Trial By Error: Seeking More Details on Crawley School Absence Study

In this study, schools identified students with unexplained absences and invited them and their families to meet with Professor Crawley to discuss the matter. The study authors did not seek ethical review for this study on the grounds that it only involved “service evaluation,” even though it was piloting a new method of identifying previously undiagnosed patients for Professor Crawley’s CFS/ME clinical service. Under the circumstances, we were interested in reviewing the letters sent to the families, as well as any other information they were provided about the study. We did not send the request directly to Professor Crawley but to the Bristol University legal representative who handled my complaint about Professor Crawley’s false libel accusation earlier this year. We also sent it to the university’s freedom of information office. Here’s what Professor Lubet and I wrote: “In 2011, Professor Esther Crawley and two colleagues, all from Bristol University, published a study in BMJ Open titled “Unidentified Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) is a major cause of school absence: surveillance outcomes from school-based clinics.”   As part of the study, three different schools sent letters to the families of children with patterns of chronic absence. Here is how this process was described in the BMJ Open paper: “Families…were sent a letter from the school that invited them to meet with a paediatrician from the Bath specialist CF...
Source: virology blog - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs