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The SMILE Trial Lightning Process for Children with CFS: Results too good to be true?
by James C Coyne October 05, 2017
A guest post by Dr. Keith Geraghty
Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, Centre for Primary Care, Division of Population Health and Health Services Research
ASA ruling left some awkward moments in Phil Parker’s videos promoting his Lightning Process.
The Advertising Standards Authority previously ruled that the Lightning Process (LP) should not be advertised as a treatment for CFS/ME. So how then, did LP end up getting tested as a treatment in a clinical trial involving adolescents with CFS/ME? Publication of the trial sparked controversy after it was claimed that LP, in addition to specialist medical care, out-performed specialist medical care alone. This blog attempts to shed light on just how a quack alternative online teaching programme, ended up in a costly clinical trial and discusses how the SMILE trial exemplifies all that is wrong with contemporary psycho-behavioural trials; that are clearly vulnerable to bias and spin.
The SMILE trial compared LP plus specialist medical care (SMC) to SMC alone (commonly a mix of cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise therapy). LP is a trademarked training programme created by Phil Parker from osteopathy, life coaching and neuro-linguistic programming. It costs over £600 and after assessment and telephone briefings, clients attend group sessions over three days. While there is much secrecy about what exactly these sessions involve, a cursory search online shows us that past clients were told to ‘block out all negative thoughts’ and to consider themselves well, not sick. A person with an illness is said to be ‘doing illness’ (LP spells doing as duing, to signify LP means more than just doing). LP appears to attempt to get a participant to ‘stop doing’ by blocking negative thoughts and making positive affirmations.
Leading psychologists have raised concerns. Professor James Coyne called LP “quackery” and said neuro-linguistic programming “…has been thoroughly debunked for its pseudoscience”. In an expert reaction to the SMILE trial for the Science Media Centre, Professor Dorothy Bishop of Oxford University stated: “the intervention that was assessed is commercial and associated with a number of warning signs. The Lightning Process appears based on neuro-linguistic programming, which, despite its scientific-sounding name, has long been recognised as pseudoscience“.
