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Professor Martin Pall's Response to Wessely et al, J Roy Soc Med paper

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15,786
The primary problem with Wessely School psychologists, and others of their ilk, is not so much their work on identifying psychological phenomena (in this case, the undisputed fact that some patients do indeed remove themselves from modern society, to live in isolation), but the trouble with their work lies in the theories they provide to explain these phenomena.

Actually I think they do a piss-poor job of identifying psychological phenomena as well - in the case of ME/CFS, for example, they use questionnaires where physical symptoms equate to having depression, anxiety, and/or psychosomatization disorders.
 

WillowJ

คภภเє ɠรค๓թєl
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yes, they use instruments which aren't suited for purpose. personality questionnaires, for example, were developed and normed in healthy people (Stein or Carruthers, I forgot which). You start asking a bunch of sick people "do other people do more for you than you do for them?" and "do you fear that you may be perceived as different from others?", and you might be measuring the presence of illness, rather than an aspect of personality.

Yet the psychologists think this represents a change in personality (even though this contradicts their basic idea of personality that it's generally fixed in a given person after maturity), apparently because the questionnaire is defined as a personality questionnaire.

Someone not familiar with the field might suppose psychologists had been trained to consider stuff like this, but at least in some cases, that doesn't appear to be happening.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,820
Actually I think they do a piss-poor job of identifying psychological phenomena as well - in the case of ME/CFS, for example, they use questionnaires where physical symptoms equate to having depression, anxiety, and/or psychosomatization disorders.

Yes you are right: even their work on identifying and accurately describing psychological phenomena is not that sharp. You get more accuracy and perception in the descriptions of ME/CFS psychological symptoms from patients themselves (on forums like this one), than you do from the Wessely School.

Perhaps the Wessely School's lack of accuracy and perceptiveness is due to spending too little time observing the actual psychological realities manifested in patients, with these psychologists preferring to live in a parallel psychobabble universe of their own fabrication tan get down to reality. It always seems to me that lots of psychologists prefer to live is some "psychobabble-space" of their own fabrication. Freud lived for years in his own psychobabble universe of the Oedipus complex, for example — a theory now discredited. These psychobabble universes owe more to mythology than they do to hard science and practical reality. Nothing wrong with mythology, but don't call it science.

Kind of ironic really: it is in fact the Wessely School who are taking refuge from reality, and isolating themselves from the actuality of the patient groups they purport to understand!
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
A couple of small points, from somebody who not so long ago, was a psychology student. (after a career in scientific research)

They haven't yet decided what factors make up "personality" - they're still just chucking theoretical constructs in the air, fiddling a litte with circumstances surrounding them - so that they can put... (wait for it..) numbers onto their constructs and then put them into an SPSS package which generates even more numbers and of course, when it's got complicated things like NUMBERS in it, it must be science.
They havre the most awful penchant for the great god MANOVA, they don't understand confounding variables, they don't even understand that most of their tests should be 3-tailed, not 2.

But the really big and important point to be making is that all the questionnaires are tested and retested on psychology students - not on a normal population.

Psychology students are the only folk that can be roped in to doing these things.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,820
But the really big and important point to be making is that [in psychology] all the questionnaires are tested and retested on psychology students - not on a normal population.

That's very interesting: so there will be an inherent bias in the results, since all the minds tested will be of a certain type, namely the type of mind that is able to deeply immerse itself into psychological theories. I am probably one of these type of mind's, though.


I followed a two-year evening course in psychology, covering both normal psychology and personality theorists (like Freud, Jung, Eysenck, Kelly, Skinner, etc) as well as abnormal psychology (depression, schizophrenia, etc). The lecturer that gave the course had in fact recovered from a brush with schizophrenia, and he was brilliant, scintillating orator with an insightful mind, that really brought the subject alive.

I took up this evening course in psychology as I had just completed a three-year undergraduate degree in mathematical physics — a fine discipline, but one which is very hard-nosed and objective, and focuses only on the world of matter, never on the psyche. I deliberately took up psychology as I wanted to "soften up" my intellect a bit, focus on the liberal arts side, and examine the more subjective world of mind.

