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they changed the recovery definition because "they realised no one would have recovered otherwise"
The only conclusion i can draw at his point about Wessely is that he is really insane together with Chalder, White e.a.
They need psychotherapy.
Can someone with a scientific background explain to me what the distinction is (if there is one) between what Wessely admitted (in the bolded section above) and scientific fraud? Because Wessely's admission that the PACE team changed their recovery criteria so that they could claim their preferred treatments were 'moderately effective' rather than completely ineffective doesn't seem that far away from an acknowledgement that they falsified their results. But I'm not a scientist, so it's quite possible I've misunderstood how falsification is defined...
'Chronic fatigue syndrome' - by the more sane definitions is a reasonable clinical entity that captures most who would have been diagnosable as ME.he has no issue with lumping ME and CF syndromes
The problem here is that what they did was approved (apparently) by the various people with oversight.
They did not take the reported figures and lie about them, or alter them.
They apparently went to the supervising bodies and got approval for their new analysis plan.
The problem here is that what they did was approved (apparently) by the various people with oversight.
They did not take the reported figures and lie about them, or alter them.
They apparently went to the supervising bodies and got approval for their new analysis plan.
What they did was (assuming for the moment they believed in their study) not fraudulent.
The fact that they did in fact get approval (assuming no collusion or undue influence) serves to insulate them from nearly all possible consequences other than the retraction of the paper(s) and possibly loss of medical licence.
Thanks very much for responding. I don't disagree with anything you've written - particularly about the insulation the PACE team can claim as a consequence of having approval for the changes they made - but I think I'm trying to make a slightly different point (I say 'think' because I don't have a scientific background, so I might have the wrong end of the stick).
As I understand it, falsification is defined as manipulating your research so that the results are not accurately reflected or reported in the research records. Previously the PACE team couldn't credibly be accused of this, as they've always insisted that they made the decision to change the trial protocol before they'd done any analysis of the trial data - with the implication being that they had no idea what the results would have been if analysed in accordance with the original protocol. In fact when patients first made FOI requests for the results when analysed under the original protocol, the PACE team claimed not to have this data as they'd never done the analysis.
What Wessely said a couple of days ago calls all this into question. He's clearly stated that the PACE team knew that they were looking at a negative result for all four treatment arms if the original protocol was used, and that this was the reason why they made the application to revise the recovery criteria. If they knew they were going to find that none of the treatments worked and they amended their methodology so that they could suppress the original results and instead report a positive effect for their preferred treatments - well, that starts to sound like falsification to me. But maybe I've misunderstood how falsification is defined (as I said, I'm not a scientist).
There's also a question of what justification they gave to the oversight committee when they requested the changes. Did they tell them "We're looking at a null result unless we make some changes, and that's going to make us look stupid and upset the people who gave us £5 milllion"? Or did they feed the committee the same cock and bull story about the Bowling SF36 paper that they used in the 2013 Psychological Medicine paper? We don't know to what degree the committee approved what they did - or why they gave their approval - because of the vague and evasive answers the PACE authors have given when questioned on this point.
I realise that there's no possibility of any charges being brought against any of them - but in the court of public opinion, it looks very bad if you appear to have falsified your trial results. To use your terms and conditions analogy - so far the bankers have been using the defence that there was no way they could possibly have known in advance that the changes they made to idle accounts would disproportionately effect elderly and infirm customers. But now one of their number has inadvertently let slip that they *did* know that elderly people would be most affected, and that they'd made a conscious decision to hit them with additional charges. What they've done is still legal - but people will look at them differently, and think twice about opening an account with them in future...
But I do agree that Simon Wessely seems to have admitted that the PACE team deliberately altered their criteria in order to make their results look more positive. And I agree that if that is so it is inexcusable.
Trouble is, Wessely made damn sure his name did not appear on any of the published PACE papers, so he is talking about what 'they' did, not what he did. White, Chalder et al , if challenged on this, will simply say Wessely's got it wrong.
The only conclusion i can draw at his point about Wessely is that he is really insane together with Chalder, White e.a.
They need psychotherapy. Maybe they can start a church with CBT as a new religion.
Wessely is formally credited in the PACE papers in a variety of roles, including the rather critical one of advising about the trial design.Trouble is, Wessely made damn sure his name did not appear on any of the published PACE papers, so he is talking about what 'they' did, not what he did. White, Chalder et al , if challenged on this, will simply say Wessely's got it wrong.
Wessely is formally credited in the PACE papers in a variety of roles, including the rather critical one of advising about the trial design.
I think you make a valid and interestingly original point here. I think we tend to think of 'fraud' in science as actually inserting results that were never obtained. This is common enough to deserve a category of this sort. Manipulating apparent outcomes by changing what you report, while still reporting real observations, is very bad science but, to put simply, not just plain lying and so not generally considered fraud. This may be a different distinction from other areas, where deliberately cherry picking what is claimed may be fraud because it convinces people to part with money when if they knew all they would not. The difference may be that in science much of the time there is a degree of cherry picking of what is reported because this has to be allowed in order for important preliminary observations to be published.
It's a change of story from the "Oh but we did this before we knew the results" defence, surely. Unless they seriously decided in advance that expecting "recovered" people to be able to walk a mile would be "too extreme".