#bmj — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #bmj, aggregated by home.social.
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Austrian Justice Department is Investigating “Sniper Tours” in Sarajevo – Vindobona.org
The allegations are serious and paint a deeply disturbing picture of so-called war tourism. During the siege of…
#Austria #AT #Europe #Europa #EU #almazadić #austria #Austrianparliament #BMJ-FederalMinistryofJustice-BundesministeriumfürJustiz #BosniaandHerzegovina #BosnianWar #Nachrichten #Österreich #sarajevo #yugoslavia
https://www.europesays.com/3003239/ -
AI Detects “Invisible” Signs of Pancreatic Cancer Years Before Diagnosis
An AI model called REDMOD can detect extremely early, otherwise invisible signs of pancreatic cancer in routine CT…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Health #Artificialintelligence #BMJ #cancer #medicalimaging
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/622093/ -
AI Detects “Invisible” Signs of Pancreatic Cancer Years Before Diagnosis
An AI model called REDMOD can detect extremely early, otherwise invisible signs of pancreatic cancer in routine CT…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Health #Artificialintelligence #BMJ #cancer #medicalimaging
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/622093/ -
@Arpie4Math @W6KME @TheBreadmonkey We had Read Codes for it, merged later with SNOMED.
There's also from time to time articles in the #BMJ sometimes involving eg plaster of Paris and a stick. -
Hat inzwischen mal wer den Vorschlag der Justizministerin zur Bekämpfung digitaler Gewalt gesehen, der überall besprochen wird? Also vollständig, nicht nur den 2. Teil?
Hat das Kabinett den überhaupt beschlossen? Es ist so still?
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5/* published by the BMJ, Palantir: Coalition urges NHS organisations to refuse to use controversial tech giant’s software https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj.s481
#NHS #MedAct #NoPalantir #Palantir #BMJ #Israel #Nato #Ukraine #FDP
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Full open access to the article referred to in the screenshot below
Published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ):
"Palantir: Coalition urges NHS organisations to refuse to use controversial tech giant’s software"
https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj.s481
@smaurizi : Thanks for sharing. The etiquette here is to add #AltText to all images, so they can be understood by people with visual impairment/ low speed internet connection.
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Neue #opendata Anwendung: Firmenatlas.com - kostenlosen Zugriff auf österreichische Firmenbuchdaten – mit Jahresabschlüssen und detaillierten Finanzzahlen inklusive Mehrjahres-Trends, Charts und Vergleichsmöglichkeiten. https://www.data.gv.at/applications/4b5a61af-4988-4c27-9c33-982b17863d21?locale=de #hvd #bmj
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New article co-authored by CPC-CG member Ann Berrington on reaching consensus on how we define modifiable determinants of #health is now published in #BMJ #PublicHealth.
‘A modifiable #healthdeterminant must be potentially changeable through direct and/or indirect interventions at the individual or #population levels, and it must be possible to quantify or describe such change in some way.'
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Food preservatives linked to higher diabetes and cancer risk in large French studies https://www.diningandcooking.com/2483101/food-preservatives-linked-to-higher-diabetes-and-cancer-risk-in-large-french-studies/ #BMJ #cancer #francais #france #French #FrenchDiet #NatureCommunications #PackagedFoods #preservatives #PreservativesInFood #RiskOfType2Diabetes #studies
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Food preservatives linked to higher diabetes and cancer risk in large French studies https://www.diningandcooking.com/2483101/food-preservatives-linked-to-higher-diabetes-and-cancer-risk-in-large-french-studies/ #BMJ #cancer #francais #france #French #FrenchDiet #NatureCommunications #PackagedFoods #preservatives #PreservativesInFood #RiskOfType2Diabetes #studies
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Food preservatives linked to higher diabetes and cancer risk in large French studies https://www.diningandcooking.com/2483101/food-preservatives-linked-to-higher-diabetes-and-cancer-risk-in-large-french-studies/ #BMJ #cancer #francais #france #French #FrenchDiet #NatureCommunications #PackagedFoods #preservatives #PreservativesInFood #RiskOfType2Diabetes #studies
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Important letter in British Medical Journal #bmj on non-violent civil obedience (in case of emergency, break glass!) #climatebreakdown #HealthforXR
‘If we punish the doctors who shout for help, who is left to resuscitate society?’
https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj.s25/rr -
Schnell war gestern: Schon seit langen Jahren wird hierzulande über die überfällige #Reform vom #Computerstrafrecht debattiert.
Nun aber scheint es weiter zu gehen: Nicht nur, dass das #BSI die explizite Absicherung von Sicherheitsforscher:innen fordert, auch wurde bekannt, dass im #BMJ wohl ein neuer #Gesetzentwurf vorliegt.
Einiges der relevanten Kritik an der Reform vom Computerstrafrecht habe ich beim #38C3 zusammen mit @fh4ntke referiert:
https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-was-lange-whrt-wird-endlich-gut-die-modernisierung-des-computerstrafrechts #cybersecurity
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@jesterchen Sind wir? Nur weil https://jens-spahn-fordert.de sagt, dass die Fraktion dagegen ist? Schachern das nicht heute #BMI #BMJ hinter verschlossenen Türen aus wie die Position ist?
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#naukasbilbao25 Gemma Marfany – El misterio de la momia maldita @gmarfanyn.bsky.social / @gmarfanyn nos habla del artículo #BMJ Revisiting the harem conspiracy and death of Ramesses III: anthropological, forensic, radiological, and genetic study https://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e8268.abstract
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🐍 Oh, look, another earth-shattering revelation: the DSM-5, aka the psychiatrist's bible, has "undisclosed" financial #conflicts. 😱 Who could have guessed that money might influence medical guidelines? Bravo, #BMJ, for revealing the obvious with all the suspense of a deflated balloon. 🎈
https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076902 #DSM5 #FinancialInfluence #MedicalEthics #Revelation #HackerNews #ngated -
🐍 Oh, look, another earth-shattering revelation: the DSM-5, aka the psychiatrist's bible, has "undisclosed" financial #conflicts. 😱 Who could have guessed that money might influence medical guidelines? Bravo, #BMJ, for revealing the obvious with all the suspense of a deflated balloon. 🎈
https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076902 #DSM5 #FinancialInfluence #MedicalEthics #Revelation #HackerNews #ngated -
🐍 Oh, look, another earth-shattering revelation: the DSM-5, aka the psychiatrist's bible, has "undisclosed" financial #conflicts. 😱 Who could have guessed that money might influence medical guidelines? Bravo, #BMJ, for revealing the obvious with all the suspense of a deflated balloon. 🎈
https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076902 #DSM5 #FinancialInfluence #MedicalEthics #Revelation #HackerNews #ngated -
🐍 Oh, look, another earth-shattering revelation: the DSM-5, aka the psychiatrist's bible, has "undisclosed" financial #conflicts. 😱 Who could have guessed that money might influence medical guidelines? Bravo, #BMJ, for revealing the obvious with all the suspense of a deflated balloon. 🎈
https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076902 #DSM5 #FinancialInfluence #MedicalEthics #Revelation #HackerNews #ngated -
Doctor a bit longer ago, "look on the Web, if there isn't something there, write it, if you can, and post it, if you can."
#BMJ published my letter.
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BMJ’s “Commissioned” Propaganda Piece Hijacked Death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill; Boothby O’Neill’s Mum Responds
By David Tuller, DrPH
Under the editorial leadership of Kamran Abbasi, The BMJ and other journals in BMJ Group have become, at times, mouthpieces for members of the biopsychosocial ideological brigades. That hasn’t been surprising, given his actions during his previous tenure as editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Under his stewardship, the journal published a piece of crap co-authored by Professor Sir Simon Wessely, a former president of the royal society, and his King’s College London’s colleague Trudie Chalder, the factually and mathematically challenged professor cognitive behavior therapy and one of the lead PACE authors. The 2020 article, Cognitive behavioural therapy for chronic fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome: outcomes from a specialist clinic in the UK, made causal statements even as it declared that its single-cohort study design did not allow for making causal statements.
When my friend and colleague Brian Hughes, a psychology professor at the University of Galway, and I pointed this out and presented other irrefutable evidence of error, Abbasi declined to take action to correct the public record. We published our critique as a separate article in the Journal of Health Psychology.
Since Abbasi’s ascent as editor in chief of The BMJ, BMJ journals have published some egregious work on ME/CFS and Long COVID. (Not that they were good before.) Most recently, in May, The BMJ, the flagship journal, published what I called “a commissioned propaganda piece” from die-hard biopsychosocial-ists. The commentary, which is called “Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care,” touted so-called multi-disciplinary treatment approaches that have no legitimate evidence of effectiveness.
The first author of The BMJ’s invited opinion piece is infectious diseases specialist Alastair Miller, a longtime proponent of graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavior therapy as curative treatments and formerly associated with what was called the Liverpool Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Service. Last summer, during the inquest into the death of 27-year-old Maeve Boothby O’Neill from ME-related complications in Exeter in 2021, The Observer published an offensive and stupid opinion piece by Professor Miller. In the piece, he attempted to hijack the tragedy of Boothby O’Neill’s death to promote his persistent ideological beliefs about purportedly successful rehabilitative strategies.