I loved every bit of this psychology course, and I loved totally immersing myself into the ideas of each personality theorist we studied. After studying a particular personality theorist, I would often automatically start viewing the social dynamics in the people around me from the perspective and framework of that theory. So for example, when I first learnt about the Freudian concepts of id, ego and super-ego I would see these three interacting mental forces clearly at play in the minds of all the people around me; I would automatically superimpose these three forces onto the behaviors of people (and I think this Freudian trichotomy is still valid). Because I became so fascinated by the interplaying forces of the psyche, I implicitly assumed, like many psychologists do, that mental phenomena, both normal and abnormal, essentially had psychogenic causes.


Now, though, from the vantage point of personally developing ME/CFS from a virus that profoundly affected my brain (which was a revelation to me in terms of possible etiologies of psychological symptoms), my understanding has been updated, and I now hold the view that whereas the mental dynamics of normal psychology can probably be studied and understood without too much reference to the physical brain; by contrast, the mental dynamics and etiologies of abnormal psychology are almost certainly not psychogenically-caused dysfunctions of the mind, but rather are rooted in physical dysfunctions of the brain that lead to mental symptoms.

Thus in normal psychology you can get away with studying the mind and psyche only; but in abnormal psychology, you can only really understand these mental dysfunctions by studying the underlying aberrant biochemistry, immunology and neurology of the brain. So for any psychologist trying to understand the causes of abnormal psychological or cognitive symptoms such as severe clinical depression, ME/CFS, generalized anxiety disorder, autism, schizophrenia and so forth, they need to have a reasonable grasp of biochemistry, immunology and neurology.


Anyway, in summary: I think it is important to appreciate how one can easily immerse oneself into a psychological theory, such that the axioms and ideas of that theory dramatically alter the way you observe other human minds. Psychological theories can be very seductive parallel universes that can beckon you in, and these theories can fundamentally change your own perspective on the mind and psyche. But in immersing yourself, there is a very real danger that you can become so totally drawn into the world of psychological theory that you no longer objectively test the tenets of the theory against reality. That is to say, you abandon the scientific method, which requires empirical verification, as well as a theoretical framework.

I think this is what has happened to the Wessely School psychologists, with their somatoform theories. The Wessely School psychologists have so deeply immersed themselves into their somatoform theories, that they have long since abandoned performing the requisite empirical reality checks on these theories. The axioms of somatoform theory have become quasi-religious beliefs for them, rather than objective, scientifically verified facts.

There should be a word that describes this decadent immersing into pure fabricated theory without any empirical reality checks. Whatever that word is, if can certainly be applied to describe the Wessely School psychologists.
 

WillowJ

คภภเє ɠรค๓թєl
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Location
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They haven't yet decided what factors make up "personality" - they're still just chucking theoretical constructs in the air, fiddling a litte with circumstances surrounding them - so that they can put... (wait for it..) numbers onto their constructs and then put them into an SPSS package which generates even more numbers and of course, when it's got complicated things like NUMBERS in it, it must be science.
This is a really good point about numbers and objectivity or science.

there's an idea that if you can put a number to it, it must be objective, scientific, etc.

The same thing happens with pain and sleepiness scales. Rate your pain from 1-10. How likely are you to fall asleep in the following situations? Great, now you've quantified it and we can compare it to last time and to other people's responses.

Wait a minute.

Can we really?

Do I give the same number to the same amount of pain this week as I did last time? Or is it influenced by other things, maybe that I'm uncomfortable because I'm thirsty, or I'm frustrated because the doctor was late, or I'm happy because the weather is nice or I got to chat with a friend?

Putting a number on it makes it easy to record in a chart. All neat. Makes it graphable.

But as you said, it's a fallacy that a figure makes things objective or scientific.
 

barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
Interesting. I have an undergraduate and masters in psychology and worked with students with emotional disabilities for over 25 years. While I would disagree with what Wessely "supposedly" espouses, if he indeed does as I sometimes think his views are understandably exaggerated by some patients, I don't think the theories are fabricated out of thin air. He believes in what he is saying. Yes, social sciences are much less reliable and depending on what you are studying within this category, some are more reliable/valid than others. People who have study in this area have to take this into account. I think most involved in these occupations would also agree with this and take it into consideration when doing these studies.

