Trial By Error, by David Tuller
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My Latest Letter to Bristol
Last month I wrote to the director of legal services at the University of Bristol seeking information about documents from a study conducted by investigators from the institution. The study, published by BMJ Open in 2011, was called “Unidentified Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) is a major cause of school absence: surveillance outcomes from school-based…
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Crowdfunding, Week 1
As I figured, the crowdfunding slowed down dramatically last week after the initial rush, but in the last few days has experienced a bit of a lift. I’ve now topped $42,300 and have reached 44% of the goal. That’s pretty amazing! Many of the 420 donations are in the $10 to $20 range, but I’ve…
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This Year’s US Clinician Summit
The PACE trial and other unacceptable studies from the CBT/GET ideological brigades have had an enormous impact around the world. Luckily, in the US at least, momentum seems to have finally shifted away from this bogus treatment paradigm. The shift, while welcome and long overdue, does not automatically mean more effective treatments are immediately at…
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My Berkeley Crowdfunding Appeal
And here’s the crowdfunding link without any preamble: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/14941 And here’s what I’ve written in the appeal: So it’s been a year since the last crowdfunding campaign for Trial By Error–my investigative reporting and public health project. While Trial By Error began 3+ years ago as an in-depth look at the PACE trial, it has…
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April is Berkeley Crowdfunding Month!
Today is the official “hard launch” of Berkeley’s month of crowdfunding. The “soft launch” phase began last Wednesday, when the site actually went live. I posted the Trial By Error page that day on Facebook. As of this posting, I’ve already reached 27% of my goal, with almost $26,000 in donations! Things started with a…
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A Bit More on Kaiser Permanente
BerkeleyWellness.com has posted a version of my interview with Dr Steve Olson. He’s the Kaiser Permanente guy who is revamping the health system’s approach to ME/CFS, which is what they are now calling the disease. Dr Olson is planning to attend this week’s research gathering at the National Institutes of Health, so undoubtedly that will…
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The CDC’s Pathetic Response to Reuters
The recent Reuters article about the illness, or cluster of illnesses, variously called CFS, ME, CFS/ME and ME/CFS was problematic for many reasons. One of them was the information included from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In explaining why the CDC dropped its longstanding recommendations for cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise…
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My Letter to Kate Kelland
This morning I sent the following e-mail to Kate Kelland, the Reuters reporter who wrote last week’s story about horrible patients and horrible me, and about how all this horribleness is affecting Professor Michael Sharpe. I cc’d Professor Racaniello and the two Reuters editors listed on the story. ********** Hi, Kate– Congratulations on last week’s…
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My Letter to Professor Hotopf About Bristol’s School Absence Study
Matthew Hotopf is a professor of general medicine psychiatry at King’s College London. He served as a peer-reviewer for a study by Bristol University investigators that was published in BMJ Open in 2011. The study involved whether school absences could be used to identify cases of diagnosed CFS/ME (as the study called the illness). As…
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Cochrane’s Report on Courtney’s Complaint
Update: When I posted earlier today, I also meant to update what was happening with the exercise review. On March 8, Cochrane announced, through a notice appended to the review, that the authors would submit another revision in May. (Cochrane has already rejected a previous revision submitted last fall.) That is also the month when…
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Kaiser Permanente Changes Course
Over the years, I’ve slammed U.S. medical and health care institutions that have championed the GET/CBT treatment paradigm for the illness or cluster of illnesses variously known as ME, CFS, ME/CFS or CFS/ME. I have done this both before and after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed its own recommendations for the…
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Stupid Studies
Boy, it’s hard to keep up with all the stupid studies coming out! But that’s no reason not to take a look at a couple of them. (In both cases, I’m just making a few comments. Much more could be said about each of these studies. You can read more about them on the Science…