http://www.investinme.org/IIME-Newslet-1603-01.htm
References:
http://www.investinme.org/IIME-Newslet-1601-01.htm
http://www.investinme.org/IIME-Newslet-1602-01.htm
Continue reading here.The PACE Trial Did Not Go Unchallenged for Five Years
Margaret Williams 28th March 2016
IiME Newslett March 2016:
On 21st March 2016 Rebecca Goldin, Director of STATS.org and Professor of Mathematical Sciences at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, published her devastating critique of the PACE trial, asking in bewilderment: “How did the study go unchallenged for five years?” (http://www.stats.org/pace-research-sparked-patient-rebellion-challenged-medicine/); others have been asking the same question.
However, the iatrogenic disaster that is the PACE trial did not go unchallenged for five years.
It is important that there should be an accurate record of the many challenges which were submitted by numerous people, including Professor Malcolm Hooper, but which were either ignored, dismissed, publicly ridiculed, denied outright or denigrated, for example, as in Nigel Hawkes’ feature article in the British Medical Journal: “Dangers of research into chronic fatigue syndrome -- Nigel Hawkes reports how threats to researchers from activists in the CFS/ME community are stifling research into the condition” (BMJ 2011;342:d3780 doi: 10.1136/bmj.d3780 Page 1).
Hawkes wrote that publication of the PACE results prompted a: “response to the Medical Research Council (MRC), which part funded the trial, and a shorter 43 page rebuttal to the Lancet. Both were written by Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Sunderland, who branded the trial “unethical and unscientific.” He wrote: “Entry criteria were used that have no credibility; definitions and outcome measures were changed repeatedly; data appears to have been manipulated, obfuscated, or not presented at all (so it cannot be checked) and the authors interpretation of their published data as ‘moderate’ success is unsustainable.” Both the MRC and the Lancet have considered the submission and rejected it, the Lancet commenting that the volume of critical letters it received about the PACE trial smacked of an active campaign to discredit the research.
References:
http://www.investinme.org/IIME-Newslet-1601-01.htm
http://www.investinme.org/IIME-Newslet-1602-01.htm
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