My “Activist” Work
Updated on March 2, 2022: Yesterday I received a thoughtful note from Professor Miek Jong in response to my recent letter to her (see below) regarding the effort on the part of a leading Norwegian doctor to denigrate my work by describing me as an “activist.” I have sent Professor Jong the following answer: Dear…
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The Lancet Publishes Whine de Coeur from Impassioned GET/CBT Defenders
The Lancet has just published an anguished whine de coeur from supporters of the graded exercise therapy/cognitive behavior therapy/ [GET/CBT] approach to ME/CFS. (Or CFS/ME, as these authors insist on calling the illness in what those familiar with the debate will recognize as a childish fit of pique.) These impassioned members of the GET/CBT ideological…
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My Exchange of Letters on Amygdala Retraining; That Undead Lightning Process Study
Earlier this week, I wrote to Helena Liira of the Helsinki University Central Hospital about a new trial of “amygdala and insula retraining” for so-called “functional disorders”—fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome along with ME/CFS and long Covid. (I critiqued the trial here.) In particular, I wondered how the investigators justified use of the phrase “amygdala…
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More on the Dutch CBT Long Covid Trial; Finnish Study of “Amygdala Retraining” Program
Update: I have sent the following letter to the responsible person listed on the clinical trial registration for the Finnish study of “amygdala and insula retraining”: Dear Dr Lira– I am a public health researcher and journalist with the Center for Global Public Health, part of UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. I frequently comment on research in…
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CBT for CFS Should Target “Problematic Worry,” Says New Study from Professor Chalder
Apparently, after 30+ years of promoting cognitive behavior therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome (so-called), Professor Trudie Chalder has discovered something new: Patients worry a lot! And those with worse symptoms tend to have higher worry levels! She believes CBT for CFS can be tweaked to make a difference. She presents this information in a new…
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Does “Long Covid” Need Rebranding As “Ongoing Covid-19 Recovery”?
Now here’s a paper called “The Effects of Messaging on Expectations and Understanding of Long COVID: An Online Randomised Trial,” from researchers at the UK’s Health Security Agency. Two of the nine authors, including the senior author who conceived the study, are also affiliated with a National Institute for Health Research unit that partners with…
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Q-and-A with Natalie Boulton, Director of “Dialogues for a Neglected Illness”
More than ten years ago, Natalie Boulton and her son, Josh, made a film called “Voices from the Shadows,” about the plight of ME patients. Natalie, from Bristol, England, was intimately familiar with the issue because of the long-time illness of her daughter, Anna. The film, a harrowing depiction of the ravages of ME, helped…
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French Dogs on the Trail; Impact of Long Covid on the US Job Market
Can Dogs Smell Compounds Associated with Host Response in Long Covid? It can be unwise to pay attention to research published on a pre-print server before it has been through a peer-review process. Although passing through peer-review is itself no guarantee of quality, the process represents at least one layer of scrutiny. Nonetheless, some pre-prints…
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Dutch CBT Trial Targets “Dysfunctional Beliefs About Fatigue” in Long Covid Patients
Since the emergence of the phenomenon now called long Covid (or Long COVID, depending on news organization), skeptics have been out in full force. Even as huge numbers of people experience a range of sequelae after a bout of Covid-19, some experts maintain that common non-specific symptoms, like cognitive impairment and relapses of profound exhaustion,…
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Awaiting Response on Chalder Paper; Australian GPs Still Promoting GET and Citing PACE
Last month, the journal Occupational Medicine published an innumerate article from Professor Trudie Chalder and several colleagues at King’s College London, called “Chronic fatigue syndrome and occupational status: a retrospective longitudinal study.” Professor Brian Hughes, a psychologist at National University of Ireland, Galway, and I alerted the journal of some disqualifying issues with the paper,…
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An Exchange of Letters Concerning Professor Chalder’s Latest Disaster of a Paper
Last week, Brian Hughes and I sent a letter to Occupational Medicine, which recently published yet another of Professor Trudie Chalder’s awful papers. Among other problems, Professor Chalder and her four co-authors completely misstated their own findings in the text of the paper. We called for retraction of the paper. In the past, I have…
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Mayo Clinic Treatment Plan Cites “Deconditioning,” “Perfectionism,” and CBT
The renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has a poor record when it comes to ME/CFS. It has a history of pushing the graded exercise therapy (GET) and cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) approach outlined in the now-discredited PACE trial. These interventions were based on the notion that the symptoms were perpetuated from a mish-mosh of…