My Letter to the University of Bristol
14 JUNE 2017
By David Tuller, DrPH
This morning I e-mailed the following letter to Sue Paterson, the University of Bristol’s Director of Legal Services and Deputy University Secretary, to protest Professor Esther Crawley’s accusation that I libeled her in blogging about her work. I cc’d the office of the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Hugh Brady.
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Dear Ms. Paterson:
I have recently learned that Professor Esther Crawley of the University of Bristol’s Centre for Child and Adolescent Health, in her inaugural lecture on February 24th of this year, accused me of libel. During her talk, she showed a slide with the phrase “libellous blogs,” accompanied by a screen shot of one of my blog posts on Virology Blog. While that slide was on the screen, she also mentioned “libellous blogs,” obviously referring to the Virology Blog post, among others.
This libel accusation is false. Given that Professor Crawley made this unsupported charge in such a high-profile academic setting, I felt that it was important to bring the matter to your attention and express my surprise and displeasure. (I have also cc’d the office of the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Hugh Brady.)
Virology Blog is a well-regarded science site hosted by Professor Vincent Racaniello, a prominent virologist at Columbia University. (I have also cc’d Professor Racaniello.) For the last year and a half, I have been writing an investigative series for Virology Blog called “Trial by Error,” about the many flaws of the PACE trial and related research, including Professor Crawley’s work. In accusing me of libel, she was also accusing my colleague, Professor Racaniello, of publishing libellous material. Professor Crawley used this slide again during a talk in April to the British Renal Society. I have written several subsequent posts about the libel accusation itself.
It is certainly true that the post highlighted in the slide, titled “The New FITNET Trial for Kids,” is harsh on Professor Crawley’s recent work. It is my opinion, as a public health expert from the University of California, Berkeley, that her research and the FITNET-NHS protocol are highly problematic in their presentation of the illness variously called chronic fatigue syndrome, myalgic encephalomyelitis, ME/CFS, or CFS/ME. In the post in question, I outlined these issues and carefully documented the facts on which I based my arguments. My concerns are shared by many leading scientists and experts in study design and research methodology.
In my post, I explained how Professor Crawley has misstated the NICE guidelines in both her research and her FITNET-NHS proposal, in ways that appear to eliminate post-exertional malaise as a required symptom. I also noted that she has conflated the symptom of “chronic fatigue,” a hallmark of many illnesses, with the specific disease entity she prefers to call “chronic fatigue syndrome.” As many have previously noted, this conflation generates samples that are far too heterogeneous to yield reliable and valid conclusions about prevalence, causes and treatments.