I believe that sometime in the future and I think it's already started, most if not all mental illnesses will be found to be physical. This does not discount therapy as an important adjunct for mental illnesses. In fact studies show that the two together are better than one or the each alone.. That being said, therapy alone doesn't have the effect of other types of therapies such as medications.

As an example, people with OCD, such as constantly washing their hands can be psychoanalyzed, have years of therapy, then take a medication and that behavior will for the most part disappear. However, therapy may be needed to help the person understand and process all the implications the above involve.

Yes this is anecdotal but I have seen this time and time again. As far as confirmation bias which absolutely exists, I as well as others have also seen the difference when parents do such things as take their children off the medications thinking we wouldn't see the difference or there's been a change in medication. You do have to keep in mind these were students had moderate to fairly severe emotional disturbances.

Barb
 

barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
The same thing happens with pain and sleepiness scales. Rate your pain from 1-10. How likely are you to fall asleep in the following situations? Great, now you've quantified it and we can compare it to last time and to other people's responses.

I have always hated these questions. As for pain it does give a relative measurement for the moment but it's not definitive for pain over a period of time.

I have taken the Epworth Sleepiness Scale several times and the questions are very difficult to answer with a yes or no response.The questionnaire asks what situations you are likely to fall asleep. What this doesn't take into account is that you can be excessively sleepy to the point you can hardly move without falling asleep but does not mean you don't have a sleep disorder. The scale is suppose to be for narcolepsy. The excessive sleepiness can be just as problematic.

Barb
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,820
While I would disagree with what Wessely "supposedly" espouses, if he indeed does as I sometimes think his views are understandably exaggerated by some patients, I don't think the theories are fabricated out of thin air. He believes in what he is saying.

I am not aware of any empirical evidence that demonstrates somatoform diseases exist, so the notion of somatoform disease that Wessely believes in seems to be a just an idea or hypothesis, but nothing more.

What annoys me with Wessely et al is that, in their own minds, they are so sure that diseases like ME/CFS, IBS and interstitial cystitis are all somatoform, that they ignore valuable empirical evidence that indicates otherwise.

For example, as we all know, there is a huge amount of anecdotal and observational evidence that ME/CFS often follows an acute viral infection (and Dr Chia has even published a study on this; ref: here). This data strongly suggests a viral etiology, at least for a major subset of ME/CFS. And of course, Chlamydia pneumoniae and parvovirus B19 infection are known (and treatable) causes of ME/CFS.

But Wessely, rather than making use of this valuable observation in order to get the causal roots of ME/CFS, just blithely counters and trashes this evidence by saying, "it is the fear of viruses that causes ME/CFS, not the viruses themselves", or words to that effect.

I find Wessely's trashing of this valuable evidence scientifically sacrilegious, and sign that he is so entranced by his own theory, he has become blind to crucial empirical data.

I believe that sometime in the future and I think it's already started, most if not all mental illnesses will be found to be physical.

Yes, me too. I just wish we could usher in that day sooner.

This does not discount therapy as an important adjunct for mental illnesses. In fact studies show that the two together are better than one or the each alone.

Agreed.
 
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15,786
But Wessely, rather than making use of this valuable observation in order to get the causal roots of ME/CFS, just blithely counters and trashes this evidence by saying, "it is the fear of viruses that causes ME/CFS, not the viruses themselves", or words to that effect.

Sort of. What he seems to say is more along the lines that some infections do seem more likely to result in ME/CFS, but that psychological factors are required to actually cause it. That is, mentally "healthy" people probably won't get ME/CFS, because they won't keep assuming that they're sick when they aren't.

But the "fear" of the cause definitely factors into his theories about the perpetuation of the disease. He also seemed to use the "fear" argument to imply that actual exposure of veterans to chemicals was less important than fear of exposure, in developing GWS or MCS.

