• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Dr David Tuller: My Letter to Professor Hotopf About Bristol's School Absence Study

Countrygirl

Senior Member
Messages
5,431
Location
UK
http://www.virology.ws/2019/03/18/t...oWgmciG-N-rAK3GT3i5lJNTxg4JydVNrt9GNfPGdel8yE

Trial By Error: My Letter to Professor Hotopf About Bristol’s School Absence Study
18 MARCH 2019
By David Tuller, DrPH

Matthew Hotopf is a professor of general medicine psychiatry at King’s College London. He served as a peer-reviewer for a study by Bristol University investigatorsthat was published in BMJ Open in 2011. The study involved whether school absences could be used to identify cases of diagnosed CFS/ME (as the study called the illness).

As I reported in my initial investigation of this issue, Professor Hotopf raised serious concerns in his peer-review about the study’s lack of ethical review–but the paper was published anyway. As part of my efforts to figure out what happened, I sent him the following e-mail on March 9. I cc’d Dr Fiona Godlee, editorial director of BMJ. I have not heard back.
The school absence study is one of 11 from Bristol investigators that exempted themselves from ethical review citing a single research ethics committee letter. The university is now investigating the situation, as I reported in January.