MEAction petition: Misleading PACE claims should be retracted
To: THE LANCET, PSYCHOLOGICAL MEDICINE, AND THE AUTHORS OF THE PACE TRIAL
Given the weak and flawed methodologies of the PACE trial, which claims that CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and GET (graded exercise) led to the recovery of ME/CFS patients, we, the undersigned patients, doctors, scientists, parents, children, family, friends, caretakers and #MEAllies:
- call upon The Lancet to retract the claim made in its February 2011 editorial [1] that 30% of patients, or indeed any patients at all, were said to have recovered in the accompanying Lancet paper on the PACE trial [2]; and retract from that paper all analyses and statements in relation to the absurd “normal ranges” for fatigue and physical function;
http://www.meaction.net/whats-wrong-in-the-lancet - call upon Psychological Medicine to retract the claims in this paper [3] that 22% of patients in the CBT and GET groups recovered, based on recovery criteria that were weakened so far from their original form in the study protocol that they no longer represent recovery by any rational standard;
http://www.meaction.net/whats-wrong-in-psychological-medicine - call upon the study authors to publish the recovery outcomes according to the analyses specified in the trial’s protocol [4] and to give independent researchers full access to the raw data (anonymised by removing trial identifiers and all other data superfluous to the calculation, such as age, sex or location). #MEAction undertakes to meet any reasonable cost of analysis or data preparation;
http://www.meaction.net/why-the-pace-trial-authors-should-publish-the-planned-recovery-analyses/ - call upon all parties to reject the view that being as disabled as patients with congestive heart failure is a good recovery of physical function in CFS.
MEAction is a global movement for Myalgic encephalomyelitis.
