By David Tuller, DrPH The name myalgic encephalomyelitis is inextricably linked with an outbreak of what appeared by all accounts to be a viral illness at London’s Royal Free Hospital in the second half of 1955. More than 200 people, most of them female staff and students, fell ill. Some reported long-term complications. Although no pathogen […]
Dr David Tuller
Trial By Error: Professors Chalder And Crawley Join Forces To Push CBT For Kids
By David Tuller, DrPH On November 10th, the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence published a draft of new clinical guidelines for ME/CFS. The draft represented a blunt rejection of the argument that the combination of “unhelpful cognitions” and deconditioning drive the illness. Under this once-hegemonic framework, indicated therapies include cognitive behavior therapy to […]
Trial By Error: Thoughts On The Observer, The Guardian, And Paradigm Shift
By David Tuller, DrPH Earlier this week, I blogged about a story in The Observer that provided an inaccurate description of what it called chronic fatigue syndrome. For much of the piece, the writer, Eleanor Morgan, offered a sympathetic portrait of people, including herself, experiencing prolonged symptoms after an acute bout of Covid-19. A lot of what […]
Trial By Error: NICE’s Upcoming Draft Guidance On ME/CFS
By David Tuller, DrPH *October is crowdfunding month at Berkeley. I conduct this project as a senior fellow in public health and journalism and the university’s Center for Global Public Health. If you would like to support the project, here’s the place: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/22602 The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, or NICE, […]
Trial By Error: The CDC’s Stakeholder Meeting
By David Tuller, DrPH The US Centers for Disease Control held one of its occasional briefings for ME/CFS stakeholders last week. I was unfortunately busy during that time, but #MEAction has posted a useful account of what was discussed, which you can read here. The #MEAction account includes short, helpful descriptions of a number […]
Trial By Error: Some Stuff About Long-Covid, BMJ And ME
By David Tuller, DrPH It is clear that there will be much grappling going forward over the similarities and differences between long-Covid and ME (or CFS, or ME/CFS, or whatever this illness or cluster of illnesses is being called). The two entities overlap in some ways, but no one should conflate them. We […]
Trial By Error: The Lightning Process Strikes Again
By David Tuller, DrPH The Lightning Process was founded more than two decades ago by Phil Parker, a British Tarot reader and specialist in auras and spiritual guides. The LP, as it is often called, could be described as “a neuro-physiological training programme based on self-coaching, concepts from Positive Psychology, Osteopathy and Neuro Linguistic Programming,” as […]
Trial By Error: Bristol’s Report Due Soon; Slides From My Oxford Talk
By David Tuller, DrPH A day of reckoning could be coming for Bristol University and Professor Esther Crawley, the ethically challenged pediatrician whose work has come under official scrutiny (that is, under scrutiny from people with greater authority than me) on multiple fronts. According to the Health Research Authority, the National Health Service unit […]
David Tuller On Exposing The Bad Science Behind The Biopsychosocial Effort To Define ME/CFS
By Cort Johnson in Health Rising. “…many of these people spout nonsense and then freak out when confronted with facts or details about the research that they can’t explain away.” David Tuller David Tuller is a unique figure in the ME/CFS universe. A reporter and editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon and […]
Trial By Error: An Open Letter To Dr Godlee About BMJ’s Ethically Bankrupt Actions
By David Tuller, DrPH I have sent the following letter to Dr Fiona Godlee, editorial director of BMJ, about Archives of Disease in Childhood’s egregious decision to re-publish Bristol University’s Lightning Process trial with the original findings intact. Given the Bristol team’s flagrant methodological violations, the journal should have retracted the paper. […]
Trial By Error: Joan McParland’s Lightning Process Experience
By David Tuller, DrPH. Aura-reader and Tarot expert Phil Parker, also known as the founder of the Lightning Process, has posted a video on YouTube of an “ME/CFS success story.” Without knowing anything about Amy’s situation or medical history beyond what she shares, I have no reason to disbelieve her testimony of […]
Trial By Error: My Interview With Melbourne’s Dr Don Lewis
By David Tuller, DrPH. When I visited Melbourne in March of last year, I heard a lot about Dr Don Lewis, a local physician beloved by those with ME—or “chronic fatigue,” as Australian patients, scientists and clinicians routinely called the illness, to my dismay. At the time, Dr Lewis was transitioning out of […]
Trial By Error: The CDC’s Pathetic Response To Reuters
By David Tuller, DrPH The recent Reuters article about the illness, or cluster of illnesses, variously called CFS, ME, CFS/ME and ME/CFS was problematic for many reasons. One of them was the information included from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In explaining why the CDC dropped its longstanding recommendations for […]
Trial By Error: Who Has The School Study Documents ?
By David Tuller, DrPH. Update (later on March 4): Because Royal United Hospitals Bath suggested that I “redirect” my request for documents back to Bristol University, that’s what I did. Earlier today, I sent an e-mail to Bristol’s director of legal services. Here’s what I wrote: As you likely remember, I have […]
Trial By Error: A Recap Of The School Absence Study
By David Tuller, DrPH Last week I broke the news that Bristol University is conducting an independent investigation of a number of studies that were exempted from ethical review on the grounds that they qualified as “service evaluation.” Because the issues involved are confusing and complex, I thought it would be helpful to repost here part […]
Trial By Error: A Bit More About Bristol’s Investigation
By David Tuller, DrPH Yesterday I reported that Bristol University, at the request of the UK Health Research Authority, is investigating a number of studiesconducted by Professor Esther Crawley. The results of this investigation are expected in two months or so. Today I can disclose that the scrutiny involves papers linked to a specific research […]
Trial By Error: My Six-Month Review
Trial By Error: My Norwegian Interview
By David Tuller, DrPH In addition to giving a couple of talks in Norway, I also answered some questions from Trude Schei, assistant Secretary General of the Norwegian ME Association. I doubt I said anything I haven’t stated many times before. However, members of the GET/CBT ideological brigades–in Norway and elsewhere–continue to maintain […]
Trial By Error: Australian Draft Report Seeks Comments
By David Tuller, DrPH in Trial By Error. In an eagerly awaited draft report, an Australian advisory committee on ME/CFS has called for the development of up-to-date domestic clinical guidelines and an increase in biomedical research into the pathophysiology of the illness. The draft report, which could have a major impact on health policy […]
Trial By Error: The New Interferon “CFS” Study
By David Tuller, DrPH I haven’t had time to cover the new and wildly over-hyped study about prolonged fatigue–and purportedly about “chronic fatigue syndrome”–that was published this week in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology. Thanks no doubt to the involvement of the Science Media Centre, this mildly interesting piece of research has received widespread media attention. […]
Trial By Error: How BMJ Enabled Bristol’s Ethics Exemptions
Trial By Error: Some Good News On Cochrane
By David Tuller, DrPH. In what can only be characterized as a welcome surprise, Cochrane has rejected the revision of a 2014 review of exercise treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome, stating that the work does not meet the organization’s “quality standards.” Cochrane revealed the decision late Friday in a statement appended to the review, which itself […]
GET Paper Withdrawal Shocks CBT/GET Proponents – Emboldens ME/CFS Advocates
By Cort Johnson in Health Rising. Our mission is to promote evidence-informed health decision-making by producing high-quality, relevant, accessible systematic reviews and other synthesized research evidence. Our work is internationally recognized as the benchmark for high-quality information about the effectiveness of health care. Cochrane The Cochrane Reviews are the gold standard – highly respected and […]