Whoops, he forgot a couple words in his title there:Another article by Ben Goldacre
http://www.nature.com/news/make-jou...ials-properly-1.19280?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews
"Make journals report clinical trials properly (except PACE)"
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Whoops, he forgot a couple words in his title there:Another article by Ben Goldacre
http://www.nature.com/news/make-jou...ials-properly-1.19280?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews
Gosh, I bet he finds that annoying.
Whoops, he forgot a couple words in his title there:
"Make journals report clinical trials properly (except PACE)"
I don't think so. I just think he is so smug he knows he can say this sort of thing - make himself look good yet not associate himself with PACE in any way.My impression is that Ben Goldacre may have written his latest piece with the PACE trial in mind, but has generalized his argument, which is probably a smart thing to do, since:
not associate himself with PACE in any way
Yes I know. But you said he might have wrote it with PACE in mind and you said that was probably smart. I disagree with both those items.I just said that I think he does not want to associate himself with PACE, due to the mud-slinging politics.
unsigned rebuttal
@BurnA
Have you not previously read that a lot of scientists are put off going into ME/CFS research because of the unpleasant politics? Which is not surprising, since who wants to conduct science and forge a career in a political cesspit?
But if you think throwing yourself into such a cesspit is smart, well then your views are noted.
(the trouble with mud-slinging is that you end up with a lot of mud on you);
BG is not a scientific researcher.
He writes this sort of stuff for a living - the fact that he can write it yet ignore PACE is the issue. In fact I think he might be rubbing our noses in it, sort of saying, is this what you want me to say about PACE, haha I'm not going to.
The basics of a rigorous scientific method were worked out many years ago, but there is now growing concern about systematic structural flaws that undermine the integrity of published data: selective publication, inadequate descriptions of study methods that block efforts at replication, and data dredging through undisclosed use of multiple analytical strategies. Problems such as these undermine the integrity of published data and increase the risk of exaggerated or even false-positive findings, leading collectively to the ‘replication crisis’.
If researchers switch from these pre-specified outcomes, without explaining that they have done so, then they break the assumptions of their statistical tests. That carries a significant risk of exaggerating findings, or simply getting them wrong, and this in turn helps to explain why so many trial results eventually turn out to be incorrect.
We expected that journals would take these discrepancies seriously, because trial results are used by physicians, researchers and patients to make informed decisions about treatments. Instead, we have seen a wide range of reactions.
Lives are at stake when subtle statistical signals of benefit and risk are sought in noisy, messy trial data.
BG knows all about harrassment because it was on his website an ME patient was harrassed so badly they took legal action and won.
@BurnA
What I am saying is that whenever any doctor, biomedical researcher, journalist, politician, etc takes an interest in ME/CFS, and comes to the support of ME/CFS patients, in spite of the cesspit politics of ME/CFS, and in spite of the fact that so many uncritical medical minds have accepted hook, line and sinker the notion that ME/CFS has a psychological cause, I for one am very grateful.
And I would be immensely pleased if Ben Goldacre did take more interest in exposing the highly dubious evidence base of the PACE trial. However, I can understand why a researcher may shy away from ME/CFS.
From the intro paragraph in Wikipedia: "he is a Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, part of the University of Oxford's Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences."
Ben Goldacre's publications on PubMed (48 to date) are here.
I have to claim ignorance here, I read somewhere on PR that someone took legal action against a troll on the BG forums.Are you saying that a patient took action against Goldacre's website and won? Please tell us more...
We would all be pleased if he did but for 3 years he's been too busy. When are you going to realise he doesn't want to be your friend ?
I don't blame anyone, but I've said this before- BG makes a lot of money from writing on bad science. It's inexcusable that he is too busy to write about PACE.The world is full of problems. You cannot blame someone just because they don't come to the aid of your particular one.