Trial By Error: Professor Michael Sharpe’s Gaffe on Australian Radio
18 APRIL 2018
By David Tuller, DrPH
It’s Thursday morning in Australia, and I’ve just arrived in Brisbane after a red-eye from Perth, with a week left to go on my tour Down Under. Of course I’m backed up on things I need to write about, and hope to have some down time soon to pull stuff together. (I only post on here from Monday to Wednesday, because Professor Racaniello posts from Thursday to Sunday. I’m doing this post now from the Brisbane airport so I can get it up before Wednesday ends in New York.)
First, for those keeping track, here is yet another clip of me talking. This is a conversation with young Australians with ME/CFS. They “meet” regularly for video chats, and invited me to join them a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed hanging out with them online and suggested that I didn’t have to be in Australia for us to do this again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=n2ww1uayF-U
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Since
criticizing my crowdfunding efforts, Professor Michael Sharpe has continued his quixotic and silly twitter campaign to rebut his many critics. I have chosen for now not to engage with him further, since he is apparently impervious to reasoned argument. Of course, his self-portrayal as the aggrieved party in the PACE saga is unattractive and untrue.
At some point I might review his recent claims. Right now, however, I want to briefly mention some comments he made in 2011, shortly after The Lancet published the first PACE results,
in a radio interview on ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:
““We have a number needed to treat; I think it’s about seven to get a clinically important treatment benefit with CBT and GET. What this trial isn’t able to answer is how much better are these treatments than really not having very much treatment at all.”
In epidemiology,
“number needed to treat” (NNT) is the calculation of how many people need to receive an intervention in order for one person to achieve the desired
