2003 - A randomised controlled trial of a psycho-educational intervention to aid reco

[Bob]

That graph, where they provide the results at six months but not at one-year follow-up, is the same as what the FITNET authors have done. They're reporting only the short-term results, and failing to point out that CBT had little or no effect at long-term-follow-up.

The same happened in this paper, in which the authors pretend to report the FITNET results but fail to report the null long-term follow-up results:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23756916?dopt=Abstract

Great work in this thread, thanku Esther and @Purple. Very helpful.

 

[Leopardtail]

I wonder why Chalder failed to include the data from 12 months?

So many of their results just look like homeopathy to me - act nice to patients and get slightly better questionnaire results because i) those who are feeling better are more likely to feel grateful and so complete their forms and ii) people tend to try to be positive about those who they think have tried to help them.

That this trial with 36 people in the therapy group is still being used by them to sell their expertise a decade after it was completed is indicative of the quality of evidence they have to support their claims.

What concerns me most is their use of likert scales in their questionnaires. They give no concrete indication of what 1 vs 10 on that scale means. In contrast those used by the MEA define with reasonable precision what 10 means, what 100 means. While the evaluation of scales is subjective (done by the patient) - the value of the evaluation is far greater if the meaning of each value is fixed. The way in which they are operating increases placebo distortion.

For each of our symptom groups (immune, fatigue, mental function, bowels, etc) we need a concrete definition of the scale in use.

If you have been feeling relatively well for a while then a small dip would seem much worse on a 1-100 scale vs if one had an increase in function after failing awful.

We need definitions such as "I can function for 2.5seconds without mental strain", I can function for 10mins without mental strain etc etc.

The same definitions need to be used in EVERY study thus making interventions comparable, and comparison of Biochemistry at different fatigue levels comparable.

Even this methodology would not be ideal but it would be MUCH better.