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UK: funding of ME/CFS by major institutional funders over the past decade

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Has anyone who knows the type research all the recipients in the list are involved with been able to determine how many millions went to biopsychosocial studies, and how many millions went to biomedical studies?

In this post, I was able to work out that overall, only 41% of ME/CFS studies in the UK are biomedical. Whereas in the US, 56% are biomedical.

The worst country though is the Netherlands, where only 32% of ME/CFS studies are biomedical. (That probably represents the influence of the Nijmegen group in the Netherlands, who are strongly biopsychosocial.)
 
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Solstice

Senior Member
Messages
641
Has anyone who knows the type research all the recipients in the list are involved with been able to determine how many millions went to biopsychosocial studies, and how many millions went to biomedical studies?

In this post, I was able to work out that overall, only 41% of ME/CFS studies in the UK are biomedical. Whereas in the US, 56% are biomedical.

The worst country though is the Netherland, where only 32% of ME/CFS studies are biomedical.

We're number 1, we're number 1.





;(
 

Cinders66

Senior Member
Messages
494
Has anyone who knows the type research all the recipients in the list are involved with been able to determine how many millions went to biopsychosocial studies, and how many millions went to biomedical studies?

In this post, I was able to work out that overall, only 41% of ME/CFS studies in the UK are biomedical. Whereas in the US, 56% are biomedical.

The worst country though is the Netherland, where only 32% of ME/CFS studies are biomedical.


Was your PAPER percentage including charity funding? If you're just going by portion of papers then MERUK & MEA & recently AFME fund every year or 2 a new study or 2 , always biomedical but called seed or pilot studies probably varying bewtween £10-30 000 each which could be boosting the stats but actually representing small privately funded research very different to the studies on average 10xs + that which large finders fund. Also in uk the BPS lot will use the cortisol circadian stuff in their research supporting for eg a dysregulated system remedied by sleep hygiene and GET.

I'd say however you look at it state funded biomedical research in uk total ever is the low millions.
 
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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Was your PAPER percentage including charity funding?

The percentage biomedical I derived was by the number of studies, rather than the amount of funding. Also, I only looked at studies listed on MEDLINE / PubMed. Small studies published in journals not on PubMed would unfortunately not be included in my figures.


Also in uk the BPS lot will use the cortisol circadian stuff in their research supporting for eg a dysregulated system remedied by sleep hygiene and GET.

That would still be counted as biomedical, by the way I derived the percentage.
 
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Persimmon

Senior Member
Messages
135
Might I suggest that Phoenix Rising makes an open request for the release of the ME/CFS grants-dataset created for this Report.

My guess is that Holgate commissioned this Report for the sole purpose of lobbying for increased UK Government funding. It's probably a good report for that purpose.

At the same time, it's very disappointing they didn't publish a list of each ME/CFS-related grant that UberResearch identified. This could have been added to the Report as an appendix, or by simply referencing a publicly accessible online file.

Many would see it as important to be able to differentiate between biomedical and biopsychosocial research funding.

Accessing the dataset would also allow us to assess how many of the listed grants were not primarily aimed at ME or CFS (eg the publicised Newcastle Sjongren's study that was initially described as an ME/CFS study, where ME/CFS was only used as a control group).

To withhold this dataset, now that it exists, would have parallels to the withholding of the PACE Trial primary outcomes dataset.

As part of a CMRC project, the grants-dataset was presumably assembled at public expense, and with ME-designated funds.

As the dataset already exists, it would be easy to publish in some form. The Report itself additionally notes how easy it would be to re-access the dataset:
"The ME/CFS Category has now been saved within the Dimensions application and can therefore be re-used in future years..."

Finally, I would add that there is no proprietary information within the dataset.

RELEASE THE DATA