Tag: BMJ
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Letter to BMJ Editor Seeking Correction in New Review of Interventions for Long Covid
The BMJ recently published a review of interventions for Long Covid that–surprise!–recommended CBT and a rehabilitation program as treatments. The review is full of holes. I have focused on one in particular. The review relies for its rehabilitation recommendation on an earlier BMJ study–even though that study has itself already been corrected for having misrepresented…
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Yet Again BMJ Recommends CBT and Exercise for Long Covid
What is going on at The BMJ? In May, the journal corrected an obvious error in a paper about a prominent Long Covid mental and physical rehabilitation trial called REGAIN. The trial was conducted among patients who had been hospitalized for Covid-19, but key sections of the paper generalized the findings to all Long Covid…
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REGAIN Team Responds to Criticism with Unconvincing Defenses of Methodological Missteps
In recent weeks, I have been urging The BMJ to correct a flawed University of Warwick trial of an online mental and physical health rehab program for people with prolonged symptoms at least three months after hospitalization for Covid-19. The primary outcome was health-related quality of life, assessed with a measure called the PROPr score.…
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Another Letter Seeking Correction of Bogus “Clinically Effective” Claims from REGAIN Trial
Last month, I sent a letter to Dr Abbasi, the editor-in-chief of The BMJ, about an egregious and arguably fraudulent claim in the REGAIN trial—an investigation of a Long Covid physical and mental health rehabilitation program. Several other experts co-signed the letter. The journal asked us to send in a rapid response. We declined, on…
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My Letter to Lead REGAIN Trial Investigator Seeking Correction of Bogus Claims of Clinical Effectiveness
Two weeks ago, I sent a letter to The BMJ on behalf of myself and 12 colleagues seeking a correction in a study published last month. The study, 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,” claimed that the intervention under investigation had been…
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We Asked BMJ to Correct a Paper; BMJ Requested a Rapid Response; We Have Declined
Leave a Comment / By David Tuller / 24 March 2024 Two weeks ago, I sent a letter to The BMJ on behalf of myself and 12 colleagues seeking a correction in a study published last month. The study, 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,” claimed…
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Letter to BMJ Seeking Correction in Study of Long Covid Physical-and-Mental Rehabilitation Program
Last month, The BMJ published a study of a rehab intervention for Long Covid in which the authors made claims that were not borne out by the data. The study was 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…
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If Professor Crawley’s ACT Study Was Peer Reviewed, Where Are the Peer Reviews?
Yesterday, I wrote a blog about a just-published but already out-dated conference abstract from a team led by Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s methodologically and ethically challenged pediatrician and grant magnet. After I tweeted about it, I heard from Naomi Harvey, a zoologist, who said she’d written to BJPsychOpen about the abstract’s flaws. Hopefully, she—and…
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The Times Fact-Checks BMJ on NICE Committee; My Letter to BMJ’s Fiona Godlee
It is not often that a major news organization fact-checks BMJ, a leading medical publisher, in real time. But that’s what happened last week when The Times pushed back against biased BMJ reporting about the committee charged by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) with developing a new clinical guidance for…
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Three CBT/GET Proponents Quit NICE ME/CFS Guidance Panel as Publication Date Nears
The new ME/CFS clinical guidance from the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is finished—and is to be publicly released on August 18th. In the meantime, this final version has been sent to registered stakeholders—even as three of the 21 members of the committee responsible for the guidance have stepped down without…
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BMJ Pushes Back Against New NICE Draft
The BMJ has published an online “editorial” slamming the new draft of clinical guidelines for ME/CFS from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. The position expressed is an interesting one: Non-pharmacological treatments for “complex conditions” cannot be adequately measured by randomized trials, according to the two authors. It is, of course, noteworthy that…
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My Letter to BMJ Paediatrics Open about the CBT-Music Therapy Study
On November 12, I received my latest letter from BMJ’s so-called research integrity office about the pile of potential research misconduct otherwise known as the pediatric study of cognitive behavior therapy and music therapy as a treatment for chronic fatigue after acute EBV. This study was published in April by BMJ Paediatrics Open and immediately…