Are Online Activists Silencing Researchers of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? (reuters.com) 273
Zorro (Slashdot reader #15,759), shares Reuters' report about Michael Sharpe, a medical researcher studying chronic fatigue syndrome, "a little-understood condition that can bring crushing tiredness and pain."
Eight years after he published results of a clinical trial that found some patients with chronic fatigue syndrome can get a little better with the right talking and exercise therapies, the Oxford University professor is subjected to almost daily, often anonymous, intimidation... They object to his work, they said, because they think it suggests their illness is psychological. Sharpe, a professor of psychological medicine, says that isn't the case. He believes that chronic fatigue syndrome is a biological condition that can be perpetuated by social and psychological factors...
Sharpe is one of around a dozen researchers in this field worldwide who are on the receiving end of a campaign to discredit their work. For many scientists, it's a new normal: From climate change to vaccines, activism and science are fighting it out online. Social media platforms are supercharging the battle. Reuters contacted a dozen professors, doctors and researchers with experience of analysing or testing potential treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome. All said they had been the target of online harassment because activists objected to their findings. Only two had definite plans to continue researching treatments. With as many as 17 million people worldwide suffering this disabling illness, scientific research into possible therapies should be growing, these experts said, not dwindling. What concerns them most, they said, is that patients could lose out if treatment research stalls.
Sharpe says he's no longer researching treatments, because "It's just too toxic." And he tells Reuters that other researchers appear to be reaching the same conclusion.
"Of more than 20 leading research groups who were publishing treatment studies in high-quality journals 10 years ago, Sharpe said, only one or two continue to do so."
Sharpe is one of around a dozen researchers in this field worldwide who are on the receiving end of a campaign to discredit their work. For many scientists, it's a new normal: From climate change to vaccines, activism and science are fighting it out online. Social media platforms are supercharging the battle. Reuters contacted a dozen professors, doctors and researchers with experience of analysing or testing potential treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome. All said they had been the target of online harassment because activists objected to their findings. Only two had definite plans to continue researching treatments. With as many as 17 million people worldwide suffering this disabling illness, scientific research into possible therapies should be growing, these experts said, not dwindling. What concerns them most, they said, is that patients could lose out if treatment research stalls.
Sharpe says he's no longer researching treatments, because "It's just too toxic." And he tells Reuters that other researchers appear to be reaching the same conclusion.
"Of more than 20 leading research groups who were publishing treatment studies in high-quality journals 10 years ago, Sharpe said, only one or two continue to do so."
Social media at work (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, and I'm sure those lazy asses in wheelchairs could all stand up and walk if they had an ounce of initiative. AMIRIGHT?
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Re:Social media at work (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Social media doesn't turn people hateful. It simply allows already hateful people to express themselves in an environment where there's low risk of being judged by society and punished.
I.e. they are just unleashing their suppressed inner arsehole which has always been there.
Re:Social media at work (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Social media doesn't turn people hateful. It simply allows already hateful people to express themselves in an environment where there's low risk of being judged by society and punished.
I.e. they are just unleashing their suppressed inner arsehole which has always been there.
It also amplifies what hateful people say because that's what draws attention, clicks and money. Me posting nice things about the post I'm responding to here on ./ usually gets me ignored unless its a really really good post. If however, I write a sarcastic, mocking, and funny post with some good details then I get lots of replies and moderations (sometimes good, sometimes bad). Most of human communication between folks is basically pleasant most of the time so you only notice when it isn't. And for some reason, probably the same reason people rubberneck at traffic accidents, people give more attention to the hateful comments. Until people change that basic behavior, the algorithms will keep pumping those more nasty posts your way. Don't know what to do about that though. Social media isn't truly a mirror of humanity, its more like a reality show where the most dysfunctional get the most attention. Or maybe it is...
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No. Social media doesn't turn people hateful.
I'm not 100% sure I agree with you. I mean your point about allowing people to unleash their inner arsehole without reprisals is certianly true. However, I do think that people are more plastic.
A classic example is of radicalisation of terrorists.
