This month marks the seventh anniversary of Virology Blog’s publication of my 15,000-word investigation of the egregiously flawed and fraudulent (i.e. misleading, deceptive) piece of crap known as the PACE trial. (Incidentally, it is also the one-year anniversary of the new and much-improved guidelines for ME/CFS from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.) To write that piece, I spent more than a year reading and interviewing people about the trial, traveled to England to meet with PACE participant and others, and consulted extensively with academic colleagues in epidemiology, biostatistics, and infectious diseases. And as I have always acknowledged, I relied extensively on the knowledge and wisdom of the amazing ME/CFS patient community.
(The PACE authors and the editor of
The Lancet, which published the first results, refused to talk with me.)
My initial series, published in
three installments from October 21st to 23rd, 2015, was covered in major media outlets—Science, The Guardian, Slate, STAT, and so on. I expected it to be a one-off; after all, what trial could survive the revelation that it included the kinds of flagrant methodological and ethical flaws that marred PACE? Unfortunately, the
Lancet editor, Richard Horton, one-time champion of Andrew Wakefield’s discredited study of the purported link between vaccines and autism, proved himself to be as deluded about the trial’s quality as the PACE authors themselves. So nothing happened. That’s one reason I’ve kept at it.
What is it about this trial that captured my ongoing interest? I was truly fascinated that the entire academic-medical-industrial complex appeared to be gripped by some form of societal hysteria or “emperor-has-no-clothes-ism” regarding the purported merits of the trial. The unaccountable acclaim for PACE was prevalent not only in the UK but among health care professionals and public health experts around the world, including in the US.
(and his indefatigability on behalf of the ME/CFS community)