Trial By Error

Tag: PACE

  • Some Thoughts on Ten Years of Trial By Error

    Ten years ago this month, I launched Trial By Error with a 15,000-word investigation of the misbegotten and fraudulent PACE trial, which purported to prove that graded exercise therapy (GET) and cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) could cure what they then called chronic fatigue syndrome. And what an amazing ride it’s been for me—difficult and challenging…

  • A (Satirical) Field Guide to Conducting Biopsychosocial Research in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME)

    A reader from Belgium sent me the following (satirical) paper she’d written for the “Journal of Entrenched Paradigms.” I found it entertaining, well-written, and on-target, and figured others would as well. It offers a sharp assessment of some of the favorite methodological strategies of members of the CBT/GET ideological brigades. I am posting it here…

  • BMJ Publishes New Propaganda Piece on Severe ME/CFS

    Last week, The BMJ published a commissioned propaganda piece—er, “opinion”—written by confirmed members of the cognitive behavior therapy/graded exercise therapy/Lightning Process ideological brigades. The title: “Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care.” It repeats all the usual blah blah, along with the unwarranted assertions and evidence-free arguments about patients’ “beliefs” as a…

  • My Visits with Alem Matthees, 2025

    In 2018, I spent six weeks in Australia, visiting multiple cities on a kind of “chronic fatigue” tour around the country. (In Australia, doctors and patients more often than not referred to the cluster of overlapping illnesses now generally being called ME/CFS as simply “chronic fatigue.”) Near the end, I spent five days in Perth.…

  • A Reprise of a 2018 Post on My Visits with Alem Matthees

    In 2018, I spent six weeks in Australia, visiting multiple cities on a kind of ME/CFS tour around the country. Near the end, I spent five days in Perth. The local patient and advocacy organization arranged for me to give a talk, do some lobbying with local government, and so on. But my main motivation…

  • Our Presentation at the University of New South Wales

    On Tuesday, I gave a presentation at the Kirby Institute, a renowned research center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, along with my friend and colleague Dr David Joffe, a respiratory medicine specialist. David spoke about the pathophysiology of Long Covid as well as the enormous economic burden of the disease. I spoke about…

  • Video of October Talk in Ireland on How “Biopsychosocial” Research on ME, Long Covid, and Related Illnesses Harms Patients

    In October, I spent 10 days traveling around Ireland and giving a talk called “Bad Science, Bad Medicine: How Flawed Biopsychosocial Studies on ME, Long Covid, etc Harm Patients.” (I wrote about the trip here.) I came as a guest of the Irish ME/CFS Association, which had previously arranged similar tours with two physicians who…

  • My Tour of Ireland, Through Wind and Rain; Slides of My Talk

    Last month, I took a quick speaking tour around Ireland at the invitation of the Irish ME/CFS Association. I first became acquainted with Tom Kindlon, the association’s assistant chairperson, about ten years ago. I was beginning to look into the background of the PACE trial, which purported to have proven the benefits of graded exercise…

  • PACE Authors Respond to Monbiot Column with Tired Arguments

    Last week, Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote another scathing column about the failure of the UK health care system to address the plight of people diagnosed with ME/CFS. (Monbiot’s previous column on the issue appeared in March; our interview about it is here.) The new column was pegged to the case of 27-year-old Maeve Boothby…

  • Actress Jennie Jacques Interviews Guardian Columnist George Monbiot and Me about the CBT/GET Ideological Brigades, and More

    English actress Jennie Jacques is known for her roles in the BBC’s Desperate Romantics, a 2009 series about the Pre-Raphaelites, a police procedural called WPC 56, which ran from 2013 to 2014, and Vikings, a History Channel offering from 2015 to 2019. In 2021, she discussed having developed ME/CFS in a profile that appeared in The Times,…

  • The Michael Sharpe Crowdfunding Effect

    In the past, Professor Michael Sharpe, one of the lead PACE investigators, has intervened in my Berkeley crowdfunding and given my efforts a significant–although presumably unintended–boost. In the spring of 2018, I spent six weeks traveling around Australia, a trip that overlapped with that April’s crowdfunding campaign. During the campaign, Jennie Spotila endorsed it with…

  • Guardian Columnist George Monbiot Calls Out the GET/CBT Charlatans and the Fraudulent PACE Trial

    In a blistering take-down published on Tuesday, Guardian columnist George Monbiot indicted Professor Sir Simon Wessely, Professor Michael Sharpe and the rest of the GET/CBT ideological brigades for their decades-long promotion of discredited theories about and bogus research into the cluster of illnesses now being called ME/CFS. Those theories and research strategies reached their apotheosis,…