However even with more normal groups, people are affected strongly by their surronudings. Maybe it still requirea a bit of latent inner arsehole to be nurtured and grow, but just about all of us have that.
I don't think
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Indeed you can use social media to radicalise people, but people aren't radicalised *by* social media. They are radicalised by others. Today it's on facebook, tomorrow it's the secret church, the day after it's their community support group (radicalisation prays on the weak).
You're post was 100% on point, except that you should replace "social media" with "communities". This didn't start with social media, and it won't end with it either.
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You're post was 100% on point, except that you should replace "social media" with "communities". This didn't start with social media, and it won't end with it either.
OK, yes. Social media is neutral and people do the radicalisation. I think my oint was more along the lines of that social media enables it because it avoids the need to have a sufficient geographical density of people to form a community.
But that cuts both ways, of course. For every new community of nutcases, there's a good worthwhile one as w
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The brain is an organ too, when you have a heart attack, they don't discuss your hearts feelings, they search for a biological problem. Psychological problems, when are they purely psychological and when are they biological, people tend to ignore, yeah your brain can make you think all sorts of weird stuff for all sorts of reason. Genetic faults, toxins, poor diet, poor blood circulation, all have profound affects on psychology and talking don't fix any of them.
Re:Social media at work (Score:5, Informative)
I actually have this condition and was involved with the community a little bit.
The problem is that for years it was written off as a purely psychological problem. It used to be called "yuppie flu" because it often affected people with high stress jobs. It was often near impossible to get doctors to take you seriously or get any treatment because they believed it to be physiological.
In addition there is no test for it. It's not well understood, all you can do is rule everything else out and CFS is the only thing left that fits the symptoms.
For that reason there are some people who spent literally decades of their lives suffering, in pain, miserable and fighting against doctors who wouldn't believe them or accused them of not trying the psychological treatments hard enough. There are a also a lot of snake oil cures and an endless stream of people asking if you have just tried getting more sleep or doing some exercise or changing your diet. Fortunately my doctors were quite good but even I'm fed up of the amateurs.
It doesn't excuse this kind of behaviour but it has created a somewhat toxic environment that both sides need to work at fixing.
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> In addition there is no test for it. It's not well understood, all you can do is rule everything else out and CFS is the only thing left that fits the symptoms.
I'd expect that you know this from personal experience, but skepticism is the proper response to claims that cannot be scientifically established. There are enough claims, and enough good medical science, to establish that at least some cases of chronic fatigue syndrome are very real, and I hope that we can sympathize with the people experiencin
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>"I actually have this condition"
I do, too. Although doctors can't even decide if calling it CFS or FMS is more appropriate, since I have symptoms of both. The only thing tangible that shows on any test is severe deep sleep fragmentation (with no known cause). And it is very frustrating to be in intermittent pain and tired/exhausted for decades with almost no treatment that helps much. I think many of the doctors and researchers involved are just as frustrated as the sufferers. I pretty much gave u
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You have my sincere sympathies. I have found that management techniques work the best, learning to recognize when the cliff edge is approaching and having the confidence and strength to say "stop".
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And mine to you, also. Fortunately my condition is not debilitating as it seems for some people. Like you, I try to know my limits and stay under them and just manage the best I can.
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I have a friend who, too, suffers from this illness, to the point that sometimes she couldn't even walk; now she's doing better. Some years ago she tried an experimental therapy, which I am certain was only a scam (it had all the signs of it), and costed her lots of money; however she is happy about having done it, because after each treatment she did feel better! I'm convinced that whatever they've done t
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yea my wife works at a cancer center like mayo and many of the doctors stop listening the minute they hear fibro mialgia. Now if your a male there are a couple things I would check into..
1) get your testosterone levels checked. DO NOT accept the result as *normal* they give you back. Normal is 200 - 1200. Do you have any idea how big a range that is? On average a 50yr old male is going to score a 400. What you need to find out is what is *normal* for your age, not normal based on an extremely wide band of r
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> toxic environment that both sides need to work at fixing Except doctors believing it's a real disease does nothing to cure it. The researchers are on neither side, but if the community of people with the condition keeps harassing them for doing their jobs, all that will happen is that the research will stop. There's a lot of conditions to research, and a lot of them affect people who won't harass or slander you.
