By David Tuller, DrPH
Zachary Grin is a physical therapist in New York City who specializes in functional neurological disorder. Over the years, we had what I considered a good-natured, generally respectful exchange of views. As a gay man, I felt empathy for him—he posted about having difficulties with his parents after he came out.
But I blocked him a while ago after he accused me of lying. What was I “lying” about? The PACE trial. When I pointed out that some participants were “recovered” at baseline on physical function and/or fatigue, he argued that no one was “recovered” at baseline because there were four criteria they had to meet to be considered “recovered.” This, of course, is exactly the distraction and Trumpian logic the PACE authors themselves have used to avoid acknowledging the mess they created.
No one has reasonably argued that participants in PACE were “fully recovered” at baseline on all metrics. I certainly haven’t. So accusing me of that, as Zachary has, is a straw person argument. The PACE authors have refused for more than a decade to explain why ANYONE was “recovered” on ANY metric at baseline—much less the two primary outcomes of physical function and fatigue.
I explained all this to Zachary, noting that each of the four criteria had its own specific “recovery” threshold. So while no one was “fully recovered” at baseline—in other words, no one had met all four recovery thresholds—it was indisputably the case that some participants were “recovered” for physical function, fatigue or both.. Zachary continued to accuse me of lying and of deliberately misleading patients. That was the last straw. Gay brotherhood only goes so far.
After blocking Zachary, my social media has been blissfully Grin-free. Recently, however, I
posted a critique of
yet another stupid study on exercise for Long Covid—
“Post-Hospitalisation COVID-19 Rehabilitation (PHOSP-R): A randomised controlled trial of exercise-based rehabilitation,” in
European Respiratory Journal. Zachary posted a comment on the blog requesting “corrections” for non-existent errors. I’ve included here what he wrote, and my response to his silly and inaccurate arguments.
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Zachary’s comments on Virology Blog
David Tuller’s critique of the PHOSP-R study has several issues that misrepresent its findings.................
