New Andrew Gelman blog post on the "PACE scandal", 25 Dec 2015

[Sasha]

Andrew Gelman is a high-profile University of Columbia professor of statistics and political science and he's just brought out his second blog post about PACE (here's his first one), on Xmas Day of all days - that's dedication for you!

Thank you, Professor Gelman!

He got interested in this when James Coyne wrote to him - we're fortunate that (a) we've got Coyne on our side and that (b) Coyne's approach of focusing on the bad science is successfully attracting the interest of people like Gelman.

 

[Cheshire]

New blog post:

PACE study and the Lancet: Journal reputation is a two-way street

One think that struck me about this PACE scandal: if this study was so bad as all that, how did it taken so seriously by policymakers and the press?

There’s been a lot of discussion about serious flaws in the published papers, and even more discussion about the unforgivable refusal of the research team to share their data. But the question I want to address here is, how did they get into the position where this research got taken seriously in the first place?

http://andrewgelman.com/2016/01/05/pace-study-and-the-lancet-journal-reputation-is-a-two-way-street/

Published only a few minutes after James Coyne's "Undisclosed conflicts of interest in a systematic review protocol of interventions for medically unexplained symptoms".

May 2016 be an "annus horribilis" for some in the UK...

 

[worldbackwards]

May 2016 be an "annus horribilis" for some in the UK...

That isn't a symptom of ME, is it?

Sorry.

 

[worldbackwards]

Published only a few minutes after James Coyne's "Undisclosed conflicts of interest in a systematic review protocol of interventions for medically unexplained symptoms".

I do wonder, given that David Tuller also posted yesterday, whether they aren't co-ordinating their attacks. Certainly it's clear that they aren't going to let this go.

I also wonder what White et al, think of all this. Are they scared? Do they think it's a storm that will blow over? Would they be right?

I also wonder if, even considering all the bad faith with which they conduct their work, whether they even understand that they've done anything wrong. Maybe this is all so standard in psychiatry that they haven't even really thought about it.

Questions. What we need is a mole.

WE NEED A DOUBLE AGENT.

 

[Bob]

For retweeting:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/684377553352536064

 

[alex3619]

Maybe this is all so standard in psychiatry that they haven't even really thought about it.

I have suspected this for some time. Too many poor methodologies are entrenched in psychiatry, and have become the standard. This needs to change or psychiatry will hardly advance.