David Tuller
Trial By Error: BMJ Publishes New Propaganda Piece on Severe ME/CFS
By David Tuller
By David Tuller, DrPH Last week, The BMJ published a commissioned propaganda piece—er, “opinion”—written by confirmed members of the cognitive behavior therapy/graded exercise therapy/Lightning Process ideological brigades. The title: “Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care.” It repeats all the usual blah blah, along with the unwarranted ...
Trial By Error: Pushback on “Brief Outpatient Rehab” Trial for Long Covid from Norwegian Ideological Brigades
By David Tuller
By David Tuller, DrPH I often find myself responding to crap studies--such as a Norwegian study called “Brief Outpatient Rehabilitation Program for Post–COVID-19 Condition: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” from Nerli et al., published last December by JAMA Network Open. The senior author was Professor Vegard Wyller, the dean of the ...
Trial By Error: A Letter Seeking a Correction in FMD Physiotherapy Paper
By David Tuller
By David Tuller, DrPH I have recently written about a trial of an intervention for functional motor disorder (FMD) that had null results for its primary outcome—physical function as rated by the SF-36. The study--"Specialist Physiotherapy for functional motor disorder in England and Scotland (Physio4FMD): a pragmatic, multicentre, phase 3 ...
Trial By Error: When Primary Outcomes Yield Null Results in Clinical Trials, FND Experts Prefer Their Secondary Outcomes
By David Tuller
By David Tuller, DrPH In 2020, the CODES study of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, also known as dissociative seizures, reported null findings for its primary outcome—the number of seizures per month one year after the start of therapy. This was a disappointing result for an ambitious ...
Trial By Error: Australian GPs Keep Promoting Exercise Treatments for ME/CFS
By David Tuller
By David Tuller, DrPH When it comes to treatments for ME/CFS, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) has long endorsed the graded exercise therapy (GET)/cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) approach. Last April, the organization published an “updated” article in its Handbook of Non-Drug Interventions (HANDI) advocating “incremental physical activity” ...