So he probably only modifies his approach slightly for ME/CFS because 1) he'd look like a total idiot if he kept ignoring high-quality evidence about infectious correlation and 2) it doesn't really matter because he can still cling to CBT as the cure. It's simply too hard to explain away X percentage of people with nasty infection Y developing ME/CFS - people who don't know any better might accept deconditioning as causing PEM, but he'd have a hard time selling anyone the theory of psychological problems causing viral and bacterial infections.
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
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2,623
Location
Scotland
Years ago, I was given CBT for OCD.
My therapist decided that my "reward" for cutting down the number of times I washed my hands should be an alcoholic drink.
I cut down the number of times I washed things to an acceptable level and my therapist published her thesis on my case as a resounding success.
I went on to develop a very serious drink problem.

The basic problem causing my OCD was mental abuse and bullying by my ex. Nothing I ever did was good enough, I was stupid, useless, fat and ugly.
So I tried harder and harder to get things "right" for him... but I didn't know what would be good enough to be right... and nothing ever was... and so OCD developed.

CBT never addressed the cause of the problem, it didn't follow me to see if something else developed instead.

All it was interested in was reducing the number of times I washed things.

CBT for OCD was extremely harmful to me, Barb.
It did not help me, it made me far worse, even though I've been recorded in the published literature as being a resounding success story in support of it.:devil:
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,820
I managed to find a page that contains Wessely's precise quotes on this subject of "the fear of viruses". See here: Simon Wessely Quotes.

There certainly seems to be a distinct mocking, belittling tone in Wessely's comments, implying that all this stuff about viruses, bacteria, and toxin exposure is overblown.

To give two examples:
"Continuing attribution of all symptoms to a persistent virus preserves self-esteem."
Butler S, Chalder T, Wessely S et al. JNNP 1991:54:153-158

In other words, here Wessely is belittling the patient's faithful observation that a viral infection seemed to trigger their ME/CFS, and instead Wessely has perversely recast this honest-to-goodness observation as the patient self-deceitfully engaging in psychological projection.

Psychological projection is a defense mechanism, in which an individual blames other people or external circumstances for faults or shortcomings that are actually due to their own personality or behavior. Psychological projection is in fact a very common behavior, and we all engage in it, especially at times of personal failure, when we want to blame external circumstances in order to protect our self-esteem. Given the ubiquity of psychological projection, it needs good judgement to decide whether an attribution of external blame is in fact the truth, or whether is just psychological projection. In this case, it is very clear that Wessely is not in possession of good judgement nor discernment.

"In a previous era, spirits and demons oppressed us. Although they have been replaced by our contemporary concern about invisible viruses, chemicals and toxins, the mechanisms of contagious fear remain the same...To the majority of observers, including most professionals, these symptoms are indeed all in the mind."
Simon Wessely. Editorial. NEJM 2000:342:2:129-130
Here Wessely seems to view concerns about microbes and toxins as akin to the irrational and unfounded fears about spirits and demons in previous eras.

Wessely is way off the mark here. In fact, in the last decade or two, a huge about of evidence has been amassed connecting microbes to a whole array of common diseases and medical conditions, from sudden heart attack to Alzheimer's. Some people who study the link between pathogenic microbes and disease, such as Dr Paul W. Ewald, believe that many common diseases (not just ME/CFS) will eventually be found to have pathogenic microbial etiology, rather than being caused purely by genetic or stress factors.
 

Roy S

former DC ME/CFS lobbyist
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1,376
Location
Illinois, USA
Interesting. I have an undergraduate and masters in psychology and worked with students with emotional disabilities for over 25 years. While I would disagree with what Wessely "supposedly" espouses, if he indeed does as I sometimes think his views are understandably exaggerated by some patients, I don't think the theories are fabricated out of thin air. He believes in what he is saying.
Barb


Barb,
I'm curious as to the ages of those students you worked with. Also, I don't know how you can assume that Wessely believes in everything he says.
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
And if his theories are not plucked out of thin air, on what scientific grounds are they based?

Psychology operates from a top down position - all theories are basically plucked from thin air - it's a similar position to trying to unbake a loaf of bread!

Real science operates from the bottom up.
Like learning about flour and gluten and yeast and salt and sugar and fermentation and temperatures and timing, rather than theorising about (eg) the qualia of a crumb and how crumbs might become assembled together!