Another author of the new BMJ article is Paul Garner, also an infectious diseases physician, who has now spent years presenting his N=1 case of recovery from post-viral symptoms as evidence of the power of his strong manly cognitions to cure Long COVID. Per Garner’s claim, this medical turnaround occurred immediately after a phone consultation with someone who sounded very much like a practitioner of the Lightning Process—whether or not that is actually the case.
Like Professor Miller’s piece last summer, the new commentary includes, perhaps not surprisingly, a reference to Boothy O’Neill’s death, in the following sentence: “However, functional impairment may lead to malnutrition and dehydration—described as the cause of death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who died in 2021 at age 27.” To be clear: the claim that Maeve’s “impairment” was “functional” rather than driven by ME-related pathophysiological dysfunctions is an unproven theory and contradicts the coroner’s report. The “functional” claim is this lot’s security blanket. But believing in the tooth fairy does not mean the tooth fairy exists.
This desperate plea for relevance from a group of misguided partisans prompted a flurry of rapid responses. So far, 21 have been publicly posted. Sarah Boothby, Maeve’s mother, twice submitted a rapid response. However, it has not appeared. I have posted her comment below. (A version is also posted on Boothby’s LinkedIn page)
**********
Dear Editor in Chief, Kamran Abbasi
I submitted the following through the BMJ Latest rapid response portal twice, the second time with a request for acknowledgment. As the BMJ has neither published my corrections and criticism nor acknowledged my communication I am writing to you formally for an explanation. Please explain why the BMJ is commissioning and publishing misinformation specifically on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis?
“In commissioning and publishing the opinion piece by Miller et al (BMJ 2025;389:r977) the BMJ failed to fact check and consequently misled its readership on the risk of death from very severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). Those interested in medical ethics should note:
Maeve Boothby O’Neill died from ME shortly after her twenty-seventh birthday. She was not the first and has not been the last to die from this devastating illness yet the BMJ made no correction to the claim that Maeve died from malnutrition and dehydration. Dehydration and malnutrition are both easily treatable conditions in Britain. The inquest into Maeve’s death took three years investigating how a preventable death could have been permitted to a young woman who did not want to die, had been actively taking medical advice since the onset of symptoms in 2008, and had consented to three hospital admissions in the seven months prior her premature death in 2021.
It took four years of extensive tests and investigations before Maeve was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), by which time she had obtained A* results in Russian, Biology, English and Chemistry at A Level. Such results are not possible without the ability to understand instructions and take advice. Once diagnosed she was under specialist CFS services for eight years, including the Centre of Excellence in Bristol. She meticulously followed the instructions and advice they gave. Maeve never believed she would not recover; she learnt from the bitterest experience how the disease progresses from mild to very severe.
Maeve’s health deteriorated following a mild viral infection from which she (and the rest of her family) appeared to have fully recovered when Maeve was thirteen. Her symptoms steadily progressed to being serious enough that her PE teachers stopped her from joining their lessons; the risk of her being injured was too high.
The facts of Maeve’s death disqualified Miller as an Expert Witness at her inquest. By the end of the three-year inquiry, HMA Coroner was mildly better informed about ME than before the inquest opened. In the process of establishing the facts she confirmed that there are no inpatient services for people with ME anywhere in the UK, either in private or publicly owned hospitals. If the opinions of Miller et al had any efficacy in cases of ME, Maeve would still be alive today.
The Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report mentions six national institutions responsible for failing to prevent Maeve’s premature death. These include the National Health Service (NHS), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). Failure on this scale can only be remedied by systemic change, which must involve leadership at the highest level.
If a provincial inquest can establish these facts about ME, the BMJ should have little difficulty in doing similar. Failure to correct its editorial stance on this disease, when the international consensus is prioritising patient safety, casts doubt on both the reliability and ethics of opinions from the British medical establishment.”
A shortened version can be found featured in my LinkedIn profile here.
Sincerely
Sarah Boothby
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BMJ’s “Commissioned” Propaganda Piece Hijacked Death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill; Boothby O’Neill’s Mum Responds
By David Tuller, DrPH
Under the editorial leadership of Kamran Abbasi, The BMJ and other journals in BMJ Group have become, at times, mouthpieces for members of the biopsychosocial ideological brigades. That hasn’t been surprising, given his actions during his previous tenure as editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Under his stewardship, the journal published a piece of crap co-authored by Professor Sir Simon Wessely, a former president of the royal society, and his King’s College London’s colleague Trudie Chalder, the factually and mathematically challenged professor cognitive behavior therapy and one of the lead PACE authors. The 2020 article, Cognitive behavioural therapy for chronic fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome: outcomes from a specialist clinic in the UK, made causal statements even as it declared that its single-cohort study design did not allow for making causal statements.
When my friend and colleague Brian Hughes, a psychology professor at the University of Galway, and I pointed this out and presented other irrefutable evidence of error, Abbasi declined to take action to correct the public record. We published our critique as a separate article in the Journal of Health Psychology.
Since Abbasi’s ascent as editor in chief of The BMJ, BMJ journals have published some egregious work on ME/CFS and Long COVID. (Not that they were good before.) Most recently, in May, The BMJ, the flagship journal, published what I called “a commissioned propaganda piece” from die-hard biopsychosocial-ists. The commentary, which is called “Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care,” touted so-called multi-disciplinary treatment approaches that have no legitimate evidence of effectiveness.
The first author of The BMJ’s invited opinion piece is infectious diseases specialist Alastair Miller, a longtime proponent of graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavior therapy as curative treatments and formerly associated with what was called the Liverpool Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Service. Last summer, during the inquest into the death of 27-year-old Maeve Boothby O’Neill from ME-related complications in Exeter in 2021, The Observer published an offensive and stupid opinion piece by Professor Miller. In the piece, he attempted to hijack the tragedy of Boothby O’Neill’s death to promote his persistent ideological beliefs about purportedly successful rehabilitative strategies.
Another author of the new BMJ article is Paul Garner, also an infectious diseases physician, who has now spent years presenting his N=1 case of recovery from post-viral symptoms as evidence of the power of his strong manly cognitions to cure Long COVID. Per Garner’s claim, this medical turnaround occurred immediately after a phone consultation with someone who sounded very much like a practitioner of the Lightning Process—whether or not that is actually the case.
Like Professor Miller’s piece last summer, the new commentary includes, perhaps not surprisingly, a reference to Boothy O’Neill’s death, in the following sentence: “However, functional impairment may lead to malnutrition and dehydration—described as the cause of death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who died in 2021 at age 27.” To be clear: the claim that Maeve’s “impairment” was “functional” rather than driven by ME-related pathophysiological dysfunctions is an unproven theory and contradicts the coroner’s report. The “functional” claim is this lot’s security blanket. But believing in the tooth fairy does not mean the tooth fairy exists.
This desperate plea for relevance from a group of misguided partisans prompted a flurry of rapid responses. So far, 21 have been publicly posted. Sarah Boothby, Maeve’s mother, twice submitted a rapid response. However, it has not appeared. I have posted her comment below. (A version is also posted on Boothby’s LinkedIn page)
**********
Dear Editor in Chief, Kamran Abbasi
I submitted the following through the BMJ Latest rapid response portal twice, the second time with a request for acknowledgment. As the BMJ has neither published my corrections and criticism nor acknowledged my communication I am writing to you formally for an explanation. Please explain why the BMJ is commissioning and publishing misinformation specifically on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis?
“In commissioning and publishing the opinion piece by Miller et al (BMJ 2025;389:r977) the BMJ failed to fact check and consequently misled its readership on the risk of death from very severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). Those interested in medical ethics should note:
Maeve Boothby O’Neill died from ME shortly after her twenty-seventh birthday. She was not the first and has not been the last to die from this devastating illness yet the BMJ made no correction to the claim that Maeve died from malnutrition and dehydration. Dehydration and malnutrition are both easily treatable conditions in Britain. The inquest into Maeve’s death took three years investigating how a preventable death could have been permitted to a young woman who did not want to die, had been actively taking medical advice since the onset of symptoms in 2008, and had consented to three hospital admissions in the seven months prior her premature death in 2021.
It took four years of extensive tests and investigations before Maeve was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), by which time she had obtained A* results in Russian, Biology, English and Chemistry at A Level. Such results are not possible without the ability to understand instructions and take advice. Once diagnosed she was under specialist CFS services for eight years, including the Centre of Excellence in Bristol. She meticulously followed the instructions and advice they gave. Maeve never believed she would not recover; she learnt from the bitterest experience how the disease progresses from mild to very severe.
Maeve’s health deteriorated following a mild viral infection from which she (and the rest of her family) appeared to have fully recovered when Maeve was thirteen. Her symptoms steadily progressed to being serious enough that her PE teachers stopped her from joining their lessons; the risk of her being injured was too high.
The facts of Maeve’s death disqualified Miller as an Expert Witness at her inquest. By the end of the three-year inquiry, HMA Coroner was mildly better informed about ME than before the inquest opened. In the process of establishing the facts she confirmed that there are no inpatient services for people with ME anywhere in the UK, either in private or publicly owned hospitals. If the opinions of Miller et al had any efficacy in cases of ME, Maeve would still be alive today.
The Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report mentions six national institutions responsible for failing to prevent Maeve’s premature death. These include the National Health Service (NHS), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). Failure on this scale can only be remedied by systemic change, which must involve leadership at the highest level.
