So you think social media are really empowering.
But then you have the PACE Trial, a £5million study of ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) largely funded by the British Taxpayer which used diagnostic criteria that included people with other conditions; which changed entry and recovery criteria mid-study so that it was possible for participants to get worse and still be classed as ‘recovered’; which jettisoned most of its objective measures of assessment mid-study because they didn’t give the desired results; which despite therefore relying almost entirely on subjective ‘tick-box questionnaire’ measures of outcome nevertheless issued a newsletter for participants mid-study telling them how well the therapies were working; whose authors claimed that these therapies (GET and CBT) led to the ‘recovery’ of many patients with ME even though their physical functioning at the end of the trial was similar to those with congestive heart failure; which has now spawned a follow-on study showing that GET and CBT are actually no more effective long term than the other therapies studied but which nevertheless is spun to give the impression of providing further proof of how wonderful they are; which in turn leads on to a front page story in the Daily Telegraph which is so divorced from any kind of reality that even the lead researcher of this latest manifestation of the mind-numbingly flawed, woefully mismanaged trial itself describes the story as ‘misleading and insulting’.
Try addressing that little lot in a Tweet.
Meanwhile the Telegraph reader looks at the front page, reads the misleading headline and, now feeling reliably informed about ME, turns to the sport…
Further reading:
An overview of David Tuller’s comprehensive critique of the PACE Trial
Sign a petition calling for the retraction of unfounded PACE trial claims
spoonseekerdotcom 