Tag: PACE
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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Debate Over Recent Citation of Arguably Fraudulent PACE Trial
Having a discussion about the PACE trial with someone who still maintains it was a well-conducted study is like debating the 2020 election with a Trumper who insists that Biden lost. These two distinct groups exhibit the same remarkable inability or willful refusal to understand and accept reality, whether it involves basic scientific constructs or…
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The 7th Anniversary of My Expose About the Fraudulent–i.e. Misleading, Deceptive–PACE Trial
*October 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/33528 This month marks the seventh anniversary of Virology Blog’s publication of my 15,000-word investigation of the egregiously flawed and fraudulent (i.e. misleading, deceptive) piece of…
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Research From GET/CBT Ideological Brigades Shows No Improvements in Work Status
Last year, Mark Vink, a Dutch physician with ME/CFS, and Friso Vink-Niese, an independent researcher, published a review of occupational outcomes among ME/CFS patients after treatment with either graded exercise therapy (GET) and cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). The results were not pretty. When viewed specifically through the perspective of employment status, the treatments bombed. This…