By David Tuller, DrPH
Professor Trudie Chalder is a lead investigator of a series of studies of rehabilitative interventions for so-called “medically unexplained symptoms” that have failed to meet expectations but have nevertheless been promoted as demonstrating treatment success. The piece of crap known as
the PACE trial is a prime example. Most famously, Professor Chalder declared at the press conference for the first PACE results, published in 2011 in
The Lancet, that more than twice as many people in the cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy groups “got back to normal” compared to those in the other groups. This statement was false and scientifically indefensible.
Professor Chalder has never publicly acknowledged or apologized for this gross misrepresentation of her study’s findings, at least as far as I have seen. Her assertion was widely disseminated by UK journalists. That is not surprising, since the British press corps has largely served as a stenographic service for the nonsense promoted by Professor Chalder and other leading lights of the biopsychosocial ideological brigades.
With the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic, Professor Chalder has predictably urged patients suffering from what has become known as post-covid syndrome to get back to their regular lives as quickly as possible. Northwestern University law professor Steven Lubet and I
wrote last week in STAT about concerns that PACE-type treatments could be imposed on post-covid syndrome patients, with possibly harmful effect.
