Invest in ME writes to The Lancet about PACE

[Sasha]

Good to see charities start to pile on in support of the scientists' letter:

http://www.investinme.org/IIME-Newslet-1511-01.htm

 

[BurnA]

Great to read, it certainly doesnt hold back.
I particularly like :

• If raw data from the trial shows that the public has been misled even more than so far identified then there should be a public inquiry
  
  
• The MRC invests in research on behalf of the UK tax payer.
  The taxpayer has been ill-served by the PACE Trial.
  The MRC should therefore examine the possibility of having the funds for the PACE Trial returned in part or in full to the public – and from there to be allocated to biomedical research into ME.
  
  
• It must be considered whether the Principal Investigators of the PACE Trial be barred from receiving any further public funding for future research into ME.

That should scare a few people.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Great to read, it certainly doesnt hold back.
I particularly like :

• If raw data from the trial shows that the public has been misled even more than so far identified then there should be a public inquiry
  
• The MRC invests in research on behalf of the UK tax payer.
  The taxpayer has been ill-served by the PACE Trial.
  The MRC should therefore examine the possibility of having the funds for the PACE Trial returned in part or in full to the public – and from there to be allocated to biomedical research into ME.
  
• It must be considered whether the Principal Investigators of the PACE Trial be barred from receiving any further public funding for future research into ME.

That should scare a few people.

It was beautifully worded. I think the Wessley cabal should be charged with fraud and misuse of taxpayer funds.

 

[alex3619]

It was beautifully worded. I think the Wessley cabal should be charged with fraud and misuse of taxpayer funds.

I don't think the evidence is strong enough to prove fraud. There is one single exception to that, which I now think can prove fraud. Over time we need to push that. It only applies to one investigator, though if we look more deeply this might change. I don't want to discuss this more in any thread as its about highly sensitive information.

 

[Gijs]

Read: Good science, bad science: Questioning research practices in psychological research

http://dare.uva.nl/record/1/417013

Analyzes in more of hundreds of studies in psychology, have shown that in more than half inaccuracies and mistakes are made (conscious and unconscious). Researchers not only remove data, they also use favorably scores.

I am almost 100% convinced this has happend in the Pace trials too.

 

[alex3619]

We know they deliberately used a statistical method that skewed the data in their favour and was mathematically inappropriate. I would love to investigate this more but I am not up to it at the moment. This has been discussed here for years, and in recent commentaries by Tuller etc. It did not pass the empirical test either - how can you define normal health as the equivalent to a typical eighty year old?