Trial By Error

Tag: PACE

  • More CBT Research from Sir Simon and Professor Chalder

    (*Thanks to the the very informed discussion–and discussants–on the Science For ME forum for alerting me to this study and its many problems!) In 2011, Professor Trudie Chalder declared at a press conference for the high-profile PACE trial that twice as many chronic fatigue syndrome patients who received cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy…

  • Disinformation About Treatments for Post-Covid Syndrome

    Professor Trudie Chalder is a lead investigator of a series of studies of rehabilitative interventions for so-called “medically unexplained symptoms” that have failed to meet expectations but have nevertheless been promoted as demonstrating treatment success. The piece of crap known as the PACE trial is a prime example. Most famously, Professor Chalder declared at the…

  • Excellent News Coverage of UK Genetics Study in The Times

    Note: The DecodeME team held a Facebook Q-and-A this week. If you want more information about the study, you can watch the video here. Two major UK government funding agencies recently announced grants totalling £3.2 million to support a major genetics study of ME. Whatever the long-term findings of DecodeME, spearheaded by the CFS/ME Research…

  • Trio of Trials Shows Limits of CBT for Medically Unexplained Symptoms

    Lancet Psychiatry recently published the results of a high-profile trial of cognitive behavior therapy as a treatment for so-called dissociative seizures, also known as psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. The trial, nicknamed CODES, found that CBT had no impact on seizure frequency–the primary outcome. The average number of seizures per month dropped in both the treatment and…

  • ME Research UK Drops Out of CMRC

    I have spent two weeks hammering the CFS/ME Research Collaborative about “Renal-gate”—that is, vice-chair Esther Crawley’s recent lecture at a conference of kidney disease experts, in which she falsely accused me of writing “libellous blogs.” The CMRC’s chair, Stephen Holgate, recently assured me that Dr. Crawley had the “full support” of the executive board—a statement…

  • The CMRC Affirms Full Support for Libelous Esther

    For the last couple of weeks, I have been hammering the CFS/ME Research Collaborative to take a position on the actions of its deputy chair, Libelous Esther—better known as Dr. Esther Crawley. As I reported in several previous posts, Dr. Crawley falsely accused me of writing “libelous blogs” and Dr. Racaniello of posting them. To…

  • My Libelous Blogging on Virology Blog

    During a recent talk at the annual conference of the British Renal Society, pediatrician and staunch PACE proponent Esther Crawley accused me of libeling her. I wasn’t at her presentation, but her slides were captured and tweeted. Dr. Crawley’s lecture recounted her heroic struggle against the dark forces of anti-science—presumably, those pesky ME/CFS advocates who…

  • The Dutch Studies (Again!), and an Esther Crawley Bonus

    Wow, the research from the CBT/GET crowd in The Netherlands never ceases to amaze. Like the work of their friends in the U.K., each study comes up with new ways to be bad. It’s almost too easy to poke holes in these things. And yet the investigators appear unable to restrain themselves from making extremely…

  • A Follow-Up Post on FITNET-NHS

    Last week’s post on FITNET-NHS and Esther Crawley stirred up a lot of interest. I guess people get upset when researchers cite shoddy “evidence” from poorly designed trials to justify foisting psychological treatments on kids with a physiological disease. I wanted to post some additional bits and pieces related to the issue. I sent Dr.…

  • The Real Data

    ‘The PACE trial is a fraud.’ Ever since Virology Blog posted my 14,000-essord investigation of the PACE trial last October, I’ve wanted to write that sentence. (I should point out that Dr. Racaniello has already called the PACE trial a “sham,” and I’ve already referred to it as “doggie-poo.” I’m not sure that “fraud” is…

  • An open letter to The Lancet, again

    On November 13th, five colleagues and I released an open letter to The Lancet and editor Richard Horton about the PACE trial, which the journal published in 2011. The study’s reported findings–that cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy are effective treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome–have had enormous influence on clinical guidelines for the illness. Last October, Virology…

  • A Few Words About “Harassment”

    David Tuller is academic coordinator of the concurrent masters degree program in public health and journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.   Last week, a commentary in Nature about the debate over data-sharing in science made some excellent points. Unfortunately, the authors lumped “hard-line opponents” of research into chronic fatigue syndrome with those who question climate…