My personal opinion is that the only thing the weasel believes in, or is interested in, is himself and his power and his status and his empire. He is not a scientist.
 

Research 1st

Severe ME, POTS & MCAS.
Messages
768
And if his theories are not plucked out of thin air, on what scientific grounds are they based?

Psychology operates from a top down position - all theories are basically plucked from thin air - it's a similar position to trying to unbake a loaf of bread!

Real science operates from the bottom up.
Like learning about flour and gluten and yeast and salt and sugar and fermentation and temperatures and timing, rather than theorising about (eg) the qualia of a crumb and how crumbs might become assembled together!

My personal opinion is that the only thing the weasel believes in, or is interested in, is himself and his power and his status and his empire. He is not a scientist.

Peggy-Sue you raise a most pertinent point here.

Doctors indeed practice medicine (evidence based) vs Psychiatry that is theory (non evidence based).
If psychiatry was scientific it wouldn't be called psychiatry, but medicine.

Imagine if you will a psychiatrist treating you in ER for 'presumed' severe chest pain and refusing you a 12-lead ECG. Deaths would occur routinely. Equally now imagine a person with CFS/ME attending ER for 'presumed' severe chest pain. Deaths would also occur, inevitably. (By the law of averages someone with CFS/ME would eventually attend ER who didn't just have high blood pressure and tachycardia from an aroused sympathetic nervous system, but also undiagnosed Asthma, blood clot, dehydration, cardiac muscle infection, cardiac arrythmia etc). This is why psychiatrists don't work in ER to treat people in cardiac and respiratory distress.

BUT..... psychiatric theories about CFS/ME do work in ER, because the physicians don't believe you are sick. So psychiatrists are there, in spirit, controlling other physicians beliefs about you.

A situation creating a chronic and sustained disaster scenario of fear of being disbelieved for CFS/ME patients, their partners, their families and carers. This is also a disaster for maintaining positive mental health for people labelled with CFS/ME. One can easily see that labeling people as mentally ill (who aren't) and denying them access to appropriate medical services for years or even decades, actually causes some to become mentally ill who weren't previously!

So there is your iatrogenic harm demonstrated. And there is you future legal cases against the Reeves and Wessely admirers of this world. They don't just theorise, they tell people in their research not to investigate physical symptoms. That is a big mistake. No doctor should do that, all patients attending doctors office (mentally ill or not) should always have a full work up. The reality is for patients on the ground, due to by-proxy discrimination, is they don't have a full ECG/blood work up because doctors think what it written through extensively published psychobehavioural explanations about CFS/ME that become official policy, is medically sound.

If you were a doctor and read this below from self proclaimed 'CFS experts', would you believe them? I would if I was ignorant about CFS and ME. With no medical training into CFS and ME, I would be ignorant, by default.

'In clinical practice, no additional tests including laboratory tests and neuro-imaging studies can be recommended'.

M.Sharpe
Ann Int Med 1992 (121).



'Suicide is the only cause of death in CFS'.

M Sharpe et al Gen Hosp Psychiat 1997:19:3:185-199.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Practical Guide to Assessment and Management.



'Referral to specialists should be avoided as they can entrench illness behavior'.

1997: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Occupational Health. A Mounstephen and M Sharpe. Occup Med 1997:47:4:217-227


So everyone labelled with CFS or ME risks experiencing iatrogenic harm. The more severely affected and the more contact the person with CFS/ME has with disbelieving medical professionals the more the risk or iatrogenic harm increases. A truly dreadful situation.

The only reason we are abused in ER is because the medical staff don't know what 'CFS' or ME is ( no medical training) and they look it up on Google on their hospital intranet connection, or remember reading or hearing comments in medical journals that tell physicians not to engage with the CFS patients somatizing behaviour. The last thing they will do is refer you to a cardiologist, an immunologist, or a rheumatologist. They will instead, likely discharge you and send you packing. What is the physical and mental health consequence of this? Not good.

