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James Coyne said:Articles reporting the PACE trial have extraordinary numbers of authors, acknowledgments, and institutional affiliations. A considerable proportion of all persons and institutions involved in researching chronic fatigue and related conditions in the UK have a close connection to PACE.
This raises issues about
- Obtaining independent peer review of these articles that is not tainted by reviewer conflict of interest.
- Just what authorship on a PACE trial paper represents and whether granting of authorship conforms to international standards.
- The security of potential critics contemplating speaking out about whatever bad science they find in the PACE trial articles. The security of potential reviewers who are negative and can be found out. Critics within the UK risk isolation and blacklisting from a large group who have investments in what could be exaggerated estimates of the quality and outcome of PACE trial.
- Whether grants associated with multimillion pound PACE study could have received the independent peer review that is such a crucial to assuring that proposals selected to be funded are of the highest quality.
There was a murky story about Jonathan Kerr failing to get further funding for his genetics work because he had criticised the behavioural research. Who knows what the truth of it was.I don't remember any UK biomedical researcher that has expressed disapproval or disagreement of PACE.
I don't remember any UK biomedical researcher that has expressed disapproval or disagreement of PACE. Jonathan Edwards seems to be the exception, but maybe that is because he's retired.
My impression is that "pal review" is now very common and a prime suspect in the low quality of so much of the published research. And not just in the UK.
I'm pretty sure our beloved professor has always been a troublemaker.
I have to say I agree. Quite rambly, lots of hypotheticals and little solid fact (which he basically admitted at the end) and seemed to say more than it actually did. I think that there is probably more solid ground to be fighting on than this.Turgid piece I'm afraid.
Is it possible to find out who the peer reviewers were? or is it all kept secret?
Is this how we want to be talking about the writing of someone who is trying to help us, guys?
tbf, I think Coyne can take it, and we don't need to avoid being critical out of gratitude.
Regarding peer reviewers, I would say one of Bleijenberg and Knoop was probably a peer review of the Lancet (2011) paper.
Does it matter who it was exactly? We know they failed. The reason for this was probably that they were aligned with Wessely school ideology. There doesn't seem to be a shortage of Wessely school believers in psych departments.