Trial By Error

Tag: norway

  • Norwegian Lightning Process Trial Ejects Questioning Participant

    The administrators of a controversial study of the Lightning Process currently being conducted in Norway have ejected a participant who expressed critical views about the biopsychosocial approach to ME, according to MELivet [MELife], Nina Steinkopf’s invaluable blog. This decision appears to be an acknowledgement that the intervention only works if you believe it will work.…

  • Further Thoughts on that JAMA Network Open Article and Estimates of Long Covid Prevalence

    *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 Last week, I wrote two posts–here and here–about a new Norwegian study in JAMA Network Open that was essentially designed not to find differences in…

  • Top Lightning Process Proponent Privately Lobbied for Approval of Norway’s LP Study

    *Two corrections had been made in the text below. The NEM committee has 12 members, not nine, as I originally wrote. And when Dr Flottorp wrote her letter, it was not while the NEM committee was considering the proposed Lightning Process trial, as I originally wrote, but before it had progressed that far. The letter…

  • Norwegian CBT/GET Ideologues Take Aim at Critics Who Reject Their Views

    [*See correction in third paragraph] Three Norwegian researchers recently published an attack on critics of cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy as treatments for ME. The article, called “Facts and Myths about ME,” was published by the news organization Aftenposten. The authors, from the Scandinavian arm of the CBT/GET ideological brigades, asserted that “the…

  • Deja Vu All Over Again with Proposed Lightning Process Study in Norway

    It’s déjà vu all over again in Norway with the Lightning Process (LP). Earlier this month, a national research ethics authority, NEM, postponed a decision on a proposed LP trial until at least June. The trial has already been approved by a regional committee. The NEM had been expected to decide at its May meeting…

  • My Letter Responding to Norway Health Leader’s Efforts to Denigrate My “Activist” Work

    Updated on March 2, 2022: Yesterday I received a thoughtful note from Professor Miek Jong in response to my recent letter to her (see below) regarding the effort on the part of a leading Norwegian doctor to denigrate my work by describing me as an “activist.” I have sent Professor Jong the following answer: Dear…

  • Some Lightning Process Updates

    A Final Round in Norway Lightning Process supporters got some bad news recently when a Norwegian national research ethics panel rejected a proposed study because it was poorly designed and fraught with conflicts of interest, as I wrote about here. But that wasn’t the end of the drama. Although the ethics panel’s decision was meant…

  • 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…

  • Update on BMJ’s CBT-Music Therapy Study (h/t Steinkopf and Tack)

    I have written multiple posts this year about a Norwegian study of cognitive behavior therapy plus music therapy as a treatment for chronic fatigue after acute EBV infection (aka mononucleosis and glandular fever). The study, published in April by BMJ Paediatrics Open, was rife with methodological and ethical flaws. It should not have been accepted in the…

  • BMJ Retracts Music Therapy-CBT Study, But…

    *October is crowdfunding month at Berkeley. I conduct this project as a senior fellow in public health and journalism and the university’s Center for Global Public Health. If you would like to support the project, here’s the place: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/22602 I have written many posts this year about a Norwegian study of cognitive behavior therapy plus music…

  • The Lightning Process Strikes Again

    The Lightning Process was founded more than two decades ago by Phil Parker, a British Tarot reader and specialist in auras and spiritual guides. The LP, as it is often called, could be described as “a neuro-physiological training programme based on self-coaching, concepts from Positive Psychology, Osteopathy and Neuro Linguistic Programming,” as Parker and colleagues…

  • Columbia Experts Urge BMJ to Retract Problem-Plagued Study

    On Thursday, Professors Vincent Racaniello and Mady Hornig, both from Columbia University, wrote to BMJ’s research integrity coordinator. I have been corresponding with BMJ, and specifically the research integrity coordinator, about the Norwegian study of cognitive behavior therapy combined with music therapy as a treatment for chronic fatigue in adolescents after acute EBV infection (known…