Language and statements about illness and disease used in medicine by registered doctors must be accurate, or great harm often occurs. If psychiatry is embedded into the medical profession and becomes the main stay of 'medical' care for a non psychiatric illness (because psychiatrists tell other medical professionals not to investigate physical symptoms) we end up with a symphony of neglect. Eventually we end with an overture of misery for the patients who cannot prove they are sick without prohibitively expensive private medical tests and traveling to CFS experts that is usually impossible if people are bed ridden and housebound. So they remain highly disabled in the community, in their beds.

I say prohibitively expensive because if you have severe grade CFS ME you cannot work to earn money, and thus medical costs become overwhelming living on meager welfare payouts never mind physically attending a physicians office to have the test to prove you aren't a somatizing CFS/ME patient because the CDC presume you are.

Psychiatrists can say and believe what they wish, but they mustn't influence the wider medical profession to neglect and abuse patients. Then we have an entirely different situation far removed from any criticism of general psychiatry, we have actual iatrogenic harm on a massive scale.
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
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2,623
Location
Scotland
"Evidence-based medicine" is just another top-down approach. (but it sounds like science!)
It does not know whether or not it is dealing with correlation or causation.

The birth rate may have gone up in Scotland since my partner came to live here in '78 - but that does not mean he is personally responsible for it.

Medics are not scientists!
Psychaitrists are medics with a couple of years of psychology tacked onto the end,
And I'm not sure if medicine is "science" or not. It's science-based but always several years out of date.
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
peggy Sue
Alas I do understand about the "OCD" in response to abuse :/
As a kid I chose not to go down such, started desperately to "not walk on the cracks in the pavement" as a "talisman" against the abuse, you know?
but soon stopped that, I'm one stubborn SOB, I wasn't going to kowtow to ANYTHING that EVER walks on this Earth.
I made them stop. Blech. just wanted nice quiet life.

Did you see the video on social networking sites about the wee lass bullying the bigger lad? ick!
oh don't I know that scenario so well. nearly always some wee Ned swine wanting to make himself feel bigger cause he's got nothing inside. Or take down anyone who shows that their "nothing existance" is a lie, a shame, it's their own fear/cowardice.

that's bad, (violent bullying) but not nearly as bad as the actual sadism of one particular swine. he made sure to leave no marks, and do what humiliated and outraged me the most. he was an utter sadist, one of the few truly evil people I have ever encountered.
Part of what is so painful of that is I finally figured out a way to beat him (he always made sure he had helpers so I was out numbered and held down)
but I couldn't do it (someone sits on your chest, lift legs, curl ankles round their head, use ALL body muscles not just legs, and pile drive the back of their head into the ground), it would have maimed or killed him, even as a kid I couldn't do that short of to save my life, you know that's gawd damn wrong.....yet, to chose to endure that...leaves very unplessant feelings. Sigh.
and many women chose to endure abuse to save their kid's harm, to keep a roof over their heads...I couldn't save my mum either.
So yeah I have an utterly incandessant rage against folk being abused, sigh

Eventually chose to stand up and knock three shades of the ever living shyte out of most of 'em...but also to still love life and people. Just used to love sitting by a river, to let all the ugliness flow out, life'sbeautiful, but as the song says "only people make you cry"
Ridiculous that eople have to suffer such.
and then swine like Wessely make us "Untermensch" weak minds so he can stroke his "ego p***s"?!!
I wonder how he would have faired? maybe his near sociopathy is a result of abuse, who knows, meh? :/



WARNING!! really unpleasant video, this stuff happend to me too, there was never a "better time" just now we get ot see it thanks to such video.


EDIT
fixed typos, added bits :p
sorry been really bad with all this crap from government on top of lousy weather setting the ME off, etc :/
 

overtrain

Medical Mafia needs to die via this virus.
While I would dispute the motives Wessely attributes to people who claim to have mcs and electromagnetic sensitivities, these conditions do not exist. There are numerous studies that back this statement.

Why do I mention the above? Not to necessarily get into a debate about MCS and EMS but to show that since these conditions are not recognized by medical science, this puts less credibility on Martin Pall and is possibly why his letter was rejected.

