Trial By Error

Tag: NIH

  • Calls for Retraction of Absurd “Effort Preference” Claims from NIH Study

    In February, the journal Nature Communications published the US National Institutes of Health’s long-awaited paper, “Deep phenotyping of post-infectious myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.” The study included 17 ME/CFS patients, along with 21 healthy controls. The paper immediately triggered howls of protest for a number of reasons, and in particular for the controversial claim at its…

  • “Effort Preference”? WTF?

    When I was a young gay man in the 1980s (I’m 67), a common term for sexual orientation was “sexual preference.” This phrase always struck me as weird. Preference? The urges I felt were not a “preference.” Preference clearly implies a choice—as in, I prefer to live in the city rather than the countryside. I…

  • An Interview with Neuroscientist Michael VanElzakker about the Just-Published and Long-Awaited NIH Study

    So, okay…The big enchilada from the US National Institutes of Health’s seven-year, $8-million, under-recruited and over-hyped study—”Deep phenotyping of post-infectious myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome”–was published last week in Nature Communications. It would be fair to describe the ensuing public debate over this massive text-and-data dump as spirited. (NIH press release here; articles in The New…

  • #MEAction’s Jaime Seltzer on Recent NIH Gathering

    Last Tuesday and Wednesday (December 12th and 13th), the US National Institutes of Health–and, specifically, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases–held a two-day meeting called “Advancing ME/CFS Research: Identifying Targets for Intervention and Learning from Long COVID.” In 2019, I’d physically attended a similar NIH gathering; this time, I caught many of the…

  • Interview with Journalist Betsy Ladyzhets about NIH’s Flawed $1.2 Billion RECOVER Program for Long Covid

    Betsy Ladyzhets is an independent health, science and data journalist who has been covering the coronavirus pandemic, including long Covid. While serving as a journalism fellow at MuckRock, she co-wrote an investigative report for STAT, a well-known health and medical news site, about the US National Institutes of Health’s problem-plagued $1.2 billion long Covid program,…

  • Why Did the NIH List an Award for Research on Cancer-Related Fatigue in Its List of Spending on ME/CFS?

    *April is crowdfunding month at UC Berkeley. If you like my work, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Berkeley’s School of Public Health to support the Trial By Error project:  https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/37217 Each year, the US National Institutes of Health publishes its “estimates of funding for various research, condition, and disease categories.” These estimates are provided in…

  • Jennie Spotila’s Annual Fact-Check of NIH Spending on ME/CFS Research

    There is a lot going on in the ME and ME/CFS world that I don’t get around to. That’s why I’m always grateful that Jennie Spotila always deconstructs the numbers on the annual spending claims from the National Institutes of Health. Last month, on her blog Occupy M.E., Spotila submitted the NIH’s 2020 numbers to…

  • National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins on Plans for Long COVID Research

    The US government seems to be taking Long COVID seriously. In December, Congress allocated $1.15 billion over four years for research into the issue. This week, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, announced the agency’s plans for that funding. (I’ve posted his announcement in full below.) In a post last month he…