The fact that they are able to do an "analysis" at all helpfully demonstrates that the data is still available and intact, thus preventing them from using the "Gremlins Defence".
Why are they doing this? Because they hope it will help them when they appeal? Because they hope it will help them when an action is brought for contempt of court for not releasing the data? Because they hope it will pre-empt and deflate criticism from real scientists when they finally get to analyse the data? Who knows, but whatever their desperate plan is, the chances are they have shot themselves in the foot with their own incompetence once again.
We will see if they appeal. If they do, then they are almost certainly hoping that this controlled release will disarm critics.
It's important that people don't get carried away just yet. I think an independent analysis of PACE will be much more damning, and we should not be content with letting PACE authors interpret their own results, regardless of the protocol used.
Tuller already pointed out how they don't talk about recovery.
They also don't talk about the missing actimetry data(!), and again emphasize subjective outcomes. Their claims about adverse events are still at odds with patient experience. There are many unanswered questions still, and it's likely that every question answered will only make PACE look even worse. They're still not critically evaluating these interventions.
So continue to push for an independent analysis regardless of what happens.
