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Keith Laws's thought on PACE follow-up study

Never Give Up

Collecting improvements, until there's a cure.
Messages
971
I especially like his inclusion of these lyrics

Holes by Mercury Rev
Holes, dug by little moles, angry jealous
Spies, got telephones for eyes, come to you as
Friends, all those endless ends, that can't be
Tied, oh they make me laugh, an' always make me
....Cry

And the related music video. His other blog posts criticise CBT in other contexts.

I like this guy!
 

JohntheJack

Senior Member
Messages
198
Location
Swansea, UK
I especially like his inclusion of these lyrics

Holes by Mercury Rev
Holes, dug by little moles, angry jealous
Spies, got telephones for eyes, come to you as
Friends, all those endless ends, that can't be
Tied, oh they make me laugh, an' always make me
....Cry

And the related music video. His other blog posts criticise CBT in other contexts.

I like this guy!

In another life Keith was a founding member of 'The The'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Laws
 

Sidereal

Senior Member
Messages
4,856
Comment on Keith Laws' blogpost:

Julie 2 November 2015 at 03:29
I was on the PACE trial. I was part of the late intake of participants and was in the CBT + APT arm of the trial. I've seen references in other places stating participants only received CBT with GET. This is not true and is an important point.

I walked into the trial with a stick and moderate M.E. still managing to work part time. My course was 6 weeks long, 2hrs a week. I came top of my group for CBT and was told this is how you are treated with ME that by changing your attitude and responses to things you will improve. So I complied.

19th December 2011, 3 days after the end of the course I collapsed from the effort of getting to it. I've been 80% housebound and periodically bedbound in relapses ever since. I cannot comply with anything now.

Words are insufficient to express the gratitude to you and other academics who are coming out to highlight to the world the flaws in this trial. The authors of this trial have been the leading voice of ME in the UK since the 1980s. These are the same people whose press releases back then sparked the 'all in the mind' and 'yuppie flu' headlines. The authors do not have to live with the consequences of their actions. Please help to make this abuse stop.
 

worldbackwards

Senior Member
Messages
2,051
More from Keef on PACE, this time on a Tim Buckley tip:
...in a Mental Elf blog this week, (Sir) Professor Simon Wessley rightly details and praises the benefits of randomised controlled trials (RCT), concluding that PACE matches-up quite well. But to extend Prof Wessley's nautical motif, I'm more interested in how 'HMS PACE' was seduced by the song of the Sirens, forced to abandon methodological rigor on the shallow rocky shores of bias and confound.

http://keithsneuroblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/song-for-siren.html
 
Messages
13,774
Professor Simon Wessley rightly details and praises the benefits of randomised controlled trials (RCT), concluding that PACE matches-up quite well.

Wessely's piece was weird: not wanting to bore people with responses to some of the more technical criticisms of PACE, but instead developing an extended naval metaphor and going on about how randomisation is important - as if PACE being randomised somehow dealt with patient's concerns (none of which relate to randomisation).
 

SOC

Senior Member
Messages
7,849
Wessely's piece was weird: not wanting to bore people with responses to some of the more technical criticisms of PACE, but instead developing an extended naval metaphor and going on about how randomisation is important - as if PACE being randomised somehow dealt with patient's concerns (none of which relate to randomisation).
Perhaps he's so scientifically ignorant that he thinks that all there is to an RCT is randomisation? o_O
 

worldbackwards

Senior Member
Messages
2,051
There are a lot of ways in which PACE is a very good piece of medical research. If it were not for the fatal flaws it would have been worth all that money.
It's an interesting piece of sociological research as well, observing how psychiatry operates when it's assumptions are put under pressure, and how medicine circles the wagons to allow them to go unchallenged.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if it were announced one day that the whole thing had been a piece of performance art, commissioned as a sad commentary on the corruption of science in the modern age. I'd pay £5 million for that.
 

Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
Comment on Keith Laws' blogpost:
Julie 2 November 2015 at 03:29
I was on the PACE trial. I was part of the late intake of participants and was in the CBT + APT arm of the trial. I've seen references in other places stating participants only received CBT with GET. This is not true and is an important point.

I walked into the trial with a stick and moderate M.E. still managing to work part time. My course was 6 weeks long, 2hrs a week. I came top of my group for CBT and was told this is how you are treated with ME that by changing your attitude and responses to things you will improve. So I complied.

19th December 2011, 3 days after the end of the course I collapsed from the effort of getting to it. I've been 80% housebound and periodically bedbound in relapses ever since. I cannot comply with anything now.

Words are insufficient to express the gratitude to you and other academics who are coming out to highlight to the world the flaws in this trial. The authors of this trial have been the leading voice of ME in the UK since the 1980s. These are the same people whose press releases back then sparked the 'all in the mind' and 'yuppie flu' headlines. The authors do not have to live with the consequences of their actions. Please help to make this abuse stop.
I'm afraid I'm not convinced she was in the PACE Trial. People entered the trial some time between March 18, 2005 and Nov 28, 2008 and treatment ended less than a year later, well before December 19, 2011.

Also, sounds like this was a group course, while the PACE Trial was individual therapy.

People routinely fill in questionnaires for the clinics so perhaps she was thinking of that.