The Mental Elf: Simon Wessely on PACE

[SOC]

It would appear that given what's going on at the NIH, the good ship PACE did NOT make the voyage all the way across the pond ("They don't have the skillset"). Sorry, SW. Perhaps you should send out a search party. I'd suggesting looking for wreckage around any icebergs. It seems your ship has encountered reality... I mean icebergs.

Icebergs:
Petersen
Klimas
Light
Hornig
Lipkin
Montoya
Davis
and others.

I see another graphic here. SW waving off HMS PACE as it sails into waters filled with real researcher icebergs.

It's getting so that he's setting himself up for these things. Really, was an "unsinkable" cruiseliner sailing from the UK to the US the best image he could have created at this point? Wasn't that just asking for Titanic comparisons? Can he be that oblivious?

 

[Chrisb]

If we ever tire of Titanic metaphors we could always keep the nautical theme going by moving on to the .Ship of Theseus.

How many changes can you make to the ship before it changes into something different?

 

[Mark]

 

[Sasha]

I couldn't stand the idea of that article sitting there with sensible comments a long way down because of all the puff-tweets at the top so I've replied to the topmost tweet with this comment, which is currently in moderation:

It is disappointing – and surprising - that Professor Wessely appears to remain blind to the nature and extent of the flaws in the PACE trial.

Six prominent scientists today published an open letter to The Lancet, which published the study, saying "the study suffered from major flaws that have raised serious concerns about the validity, reliability and integrity of the findings."

http://www.virology.ws/2015/11/13/an-open-letter-to-dr-richard-horton-and-the-lancet/

Over 10,000 people have signed a petition calling for the misleading claims made in PACE to be retracted:

http://my.meaction.net/petitions/pace-trial-needs-review-now

I suggest interested readers follow those links and get the facts.

Mental Elf, you owe patients an apology for publishing this biased and misleading article. How will you make this right?
​

If they have the guts to publish it (and they published several such comments of mine where I thought I was really testing their limits) then that comment will be highly visible to readers who might have been taken in by the article.

 

[Sasha]

Happy to say Mental Elf published my comment so it's now pretty much the first thing at the end of SW's article.

I seriously do wonder how Mental Elf are (a) going to make reparation to patients and (b) ever get their reputation back. This really was a disgraceful episode.

 

[Esther12]

The guy who runes Mental Elf clearly thinks Wessely did a good job defending the PACE trial. A bit worrying.

 

[Sasha]

The guy who runes Mental Elf clearly thinks Wessely did a good job defending the PACE trial. A bit worrying.

Has he said so since the article received all those comments?

I doubt the Elf guy had read PACE at all - probably didn't think it through and was easily taken in by a pile of waffle from SW in that article that sounded sciencey.

 

[Esther12]

I've forgotten who he is... I think someone pointed out that he's related to the biopsychosocial stuff himself. I'm not sure I'd expect sound arguments and evidence to have a big affect on his beliefs.

 

[Sasha]

I've forgotten who he is... I think someone pointed out that he's related to the biopsychosocial stuff himself. I'm not sure I'd expect sound arguments and evidence to have a big affect on his beliefs.