If a provincial inquest can establish these facts about ME, the BMJ should have little difficulty in doing similar. Failure to correct its editorial stance on this disease, when the international consensus is prioritising patient safety, casts doubt on both the reliability and ethics of opinions from the British medical establishment.”
A shortened version can be found featured in my LinkedIn profile here.
Sincerely
Sarah Boothby
-
BMJ’s “Commissioned” Propaganda Piece Hijacked Death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill; Boothby O’Neill’s Mum Responds
By David Tuller, DrPH
Under the editorial leadership of Kamran Abbasi, The BMJ and other journals in BMJ Group have become, at times, mouthpieces for members of the biopsychosocial ideological brigades. That hasn’t been surprising, given his actions during his previous tenure as editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Under his stewardship, the journal published a piece of crap co-authored by Professor Sir Simon Wessely, a former president of the royal society, and his King’s College London’s colleague Trudie Chalder, the factually and mathematically challenged professor cognitive behavior therapy and one of the lead PACE authors. The 2020 article, Cognitive behavioural therapy for chronic fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome: outcomes from a specialist clinic in the UK, made causal statements even as it declared that its single-cohort study design did not allow for making causal statements.
When my friend and colleague Brian Hughes, a psychology professor at the University of Galway, and I pointed this out and presented other irrefutable evidence of error, Abbasi declined to take action to correct the public record. We published our critique as a separate article in the Journal of Health Psychology.
Since Abbasi’s ascent as editor in chief of The BMJ, BMJ journals have published some egregious work on ME/CFS and Long COVID. (Not that they were good before.) Most recently, in May, The BMJ, the flagship journal, published what I called “a commissioned propaganda piece” from die-hard biopsychosocial-ists. The commentary, which is called “Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care,” touted so-called multi-disciplinary treatment approaches that have no legitimate evidence of effectiveness.
The first author of The BMJ’s invited opinion piece is infectious diseases specialist Alastair Miller, a longtime proponent of graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavior therapy as curative treatments and formerly associated with what was called the Liverpool Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Service. Last summer, during the inquest into the death of 27-year-old Maeve Boothby O’Neill from ME-related complications in Exeter in 2021, The Observer published an offensive and stupid opinion piece by Professor Miller. In the piece, he attempted to hijack the tragedy of Boothby O’Neill’s death to promote his persistent ideological beliefs about purportedly successful rehabilitative strategies.
Another author of the new BMJ article is Paul Garner, also an infectious diseases physician, who has now spent years presenting his N=1 case of recovery from post-viral symptoms as evidence of the power of his strong manly cognitions to cure Long COVID. Per Garner’s claim, this medical turnaround occurred immediately after a phone consultation with someone who sounded very much like a practitioner of the Lightning Process—whether or not that is actually the case.
Like Professor Miller’s piece last summer, the new commentary includes, perhaps not surprisingly, a reference to Boothy O’Neill’s death, in the following sentence: “However, functional impairment may lead to malnutrition and dehydration—described as the cause of death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who died in 2021 at age 27.” To be clear: the claim that Maeve’s “impairment” was “functional” rather than driven by ME-related pathophysiological dysfunctions is an unproven theory and contradicts the coroner’s report. The “functional” claim is this lot’s security blanket. But believing in the tooth fairy does not mean the tooth fairy exists.
This desperate plea for relevance from a group of misguided partisans prompted a flurry of rapid responses. So far, 21 have been publicly posted. Sarah Boothby, Maeve’s mother, twice submitted a rapid response. However, it has not appeared. I have posted her comment below. (A version is also posted on Boothby’s LinkedIn page)
**********
Dear Editor in Chief, Kamran Abbasi
I submitted the following through the BMJ Latest rapid response portal twice, the second time with a request for acknowledgment. As the BMJ has neither published my corrections and criticism nor acknowledged my communication I am writing to you formally for an explanation. Please explain why the BMJ is commissioning and publishing misinformation specifically on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis?
“In commissioning and publishing the opinion piece by Miller et al (BMJ 2025;389:r977) the BMJ failed to fact check and consequently misled its readership on the risk of death from very severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). Those interested in medical ethics should note:
Maeve Boothby O’Neill died from ME shortly after her twenty-seventh birthday. She was not the first and has not been the last to die from this devastating illness yet the BMJ made no correction to the claim that Maeve died from malnutrition and dehydration. Dehydration and malnutrition are both easily treatable conditions in Britain. The inquest into Maeve’s death took three years investigating how a preventable death could have been permitted to a young woman who did not want to die, had been actively taking medical advice since the onset of symptoms in 2008, and had consented to three hospital admissions in the seven months prior her premature death in 2021.
It took four years of extensive tests and investigations before Maeve was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), by which time she had obtained A* results in Russian, Biology, English and Chemistry at A Level. Such results are not possible without the ability to understand instructions and take advice. Once diagnosed she was under specialist CFS services for eight years, including the Centre of Excellence in Bristol. She meticulously followed the instructions and advice they gave. Maeve never believed she would not recover; she learnt from the bitterest experience how the disease progresses from mild to very severe.
Maeve’s health deteriorated following a mild viral infection from which she (and the rest of her family) appeared to have fully recovered when Maeve was thirteen. Her symptoms steadily progressed to being serious enough that her PE teachers stopped her from joining their lessons; the risk of her being injured was too high.
The facts of Maeve’s death disqualified Miller as an Expert Witness at her inquest. By the end of the three-year inquiry, HMA Coroner was mildly better informed about ME than before the inquest opened. In the process of establishing the facts she confirmed that there are no inpatient services for people with ME anywhere in the UK, either in private or publicly owned hospitals. If the opinions of Miller et al had any efficacy in cases of ME, Maeve would still be alive today.
The Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report mentions six national institutions responsible for failing to prevent Maeve’s premature death. These include the National Health Service (NHS), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). Failure on this scale can only be remedied by systemic change, which must involve leadership at the highest level.
If a provincial inquest can establish these facts about ME, the BMJ should have little difficulty in doing similar. Failure to correct its editorial stance on this disease, when the international consensus is prioritising patient safety, casts doubt on both the reliability and ethics of opinions from the British medical establishment.”
A shortened version can be found featured in my LinkedIn profile here.
Sincerely
Sarah Boothby
-
BMJ’s “Commissioned” Propaganda Piece Hijacked Death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill; Boothby O’Neill’s Mum Responds
By David Tuller, DrPH
Under the editorial leadership of Kamran Abbasi, The BMJ and other journals in BMJ Group have become, at times, mouthpieces for members of the biopsychosocial ideological brigades. That hasn’t been surprising, given his actions during his previous tenure as editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Under his stewardship, the journal published a piece of crap co-authored by Professor Sir Simon Wessely, a former president of the royal society, and his King’s College London’s colleague Trudie Chalder, the factually and mathematically challenged professor cognitive behavior therapy and one of the lead PACE authors. The 2020 article, Cognitive behavioural therapy for chronic fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome: outcomes from a specialist clinic in the UK, made causal statements even as it declared that its single-cohort study design did not allow for making causal statements.
When my friend and colleague Brian Hughes, a psychology professor at the University of Galway, and I pointed this out and presented other irrefutable evidence of error, Abbasi declined to take action to correct the public record. We published our critique as a separate article in the Journal of Health Psychology.
Since Abbasi’s ascent as editor in chief of The BMJ, BMJ journals have published some egregious work on ME/CFS and Long COVID. (Not that they were good before.) Most recently, in May, The BMJ, the flagship journal, published what I called “a commissioned propaganda piece” from die-hard biopsychosocial-ists. The commentary, which is called “Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care,” touted so-called multi-disciplinary treatment approaches that have no legitimate evidence of effectiveness.
The first author of The BMJ’s invited opinion piece is infectious diseases specialist Alastair Miller, a longtime proponent of graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavior therapy as curative treatments and formerly associated with what was called the Liverpool Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Service. Last summer, during the inquest into the death of 27-year-old Maeve Boothby O’Neill from ME-related complications in Exeter in 2021, The Observer published an offensive and stupid opinion piece by Professor Miller. In the piece, he attempted to hijack the tragedy of Boothby O’Neill’s death to promote his persistent ideological beliefs about purportedly successful rehabilitative strategies.
Another author of the new BMJ article is Paul Garner, also an infectious diseases physician, who has now spent years presenting his N=1 case of recovery from post-viral symptoms as evidence of the power of his strong manly cognitions to cure Long COVID. Per Garner’s claim, this medical turnaround occurred immediately after a phone consultation with someone who sounded very much like a practitioner of the Lightning Process—whether or not that is actually the case.
Like Professor Miller’s piece last summer, the new commentary includes, perhaps not surprisingly, a reference to Boothy O’Neill’s death, in the following sentence: “However, functional impairment may lead to malnutrition and dehydration—described as the cause of death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who died in 2021 at age 27.” To be clear: the claim that Maeve’s “impairment” was “functional” rather than driven by ME-related pathophysiological dysfunctions is an unproven theory and contradicts the coroner’s report. The “functional” claim is this lot’s security blanket. But believing in the tooth fairy does not mean the tooth fairy exists.
