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Scientists trade insults over ME (JHP special issue)

Snow Leopard

Hibernating
Messages
5,902
Location
South Australia
George Davey Smith, for example, is an epidemiologist, and lots of the others are psychologists. Maybe he has never understood the implications of placebo effect and therapist effect because it's not part of his experience, so he leaves it to the 'experts' in clinical research.

GDS has explicitly questioned the value of the psychological emphasis on illnesses like CFS in the past due to the poor quality science.

It seems he has been "turned" over to their side. How they managed to turn him is simply a topic of speculation.
 

Invisible Woman

Senior Member
Messages
1,267
Yeah - I think it suited their purpose for MEGA for GDS to look like a complete outsider.

If they're resorting to those tactics before they even get out of the starting blocks with MEGA then, in my opinion, that tells us all we need to know.
 

lilpink

Senior Member
Messages
988
Location
UK
This Bristol proposal - B1298 - CFS National Outcomes Database and Biobank - 12/01/2012 - that was shown in David Marks' tweet, has the hallmarks of the MEGA project all over it – the blood and urine samples, the Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), the epigenetics, the - omics-es etc ……but the striking difference here is that Dr Crawley and her co-applicants appear to want to use data and samples from patients who contributed to the National Outcomes Database. Specifically they appear to be wanting to use NOD patients' long-term outcome data, (data that according to the NOD team supports the PACE Trial results), and also their already established phenotypes - remember this NOD study anyone? - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26800634 - and they say that NOD patients who contributed previously will be contacted again and asked to contribute their DNA.

Surely in this proposal Crawley and co are setting the scene for MEGA, or at least giving it a 'trial run'. Which were the 4 centres were that were going to collect those blood and urine samples, I wonder? I could hazard a guess based on the applicants who are named here - almost certainly Bath and/or Bristol with Crawley involved…….Oxford too I suspect, with Dr Brian Angus (who incidentally signed that pro-Wessely letter - http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ness-and-stigma.1324/&page=1#blogcomment-5652 ) ……. and maybe London (ELFT) too perhaps, on account of Prof Peter White being included?

Has anyone had their blood and urine taken at any of these CFS/ME clinics?

If so, I hope they were FULLY informed when they consented.

And I wonder what ethical approvals were in place for this proposal? Let's hope it wasn't yet another 'service evaluation' exercise like all those NOD studies or Crawley's school absence study - http://www.virology.ws/2017/08/28/trial-by-error-no-ethical-review-of-crawley-school-absence-study/
 
Messages
85
Scientists trade insults over myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) study
One sad casualty in this affair has been overlooked. Dr Jonathan Kerr worked at St Georges Hospital in London, the hotbed of the PACE study. He worked however on possible physiological problems in ME CFS. This was counter to the PACE ideal. His tenure in the hospital was not renewed and he was forced to leave, in fact he had to leave England to obtain his present position in South America.
 
Messages
85
In the original article it's good to see that even the Times isn't letting the psychosocial brigade have it all their own way, portraying it as six of one and half a dozen of the other is a significant move in the right direction, although nowhere near far enough of course. When I read the headline I did wonder who had been doing the insulting on our behalf, and of course it would be that liability Coyne. We have now been promoted from "borderline sociopaths" to "Professor Coyne and his allies".

Anyway, Coyne has got his wish of getting "all this backchannel bullshit into the open", and allowed the Times to portray the JHP's special edition as part of a childish academic spat. On the other hand "disgusting old fart neoliberal hypocrite" is a wonderfully attention-grabbing piece of publicity that will appeal to the British public, and if it's true that there's no such thing as bad publicity then his petulant rantings may have inadvertently done us a favour after all - we were never going to get higher level coverage from the Times anyway, what with their place on the board of the SMC and the lazy, spineless journalism we've had from them in the past.

Can't help noticing that 3 JHP board members stropping off in a huff is a newsworthy "mass resignation" whilst the fate of 250,000 UK citizens suffering from ME for decades seems totally unworthy of serious investigation.
Even if you take the PACE research as a proper scientific study, which i question, the results published by the authors do NOT show impressive positive results. The results are marginal at best. This should suggest major questions about the trial and the imposed treatment.
 

Snow Leopard

Hibernating
Messages
5,902
Location
South Australia
Even if you take the PACE research as a proper scientific study, which i question, the results published by the authors do NOT show impressive positive results. The results are marginal at best. This should suggest major questions about the trial and the imposed treatment.

Exactly. The authors try to claim that the differences in questionnaire means between groups is a "moderate" result. But anyone who has looked at the questionnaires themselves knows how little change there was and could easily be explained by the various biases that were not controlled for due to lack of blinding.
 

frozenborderline

Senior Member
Messages
4,405
James Coyne, a co-editor on the journal and emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said he was glad to see Professor Davey Smith go, replying: “I have become sick and tired of you badgering me backchannel.” He added: “You had long been one of my intellectual heroes but in your attempt to bully me you moved from a Trotskyite in your younger days to a disgusting old fart neoliberal hypocrite.

Nice bantz... insults these pace trial advocates deserve, and neoliberalism does have a lot to do with how they are treating me/cfs... feel compelled to point out that almost all trotskyites turn into neoconservatives/neoliberals though!
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
Debored13
extremists are pretty much the same...hence classic political image showing the political dispositions in a horse shoe shape
not much difference in the end between communism and fascism because folk drag them all to hell (and any other system)
 

frozenborderline

Senior Member
Messages
4,405
Debored13
extremists are pretty much the same...hence classic political image showing the political dispositions in a horse shoe shape
not much difference in the end between communism and fascism because folk drag them all to hell (and any other system)
I don't really believe in horseshoe theory, centrist/liberal governance has been a failure imo
 

Snowdrop

Rebel without a biscuit
Messages
2,933
Even if you take the PACE research as a proper scientific study, which i question, the results published by the authors do NOT show impressive positive results. The results are marginal at best. This should suggest major questions about the trial and the imposed treatment.

There are most certainly major questions with regard to this trial. It is the focus of a great deal of scrutiny.

David Tuller has done a brilliant job of blogging on the PACE trial and other related issues to the point where many people who knew nothing about ME have been informed and have themselves looked at the trial.

This trial is dead. That is it holds no scientific relevance. It's just that it takes a while for the institutions that have treated it as valid to catch up with the facts.