Sounds like professor Gundersen has been bought by PACE authors. Perhaps Trudie Chalder recruited him in her latest visit to Norway ?
I also think it is unlikely to be coincidence that Prof Gundersen came up with this article just after Trudie Chalder's visit to the country.
It's a coincident (se below).
I think it might have more to do with The Norwegian Research Council having recently asked ME-patients what kind of research the patients themselves would prefer getting funded.
Correct - this was the occassion that prompted it - however it is not the underlying cause.
I wonder if Gundersen has actually looked at the details on this. It sounds like he hasn't.
I don't think he's interested.
I have written to Gundersen but not had a reply. I am also hoping that Aftenposten will publish a brief response from me.
You should know that he is very unlikely to be interested in the facts around CFS at all.
Please keep in mind that the following are only speculations.
The underlying cause of his "interest" in CFS is more likely to be due to an internal conflict at his university department (institute for bioscience) regarding a failed research project on borrelia (mentioned as the first example of research in his article, and contrasted with PACE). Carried out by Ivar Mysterud and Morten Laane.
He is trying to distance himself from these two researches, who placed the department in a bad light because they didn't follow regulations (didn't report the protocol to Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics (REC), which is required by law for medical research). Also it turns out after thorough research that the method was unusable. However, a negative research result should not be an embarrasment as you long as you accept it (and I think everyone does in this case).
Unfortunately for both K. Gundersen and patients, he does that by endorsing another study (PACE), which also didn't follow proper standards. If what I read was correct it actually violated the law in the same way. (I read here on PR that changes in the protocol (removing objective measurements) were not reported to the english analogue to the norwegian REC until after they occured.)