Trial by Error: Retired PACE Investigator Peter White and Swiss Re
By David Tuller, DrPH
On November 17, 2015, a few weeks after publication of my 15,000-word investigation of the PACE trial, I posted a blog about a talk Peter White gave to Swiss Re employees on the findings from his bogus study. Professor White, of course, was the lead PACE investigator and also served–and apparently still serves–as “chief medical officer” for the insurance company.
Swiss Re has released information about its 2017 “insurance medicine summit,” to be held this coming November. Not surprisingly, Professor White is on the schedule. Although he has retired from his academic position, he a...
Source: virology blog - August 7, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Trial by Error: The Science Media Centre ’ s Desperate Efforts to Defend PACE
By David Tuller, DrPH
This week, the Journal of Health Psychology published a special issue containing a raft of commentaries on the PACE trial. Most of them slammed the study for its many, many unacceptable flaws. Not surprisingly, Sir Simon Wessely’s lackeys at the Science Media Centre immediately posted three comments from “experts” lauding the trial and criticizing the JHP commentaries. I thought it might be helpful to deconstruct these rather pathetic efforts at defending the indefensible.
I’ve posted all three statements below, followed by my comments. I decided to keep them relatively brief, although I ...
Source: virology blog - August 2, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Trial by Error: NICE Declines to Disclose Names of Experts
By David Tuller, DrPH
The Countess of Mar has received a negative response to her request for the names of the experts involved in the review of the NICE guideline for CFS/ME. The ME Association has not yet received a response related to the same question, nor have I. But the response to the countess indicates that the process is proceeding with a lack of full transparency.
Here’s the response from the Department of Health:
“The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) routinely consults a range of topic experts as part of its surveillance review process. NICE is currently consulting on a review propos...
Source: virology blog - July 24, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Trial by Error: The NICE guidelines, and more on the CDC
This study exemplifies some of the problems common in this field of research, as I described on Virology Blog months ago. (Professor Esther Crawley of Bristol University, the trial’s lead investigator, subsequently referred to that blog post as “libelous” in a slide she showed during at least two speeches. She has not documented her charge.)
The consultation document also notes that only study abstracts, not the studies themselves, were reviewed. This is a surprising methodological choice given the significance of the issue. Abstracts can be seriously misleading and incomplete; studies themselves obviously provide a ...
Source: virology blog - July 17, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Trial by Error, Guest Post: Questions About Professor Sharpe ’ s ‘ Special Ethics Seminar ’
by Steven Lubet
On 1 June 2017, Professor Michael Sharpe presented the “Special Ethics Seminar” at Oxford University’s St Cross College. In his posted abstract, he asserted that “some areas of scholarship are politicised (U.K. spelling in original),” including “the role of psychiatric or psychological approaches in the treatment” of ME/CFS patients. Sharpe also likened ME/CFS patients to climate change deniers, claiming:
The use of such co-ordinated pressure group action against science was prominently seen in the field of climate change research but is now emerging in other areas.
Chronic fatigue syndr...
Source: virology blog - July 3, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Trial by Error, Continued: More on Graded Exercise from Peter White and The Lancet
By David Tuller, DrPH
Professor Peter White and colleagues have published yet another study in The Lancet promoting graded exercise as an appropriate intervention for the illness they refer to as “chronic fatigue syndrome” but that is more appropriately called “myalgic encephalomyelitis.” (Two compromise terms, ME/CFS and CFS/ME, satisfy no one.) This new article exhibits the range of problems found repeatedly in this body of research, including the reliance on subjective outcomes for an open-label trial, unusual outcome-switching, and self-serving presentations of data.
In short, this latest study seeks to bolste...
Source: virology blog - June 28, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Commentary Source Type: blogs
Pacing, pacing, pacing – good, bad, or … ?
There’s nothing that pain peeps seem to like more than a good dispute over whether something is good, or not so good for treatment. Pacing is a perennial topic for this kind of vexed discussion. Advocates say “But look at what it does for me! I can do more without getting my pain out of control!” Those not quite as convinced say “But look at how little you’re doing, and you keep letting pain get in the way of what you really want to do!”
Defining and measuring pacing is just as vexed as deciding whether it’s a good thing or not. Pacing isn’t well-defined and there are several...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - June 18, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: adiemusfree Tags: 'Pacing' or Quota Assessment Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping Skills Pain conditions Research Science in practice biopsychosocial pain management self management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
Trial by Error, Continued: My Letter to the University of Bristol
By David Tuller, DrPH
This morning I e-mailed the following letter to Sue Paterson, the University of Bristol’s Director of Legal Services and Deputy University Secretary, to protest Professor Esther Crawley’s accusation that I libeled her in blogging about her work. I cc’d the office of the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Hugh Brady.
