ME

How illnesses become psychologised: Long COVID, ME, and the ‘All-In-Your-Head’ cartel

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 […]

Paradigm Lost: Lessons for Long COVID

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 […]

people working in a call center

Time to flatten the curve of shoddy COVID scholarship

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 […]

adorable fatty cat sitting in cozy old armchair at home

Beware the COVID-sceptic doctors

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 […]

Letter to the BMJ

David Tuller, Vincent Racaniello, and I have written to the BMJ about that guest editorial on the draft NICE guidelines for ME and related conditions. The letter is also online over at Virology Blog and has now been posted as a Rapid Response on BMJ.com. * * * Subject line: […]

Expert reaction to the BMJ editorial calling for the abandonment of standards

An invited, non-peer-reviewed guest editorial in the BMJ has claimed that behavioural interventions for “complex conditions” (such as ME or CFS) should not be judged using the customary criteria — and that the relevant studies should not be evaluated as though they were proper randomised controlled trials — because, among […]