Coyne: Should The BMJ silence authors who were abused by a reviewer?

[Yogi]

Wessely is PR savvy. I think it's someone else. The anger suggests it's someone who stands to lose a lot from PACE trial retraction and collapse of the psychosocialbabble model. Maybe Sharpe?

He is becoming a bit unhinged recently. Don't think it can be Sharpe as he was the PI and clear COI??

 

[Daisymay]

My view is name and shame reviewer 2 for being exactly what they are for all to see. Perhaps they are so used to back room conversations they think they can make vile and unsubstantiated comments with absolute impunity.

Smacks of delusional behaviour to me?

Quite, and positively vexatious!

 

[Sean]

It's a campaign, I tell you! A campaign!

 

[JayS]

Wessely is PR savvy. I think it's someone else. The anger suggests it's someone who stands to lose a lot from PACE trial retraction and collapse of the psychosocialbabble model. Maybe Sharpe?

I don't think it's likely to be any names we'd be as familiar with as we are with Wessely's, and the PACE team. After everything that's transpired, it would be far too irrational to display anger they've for so long managed to keep under wraps, if indeed they ever express themselves that way. I've seen that kind of nastiness, but not from them.

My guess would be from colleagues who are willing to express that sort of bile, almost on their behalf, or even people they have mentored who have biases that have led to the least generous possible interpretations of the literature, which I've always felt is exactly what was desired in the first place. I could be wrong. But I'd be shocked if they keep in that sort of anger in every other professional setting and exposed themselves in this way, even to this degree.

 

[Esther12]

Wessely is PR savvy. I think it's someone else. The anger suggests it's someone who stands to lose a lot from PACE trial retraction and collapse of the psychosocialbabble model. Maybe Sharpe?

I agree. No way it was Wessely. I'd expect it's someone more on the periphery, who has less of an understanding of things. Richard Horton came out with some of the boldest defences of PACE and attacks on critics, presumably because he had no idea what he was talking about.

There should be an independent invistigation of the way the BMJ has dealt with many of the issues around CFS. I don't think that they can be trusted to overcome what seems to be quite entrenched and shameless bigotry.

 

[Woolie]

It's a campaign, I tell you! A campaign!

Yea, harrassment of researchers. Vexatious behaviour. What next, death threats? Or perhaps that worst of all abuses - an FOI request??!!??

I suspect the nasty reviewer must be a member of that "fairly small, but highly organised, very vocal and very damaging group of individuals" - you know, the ones who are trying to "hijack this agenda and distort the debate".

(Sorry, I could resist )

 

[Woolie]

I agree. No way it was Wessely. I'd expect it's someone more on the periphery, who has less of an understanding of things. Richard Horton came out with some of the boldest defences of PACE and attacks on critics, presumably because he had no idea what he was talking about.

Yea, the PACE authors and Wessely are too wily. PR masterminds, they are. They'd use a more subtle means to undermine the research, something that no-one could use against them later.

 

[Sean]

There should be an independent investigation of the way the BMJ has dealt with many of the issues around CFS.

Plus the Lancet, and the vast majority of psych journals.

I don't think medicine can be trusted to deliver on such an investigation. It will require a panel of genuinely independent people from outside to analyse and critique it properly. Should comprise mostly of senior scientists with unimpeachable reputations in a mix of other disciplines like stats, biology, physics, chemistry, experimental design, with maybe a senior judge, an ethics expert, etc. And they will need to devote a couple of years of their lives to do it properly.

But somebody has to clean the mess up, and medicine clearly cannot do it on its own.

 

[Sean]

I suspect the nasty reviewer must be a member of that "fairly small, but highly organised, very vocal and very damaging group of individuals" - you know, the ones who are trying to "hijack this agenda and distort the debate".

Bastard reviewers and researchers, just don't want to recover from their FIBS (False Illness Beliefs Syndrome).

 

[Woolie]

FIBS

Haha, "fibs". I only just got that!

 

[Sean]

When God was handing out brains, Woolie thought he said 'trains', and asked for a slow one.

 

[Orla]

I don't think any of the reviews would be a listed author on the PACE trial (surely even the BMJ wouldn't allow that?). So that rules out some prominent people.

 

[Sean]

I doubt it was Wessely, or a senior PACE person.

But, hey, you never know. The pressure must be getting to some of them.

