biophile
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More importantly we would expect the mito dysfunction group to be tested against a randomized group of CFSers. But in fact they chose CFSers who they knew, prior to the study, had no mito abnormalities. Quote: "The CFS group was recruited from patients who had undergone a muscle biopsy with measurement of RCC activity for evaluation of a suspected neuromuscular or mitochondrial disorder between 2005 and 2007." They were given a CFS diagnosis when no abnormalities were found. In other words, the researchers knew objectively the outcome of the main point of the study before they started. Am I wrong or is this not really science? (No viable null hypothesis?).
Reminds me of Wessely's recent reminiscence about an early study of his involving comparisons of CFS vs depression vs neuromuscular disorders (http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/83/1/4.full.). Conducted in the late 1980's with no official CFS criteria, instead Wessely sourced "cases of unexplained fatigue" (ie an absence of abnormalities on conventional neurological testing including muscle testing) from neurologists at a hospital for nervous diseases using an ad hoc criteria which seems remarkably similar to what the 1991 Oxford criteria would turn out to be: 6 months (unexplained) fatigue as the primary complaint.
The "striking" overlap of chronic fatigued patients with depressed patients compared to muscle disorder patients would be an unsurprising methodological artifact when considering that the criteria/symptom of fatigue has known overlap with depression and those with evidence of neurological and muscular abnormalities were actively excluded from the study.