**********
Dear Ms. Paterson:
I have recently learned that Professor Esther Crawley of the University of Bristol’s Centre for Child and Adolescent Health, in her inaugural lecture on February 24th of this year, accused me of libel. During her talk, she showed...
Source: virology blog - June 14, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Mother and Daughter Dynamic Duo: Fighting For Women ’s Health Equality
This essay was first published on MsMagazine.com.
For decades, my mom and I have been a dynamic duo using the arts to creatively fight for women’s rights. And now we are using the arts to fight for my life.
In the ’60-70s, during the burgeoning “Women’s Liberation Movement,” my mother, Bobbi Ausubel, co-wrote America’s first feminist play, How to Make a Woman. After each performance, cutting edge and ruckus consciousness raising groups helped women and men grapple with just how much gender roles dictated their lives.
As a little girl, I couldn’t care less. I played with my toys under the adults...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - June 8, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Trial By Error, Continued: Julie Rehmeyer ’ s Journey “ Through the Shadowlands ”
By David Tuller, DrPH
In February, 2011, I wrote a bad article about the PACE trial. At that time, I was reporting on the XMRV situation and had never heard about this piece of crap. As happens at news organizations, my editor at The New York Times sent me the Lancet paper and asked me to write it up for publication later that day. I did the best I could. Not knowing any of the background, I took the study at face value and reported the bogus findings—that cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy appeared to be effective treatments. I did include a few caveats—that the authors had links to disability insu...
Source: virology blog - June 7, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Trial By Error, Continued: My “ Tear It Up ” Talk at Invest in ME
By David Tuller, DrPH
First, since I’m in London at the moment, I need to say that it feels weird and even wrong to be posting about PACE-related issues right after Saturday night’s terrible events. But in our f**ked-up world, life goes on for everyone else, including ME/CFS patients, and my job is to report this stuff, and so that’s what I’m going to do.
On Thursday, wearing a beautiful and beautifully ironed shirt, I gave a talk at the dinner before this year’s annual Invest in ME conference, at a hotel right next to the Tower of London. About 100 or so scientists, advocates, patients, caregivers, and other...
Source: virology blog - June 4, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Commentary Source Type: blogs
David Tuller ’ s Fundraiser
If you appreciate the articles written here by David Tuller on ME/CFS, please consider supporting him financially at Crowdrise.
David is an investigative reporter with a doctorate in public health from the University of California, Berkeley. Since the fall of 2015, David has waged a determined effort to expose the methodological and ethical problems with the PACE trial for ME/CFS. He started this effort because he came to understand that the PACE treatments, graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavior therapy, were not just useless but could actually cause serious harm. Although patients had spent years documenting ...
Source: virology blog - June 2, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: Commentary Information Berkeley chronic fatigue syndrome Crowdrise david tuller mecfs myalgic encephalomyelitis PACE trial Source Type: blogs
TWiV Special: Trial by Error, Continued
David Tuller returns to discuss the continuing saga of the UK’s PACE trial for chronic fatigue syndrome, including the accusation that he is engaging in libelous blogging.
You can find this TWiV Special at microbe.tv/twiv, or listen below.
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Source: virology blog - June 1, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: This Week in Virology CFS/ME Research Collaborative chronic fatigue syndrome CMRC david tuller libelous blogging mecfs myalgic encephalomyelitis PACE trial Source Type: blogs
The Best Night Routine for a Productive Day
You're reading The Best Night Routine for a Productive Day, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Even if you don't consider yourself a productive person, you still have some type of morning routine to kick off the workday. If it’s a daily mad sprint to the train stop with coffee in one hand and a breakfast burrito in the other, there’s probably still at least some forethought (breakfast burritos don’t just happen).
But a bedtime routine? If yours consists of just falling asleep during The Daily Show with...
Source: PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement - May 26, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Sarah Brown Tags: featured health and fitness productivity tips self improvement best self-improvement blogs morning routine motivation night routine pickthebrain productive night routine sleep Source Type: blogs
Trial By Error, Continued: ME Research UK Drops Out of CMRC
By David Tuller, DrPH
I have spent two weeks hammering the CFS/ME Research Collaborative about “Renal-gate”—that is, vice-chair Esther Crawley’s recent lecture at a conference of kidney disease experts, in which she falsely accused me of writing “libellous blogs.” The CMRC’s chair, Stephen Holgate, recently assured me that Dr. Crawley had the “full support” of the executive board—a statement I dutifully conveyed to Virology Blog readers.
To be clear, I don’t know what Dr. Crawley actually said in the lecture, or if she mentioned my name. The slide live-tweeted from her talk, which featured the phrase ...
Source: virology blog - May 22, 2017 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Commentary Information CFS/ME Research Collaborative chronic fatigue syndrome CMRC libel libelous mecfs myalgic encephalomyelitis PACE Source Type: blogs
