Trial By Error, by David Tuller
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In Guardian Column, Professor Pariante Parrots Standard Biopsychosocial Nonsense
On Tuesday (four days ago), The Guardian published an opinion piece from Professor Carmine Pariante titled “Long Covid is very far from ‘all in the mind’–but psychology can still help us to treat it.” The article is the latest from a member of the biopsychosocial ideological brigades to demonstrate what has long been apparent—those who…
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Professor David’s Third Mis-Citation of Seminal Study of “Medically Unexplained Symptoms”
I have recently blogged about the multiple mis-citations of a seminal study involving so-called “medically unexplained symptoms” (MUS). The 2010 study, Bermingham et al, found that the amount spent by the National Health Service on working-age people who were assessed as “somatising” accounted for around 10% of what was spent on that population. Since the…
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Trial By Errors: Why Have Experts in MUS Spent Ten Years Mis-Citing a Study about Costs to the NHS?
What does it mean that the top investigators in a field of research have collectively and consistently misrepresented a seminal figure in their purported domain of expertise? I’m talking about all those who present themselves as authorities on the topic of so-called “medically unexplained symptoms” (MUS) but have found it difficult to accurately cite a…
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More on the Lightning Process and the Science Media Centre’s Collusion With UK Journalists
My story on the Lightning Process this week, published by Coda Story, was pretty long. Even so, it didn’t cover everything I would have liked to include. Here a bit more about the issue. As we now know, the pediatric Lightning Process study conducted by Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s methodologically and ethically challenged pediatrician,…
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Do the “Vast Majority” of Lightning Process Participants Achieve “Lasting Change”?
Coda Story is an excellent news organization focused on international stories related to the misuse of science and technology, among other topics. Today, it published a piece of mine about the training program called the Lightning Process. Sites devoted to the Lightning Process are full of tales of recovery from prolonged illness. I included one…
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Northwestern Law Professor Steven Lubet Corresponds with McMaster U. About That WSJ Op-Ed
A recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece accused an apparently powerful “queer feminist wellness collective” of causing an international wave of mental illness, which is being expressed as reports of persistent disabling symptoms after an acute bout of COVID-19. The article was written by a psychiatry resident at Canada’s McMaster University in Canada. Given the…
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Letter to Lancet Editor Demanding Independent Investigation of PACE (Reprise from 2018)
In August, 2018, I organized an open letter to Lancet editor Dr Richard Horton demanding an independent investigation of the PACE trial. The letter was signed by more than 100 scientists, clinicians, academics and other experts from Columbia, Harvard, University College London, Queen Mary University of London, Berkeley, Georgetown, etc, etc; ten members of Parliament;…
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My Letter to Professor Anthony David Asks Why MUS Experts Keep Misquoting a Major Study
Earlier this week, I wrote to the journal Psychological Medicine about a significant mistake in a paper on functional neurological disorders. The mistake involved a misquotation of Bermingham et al, a key 2010 analysis of the National Health Service costs associated with care for working-age people found to be “somatising.” One of Psychological Medicine‘s two…
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PACE Team’s Work for Insurance Companies Is “Not Related” to PACE. Really? (Reprise)
When I first investigated the PACE trail in 2015, one of the features most shocking to me was the investigators’ blatant violation of a core human rights document that they had promised in their protocol to adhere to. That violation of the Declaration of Helsinki involved their failure to tell study participants about their close…
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The World According to Sharpe
Poor Professor Michael Sharpe. The distinguished psychiatrist from Oxford University has a dilemma. His science sucks big-time, and he can’t defend it effectively with standard argumentation. He does not seem to grasp why people have called the PACE trial fraudulent, so he lashes out, trying to bully and bluff his way through the mess by…
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Jennie Spotila Tracks Down–and Busts–an Old Tale About “Death Threats” from Patients
In early 2011, the first report of the PACE results in The Lancet drew widespread criticism from patients and advocates. Later that year, stories about unhinged, anti-science patients harassing and threatening leading researchers in the field appeared in high-profile UK outlets like BMJ and The Times. In the UK, this appears to have been orchestrated…
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A Letter to Psychological Medicine about Error in MUS Paper from Sir Simon and Colleagues
I have previously documented that some of the leading experts in “medically unexplained symptoms” (MUS) have regularly misstated a core finding from a seminal study in their field. The study—”The cost of somatisation among the working-age population in England for the year 2008–2009”—was published in 2010 in the journal Mental Health in Family Practice. The…