Dr David Tuller: A Letter to Archives of Disease in Childhood

[Countrygirl]

http://www.virology.ws/2018/10/08/t...t-letter-to-archives-of-disease-in-childhood/

Trial By Error: A Letter to Archives of Disease in Childhood
30 JANUARY 2018
By David Tuller, DrPH

Earlier today, Professor Racaniello e-mailed the following letter to Nick Brown, the editor-in-chief of Archives of Disease in Childhood, one of the journals from the BMJ Group. Archives recently published a study of the Lightning Process in kids with ME/CFS.

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Dear Dr. Brown:

In September, Archives of Disease in Childhood published a study called “Clinical and cost-effectiveness of the Lightning Process in addition to specialist medical care for paediatric chronic fatigue syndrome: randomised controlled trial” [1]. Like many studies of this illness, it was an open-label trial with self-reported outcomes—a study design known to be highly vulnerable to bias.

The researchers have received criticism for their initial decision to conduct a pediatric trial of the Lightning Process–a commercial, pseudo-scientific intervention that combines elements of life-coaching, osteopathy, and neurolinguistics programming. The intervention encourages participants to report that it has made them better, another source of potential bias. Beyond the decision to study the Lightning Process, the study suffered from major cross-contamination between treatment arms and significant loss-to-follow-up, among other problems.