The scandal of PACE trial continues to shock

Last week the Journal of Health Psychology published a special edition on the travesty that is the PACE trial. Editor David F Marks knew nothing of the trial until a year ago and when he looked at the evidence he realised - as anyone rational would - that this highly spun - harmful - research is abject nonsense from start to finish. By pitting himself against the UK medical/academic establishment he has learned just what ME patients have been tolerating for decades.

Of course, the Science Media Centre's psych-driven lobby hit back with petulant, sour punches as toys were thrown out of the pram. The PACE researchers have nowhere to go, so this barrel-scraping for experts is entirely unsurprising. (Though they have rarely in the past ever used actual experts to comment on ME research, they prefer to use friends of PACE.) David Tuller has  done a great job of describing these recent dirty punches on virology blog.

Meanwhile, in the important, relevant world of research,  we have new findings from Professor Montoya's team on elevated cytokines and illness severity. And next week scientists meet at a Stanford community symposium: a gathering of great minds, including a Nobel Laureate, who have ME patients' welfare at heart, putting the medical mafia here to shame (although those mafiosi remain, as always, unshameable and impudent).