This desperate plea for relevance from a group of misguided partisans prompted a flurry of rapid responses. So far, 21 have been publicly posted. Sarah Boothby, Maeve’s mother, twice submitted a rapid response. However, it has not appeared. I have posted her comment below. (A version is also posted on Boothby’s LinkedIn page)
**********
Dear Editor in Chief, Kamran Abbasi
I submitted the following through the BMJ Latest rapid response portal twice, the second time with a request for acknowledgment. As the BMJ has neither published my corrections and criticism nor acknowledged my communication I am writing to you formally for an explanation. Please explain why the BMJ is commissioning and publishing misinformation specifically on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis?
“In commissioning and publishing the opinion piece by Miller et al (BMJ 2025;389:r977) the BMJ failed to fact check and consequently misled its readership on the risk of death from very severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). Those interested in medical ethics should note:
Maeve Boothby O’Neill died from ME shortly after her twenty-seventh birthday. She was not the first and has not been the last to die from this devastating illness yet the BMJ made no correction to the claim that Maeve died from malnutrition and dehydration. Dehydration and malnutrition are both easily treatable conditions in Britain. The inquest into Maeve’s death took three years investigating how a preventable death could have been permitted to a young woman who did not want to die, had been actively taking medical advice since the onset of symptoms in 2008, and had consented to three hospital admissions in the seven months prior her premature death in 2021.
It took four years of extensive tests and investigations before Maeve was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), by which time she had obtained A* results in Russian, Biology, English and Chemistry at A Level. Such results are not possible without the ability to understand instructions and take advice. Once diagnosed she was under specialist CFS services for eight years, including the Centre of Excellence in Bristol. She meticulously followed the instructions and advice they gave. Maeve never believed she would not recover; she learnt from the bitterest experience how the disease progresses from mild to very severe.
Maeve’s health deteriorated following a mild viral infection from which she (and the rest of her family) appeared to have fully recovered when Maeve was thirteen. Her symptoms steadily progressed to being serious enough that her PE teachers stopped her from joining their lessons; the risk of her being injured was too high.
The facts of Maeve’s death disqualified Miller as an Expert Witness at her inquest. By the end of the three-year inquiry, HMA Coroner was mildly better informed about ME than before the inquest opened. In the process of establishing the facts she confirmed that there are no inpatient services for people with ME anywhere in the UK, either in private or publicly owned hospitals. If the opinions of Miller et al had any efficacy in cases of ME, Maeve would still be alive today.
The Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report mentions six national institutions responsible for failing to prevent Maeve’s premature death. These include the National Health Service (NHS), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). Failure on this scale can only be remedied by systemic change, which must involve leadership at the highest level.
If a provincial inquest can establish these facts about ME, the BMJ should have little difficulty in doing similar. Failure to correct its editorial stance on this disease, when the international consensus is prioritising patient safety, casts doubt on both the reliability and ethics of opinions from the British medical establishment.”
A shortened version can be found featured in my LinkedIn profile here.
Sincerely
Sarah Boothby
-
BMJ’s “Commissioned” Propaganda Piece Hijacked Death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill; Boothby O’Neill’s Mum Responds
By David Tuller, DrPH
Under the editorial leadership of Kamran Abbasi, The BMJ and other journals in BMJ Group have become, at times, mouthpieces for members of the biopsychosocial ideological brigades. That hasn’t been surprising, given his actions during his previous tenure as editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Under his stewardship, the journal published a piece of crap co-authored by Professor Sir Simon Wessely, a former president of the royal society, and his King’s College London’s colleague Trudie Chalder, the factually and mathematically challenged professor cognitive behavior therapy and one of the lead PACE authors. The 2020 article, Cognitive behavioural therapy for chronic fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome: outcomes from a specialist clinic in the UK, made causal statements even as it declared that its single-cohort study design did not allow for making causal statements.
When my friend and colleague Brian Hughes, a psychology professor at the University of Galway, and I pointed this out and presented other irrefutable evidence of error, Abbasi declined to take action to correct the public record. We published our critique as a separate article in the Journal of Health Psychology.
Since Abbasi’s ascent as editor in chief of The BMJ, BMJ journals have published some egregious work on ME/CFS and Long COVID. (Not that they were good before.) Most recently, in May, The BMJ, the flagship journal, published what I called “a commissioned propaganda piece” from die-hard biopsychosocial-ists. The commentary, which is called “Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care,” touted so-called multi-disciplinary treatment approaches that have no legitimate evidence of effectiveness.
The first author of The BMJ’s invited opinion piece is infectious diseases specialist Alastair Miller, a longtime proponent of graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavior therapy as curative treatments and formerly associated with what was called the Liverpool Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Service. Last summer, during the inquest into the death of 27-year-old Maeve Boothby O’Neill from ME-related complications in Exeter in 2021, The Observer published an offensive and stupid opinion piece by Professor Miller. In the piece, he attempted to hijack the tragedy of Boothby O’Neill’s death to promote his persistent ideological beliefs about purportedly successful rehabilitative strategies.
Another author of the new BMJ article is Paul Garner, also an infectious diseases physician, who has now spent years presenting his N=1 case of recovery from post-viral symptoms as evidence of the power of his strong manly cognitions to cure Long COVID. Per Garner’s claim, this medical turnaround occurred immediately after a phone consultation with someone who sounded very much like a practitioner of the Lightning Process—whether or not that is actually the case.
Like Professor Miller’s piece last summer, the new commentary includes, perhaps not surprisingly, a reference to Boothy O’Neill’s death, in the following sentence: “However, functional impairment may lead to malnutrition and dehydration—described as the cause of death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who died in 2021 at age 27.” To be clear: the claim that Maeve’s “impairment” was “functional” rather than driven by ME-related pathophysiological dysfunctions is an unproven theory and contradicts the coroner’s report. The “functional” claim is this lot’s security blanket. But believing in the tooth fairy does not mean the tooth fairy exists.
This desperate plea for relevance from a group of misguided partisans prompted a flurry of rapid responses. So far, 21 have been publicly posted. Sarah Boothby, Maeve’s mother, twice submitted a rapid response. However, it has not appeared. I have posted her comment below. (A version is also posted on Boothby’s LinkedIn page)
**********
Dear Editor in Chief, Kamran Abbasi
I submitted the following through the BMJ Latest rapid response portal twice, the second time with a request for acknowledgment. As the BMJ has neither published my corrections and criticism nor acknowledged my communication I am writing to you formally for an explanation. Please explain why the BMJ is commissioning and publishing misinformation specifically on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis?
“In commissioning and publishing the opinion piece by Miller et al (BMJ 2025;389:r977) the BMJ failed to fact check and consequently misled its readership on the risk of death from very severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). Those interested in medical ethics should note:
Maeve Boothby O’Neill died from ME shortly after her twenty-seventh birthday. She was not the first and has not been the last to die from this devastating illness yet the BMJ made no correction to the claim that Maeve died from malnutrition and dehydration. Dehydration and malnutrition are both easily treatable conditions in Britain. The inquest into Maeve’s death took three years investigating how a preventable death could have been permitted to a young woman who did not want to die, had been actively taking medical advice since the onset of symptoms in 2008, and had consented to three hospital admissions in the seven months prior her premature death in 2021.
It took four years of extensive tests and investigations before Maeve was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), by which time she had obtained A* results in Russian, Biology, English and Chemistry at A Level. Such results are not possible without the ability to understand instructions and take advice. Once diagnosed she was under specialist CFS services for eight years, including the Centre of Excellence in Bristol. She meticulously followed the instructions and advice they gave. Maeve never believed she would not recover; she learnt from the bitterest experience how the disease progresses from mild to very severe.
Maeve’s health deteriorated following a mild viral infection from which she (and the rest of her family) appeared to have fully recovered when Maeve was thirteen. Her symptoms steadily progressed to being serious enough that her PE teachers stopped her from joining their lessons; the risk of her being injured was too high.
The facts of Maeve’s death disqualified Miller as an Expert Witness at her inquest. By the end of the three-year inquiry, HMA Coroner was mildly better informed about ME than before the inquest opened. In the process of establishing the facts she confirmed that there are no inpatient services for people with ME anywhere in the UK, either in private or publicly owned hospitals. If the opinions of Miller et al had any efficacy in cases of ME, Maeve would still be alive today.
The Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report mentions six national institutions responsible for failing to prevent Maeve’s premature death. These include the National Health Service (NHS), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). Failure on this scale can only be remedied by systemic change, which must involve leadership at the highest level.
If a provincial inquest can establish these facts about ME, the BMJ should have little difficulty in doing similar. Failure to correct its editorial stance on this disease, when the international consensus is prioritising patient safety, casts doubt on both the reliability and ethics of opinions from the British medical establishment.”
A shortened version can be found featured in my LinkedIn profile here.
Sincerely
Sarah Boothby
-
Es gibt eine #Petition:
An
Bundesministerium Innovation, Mobilität und Infrastruktur
für die Änderung Straßenverkehrsordnung (#StVO) sowie das Bundesministerium für Justiz (#BMJ) für datenschutzrechtliche Aspekte.