 

[Wolfiness]

^ Yes, we know from CW's Twitter it isn't.

My money's on Rod Liddle.


I'd like to share this article with my non-ME friends but it is too obliquely and wildly written for people not already in the loop to understand easily.

 

[Wolfiness]

"Because scientifically literate patients telling us about themselves would be against everything we stand for."

 

[Barry53]

[My highlighting]

Self-acknowledged as not an objective review then. In fact it is not really a review at all - more a vitriolic opinion piece.

 

[Barry53]

Conflation and misdirection again. Wiltshire et al's use of the word "merely" in this context is clearly not stating that such forms of disability can never ever exist; the point being emphasised is that properly-diagnosed ME/CFS is not such a disability. Just because the reviewer is confident they have witnessed such conditions, that hardly counts as evidence that a totally different condition, ME/CFS, must also be the same. So the reviewer picks on the word "merely"; states that they, the reviewer, have witnessed life-threatening fearful cognitions; then mashes the two together to denigrate CW et al's statement that ME/CFS is not down to fearful congnitions. I am so peed off with this endless chicanery of deliberately conflating and misdirecting what is said about ME/CFS.

 

[TiredSam]

So many ways to take this apart. Here are 3:

Have they never spoken with patients who are at risk of dying due to mere fearful cognitions

I read this as a confession by Reviewer 2 that, having spoken to patients at risk of dying, they chose to assume (and diagnose) that they were suffering the consequences of fearful cognitions, instead of doing their job and looking for a biological cause. I note the choice of "spoken with" rather than "examined". What was it, merely a five minute phone chat? I hope my use of the word "merely" doesn't offend.

Have they never spoken with patients who are at risk of dying due to mere fearful cognitions

To be honest I'd be surprised if anyone has. If there is such a thing, evidence of the mechanism / causation of how this claimed phenomenon occurs is long overdue.

Have they never spoken with patients who are at risk of dying due to mere fearful cognitions

Who assessed the "risk of dying"? Is Reviewer 2 claiming here that they can save lives by the power of their speech alone?

Do we know anyone with a saviour complex who issues a diagnosis after merely "speaking" with a sufferer, or their parent, on the phone? Couldn't be, could it?

EDIT: I've clearly been spending too much time on the other thread, and need to lie down.

Oh, I am lying down.

 

[Wolfiness]

It's just more "Ohhh, so you're claiming psychiatric diseases aren't real!" strawmannery.

 

[RogerBlack]

The review has now been posted in full on https://jcoynester.wordpress.com/20...bused-by-a-peer-reviewer-and-silenced-by-bmj/

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/862657228364447745

To quote Coynes summary of it

1. The reviewer recommends the manuscript be published without the authors being given the opportunity of revision. The intent of this is that it would draw Rapid Responses protesting what patients with chronic fatigue syndrome have to put up with, including from patients who, like the authors, have the condition.
2. The reviewer dislikes this paper and yet still want it to be published.
3. The reviewer claims the manuscript insults and demeans other patients.
4. If the paper is published and the PACE investigators don’t respond as the reviewer hopes, the reviewer will post a comment to the authors “Shame on you.”
5. The authors should just move on and be done with the PACE trial.
6. The reviewer notes that the paper is billed as a collaboration between patients and scientists, but questions whether any of the authors qualify as “clinicians” or “scientists.”
7. The reviewer expresses doubts that the patients meet criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome.
8. The reviewer reiterates the doubt the patients meet criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome and suggests that they were erroneously self-diagnosed.
9. The reviewer suggests that the authors were erroneously self-diagnosed and went doctor-shopping until they found agreement.
10. After earlier mentioning that he had not obtained the author’s published review, he questions whether it is a major review.
11. The reviewer asserts that the PACE investigators can defend the recovery rates they claimed in the PACE trial.
12. The reviewer questions whether the authors are merely writing about themselves rather than persons with diagnosed chronic fatigue syndrome.
13. The reviewer claims the authors insult patients with genuine chronic fatigue syndrome when they challenge Wessely’s model emphasizing “fearful cognitions.”

Reviewer 1 was positive! And indeed raised additional problems with the original research leading to this analysis.

This makes the BMJ 'our editorial response was more positive than the reviews' odd.

It is even more odd, as this lengthy 'negative' review still recommends it is published as it stands.