Exactly. There are two legitimate research paths, cause and cure, and symptom treatment. It seems those researching symptom treatment are attacked, which certainly doesn't help sufferers. "cure or bust" doesn't make sense.
There are many types of chronic pain we still don't know the cause of, yet there are many of those people who's lives have been improved from pain management techniques.
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Unfortunately this is very much where we are at with CFS - lots of people saying things worked for them, but very little scientific evidence to back any of it up. I'm not saying it didn't work, merely that none of this stuff is ever done in controlled conditions so for example switching to a vegan diet was likely accompanied by other lifestyle changes and of course greater experience at managing the condition.
The other problem is that the few proven treatments are only partially effective and only for some
Where's the raw data for the PACE trial? (Score:2)
Where is the data for the PACE trial? https://me-pedia.org/wiki/PACE... [me-pedia.org]. Can unrelated researchers rake over same data to verify the conclusions within it? No.
That said, harassment is bad. In order to play fair, activists should restrict their activities to release the "release the data behind the findings for the PACE trial that's now found its way into policy, or withdraw/retract the published papers and the policy". I don't myself have CFS/ME but I have been following it. Over 25 years now, I've known
Lol, "activist" is a tad generous (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe troll is the recognised term. But psycho works too. When they come from a position of nonsense, they're not hard to identify. Usually the first words out are deluded speak.
Facebook does a great job of friending them all to one another so they can amplify the recruiting process.
The weirdest part is if one goes through an argument logically with them they rather quickly try to change the subject or throw a myriad of red-herring in to derail the exchange. Meaning they know it's all bullshit.
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Troll is being generous. This is not trolling, this is electronic bullying or terrorism.
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People frequently use the word "troll" when they mean "I don't agree with what the person is saying". It is very 2019.
It's pretty much a "dog whistle" now. I put it in the same bucket as other verbal detritus like "And that's a good thing" and found myself actively tuning out and skipping over most comments/articles that lead with "those darn $GROUP_I_DISAGREE_WITH trolls".
From experience - yes very misunderstood (Score:2)
It's not even clear what "psychological" means (Score:2)
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People have the same reaction if you describe something as a placebo effect. The placebo effect can shrink tumours. It's an example of a psychological process that has real physical effects.
Perhaps ... (Score:2)
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panic attacks in the presence of WiFi routers are all real things
Well, at work we fixed that with a bit of masking tape on the routers' LEDs. Can't get any more real than that !
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There was a local woman who claimed to be sensitive to her neighbor's wifi. Said it caused her migraines. Her neighbor turned it off when he left for work, as soon as he got home and turned it on she would be on the phone complaining again. Eventually he agreed to not use wifi and she was happy. Later I got the whole story from a friend. At first buddy was almost convinced the woman actually was sensitive to wifi. Then he got smart and turned off the SSID broadcast and she couldn't "sense" the wifi any more
"too toxic" (Score:2)
By "it", I think he means the social-media landscape. There are other solutions besides ceasing research and hiding behind the couch -- ignore social media or hire someone to strike back at on-line activists like David Tuller. Fight fire with fire; sewage with sewage.
How about a for-profit business specializing in on-line dissemination of vitriol, half-truths, personal attacks and veiled threats of violence? Oh. Never mind. We already got that.
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Fight fire with fire; sewage with sewage.
Ok, I'd like a couple examples of these kinds of fights. The latter seems kind of counterproductive, unless you have a shortage of sewage. Plus, wouldn't you fight fire by clearing out flammable objects and planting fire-resistant foliage?
I have an idea (Score:2)
Er (Score:2)
They object to his work, they said, because they think it suggests their illness is psychological.
And so what if it were? Is the brain magically not biological for some reason?
Being an illness of the brain wouldn't make it "not real".
Re:No, they aren't. (Score:5, Interesting)
Beyond that, they understand that if the problem is written off as being psychological, there is little chance that a physical remedy will be sought or even tried at random that might actually help them.
