Trial By Error, by David Tuller
-
A Recap of the School Absence Study
Last week I broke the news that Bristol University is conducting an independent investigation of a number of studies that were exempted from ethical review on the grounds that they qualified as “service evaluation.” Because the issues involved are confusing and complex, I thought it would be helpful to repost here part of my initial…
-
A Bit More About Bristol’s Investigation
Yesterday I reported that Bristol University, at the request of the UK Health Research Authority, is investigating a number of studies conducted by Professor Esther Crawley. The results of this investigation are expected in two months or so. Today I can disclose that the scrutiny involves papers linked to a specific research ethics committee (REC)…
-
The Reporter’s Questions for Professor Racaniello
The reporter writing the story I posted about earlier also contacted Professor Racaniello. Here are the questions asked, and his answers: Could you please say why David Tuller publishes his blog posts on your site, instead of publishing it on a blog/website of his own? A number of years ago a retrovirus was suspected to…
-
Some Thoughts About an Upcoming Article
*I have corrected the paragraph involving tweets to Sir Simon Wessely. See note at end of post. A major news organization is preparing to publish what seems to be a piece about me and my work. The piece also seems to be focusing on the narrative that dangerous and irrational patients are running rampant and…
-
Bristol Investigating Crawley Papers
In the last year, I have raised multiple concerns about studies from the University of Bristol with the UK Health Research Authority, among others. The HRA is the National Health Service arm that oversees approvals for research in England; the agency’s role is to ensure that research receives a favorable opinion from an ethics committee…
-
My Letter to Professor Chew-Graham About METRIC
Earlier this evening, I sent the following e-mail to Carolyn Crew-Graham, a professor of general practice research at Keele University. Professor Chew-Graham is the lead author of METRIC, the atrocious online training course hailed last week by Steve Brine MP as addressing “misconceptions” about the illness variously called ME, CFS, CFS/ME and ME/CFS. Professor Chew-Graham…
-
Steve Brine’s Troubling Claim in Parliamentary Debate on ME
Update on January 29: I love how patients keep me on my toes. A savvy reader pointed out to me today that even members of the GET/CBT ideological brigades have dropped the notion that attributing symptoms to a physical cause itself leads to a poor prognosis. That was the prevailing outlook some years ago, but…
-
Action For ME’s Employment Advice
Action For ME is the largest charity for this disease in the UK. It is also the charity responsible for enabling the PACE trial through its unfortunate decision to work with the investigators to develop “adaptive pacing therapy.” This was a terrible idea from the start, for multiple reasons. First, the PACE investigators had already…
-
S4ME Summary for Week of January 14th
As I mentioned in my six-month review, I always feel that there are lots of issues I don’t get to. To broaden the blog’s range a bit and, hopefully, increase its usefulness to readers, I figured it was a good idea to post the weekly round-up of news posted on the invaluable Science For ME…
-
My Six-Month Review
So it’s time again to review my work and figure out what I’ve been doing. My crowdfunding from last April has been covering my half-time position at Berkeley since July 1, so December 31 marks the end of the first six months. The Berkeley fiscal year ends June 30th, so I will need to decide…
-
Carol Monaghan Scores Another Parliamentary Debate
Carol Monaghan, a member of Parliament from the Glasgow area, has done it again. This week she is spearheading a three-hour debate in the House of Commons about the awful situation confronting ME patients in the UK. (The organizers of this debate are using ME, not CFS or ME/CFS or CFS/ME. As readers know, the…
-
More Thoughts on the Interferon Study
I was surprised recently when the UK press made a big splash about what was, in the end, a modest study from a team led by Carmine Pariante, a professor of psychiatry at Kings College London. I was less surprised when I realized that the Science Media Centre was involved in disseminating the news. The…