Sichere Straßen für #Radfahrer: #Dashcams legalisieren und Leben schützen! -
Nuevo #MetaAnálisis sobre los riesgos a la salud por consumir #cannabis: 29% de incremento de riesgo de angina/#infarto del miocardio, 20% de incremento en el riesgo de #stroke/#ictus y se duplica el riesgo de #Muerte por problemas cardiovasculares.
🤷🏽♂️ #CardiovascularRisk #EVC #Toulouse #Strasbourg #Heart #BMJ
https://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2025/06/10/heartjnl-2024-325429
-
Nuevo #MetaAnálisis sobre los riesgos a la salud por consumir #cannabis: 29% de incremento de riesgo de angina/#infarto del miocardio, 20% de incremento en el riesgo de #stroke/#ictus y se duplica el riesgo de #Muerte por problemas cardiovasculares.
🤷🏽♂️ #CardiovascularRisk #EVC #Toulouse #Strasbourg #Heart #BMJ
https://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2025/06/10/heartjnl-2024-325429
-
More on the BMJ Opinion Piece from the Psychobabblers
By David Tuller, DrPH
When it comes to ME and ME/CFS, The BMJ—formerly called The British Medical Journal but now, like the food franchise once known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, officially reduced to a mere acronym—is a long-time champion of the “biopsychosocial” ideological brigades. (I use the “scare quotes” because the term is a misnomer, given that these experts focus pretty much exclusively on the “psycho” and “social” while largely ignoring the “bio” part of the equation.) So it should not surprise anyone that The BMJ recently published yet another ignorant and misguided screed from this crew—a commissioned opinion piece titled “Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care,” from Miller et al. (I first posted about this propaganda piece a few days ago.)
Indeed, The BMJ, and the many other titles under the BMJ publishing umbrella, have for decades provided opportunities for the GET/CBT zealots to air their theories about deconditioning and problematic illness beliefs as causal factors for ME/CFS—theories now extended to Long Covid. A 1989 letter written by Dr Melvin Ramsey, an early ME researcher, reveals the historical nature of this prejudicial and biased approach.
Dr. Ramsey investigated the 1950s disease outbreak at London’s Royal Free Hospital, the event that subsequently gave rise to the name “myalgic encephalomyelitis.” In 2021, an invaluable Twitter (now X) account, Royal Free 1955, which has released an impressive archive of relevant documents, posted Dr. Ramsey’s letter. In the letter, addressed to someone named Edith, Dr. Ramsey discussed the challenges he was confronting in trying to publish ME-related research. Here’s the key section:
“For many months we have been in difficulty by the influence exerted by a psychiatrist, Dr. Simon Wessly [sic] who has secured for himself the position of referee to the BMJ whose Assistant Editor has been strongly anti-ME and we cannot get anything published in British medical journals in our favor. Simon Wessly cuts right across my fundamental tenet of “rest” for chronic M.E. cases and tries to get them admitted to Psychiatric Units where they are immediately put on vigorous exercise.”
The BMJ’s skewed view of this issue continued during the reign of Dr Fiona Godlee, the previous editor in chief. I had many go-round with Dr Godlee, who stepped aside in 2021, over some of the nonsense published in various BMJ journals during her tenure. That included the report on the fraudulent pediatric study of the woo-woo Lightning Process conducted by Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s ethically and methodologically challenged pediatrician and grant magnet. (Professor Crawley has since retired from the university and from medical practice, for reasons that have not been publicly explained. No great loss!)
That clinical trial, published in 2018 in BMJ’s Archives of Disease in Childhood, violated core principles of scientific research, rendering its findings unreliable and essentially uninterpretable. Specifically, the authors recruited more than half the participants before the trial was formally registered, and swapped primary and secondary outcomes after having collected much of their data. All major medical journals have policies forbidding such actions, none of which were revealed in the published trial report. The paper should clearly have been retracted. Instead, it now carries a 3,000-word correction and a 1,000-word editorial note offering tortured but unconvincing excuses for why it was re-published with the exact same findings.
Dr Godlee’s successor was Dr. Kamran Abbasi. I have had prior dealings with Dr Abbasi as well. He was formerly the editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. During his tenure, the journal published a seriously problematic paper whose authors included Professor Sir Simon Wessely and Trudie Chalder, King’s College London’s mathematically and factually challenged professor of cognitive behavior therapy. The paper was called “Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for chronic fatigue and CFS: outcomes from a specialist clinic in the UK.”
Among other concerns, the authors made causal claims of success for their intervention even as they acknowledged that their observational study was incapable of documenting causal relationships. Dr Abbasi refused to take any corrective action. We ended up publishing our critique as a full-fledged paper in the Journal of Health Psychology.
In other words, Dr Abbasi protected Professor Sir Simon, Professor Chalder and their colleagues from accountability for their indisputable errors. His failure to pursue the necessary steps to ensure the accuracy of the scientific literature was extremely disturbing and represented a violation of his responsibilities to both the field of medicine and the general public. Dr Abbasi’s decision revealed his true colors—and his biased approach to this issue. No one should expect anything different from him during his stewardship of the BMJ stable of publications.
**********
Snippets from some of the rapid responses
The recent opinion piece has now racked up more than a dozen rapid responses, many of them quite eloquent in their expressions of dismay at the bogus arguments advanced by the authors. I’ve included a few quotes from these responses here.
Elke Hausmann, GP in Derby: “There are thousands of us, including many doctors with Long Covid or ME, who argue that continuing to invest in researching mind/body approaches is taking away from the real research we need, into understanding the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms at play in ME and Long Covid, which has always been where progress in medicine and medical treatments has come from.”
Tom Parsons, severe ME patient in Sussex, England: “The so-called biopsychosocial approach is continuously presented as a new and cutting-edge approach to treating people with ME/CFS when it has been the dominant treatment paradigm in this country and elsewhere since the 1990s and, in that time, its advocates have failed to produce any good quality evidence that these approaches help people recover any significant degree of functioning. To present these approaches as exciting new science is, to borrow a phrase, serving old wine in new bottles.”
David Putrino, neuroscientist and professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, along with more than a dozen other experts and patient advocates: “Miller et al continue to promote the unsubstantiated claims that ME/CFS is deeply rooted in psychosomatic aetiology and occurs due to a combination of deconditioning and “unhelpful illness beliefs.” They argue that “the patients’ belief that they won’t recover can harm their mental wellbeing.” These assertions lack credible scientific basis, contradict current NICE guidelines, and risk causing further harm to people with ME/CFS.”
Dom J. Salisbury, patient advocate in Lancashire, England: “In their opinion piece, Miller and coauthors ignore PEM when listing common symptoms of ME/CFS. This is an attempt to continue framing this illness as belonging to a family of ‘fatiguing conditions’, which, along with other ‘medically unexplained symptoms’, they argue can be treated with psychological interventions and rehabilitation.”
Michiel Tack, patient in Hulst, The Netherlands: “The view that ME/CFS is maintained by unhelpful thoughts and behavior is poorly supported by current evidence and may unfairly blame patients for their illness and failure to recover. This model has been tested in the past with disappointing results, which is likely why NICE no longer recommends it.”
-
BMJ Publishes New Propaganda Piece on Severe ME/CFS
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 assertions and evidence-free arguments about patients’ “beliefs” as a causal factor. It would be interesting to know what, if anything, prompted the invitation to these authors, but The BMJ’s apparent support for this position is not surprising, given its history and current editorial leadership
I’m always torn when another one of these creepy articles appears. Is a robust response necessary to counter the delusional musings? Or does responding just amplify nonsense that is best left ignored? Both perspectives obviously have merit. Sometimes I can’t restrain myself and feel I need to mount a rebuttal or work with others to do so. Sometimes, I just can’t bring myself to essentially write the same thing I’ve already written many, many times.
(So far, quite a few powerful “rapid responses” have been posted to The BMJ’s site. In another post, I’ll highlight some of those.)
The first author of The BMJ’s opinion is longtime GET/CBT proponent Alastair Miller, an infectious disease specialist formerly associated with what was called the “Liverpool Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Service.”Early in the pandemic, in a webinar produced by the Royal Society of Medicine, Miller argued that the PACE trial “has had a lot of bad press.” He added:
“That study along with a number of other meta-analyses have shown benefits of CBT and graded exercise, and that’s the approach that we used in Liverpool. And from our results, which are pretty much in line with PACE and all the other centers that are using these therapies, we reckoned that about one third of our patients made a complete recovery and go back to a pre-morbid existence, about a third made an improvement but still had some symptoms, and about a third did not recover.”
It is troubling that the new opinion hijacks the 2021 death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who was just 27, to bolster its argument. But that is also not surprising, given that Miller did the same thing last summer. In late July, while the inquest into Boothby O’Neill’s death was underway in Exeter, The Guardian published a screed by Miller articulating similar points to some of those made in The BMJ.
At that time, I wrote a post about Miller’s Guardian piece. Given the new provocation, I thought that post deserved a reprise.
**********
Guardian Publishes Response to Boothby O’Neill Inquest from Ranking Member of the CBT/GET Ideological Brigades
My heart sinks every time I see another ridiculous article from a member of the CBT/GET ideological brigades. They repeat the same bogus arguments that we’ve heard for years—arguments that have already been refuted time and again. So let’s take a look at the most recent iteration of this tiresome dog-and-pony show—physician Alastair Miller’s reflections in The Guardian on the inquest into the death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill. (I have been attending daily in County Hall in Exeter, a university town in southwest England; I posted my thoughts on the first week of testimony here.)
