Just last week I gave a presentation to the Norgewegian ME Association on how the new treatment guideline for ME/CFS is rooted in scientific evidence and reasoning. The video has now been posted: By way of a teaser, here is the title and background info for the talk: The New […]
I used to be concerned about bad science. These days, what gets me going is wrong science: blatant error somehow surviving peer-review and ending up published as if it were fact. It seems that is where we have got to with modern academic publishing. Standards have slipped so badly, even […]
Some examples of comedy are jarringly impactful precisely because they feel so authentic. A personal favourite of mine is the 1984 movie This is Spinal Tap, the legendary mockumentary depicting a fictional English rock band attempting to rescue their dwindling reputations by organising one last big-splash concert tour. It is […]
Some examples of comedy are jarringly impactful precisely because they feel so authentic. A personal favourite of mine is the 1984 movie This is Spinal Tap, the legendary mockumentary depicting a fictional English rock band attempting to rescue their dwindling reputations by organising one last big-splash concert tour. It is […]
Whether to laugh or to cry, truly that is the question. Professors of psychology can be a strange breed. While some are blind to their own faults, others are are obsessively self-critical. Perhaps this is why the field of psychology has been described as being “in crisis” since (at least) […]
We are under attack! Well, at least at my university we are. A cyber attack that is. As a result, all our IT systems are down and there is widespread disruption. Coming in the middle of a pandemic (yes, I said “middle”), it is certainly creating quite a lot of […]
David Tuller and I have written a response to an alarming research paper that appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. We have posted a preprint with the Open Science Foundation, and David has also posted the text in full over on Virology […]
Hello! I hope your Saturday is going well. Here is a talk I gave in November, at the Psychological Society of Ireland’s annual conference. The transcript appears below. Enjoy! * * * * * * Transcript: Psychology, religion, and public policy Now, this particular topic is very wide-ranging. I wouldn’t […]
It turns out that not all medical doctors are infallible. Who knew? Some of them, it seems, dally at the margins of pseudoscience. Take for example the latest BMJ Op-Ed from the doctor who cured himself of long COVID. He says he did so through positive thinking. Go him! ‘Pseudoscience’ is […]
I have recently been quoted in not just one, but two recent articles about the controversial psychotherapy, the Lightning Process (insert your own “lightning-never-strikes-twice” joke here). Quite apart from my own contributions, both articles are well worth reading. * * * The first is from David Tuller, part of his […]
Here is my letter to the BMJ. I think it is pretty self-explanatory (nonetheless, I have added some additional context below the fold): Date: Sep 11, 2019To: <Fiona Godlee>, Editor in Chief, BMJRE: BMJ’s scientifically and ethically indefensible decision about Bristol’s Lightning Process study Dear Dr Godlee, First of all, […]
[UPDATED: 29 October 2021] 1. What’s going on? 2. How is the new guideline different to the old one? 3. Why is the new guideline being welcomed? 4. Why was the old guideline problematic? 5. How did NICE arrive at the new guideline? 6. Was NICE overly harsh in using […]
Last Monday, the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) held its much anticipated roundtable discussion event, ostensibly to appease those (few) medical stakeholders who had baulked at the newly developed treatment guideline for ME/CFS. Regular readers will be aware that NICE developed its guideline over several years […]
We are under attack! Well, at least at my university we are. A cyber attack that is. As a result, all our IT systems are down and there is widespread disruption. Coming in the middle of a pandemic (yes, I said “middle”), it is certainly creating quite a lot of […]
So last week, our friends at the BMJ published yet another ‘news’ item in one of the esteemed journal’s very-much-not-peer-reviewed sections. It carried a rather dramatic headline: Covid-19: Boys are more at risk of myocarditis after vaccination than of hospital admission for covid In a world swirling with anti-vaccination conspiracy […]
The very fact they call themselves “Royal Colleges” should have been a sign. Simply put, some of these folks have a rather high opinion of themselves. There seems to be a widespread view within Britain’s “Royal Colleges” that they form a kind of medical aristocracy, a ruling class with feudal […]
To fully understand the future, it is important to know the past. Next week, we finally get to see that long awaited new NICE treatment guideline for ME/CFS. As regular readers will know, all indications so far suggest the new guideline will be dramatically different from the old one. Graded […]
