Cochrane has just given the finger to the international ME/CFS community. After jerking everyone around and promising for five years to conduct a new review of exercise interventions for the illness, the organization abruptly abandoned that commitment this week. On Monday, Cochrane posted the following message on its website:
“In 2019, Cochrane published an amended version of the review ‘Exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome’ and, at that time, announced an intention to further update the review. Due to insufficient new research in the field and a lack of resources to oversee this work, the update will not be proceeding.”
(Under the circumstances, it is incumbent upon Cochrane to withdraw the outdated review that the cancelled one was supposed to replace. To that end, the Science For ME online forum has re-upped its earlier call, via petition, for the organization to do just that. As of this posting, the petition has more than 13,000 signers.)
Also on Monday, members of the team selected to write both the protocol for the new review and the review itself received a terse message alerting them to these developments. The team had submitted a draft protocol to Cochrane almost two years ago but had received no substantive response about its disposition–until now. It seems that Cochrane did not share the draft protocol with members of an Independent Advisory Group, a parallel team appointed to provide guidance and oversight during the process.
The message from Cochrane to the members of the writing team read:
“Dear [names of writing team members],
“This email is to inform you of developments with the submission of your protocol on exercise therapy for ME CFS. There have been some discussions within the different leadership groups of Cochrane about the priority of this review in recent weeks.
“The outcome is that Cochrane has decided not to proceed with an update. Producing a meaningful update of this review is not a priority based on insufficient new research in the field and the available organizational resources to oversee this work.
“You will shortly receive notification that your submission has been withdrawn. This will outline your rights in relation to the content of the protocol.
“Kind regards,
“Office of the Editor in Chief
So that’s it. Five years of effort wasted. Five years of promises un-promised.
It is typical bureaucrat-ese to send a letter from an “office”—as in, the “office of the editor in chief”–rather than from the responsible individual. In this case, I assume we can assume that Karla Soares-Weiser, Cochrane’s actual editor in chief, agrees with the decision issued by her “office.”
The decision represents a complete turnaround from the organization’s position at the time it published the 2019 review from Larun et al, itself an iteration of previous work. The review recommended exercise, albeit with multiple hedges, but it was so fraught with issues that it should never have been published in the first place. However, powerful forces among the GET ideological brigades pressured Cochrane to release it. The drama spilled out into public view–an embarassment for the organization............................