Miller is an infectious disease expert from Liverpool who used to run a local ME/CFS clinic. (I assume it was called a CFS clinic when he ran it.) Before I explain why his article is full of nonsense, I want to acknowledge that he makes at least one reasonably valid point in writing the following: “I know of no colleagues who hold the view that ME/CFS is ‘all in the mind.’”
In general, I believe Miller and most of his colleagues accept that patients’ symptoms are genuine and not imaginary or delusional. But according to the theoretical framing outlined in papers starting in the late 1980s as well as in the fraudulent PACE trial, the symptoms arise solely from the combination of two elements: “unhelpful” or “dysfunctional” beliefs about their illness, which causes them to remain sedentary, and the “deconditioning” that results from this ongoing inactivity. So while I’m sure some doctors do think and express the belief that the symptoms are “all in the mind,” I have never charged the PACE authors and their fan club with holding that specific perspective. The reality is a bit more nuanced.
Beyond that, pretty much everything else included in Miller’s essay is nonsense—although Jon Stone, a professor of neurology at the University of Edinburgh and a big PACE supporter, called it “a great article” on X (formerly known as Twitter). What is most striking, however, is the glaring absence of any mention of the 2021 guidance for ME/CFS from NICE. That guidance found the quality of the research into CBT and GET, including the PACE trial, to be of poor quality and not fit for use as the basis of clinical recommendations. Miller undoubtedly disagrees; after all, he was one of the dozens of co-authors of a screed against the guidance published last year. But readers have a right to know that Miller’s position contradicts the recommendations from the UK’s highly respected authority on clinical care. Omitting any reference to the new guidance is an unacceptable lapse.
As far as the key points included, here goes.
Miller suggests that there have been “years of well-funded research” into the illness. Over the last 30+ years in the UK, as he well knows, that “well-funded research” has mainly been devoted to incessant reiterations of various forms of CBT and GET—and the five-million-pound PACE trial was the apotheosis of this approach. The results of this enormous investment, as outlined by NICE’s analysis of the data, were pathetic—research that provided no viable or legitimate evidentiary basis for the CBT/GET paradigm.
In the case of Boothby O’Neill, we’re talking about a young woman who died from malnutrition because no one at the hospital seemed to know anything about ME/CFS. As has become clear from the testimony, they believed in the CBT/GET paradigm because no one ever told them otherwise, and they offered her the sort of advice parroted by Miller. Maeve had tried CBT. Since it didn’t cure her illness, did she do it wrong? Even as she was deteriorating dramatically in the last months, she was nudged to make “lifestyle” changes—that is, to try to push herself to do more. Is Miller suggesting that, if she had, she wouldn’t have died?
He then makes this claim: “With appropriate support and intervention many patients will make a full recovery. A rough rule of thumb from clinical experience is that about one-third of patients will make a full recovery, one-third a partial recovery and one-third will remain at baseline or deteriorate.”
This might be a “rough” estimate from his clinical experience, but clinical experience is not necessarily a reliable guide. It is critical to remember that the standard UK case definition for what was long called CFS was six months of unexplained fatigue—that’s it. If some of these patients had idiopathic fatigue, perhaps related to undiagnosed depression or anxiety, it makes sense that a chunk of them would improve with CBT and exercise.
In any event, science has developed clinical trials specifically to vet whether assumptions made from reported clinical experience are valid, reliable and accurate. PACE was the clinical trial designed to prove that these approaches worked. It was a farce and a bust, as a reanalysis of the data documented. (I was a co-author of this paper.) Miller obviously doesn’t agree. In a Long Covid webinar hosted by the Royal College of Medicine in October, 2020, he noted that his clinical experiences “are pretty much in line with PACE.”
As I have repeatedly noted, PACE was put to its best use at my academic institution—the University of California, Berkeley–as a pedagogical tool. My epidemiology colleagues have highlighted it in graduate seminars as a case study of awful research. Bruce Levin, a retired professor of biostatistics at Columbia, gave a lecture about PACE called “How NOT to Conduct a Randomized Clinical Trial.” Miller—and Jon Stone–might find that offensive. But this is the verdict on PACE from experts beyond the influence of those pontificating on the matter from their august perches at King’s College London, Oxford, and elsewhere.
In calling for a “new conversation” about ME/CFS, Miller conveniently ignores that he and his colleagues have dominated this field for decades. They have not been interested in any conversations about it beyond those that confirm their biases. Abetted and enabled by the (Anti-) Science Media Centre, they have bullied and disparaged desperately ill patients as dangerous, crazed terrorists—a narrative that, for a while, successfully shifted attention away from the egregious methodological flaws that characterize the CBT/GET research in general and the PACE trial specifically. That era is over.
Then there is this passage:
“Patients can’t exercise their way out of the illness…The fact that we use CBT and other behavioural approaches in no way implies that we do not believe this is a physical condition. After all, we use CBT and rehabilitation to relieve symptoms in cancer, in rheumatoid arthritis and following heart attacks.”
Unfortunately for Miller’s argument, the message from the research, including the PACE trial, is clear—the interventions were explicitly presented as potentially curative. So in asserting now that “patients can’t exercise their way out of the illness,” Miller is trying to rewrite the past. And to compare the CBT designed to ME/CFS patients to the CBT offered to those with cancer or rheumatoid arthritis is a non-starter. The CBT for ME/CFS patients was specifically aimed at alleviating them of their beliefs about the illness. As far as I know, no one has reasonably argued that CBT will cure cancer without actual medical treatment.
This essay reads like it was written to justify the fatal mistreatment suffered by Maeve at the hands of health care providers who unwittingly bought into the PACE and CBT/GET propaganda. It is a disgraceful display of ignorance, hypocrisy, and historical revisionism.
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BMJ Publishes New Propaganda Piece on Severe ME/CFS
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 assertions and evidence-free arguments about patients’ “beliefs” as a causal factor. It would be interesting to know what, if anything, prompted the invitation to these authors, but The BMJ’s apparent support for this position is not surprising, given its history and current editorial leadership
I’m always torn when another one of these creepy articles appears. Is a robust response necessary to counter the delusional musings? Or does responding just amplify nonsense that is best left ignored? Both perspectives obviously have merit. Sometimes I can’t restrain myself and feel I need to mount a rebuttal or work with others to do so. Sometimes, I just can’t bring myself to essentially write the same thing I’ve already written many, many times.
(So far, quite a few powerful “rapid responses” have been posted to The BMJ’s site. In another post, I’ll highlight some of those.)
The first author of The BMJ’s opinion is longtime GET/CBT proponent Alastair Miller, an infectious disease specialist formerly associated with what was called the “Liverpool Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Service.”Early in the pandemic, in a webinar produced by the Royal Society of Medicine, Miller argued that the PACE trial “has had a lot of bad press.” He added:
“That study along with a number of other meta-analyses have shown benefits of CBT and graded exercise, and that’s the approach that we used in Liverpool. And from our results, which are pretty much in line with PACE and all the other centers that are using these therapies, we reckoned that about one third of our patients made a complete recovery and go back to a pre-morbid existence, about a third made an improvement but still had some symptoms, and about a third did not recover.”
It is troubling that the new opinion hijacks the 2021 death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who was just 27, to bolster its argument. But that is also not surprising, given that Miller did the same thing last summer. In late July, while the inquest into Boothby O’Neill’s death was underway in Exeter, The Guardian published a screed by Miller articulating similar points to some of those made in The BMJ.
At that time, I wrote a post about Miller’s Guardian piece. Given the new provocation, I thought that post deserved a reprise.
**********
Guardian Publishes Response to Boothby O’Neill Inquest from Ranking Member of the CBT/GET Ideological Brigades
My heart sinks every time I see another ridiculous article from a member of the CBT/GET ideological brigades. They repeat the same bogus arguments that we’ve heard for years—arguments that have already been refuted time and again. So let’s take a look at the most recent iteration of this tiresome dog-and-pony show—physician Alastair Miller’s reflections in The Guardian on the inquest into the death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill. (I have been attending daily in County Hall in Exeter, a university town in southwest England; I posted my thoughts on the first week of testimony here.)
Miller is an infectious disease expert from Liverpool who used to run a local ME/CFS clinic. (I assume it was called a CFS clinic when he ran it.) Before I explain why his article is full of nonsense, I want to acknowledge that he makes at least one reasonably valid point in writing the following: “I know of no colleagues who hold the view that ME/CFS is ‘all in the mind.’”
In general, I believe Miller and most of his colleagues accept that patients’ symptoms are genuine and not imaginary or delusional. But according to the theoretical framing outlined in papers starting in the late 1980s as well as in the fraudulent PACE trial, the symptoms arise solely from the combination of two elements: “unhelpful” or “dysfunctional” beliefs about their illness, which causes them to remain sedentary, and the “deconditioning” that results from this ongoing inactivity. So while I’m sure some doctors do think and express the belief that the symptoms are “all in the mind,” I have never charged the PACE authors and their fan club with holding that specific perspective. The reality is a bit more nuanced.
Beyond that, pretty much everything else included in Miller’s essay is nonsense—although Jon Stone, a professor of neurology at the University of Edinburgh and a big PACE supporter, called it “a great article” on X (formerly known as Twitter). What is most striking, however, is the glaring absence of any mention of the 2021 guidance for ME/CFS from NICE. That guidance found the quality of the research into CBT and GET, including the PACE trial, to be of poor quality and not fit for use as the basis of clinical recommendations. Miller undoubtedly disagrees; after all, he was one of the dozens of co-authors of a screed against the guidance published last year. But readers have a right to know that Miller’s position contradicts the recommendations from the UK’s highly respected authority on clinical care. Omitting any reference to the new guidance is an unacceptable lapse.
As far as the key points included, here goes.
Miller suggests that there have been “years of well-funded research” into the illness. Over the last 30+ years in the UK, as he well knows, that “well-funded research” has mainly been devoted to incessant reiterations of various forms of CBT and GET—and the five-million-pound PACE trial was the apotheosis of this approach. The results of this enormous investment, as outlined by NICE’s analysis of the data, were pathetic—research that provided no viable or legitimate evidentiary basis for the CBT/GET paradigm.
In the case of Boothby O’Neill, we’re talking about a young woman who died from malnutrition because no one at the hospital seemed to know anything about ME/CFS. As has become clear from the testimony, they believed in the CBT/GET paradigm because no one ever told them otherwise, and they offered her the sort of advice parroted by Miller. Maeve had tried CBT. Since it didn’t cure her illness, did she do it wrong? Even as she was deteriorating dramatically in the last months, she was nudged to make “lifestyle” changes—that is, to try to push herself to do more. Is Miller suggesting that, if she had, she wouldn’t have died?
He then makes this claim: “With appropriate support and intervention many patients will make a full recovery. A rough rule of thumb from clinical experience is that about one-third of patients will make a full recovery, one-third a partial recovery and one-third will remain at baseline or deteriorate.”
This might be a “rough” estimate from his clinical experience, but clinical experience is not necessarily a reliable guide. It is critical to remember that the standard UK case definition for what was long called CFS was six months of unexplained fatigue—that’s it. If some of these patients had idiopathic fatigue, perhaps related to undiagnosed depression or anxiety, it makes sense that a chunk of them would improve with CBT and exercise.
In any event, science has developed clinical trials specifically to vet whether assumptions made from reported clinical experience are valid, reliable and accurate. PACE was the clinical trial designed to prove that these approaches worked. It was a farce and a bust, as a reanalysis of the data documented. (I was a co-author of this paper.) Miller obviously doesn’t agree. In a Long Covid webinar hosted by the Royal College of Medicine in October, 2020, he noted that his clinical experiences “are pretty much in line with PACE.”
As I have repeatedly noted, PACE was put to its best use at my academic institution—the University of California, Berkeley–as a pedagogical tool. My epidemiology colleagues have highlighted it in graduate seminars as a case study of awful research. Bruce Levin, a retired professor of biostatistics at Columbia, gave a lecture about PACE called “How NOT to Conduct a Randomized Clinical Trial.” Miller—and Jon Stone–might find that offensive. But this is the verdict on PACE from experts beyond the influence of those pontificating on the matter from their august perches at King’s College London, Oxford, and elsewhere.
In calling for a “new conversation” about ME/CFS, Miller conveniently ignores that he and his colleagues have dominated this field for decades. They have not been interested in any conversations about it beyond those that confirm their biases. Abetted and enabled by the (Anti-) Science Media Centre, they have bullied and disparaged desperately ill patients as dangerous, crazed terrorists—a narrative that, for a while, successfully shifted attention away from the egregious methodological flaws that characterize the CBT/GET research in general and the PACE trial specifically. That era is over.
Then there is this passage:
“Patients can’t exercise their way out of the illness…The fact that we use CBT and other behavioural approaches in no way implies that we do not believe this is a physical condition. After all, we use CBT and rehabilitation to relieve symptoms in cancer, in rheumatoid arthritis and following heart attacks.”
Unfortunately for Miller’s argument, the message from the research, including the PACE trial, is clear—the interventions were explicitly presented as potentially curative. So in asserting now that “patients can’t exercise their way out of the illness,” Miller is trying to rewrite the past. And to compare the CBT designed to ME/CFS patients to the CBT offered to those with cancer or rheumatoid arthritis is a non-starter. The CBT for ME/CFS patients was specifically aimed at alleviating them of their beliefs about the illness. As far as I know, no one has reasonably argued that CBT will cure cancer without actual medical treatment.
This essay reads like it was written to justify the fatal mistreatment suffered by Maeve at the hands of health care providers who unwittingly bought into the PACE and CBT/GET propaganda. It is a disgraceful display of ignorance, hypocrisy, and historical revisionism.
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BMJ Publishes New Propaganda Piece on Severe ME/CFS
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 assertions and evidence-free arguments about patients’ “beliefs” as a causal factor. It would be interesting to know what, if anything, prompted the invitation to these authors, but The BMJ’s apparent support for this position is not surprising, given its history and current editorial leadership
I’m always torn when another one of these creepy articles appears. Is a robust response necessary to counter the delusional musings? Or does responding just amplify nonsense that is best left ignored? Both perspectives obviously have merit. Sometimes I can’t restrain myself and feel I need to mount a rebuttal or work with others to do so. Sometimes, I just can’t bring myself to essentially write the same thing I’ve already written many, many times.
(So far, quite a few powerful “rapid responses” have been posted to The BMJ’s site. In another post, I’ll highlight some of those.)
The first author of The BMJ’s opinion is longtime GET/CBT proponent Alastair Miller, an infectious disease specialist formerly associated with what was called the “Liverpool Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Service.”Early in the pandemic, in a webinar produced by the Royal Society of Medicine, Miller argued that the PACE trial “has had a lot of bad press.” He added:
“That study along with a number of other meta-analyses have shown benefits of CBT and graded exercise, and that’s the approach that we used in Liverpool. And from our results, which are pretty much in line with PACE and all the other centers that are using these therapies, we reckoned that about one third of our patients made a complete recovery and go back to a pre-morbid existence, about a third made an improvement but still had some symptoms, and about a third did not recover.”
It is troubling that the new opinion hijacks the 2021 death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who was just 27, to bolster its argument. But that is also not surprising, given that Miller did the same thing last summer. In late July, while the inquest into Boothby O’Neill’s death was underway in Exeter, The Guardian published a screed by Miller articulating similar points to some of those made in The BMJ.
At that time, I wrote a post about Miller’s Guardian piece. Given the new provocation, I thought that post deserved a reprise.
**********
Guardian Publishes Response to Boothby O’Neill Inquest from Ranking Member of the CBT/GET Ideological Brigades
My heart sinks every time I see another ridiculous article from a member of the CBT/GET ideological brigades. They repeat the same bogus arguments that we’ve heard for years—arguments that have already been refuted time and again. So let’s take a look at the most recent iteration of this tiresome dog-and-pony show—physician Alastair Miller’s reflections in The Guardian on the inquest into the death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill. (I have been attending daily in County Hall in Exeter, a university town in southwest England; I posted my thoughts on the first week of testimony here.)
Miller is an infectious disease expert from Liverpool who used to run a local ME/CFS clinic. (I assume it was called a CFS clinic when he ran it.) Before I explain why his article is full of nonsense, I want to acknowledge that he makes at least one reasonably valid point in writing the following: “I know of no colleagues who hold the view that ME/CFS is ‘all in the mind.’”
In general, I believe Miller and most of his colleagues accept that patients’ symptoms are genuine and not imaginary or delusional. But according to the theoretical framing outlined in papers starting in the late 1980s as well as in the fraudulent PACE trial, the symptoms arise solely from the combination of two elements: “unhelpful” or “dysfunctional” beliefs about their illness, which causes them to remain sedentary, and the “deconditioning” that results from this ongoing inactivity. So while I’m sure some doctors do think and express the belief that the symptoms are “all in the mind,” I have never charged the PACE authors and their fan club with holding that specific perspective. The reality is a bit more nuanced.
Beyond that, pretty much everything else included in Miller’s essay is nonsense—although Jon Stone, a professor of neurology at the University of Edinburgh and a big PACE supporter, called it “a great article” on X (formerly known as Twitter). What is most striking, however, is the glaring absence of any mention of the 2021 guidance for ME/CFS from NICE. That guidance found the quality of the research into CBT and GET, including the PACE trial, to be of poor quality and not fit for use as the basis of clinical recommendations. Miller undoubtedly disagrees; after all, he was one of the dozens of co-authors of a screed against the guidance published last year. But readers have a right to know that Miller’s position contradicts the recommendations from the UK’s highly respected authority on clinical care. Omitting any reference to the new guidance is an unacceptable lapse.
As far as the key points included, here goes.
Miller suggests that there have been “years of well-funded research” into the illness. Over the last 30+ years in the UK, as he well knows, that “well-funded research” has mainly been devoted to incessant reiterations of various forms of CBT and GET—and the five-million-pound PACE trial was the apotheosis of this approach. The results of this enormous investment, as outlined by NICE’s analysis of the data, were pathetic—research that provided no viable or legitimate evidentiary basis for the CBT/GET paradigm.