It seems people, IMHO, are way too quick to find any criticism of Wessley. When we pick on everything Wessely does, it's like the boy who cried wolf. People will dismiss any of our points. We need to prioritize our criticism and maybe this topic is one of those priorities, I don't know. I am not a defender of Wessely s work but at what point do we start getting diminishing returns when we criticize him?

Can we access Wessely's full paper? I would feel more comfortable about expressing my opinions after getting as much information as possible. My opinions are flexible depending on what data is available.

If anyone is interested in some of the science the following is a good source of information. I will add more if/when I have the energy.




http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org...-health-effects-of-electromagnetic-radiation/
Barb
And the point is….?

What is it exactly these researchers set out to show/prove/disprove beyond their oh so limited study guidelines in & of themselves? In an undefined x- environment with a buttload of y-variables they know not of, z doesn’t happen (the way they think it should transpire, if, in fact, z ever did transpire in the manner the ill tried, apparently without success, to get someone, anyone, donning a labcoat, to believe). So, if z doesn’t transpire via the aforementioned set, but if so, sorta maybe, well, ding, questionable. Anyone else hear “Neener!”

a systematic review
Can we assume “Meta-analysis” by the words “systematic review”? And the qualifications of said analysts are? Which countries were represented? What protocols were observed across the board and verified by who in order to validate this review as “systematic”?

Psychosomatic Medicine
The focus of the journal is clear via its title. Just sayin’.

31 double blind studies
And the 31 studies were financed by? And the protocols were? And they were all replicas? And the study sample patients trucked in from where? A newspaper ad? Which newspapers? Online ad? The possibilities boggle the mind. How samples were recruited and with what words and tone? Were they paid? How much? Did any have EMF already? Yes? No? How did researcher bias as studies took place affect contributing subjects’ verbal and physical responses? The size of each study? Who specifically set the protocols for- then observed and ensured compliance with- each and every study? WHAT was asked of the subjects? For the love of….

double blind
By this juncture in the paragraph, I’m smelling a rat. Call me crazy, but “Double-blind is a hyphenated compound considered a single word…” Please, please, Herr researchers, have exercised more astute attention to detail in the actual studies than this, this… wicky dealie, ‘K, thx.

24 of the studies found no effect
Studies don’t stand up in lab coats. People do. Paging Dr. Study… to the ER STAT.

Patients couldn’t tell the difference.
Sorry, WHAT ptns? The ones who think they already HAVE the condition? How precise is the knowledge regarding each subjects’ overall health, genetic background, race, gender, age, and all other variables that can serve as factors regarding sensitivity to a real or sham substance? Really, who has time or inclination to show up to get potentially EMFed?

some study subjects
Again, protocols. What info. specifically was solicited from study subjects? And that “some” is so precise I want to stick a needle in my eye so I’d never have to see the word again.

on subsequent
IN

trials by the same researchers
No, really? I mean, rilly? The same researchers. Just, no.
Use. different. researchers. My god, someone had to say that aloud.

difficult to show under blind conditions that exposure to EMF can trigger these symptoms
WHAT? Let’s break this down: difficult to show under blind conditions that exposure to EMF can trigger these symptoms… "difficult" via YOUR STUDY. Hello, variables? QED: Unless EMF sensitivity presents in the sole chosen acceptable way in order to validate or invalidate both its existence AND trigger point in subjects, wail, heck, Doc Faustus, that thang don’ be. How “trigger” at all correlates to the conclusion EMF exposure is not “triggered” in and of the thing itself under any other circumstances/places/times/genetic heritages/… why not add Solar System OriginationPoints here… because researchers, what? Waved some under a nostril? What, please, makes this real Science?

There is too much.... (don't curse, now) left. Here. Floundering. Too many words, lines, lacks but I’ve lost interest in this delicious NAÏVETÉ.

I have CFS & I got it how I got it. It’s not in my head. You have CFS. You got it how you got it. It’s not in your head. Call it M.E. Whatever. One diagnosis I will not accept is Sheeple. Nor should you, out there, if you have EMF.

It’s morning in America, in still so many ways, as I reach for a Xanax then head to bed. Cue the clapping & jeering.

And I don’t even know what EMF stands for. >note to self: Googleacronymlater.