Based on the history of medical treatment of the peptic ulcer, they're probably right. For decades it was written off as the patient stressing too much and the advice was "learn to relax". Then finally, the problem was demonstrated to be an infection of H. Pylori. Even then, it took another 15 years before "learn to relax" gave way to treatment of the infection.
I can see why chronic fatigue sufferers might not want to wait half a century for an effective treatment.
Re:No, they aren't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of moronic to shout down anyone researching the disease, then, isn't it?
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While I wouldn't defend this behaviour it's important to understand why even just suggesting that it is a psychological problem can be a real problem for people suffering from CFS.
If anyone puts forward evidence of it being a psychological condition then some doctors and even non-doctors will latch on to it. That stops people suffering from it getting the treatment they need, because it's cheaper to fob them off with some talking therapy (which they often have to pay for themselves in the UK) than say grade
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If you can empirically demonstrate a treatment that works for some percentage of people suffering from these symptoms, you can start to examine the differences between t
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There is some research that shows that people suffering from CFS have faulty mitochondria. That explains why they both feel tired and experience aching - their mitochondria are not delivering the energy their muscles need and they feel like they did too much exercise.
Exactly why they fail in that way and what, if anything, can be done to fix it isn't known. There has been some success with related conditions involving stuff like an immune system reboot (basically chemo, you kill your immune system and grow
Re:No, they aren't. (Score:5, Insightful)
I read this article a few days ago. This is the biggest problem with these whole social-justice social media warriors. They bully and bully and bully to get their way. These idiots draw conclusions, or more accurately, they _jump_ to conclusions. In this case the researcher did some research that suggested that exercise therapy can bring some relief. So they jump to conclusion that they think its all in their head and start bullying the researcher till he quits. Its fucking idiotic. These asshats have no clue how research works. for starters telling people that research is showing that exercise can bring some relief implies, in no way, that they are done and thats the best you can hope for. Why wouldn't you share this non-invasive and multi-theraputic finding with the world? The benefits of exercise are very pervasive. Furthermore, once you find a link, that's where the interesting part happens, WHY does it provide relief? Is it a dopamine response? A serotonin one? Perhaps there is something going on with exercise and the lymphatic system... Research starts at a 5000ft overview and starts zooming on on things that help until they find the 1 or more, most effective responses. THEN they figure out how to increase this to provide greater relief.
These social bullies dont deserve treatment, and thats exactly what they are doing with their behavior. REAL science is about following the research REGARDLESS of whether you _like_ the results or not. Its not about what you like. Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? There is no room in science for prejudices. Leave that shit at the door and follow the research empirically. The idea that you can make science conform to your expectations is such an abortion of logic, these idiots should be forced to take a 12 week course on nothing but the scientific method. Revoke their driving privilege till they pass a course. The only reason they are not called out for this is because they happen to also be easily made to agree with any other policy issue. In other words they are free votes / allies on any topic they dont understand. It reminds me of that guy on youtube that goes around asking people at college stuff and listen to them give the most ridiculous answers based on prejudices.
Re:No, they aren't. (Score:5, Insightful)
And just who is going to find that actual treatment if the activists drive out all the researchers?
Re:No, they aren't. (Score:4, Insightful)
> Your question is kind of like who will solve our energy problems if we drive all the perpetual motion cranks away?
Well, there are good mathematical, theoretical and experimental foundations to presume perpetual motion is a crank hobby and not real science.
There are also good clinical foundations for psychosomatic illness to be an actual thing.
So your analogy is really terrible...
=Smidge=
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There is also a long history of suffering caused by dismissing illness with real physiological roots as psychosomatic. Considering that it has already taken DECADES to have CFS sort of recognized as even possibly anything but psychosomatic in spite of a total failure to treat it successfully through psychology, it does kinda make sense that sufferers might want to call "no backsliding", doesn't it?
Re: No, they aren't. (Score:3)
There is an even longer history of psychosomatic illnesses being correctly diagnosed as psychosomatic. And also a history of psychosomatic illnesses being incorrectly diagnosed as physiological.
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As a back-pain sufferer who turned out to have 12 large gall bladder stones I thank you for your sharp observation. I could have had years more of pain medication and counselling instead of an operation.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Do you know what physical therapy is NOT? It's not a psychological treatment, it is a physical treatment.
