[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 […]
Psychology
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 […]
Where the tragic happens
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 […]
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 […]
On risk perception and vaccine clots
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 […]
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 […]




