'PACE-GATE: An alternative view on a study with a poor trial protocol' by Bart Stouten in JHP

[Dolphin]

Given the evidence that the objective improvements reported for CBT and GET are at most modest, I agree with Geraghty that these should be downgraded to adjunct support-level status.

 

[Dolphin]

I don't really understand why he didn't also use the fitness and employment data that has been released.

<snip>

Maybe I'm being overly-critical on this, as my expectation is that this issue should be an easy win for us, but I feel like this paper uneccessarily muddies the water by omitting some important pieces of infomation. As the author cites some of his own comments from 2004, I wondered if maybe he has been paying less attention to issues recenty, and is a bit relying on old knowledge? If I was speaking with the author I would express my gratitude for him writing it, but I didn't think that this was great tbh, and I have some concerns that it gives the PACE authors some valuable tools for their own response.

I had similar thoughts. He didn't use the raw data from the Freedom of Information act requrest for the 6-minute walking test, so the other data (he didn't use) was also means. I think one can work out the standard deviation from the walking test graph, though I'm not sure how to do it myself at the moment. Anyway it could have been referred to even if the exact numbers weren't used.

 

[Tom Kindlon]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/876577179840204800