Note that it is possible to walk on a broken foot given sufficient determination and possibly hypnosis. So is hypnosis an appropriate treatment for broken bones? Should we just quit all that nonsense with plaster and tell the patients they could walk if they really tried
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Placebo and Nocebo effects. Look into them.
If exercise is one possible treatment for clinical depression - a bona-fide psychological disorder - then it can possibly be a treatment for other psychological disorders. It doesn't matter if it *actually* does anything, merely the act of trying with the expectation that it will help can be helpful in and of itself. The best part? Even if the patient is told it's a placebo, it usually still works!
=Smidge=
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And yet, nobody tries to treat clinical depression psychologically anymore except possibly as an adjunct to anti-depressants.
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You seem to be confusing ASD (autism) and ADHD (attention deficit disorder). How brave of you to not let ignorance stop you from having an opinion.
Re:No, they aren't. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think doctors have a cognitive bias (or biases) that likes to blame patients for their illnesses, especially if they can tie them to some self-help step like not enough exercise or some other perhaps true but unlikely "lack of effort" lifestyle choice.
I had a doctor who said my headaches would be helped by more exercise. Admittedly, I didn't do any structured kind of exercise besides daily mile-long walks with the dog. I bought an elliptical machine and began using it every day. Next doctor visit, "well, you're probably not getting enough exercise". I described my use of the elliptical and he looked at me like I was liar.
Finally I asked him, "OK, how much exercise and what type do I need? Be specific in terms of heart rate, duration, frequency" and then he rambled about hiring a personal trainer. Basically it was a bullshit suggestion like "reboot your computer" that had nothing to do with my illness that he assumed I wouldn't comply with, probably with the hope that I'd avoid him knowing I was guilty of non-compliance.
I think part of it is that doctors go through a ton of training and effort to become doctors and end up assuming if they can go through with complex, high-discipline programs to achieve their goals than anyone can, without recognizing that some people are less able for reasons which have nothing to do with moral judgements about laziness/character/morals. It's no different than rich people who blame poor people for not working hard enough.
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I think part of it is just that in maybe 7 out of 10 cases advice like "get more exercise" or "get some bed rest" appears to work because the person doesn't come back with the same complaint.
That's why there now has to be a rule that if someone comes in with chest t pain they MUST be checked for heart problems, because too many doctors were fobbing them off and then thinking they had done well when in fact they didn't come back because they were dead or had a severe stroke.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Presumably, someone who will study the condition properly rather than just pronouncing it's just a bad case of the lazies.
So far you're kinda only providing evidence that it is actually a bad case of the crazies.
And that it is FAR WORSE than what the research shows.
But do keep shouting "I'M NOT CRAZY! YOU ARE CRAZY!"
Your analogies, equating medical researchers with "perpetual motion cranks" are also REALLY helping your case.
Well... not your actual case...
And just who is going to find that actual treatment if the activists drive out all the researchers?
Your question is kind of like who will solve our energy problems if we drive all the perpetual motion cranks away?
Re: No, they aren't. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it worked for gender dysphoria. It's a real condition, but despite a total lack of physiological evidence they managed to bully the entire medical industry into removing it from the Mental Illness category.
Re: No, they aren't. (Score:3)
20 years of physiological studies have shown brains of people with gender dysphoria are physiologically similar to the average brain of people of the other sex. Even the rate at which this happens is known: about one in every 20 thousand newborns have the condition.
So, no, they did no bullying. They demanded medical studies, those studies were made, and they confirmed the condition is real.
Now the challenge is in figuring out what causes brains of fetuses to develop in this way and whether there's a way to
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If you truly believe that, scrape together a few bucks and provide funding for development of a perpetual motion machine.
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Something being of psychological nature is not blaming the sick person. And the researcher is not even saying that chronic fatigue symptom IS psychological, only that some psychological treatments might help a little. If it is a neurological issue, psychological treatments to dampen the symptoms might be the best we have until medicines are developed.
I bet a lot of the ones harassing researchers are not sick. They are lazy bastards who claim to have chronic fatigue symptoms to scam the government out of dis
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I have Fibromyalgia Syndrome. There is no effective treatment, because it is about brain wiring. Exercise and positive attitude are the ONLY things that work. The best thing FMS and CFS sufferers can do is to stop hoping for a magic cure. It won't come. But taking hold of your life and pushing through it does work. You have ups and downs, but just letting it just wash over you destroys you.
It took me 20 years to understand how to control it, and to accept that no one was going to find me a cure.
Re:No, they aren't. (Score:5, Interesting)
Many physical disorders can be at least partially overcome through psychology if there is no other known treatment.
That doesn't mean the problem is actually psychological, and it certainly doesn't mean we should stop looking. Given sufficient determination, one may walk on a broken foot. That doesn't suggest that cognitive behavioral therapy is the best treatment approach to a broken foot.
Since people aren't BORN with Fibromyalgia, that implies that something changed later. It's not unreasonable to think that something else could change it back.
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my wife has it, she describes it as arthritis but in your muscles. For all anyone knows, it could be a very mild form of scleroderma. Often the medicines for arthritis came with serious side effects including heart attack. However, exercise has always been a form of non-invasive therapy for arthritis. Psychological? It amazes me how hospitals took a while to realize that outpatient, when possible, had much faster recovery times. Your state of mind is _critical_ to your ability to heal and repair. The power
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Sure, a positive attitude and a calm state of mind makes an excellent adjunct to a primary treatment. Also familiar comforts of home.
I would recommend that as an adjunct to treatment of any condition or for maintaining wellness. But if I break my foot, I'll be expecting that the bones need to be set, a cast applied and that I will need to stay off of it for a while.
Re:No, they aren't. (Score:5, Interesting)
RTFA closer. There are now few people looking for a psychological treatment. That may be for the best.
Consider that once the 'learn to relax" answer became standard, practically nobody looked in to curing ulcers either.
CFS already has a history of terrible psychological treatments including verbally abusing patients to practically force them to walk with a walker until they collapsed. Mysteriously, this made things worse.
A big red flag here, a psychologist researches CGS, claims that psychological issues cause it to not get better, then claims that he's not suggesting a psychological treatment. Excuse me? How's that again?
Then read carefully, only researchers making similar suggestions are being pestered. On;y they are leaving the field. What remains is people looking for the biological/physiological cause and how to treat it.
When you read it carefully, it really does sound a lot like ulcer patients who rejected "try to relax" as the answer to their very much physical problem.
It may not be ideal, but it's certainly understandable given the history and it's better than discouraging research into physical causes and cures.
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You do realize that pre-supposing a specific treatment and then working backwards is exactly how the big, high-profile PACE study being defended in the article worked, right? They even modified their definition of successful treatment after the study started in order to get their results, then claimed it was vexatious harassment when the patients tried to find out what the results would've been according to the originally-planned procedure. (Which is, you know, only the correct and scientifically valid way
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From what see, it looks like anyone who suggests that there may be a psychological compotent to CFS is being pestered.
Let's look at another case: low back pain. It used to be that the only treatment for low back pain was surgery. But surgery never worked. There was no consideration of the possibilit
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The difference is that CFS HAS for a long time been treated as a psychological illness. It took years for anyone outside of the sufferers to even consider the possibility that it might not be psychological. Notably, people weren't getting better with a psychological approach. Sharpe's PACE study has been strongly rebutted [biomedcentral.com] already by other researchers.
In the case of back pain, the various forms of fusion surgery have been a complete failure. For years, surgical centers didn't let that stop them from promisin
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Dig deeper. What evidence?
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Dig deeper. What evidence?
So? What gives the SJW's the right to bully the Scientist? If the SJW's are correct his scientific peers will do the job for them. Contrary to your view, most Scientists would love come up with novel solution outside the mainstream. The Ulcer example is perfect. The discover won world-fame and a Nobel prize.
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Only in the sense that Wakefield was "bullied" over his paper claiming a link between vaccination and autism. Perhape the three of you can find a safe space somewhere.
The research in question has already been refuted simply by re-analysing the data presented. The "bullies" as you call them stand to be personally harmed by the bogus conclusions.
