Tag: PACE
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The 7th Anniversary of My Expose About the Fraudulent–i.e. Misleading, Deceptive–PACE Trial
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 crap known as the PACE trial. (Incidentally, it is also the one-year anniversary of the new and much-improved guidelines for ME/CFS from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.)…
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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…
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The Lancet Publishes Whine de Coeur from Impassioned GET/CBT Defenders
The Lancet has just published an anguished whine de coeur from supporters of the graded exercise therapy/cognitive behavior therapy/ [GET/CBT] approach to ME/CFS. (Or CFS/ME, as these authors insist on calling the illness in what those familiar with the debate will recognize as a childish fit of pique.) These impassioned members of the GET/CBT ideological…
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Professor Chalder Messes Up Again in New Paper on CFS and Employment Outcomes
Same-Day Update: In re-reading the new paper, I noticed that the discussion section also features errors involving the percentages. It includes this sentence: “About 9% of individuals who were not working at baseline had returned to work at follow-up.” And this one: “Further, 6% of those working at baseline were no longer working at follow-up.”…
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PACE Authors Now Blame “Misunderstandings” for GET/CBT Criticisms
It is hard to know what to make of the news that a peer-reviewed journal has actually accepted a PACE-reunion paper from the three lead investigators—Professors Michael Sharpe, Trudie Chalder, and Peter White. Even more so for a paper titled–without irony, it seems–“Evidence based care for people with chronic fatigue syndrome and myalgic encephalomyelitis.” This…
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Quartet of Trials Reveals Limitations of CBT for “Medically Unexplained Symptoms”
A year ago, I wrote a post about how the biopsychosocial ideological brigades had completed a trifecta of major studies that investigated cognitive behavior therapy for a variety of so-called “medically unexplained symptoms” (MUS). As a group, the studies demonstrated the overall ineffectiveness of CBT as a treatment for this category of disorders—despite herculean efforts…
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Letter to Lancet Editor Demanding Independent Investigation of PACE (Reprise from 2018)
In August, 2018, I organized an open letter to Lancet editor Dr Richard Horton demanding an independent investigation of the PACE trial. The letter was signed by more than 100 scientists, clinicians, academics and other experts from Columbia, Harvard, University College London, Queen Mary University of London, Berkeley, Georgetown, etc, etc; ten members of Parliament;…
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The World According to Sharpe
Poor Professor Michael Sharpe. The distinguished psychiatrist from Oxford University has a dilemma. His science sucks big-time, and he can’t defend it effectively with standard argumentation. He does not seem to grasp why people have called the PACE trial fraudulent, so he lashes out, trying to bully and bluff his way through the mess by…
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Guardian Columnist George Monbiot Is Causing Long COVID, Says Professor Michael Sharpe
In a remarkable display of—well, I’m not even sure what to call it–Professor Michael Sharpe has blamed Guardian columnist George Monbiot and Long COVID support groups, among others, for the wave of people reporting prolonged symptoms after acute bouts of COVID-19. And during the same February presentation in which he made those observations, Professor Sharpe…
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Biopsychosocial Brigades Seek Traction with Long Covid
Last week, two major articles on long Covid appeared in well-known US publications—one in the Atlantic, the other in Vox. Like the New York Times Magazine article that ran in January, these stories addressed with nuance the complex and unclear relationship between the varieties of long Covid and the group of entities collectively known these…
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Happy Tenth Anniversary, PACE Trial!
It’s been ten years since The Lancet published the first results of the PACE trial. Wow! Ten years ago, I was 54 and still a graduate student in public health at UC Berkeley. I was also busy writing stories for The New York Times about the mouse retrovirus study that had roiled the field of…