By David Tuller, DrPH
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No human being should ever have to read as many papers as I have from Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s methodologically and ethically challenged pediatrician, and Professor Trudie Chalder, King’s College London’s statistically and factually challenged cognitive behavior therapy specialist. Most recently, I had to ask
the UK’s Health Research Authority to track down why most of the papers that Professor Crawley was ordered to correct a few years ago, per the results of an investigation into her work, had not been corrected. And Professor Chalder makes one egregious error after another–as when she declared at a PACE press conference that people in the trial got “back to normal,” a serious misstatement of the findings.
Really, I’ve had it up to here with the crap that they publish. Perhaps that’s why I have so far avoided paying attention to a major study in which they both play a role. But the time has come to discuss the project called
Children & young people (CYP) with Long Covid—which the authors shorthand as the CLoCk study. (Enough with these stupid pseudo-acronyms! What the @#$ does “clock” have to do with anything???)
Professors Chalder and Crawley are not the main investigators but are members of a larger consortium of researchers across multiple universities. Nonetheless, their participation is certainly a red flag. The prospective study is sponsored by University College London’s Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and has been awarded £1.35 million from UK funding agencies. Here is a description of the project from UCL’s site:
“This project has identified test positive and test negative 11–17-year-olds through Public Health England’s database. We will be contacting families 3, 6, 12 and 24 months after the young person’s COVID-19 test asking them to complete a questionnaire about the young person’s physical and mental health. We will compare the symptoms between those who have tested positive and those who do not, and also track symptoms over time.”