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I can see why chronic fatigue sufferers might not want to wait half a century for an effective treatment.
You mean they prefer "never" to half a century? Because that is the effect they are having.
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Stress can be a contributor but isn't a necessary pre-condition.Either way, to make it go away you will do well to take antibiotics.
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This is true to an extent, but learning to relax and not stressing out is a somewhat effective way of treating stomach ulcers. Not terrible effective, but it does work.
Diseases with a physical cause can still be cured without medicines and sometimes this is the best we have. Telling someone with a cold to sleep and take plenty of fluids is not to suggest that the cold is psychosomatic. It's just the best we have.
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How about telling them that the virus kicks it off for the first few hours, but the week of sniffles, aches, and tiredness are just psycho-social issues prolonging the symptions? So quit complaining and get to work!
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Re: No, they aren't. (Score:2)
On the other hand, if you are confronted with evidence that a certain treatment modality results in improvement of symptoms for some people with the condition and your response is to discount the reality of the results, you are actively harming those people who could benefit from the treatment.
That said, the question of âoeis it psychologicalâ is fucking ridiculous. Your brain and body arenâ(TM)t separated by a giant wall. Theyâ(TM)re not two different things that you happen to own. T
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If we keep laughing at the perpetual motion cranks, who's going to invent a fusion reactor?
Re:No, they aren't. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Exactly what the people pestering the psychologists are hoping to do for CFS
Re: No, they aren't. (Score:3)
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The claim was actually that the biological illness gives way to a psychological problem allowing a cure through psychology. As others her pointed out, the study had some serious flaws. But you knew that because you read the fine article carefully, right?
Re: No, they aren't. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, lets protect ourselves from the implications of a stigma of "crazy" by acting as crazy as possible, that will surely help.
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We want solid good guys and bad guys. And the world to fit into our preconceived notions on how the world works.
We don’t want to think of that bully who we finally got the courage to punch in the face to stop him from harassing you is actually living a tough life and may not be eating every day.
Or the Fat Woman down the street isn’t lazy and just over eating but starving herself with constant diets and avoiding the public because of fear of ridicule.
When ever we find out that someone needs som
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Many illnesses have both a physical and psychical part. Mental illnesses are mostly based on physical malfunctions. Psychosomatic symptoms are real symptoms (people can die from them). The interaction between physical and psychical processes are complex and more complexities are discovered the more humans (and other animals) are studied. There is essentially no sharp border between mind and body, the mind is part of the body and the mind controls the body (and vice versa).
Treatments targeting psychical well
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the common teen gender confusion which is almost always resolved as simple homosexuality by the age of 18
While there are plenty of such cases mistakenly labeled as gender dysphoria (which is why one should be extremely careful with diagnosis given the nature of the treatment), there are real cases as well that have nothing to do with "confusion"
poor diagnosis with these conditions, because it means no expectation of recover and no end to funded treatment.
They should have picked a better condition to capitalize on. Sex reassignment surgery isn't that expensive actually, and most post-ops only require permanent hormone treatment which is dirt cheap.
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PTSD is a real thing, but the number of people claiming to have it is far lower than those who actually do. When a clerk who spent her entire deployment drinking coffee and watching movies can get diagnosed with PTSD, you know that the system is ridiculously open to abuse.
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Ugh. *far higher
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On one hand, you try to dismiss it as fraud, yet by believing there is something to be understood, you acknowledge that it is real.
Big surprise, dome people will claim anything for fraudulant purposes. Others really have the condition.
Some seem to get better for reasons unknown, some never do.
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You are not a particularly logical person, are you? The problem isn't that there is no underlying physiological cause for CFS. The problem is that, until we know what it is, it's easy for anyone to claim they are suffering from it, and it is difficult to refute the claim. Thus, as long as the underlying causes are not understood, it's easy to make fraudulent claims. Thus, there is incentive to shut down research.
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Not only am I quite logical, I also have the ability to read between the lines. Evidently you do not.
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They are quitting?
They just don't have the energy to pursue the subject anymore.
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How are you disagreeing with actual scientific research?