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 […]
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Medical haste, COVID-19, and the mythology of “Medically Unexplained Symptoms”
Here is an extract from a lecture I gave last year for my colleagues at the Psychiatric Association of Turkey. It concerns the issue of so-called “Medically Unexplained Symptoms”: I attempt to show how the primacy effect — a reliance on first impressions — serves to distort medical reasoning. For […]
‘Cancel culture’ paranoia and other right-wing hysterics reveal medical conservatism’s true colours
Historian David Olusoga has been speaking about the ironies of ‘cancel culture’: Olusoga, whose work has explored black Britishness and the legacy of empire and slavery, said that people “feel perfectly comfortable making these comments about me without being able to point to a single reference or footnote in my […]
Authors defend statistical errors, editor sees no evil
Let’s have another go, shall we? Last December we wrote about a paper published in Occupational Medicine, in which the following information was presented in a table: The study concerned a group of patients who were scrutinised at two time-points, firstly at “baseline”, and secondly at “follow-up”. That is basically […]
The New NICE Guideline for ME/CFS (2021): Following the Science
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 […]
Psychology, religion, and public policy
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 […]