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 […]
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 the ‘GRADE’ system to […]
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 […]
I was delighted to be part of this panel discussion on Gez Medinger‘s YouTube channel, RUN-DMC. As many readers will know, Gez is a London-based film producer and director who has been debilitated with severe Long COVID ever since contracting Covid early in the pandemic. His YouTube channel is now […]
Academic publication is increasingly a performance art. So how effective is its quality control? – AN ESSAY – The sheer stampede of COVID-19 research has drawn mainstream attention to the issue of quality control in scientific publishing. Even long-established major journals seem more inclined than ever to carry content of […]
Last October, I wrote that COVID-19 had created a stampede of shoddy research. Little has changed in the interim. Putting all hands to the pump might feel appropriate in a crisis, but during a global public health emergency, rushing headlong into the scholarly frontline is anything but okay. Frankly, it is […]
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 […]
Ireland often likes to see itself as a cosmopolitan kind of place, where the world’s tourists, investors, and bohemian artistes are promised the traditional hundred thousand welcomes. As the most recent example of our keenness to globalise, witness our incorporation of the latest intellectual trend: delusional-right-wing-conspiracy-theory-based anarchy! Last weekend’s violence […]
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, […]
David Tuller (University of California, Berkeley), Steven Lubet (Northwestern University), and I have written an opinion piece over at Health Affairs. It’s on the implications of recent developments in ME and chronic fatigue syndrome for the treatment of Long COVID. We argue that the paradigm shift signalled by the UK’s […]
Last October, I wrote that COVID-19 had created a stampede of shoddy research. Little has changed in the interim. Putting all hands to the pump might feel appropriate in a crisis, but during a global public health emergency, rushing headlong into the scholarly frontline is anything but okay. Frankly, it is […]
I am a bit late posting this, but there you go. Watchyagonnadoaboutit. The other week I was quoted in the Irish Times on the matter of risk perception and vaccines: Proper risk assessments should combine two factors: impact and probability. In other words: “how bad something is” and “how likely […]
As you read here in February, David Tuller and I attempted to respond to an alarming research paper that appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The paper they had published had purported to show evidence that cognitive behavioural therapy leads to symptom improvements in […]
Steven Lubet, a law professor at Northwestern University, has written a powerful piece over at Social Science Space, responding to the awful Op-Ed on Long COVID that appeared the other week in the Wall Street Journal. He doesn’t hold back: It would be mistaken to suppose that disdain for patients […]
Swiss Re Group, “one of the world’s leading providers of reinsurance and insurance,” recently hosted a virtual Expert Forum on “secondary” impacts of COVID. As would be expected, the insurance industry is especially interested in the financial implications of this new disease. The programme covered many of the biophysical sequelae […]
