Month: December 2015

Message to Planet PACE

Prof James Coyne’s Freedom of Information request for data from the PACE Trial has been refused and he has shared the letter he received in explanation. It makes astonishing reading.

There have of course been numerous previous refusals concerning this data but the excuses given are increasingly desperate and unconvincing.

Prof Coyne was told: ‘The university considers that there is a lack of value or serious purpose to your request. The university also considers that there is improper motive behind the request. The university considers that this request has caused and could further cause harassment and distress to staff.’

The letter goes on to say: ‘The active campaign to discredit the project has caused distress to the university’s researchers who hold legitimate concerns that they will be subject to public criticism and reputational damage.’

The letter concludes: ‘The university considers that when applying a holistic approach, this request can properly be considered to be vexatious.’

Bearing in mind that James Coyne requested the data so that he could ‘verify the substantive claims of the article through reanalysis’, it is difficult to see why his request should be thought to ‘lack value or serious purpose’ or why it should be considered that he has ‘an improper motive’.

It is also hard to see why the PACE researchers’ apparent ‘distress’ and their fears of ‘public criticism and reputational damage’ can possibly be considered adequate justification for refusing access to their data. Continue reading “Message to Planet PACE”

Time to be Heard

Six weeks on from the infamously unhelpful article by Sarah Knapton in the Daily Telegraph, the online version of the newspaper has published an article on ME by Dr Charles Shepherd of the ME Association with a view to correcting some of the misinformation. This was part of a deal which was struck by way of redress for the Telegraph falling so short of the truth on this occasion, as part of which they also published a ‘clarification’ of their assertion that ME isn’t really a chronic illness. As the clarification stated that the study they had reported actually said no such thing, it might have been more appropriate to call it  a ‘correction’ but I suppose you can’t expect a leading national newspaper to have such a precise grasp of the English language.

As for Dr Shepherd’s article, it doesn’t appear in the print edition, this in marked contrast to Knapton’s article which was linked from the front page. We have elderly relatives who read the original article but will only receive Shepherd’s piece because we’ll print it out and send them it. Many other Telegraph readers will sadly remain in ignorance.

This sort of imbalance is pretty much standard, of course, in situations like this, and Dr Shepherd and the ME Association are to be congratulated for at least getting the deal they did. It is worth, too, saying a word or two extra in praise of Charles Shepherd, who has been performing duties like this on our behalf for the best part of three decades now, plodding time and again to the barricades to call out the truth into the no man’s land of ignorance, doubt and incomprehension, then plodding patiently back again in the knowledge that he will probably have to do the same thing all over again in an another week’s time. And another. And another. The man is a hero. We are very fortunate to have him.

We are also lucky to have ME patients such as Tom Kindlon who have been plugging away with well reasoned comments for years, slowly exposing the fracture lines in the PACE Trial and counteracting other misconceptions. Not all of us are capable of such exhaustive feats of analysis, and yet there is a growing understanding that we all have a part to play in getting the truth out there. Continue reading “Time to be Heard”