In the case of Boothby O’Neill, we’re talking about a young woman who died from malnutrition because no one at the hospital seemed to know anything about ME/CFS. As has become clear from the testimony, they believed in the CBT/GET paradigm because no one ever told them otherwise, and they offered her the sort of advice parroted by Miller. Maeve had tried CBT. Since it didn’t cure her illness, did she do it wrong? Even as she was deteriorating dramatically in the last months, she was nudged to make “lifestyle” changes—that is, to try to push herself to do more. Is Miller suggesting that, if she had, she wouldn’t have died?
He then makes this claim: “With appropriate support and intervention many patients will make a full recovery. A rough rule of thumb from clinical experience is that about one-third of patients will make a full recovery, one-third a partial recovery and one-third will remain at baseline or deteriorate.”
This might be a “rough” estimate from his clinical experience, but clinical experience is not necessarily a reliable guide. It is critical to remember that the standard UK case definition for what was long called CFS was six months of unexplained fatigue—that’s it. If some of these patients had idiopathic fatigue, perhaps related to undiagnosed depression or anxiety, it makes sense that a chunk of them would improve with CBT and exercise.
In any event, science has developed clinical trials specifically to vet whether assumptions made from reported clinical experience are valid, reliable and accurate. PACE was the clinical trial designed to prove that these approaches worked. It was a farce and a bust, as a reanalysis of the data documented. (I was a co-author of this paper.) Miller obviously doesn’t agree. In a Long Covid webinar hosted by the Royal College of Medicine in October, 2020, he noted that his clinical experiences “are pretty much in line with PACE.”
As I have repeatedly noted, PACE was put to its best use at my academic institution—the University of California, Berkeley–as a pedagogical tool. My epidemiology colleagues have highlighted it in graduate seminars as a case study of awful research. Bruce Levin, a retired professor of biostatistics at Columbia, gave a lecture about PACE called “How NOT to Conduct a Randomized Clinical Trial.” Miller—and Jon Stone–might find that offensive. But this is the verdict on PACE from experts beyond the influence of those pontificating on the matter from their august perches at King’s College London, Oxford, and elsewhere.
In calling for a “new conversation” about ME/CFS, Miller conveniently ignores that he and his colleagues have dominated this field for decades. They have not been interested in any conversations about it beyond those that confirm their biases. Abetted and enabled by the (Anti-) Science Media Centre, they have bullied and disparaged desperately ill patients as dangerous, crazed terrorists—a narrative that, for a while, successfully shifted attention away from the egregious methodological flaws that characterize the CBT/GET research in general and the PACE trial specifically. That era is over.
Then there is this passage:
“Patients can’t exercise their way out of the illness…The fact that we use CBT and other behavioural approaches in no way implies that we do not believe this is a physical condition. After all, we use CBT and rehabilitation to relieve symptoms in cancer, in rheumatoid arthritis and following heart attacks.”
Unfortunately for Miller’s argument, the message from the research, including the PACE trial, is clear—the interventions were explicitly presented as potentially curative. So in asserting now that “patients can’t exercise their way out of the illness,” Miller is trying to rewrite the past. And to compare the CBT designed to ME/CFS patients to the CBT offered to those with cancer or rheumatoid arthritis is a non-starter. The CBT for ME/CFS patients was specifically aimed at alleviating them of their beliefs about the illness. As far as I know, no one has reasonably argued that CBT will cure cancer without actual medical treatment.
This essay reads like it was written to justify the fatal mistreatment suffered by Maeve at the hands of health care providers who unwittingly bought into the PACE and CBT/GET propaganda. It is a disgraceful display of ignorance, hypocrisy, and historical revisionism.
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⚛ **Editorial: Ending nuclear weapons, before they end us**
“_Even a fraction of the current arsenal could decimate the biosphere in a severe mass extinction event. The global climate disruption caused by the smoke pouring from cities ignited by just 2% of the current arsenal could result in over two billion people starving._”
Abbasi K, Ali P, Barbour V, Birch M, Blum I, Doherty P et al. Ending nuclear weapons, before they end us BMJ 2025; 389 :r881 doi: https://www.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r881
#OpenAccess #OA #DOI #BMJ #Editorial #Nuclear #Armageddon #Extinction
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Das wird in der Tat eine der dicken Brocken für das neue Justiz- und #Verbraucherschutz-Ministerium #BMJ und des @BMWK! Der #Fernwärme-Markt braucht v.a. mehr #Preiskontrolle und faire Preise für #Verbraucher:innen, damit die #Akzeptanz für diese wichtige Säule der #Wärmewende hoch bleibt. Der Bundesverband Verbraucherzentralen #VZBV hat die Forderung jüngst nochmal erneuert und mit einer Studie unterfüttert! #Energieverbrauchrunter #Energiesparen #Sanierung #GasExit #lessismore #Effizienzwende #Nahwärme #Wärmenetz #fernwarme
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An #editorial in the highly respected #BMJ explains that Trump et al are #destroying #science and must be stopped: “Trump’s first 100 days have destroyed the foundations of 100 years’ scientific progress and pre-eminence.” https://www.bmj.com/content/389/bmj.r862
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Die #Überwachungsgesamtrechnung ist da, ohne jede Ankündigung oder Pressemitteilung am Freitagmorgen online gepackt von @bmi.bund.de und #BMJ. War der Versuch erfolgreich, staatliche Überwachungsbefugnisse und deren realen Einsatz zu kartografieren? #datenschutz #polizei #nachrichtendienste
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zv657bpskxtjkvbdd5wymjam/post/3lobkvgapki2r -
Wenn ihr ein wenig Wochenendlektüre braucht.
#BMJ und #BMI haben die #Überwachungsgesamtrechnung veröffentlicht:
https://www.bmj.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/DE/Fachpublikationen/2025_Forschungsbericht_Ueberwachungsgesamtrechnung.html?nn=144128Das ist das Ergebnis einer Studie des Max-Planck-Instituts zur Erforschung von Kriminalität, Sicherheit und Recht.
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Smartphone and social media harms: why we failed in our duty of care | The #BMJ
A lead banner cautions: "Intended for healthcare professionals"
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Weil es die Kolleginnen & Kollegen vom #BMJ noch nicht ins Fediverse geschafft haben, teilen wir hier einmal deren wunderschöne Botschaft zum #Frühlingsanfang.
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Weil es die Kolleginnen & Kollegen vom #BMJ noch nicht ins Fediverse geschafft haben, teilen wir hier einmal deren wunderschöne Botschaft zum #Frühlingsanfang.
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Weil es die Kolleginnen & Kollegen vom #BMJ noch nicht ins Fediverse geschafft haben, teilen wir hier einmal deren wunderschöne Botschaft zum #Frühlingsanfang.
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Weil es die Kolleginnen & Kollegen vom #BMJ noch nicht ins Fediverse geschafft haben, teilen wir hier einmal deren wunderschöne Botschaft zum #Frühlingsanfang.
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Weil es die Kolleginnen & Kollegen vom #BMJ noch nicht ins Fediverse geschafft haben, teilen wir hier einmal deren wunderschöne Botschaft zum #Frühlingsanfang.
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The Government stopped funding for Tell Mama, an organisation fighting Islamophobia. Another favour to Trump?
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These two pieces were published nine days apart but by chance I saw they both today. I'm in no position to judge them, but I'm struck by their convergence and timing.
1. "The Coronavirus Consensus Was Wrong"
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-coronavirus-consensus-was-wrong
(#paywalled)A book review in the _Chronicle of Higher Education_. Two Princeton political scientists who "describe themselves as progressives," Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee, argue that “the truth-seeking functions of journalism, science, and universities [were] undermined by class bias, political polarization, partisan animosity, premature moralization of disagreements, and intolerance of reasonable dissent and contestation.”
2. "COVID-19 advocacy bias in the BMJ: meta-research evaluation"
https://bmjopenquality.bmj.com/content/14/1/e003131In an article (not an editorial) in _BMJ Open Quality_ four researchers argue that during the pandemic "#BMJ had a strong bias in favour of authors advocating an aggressive approach to COVID-19 mitigation" and published too many opinion and advocacy pieces with little or no review.
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The beauty & clarity of righteous resistance: "#Medical journals, including The #BMJ, do not retract published articles on demand. We will not retract published articles on request by an author on the basis that they contain so-called banned words. Retraction occurs in circumstances where clear evidence exists of major errors, data fabrication, or falsification that compromise the reliability of the research findings. It is not a matter of author request."
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The beauty & clarity of righteous resistance: "#Medical journals, including The #BMJ, do not retract published articles on demand. We will not retract published articles on request by an author on the basis that they contain so-called banned words. Retraction occurs in circumstances where clear evidence exists of major errors, data fabrication, or falsification that compromise the reliability of the research findings. It is not a matter of author request."
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Update. The #BMJ isn't the only journal pushing back against the #CDC directive that staff scientists should retract pending publications that use Trump-banned words. (Earlier in this thread.)
Kudos to the _American Journal of Public Health_ (#AJPH) for pushing back as well.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/114076From publisher Georges Benjamin: "We at the American Journal of Public Health have no interest in following the president's prohibitions on language. We will publish things under our guidelines, under our ethical principles." Benjamin acknowledged that the journal may now get fewer submissions from government scientists.
AJPH is published by the American Public Health Association (#APHA).
#Censorship #Medicine #ScholComm #SocietyPublisher #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
