Earlier this year, I wrote about a draft academic paper that had attempted to condemn the new NICE guideline for ME/CFS. As regular readers might recall, the paper had claimed that NICE was guilty of “eight major errors” in its guideline reviewing processes. In my blog post I noted that […]
Colleagues and I have responded to a paper in Der Nervenarzt, the leading German neurology journal, pointing out various reasons why its “overview” of evidence-based approaches to ME/CFS treatment lacked, well, evidence. Our critique can be read in full in English via the following Tweet (kudos to @AnilvanderZee): In summary, […]
Earlier this month, on World ME Awareness Day, I spoke at the Hope 4 ME & Fibro NI conference in Belfast. The event was hosted in the Stormont Parliament Buildings by Alliance Party MLA, Paula Bradshaw. The title of my lecture was Getting it Right: Addressing Myths about the 2021 […]
I am pleased to write that my latest book — A Conceptual History of Psychology: The Mind Through Time — is now published worldwide. Here are the contents: PART I. FOUNDATIONChapter 1. People, history and the concept of psychologyChapter 2. Spirituality, philosophy and the concept of the mindChapter 3. Knowledge, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
David Tuller has been conducting a series of interviews on YouTube relating to science, medicine, and medical controversies relating to ME/CFS and Long Covid. I was pleased to discuss with him my recently published book and, for good measure, the issue of dualism as it affects the psychologising of illness. […]
Having spent years casting their critics as angry anti-science activists, some of our favourite panjandrums have now entered Phase 3 in their own year-long campaign of (a) getting angry, (b) engaging in activism, and, yes, (c) throwing science-based medicine under the bus. Here is what the Royal College of Physicians […]
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 […]
[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 […]
Here is a transcript of my recent podcast with the Norwegian ME Association. In the interview, we discuss the medical stigma where post-viral illnesses, such as ME and Long COVID, are falsely characterised as ‘psychological’ due to poorly grounded stereotyping. The discussion touches on how medical opinion has become intertwined […]
I recently had the pleasure of talking with the folks at the Norwegian ME Association for their (excellently produced) podcast series. Arising from my new book, we discussed the medical stigma in which an illness is falsely characterised as ‘psychological’ — post-viral conditions such as ME and Long Covid, for […]
Just the other week, I spoke at the annual conference of the RME, the Swedish National Association for ME. In my lecture, I took another look at the new ME/CFS guideline as published by NICE about one year ago. While I covered ground that might be familiar to some, it […]
The Irish men’s rugby team is currently number one in the world. We might therefore expect its governing body, the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU), to be a proficient and effective organisation, capable of meeting its own aims while setting examples for others to follow. Unfortunately, however, when it comes […]
Yesterday, we had lots of news headlines concerning the Loch Ness monster, proving that the silly season is still a thing. (After all, it’s not as though there is actually anything important going on in the world right now.) Virtually all the headlines focused on the same catchy notion: It […]
As a straight, white, middle-aged, college-educated, settled-community, cisgender man, I know that I benefit from more than my fair share of privilege. So if I have found Pride Month somewhat stressful, I can only imagine how others must have felt. Pride Month just isn’t what it used to be. What […]
