"A CBT Model of Understanding the Truncated Graph" (PACE Trial, etc.)

[Tom Kindlon]

(3 minutes 49 seconds)
Another cheeky video from @maxwhd (from Twitter).

It includes various quotes which at least partly explain why people can have difficulties getting disability and insurance payments.

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Comment from me:...

And of course three of those people, Peter White, Michael Sharpe & Trudie Chalder were the principal investigators on the PACE Trial, a trial that cost £5 million of UK taxpayers' money (including some money from the Dept. of Work & Pensions). It found that: "There was no clear difference between treatments* in terms of lost employment" (ref: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040808)

*Graded Exercise Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Adaptive Pacing Therapy and Specialist Medical Care alone (everyone got Specialist Medical Care)

 

[A.B.]

"There is good evidence that being on benefits is a predictor of poor outcome."

There is also good evidence that hospital admission is a predictor of poor outcome, so let's shut down these harmful hospitals while we're cutting equally harmful benefits.

Seriously, what's wrong with these people? Can't they think properly?

 

[Esther12]

It's always pissed me off how academics on good salaries have been so bold in speculating about the role of secondary gain in perpetuation disability for patients - ESA WRAG is something like £4,000 a year, and means tested! That's not a great incentive for dysfunctional behaviour!

There seems to be rather more caution when it comes to recognising the incentives which are in place to encourage researchers to make exaggerated claims about their own expertise (eg: The thread on James Coyne's recent correspondence with the BMJ).

"While there is some reason to suspect that we may eventually uncover the neurological underpinnings of the modern manifestation of quackery, that should not blind us to other potentially important psychosocial factors, such as the secondary gain (monetary, social and psychological) which accrues as a result of an inappropriate adoption of the expert role."

 

[alex3619]

"There is good evidence that being on benefits is a predictor of poor outcome."

There is also good evidence that hospital admission is a predictor of poor outcome, so let's shut down these harmful hospitals while we're cutting equally harmful benefits.

Seriously, what's wrong with these people? Can't they think properly?

Its the "nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more" school of science.

Its a basic principle of research that association is not necessarily causation. Yet what else have they got? They don't have causal mechanisms to investigate, just vague claims.