Quick thoughts blog post by James C Coyne, 11 July 2017: Asserting privilege: PACE investigators’ request that their manuscript not be peer reviewed or receive replies
After demanding parts of an article published in the Journal of Health Psychology be retracted, the PACE investigators requested their response be published without peer review and with no comments allowed.
This episode is part of a continuing saga of the PACE investigators attempts to exert extraordinary control over what is said about their work.
The predicament of the scientific community with respect to the PACE trial fits well with John Ioannidis has termed “scientific inbreeding” where an interconnected group is able, temporarily at least, to dominate a scientific area and control and contain criticism of flaws consistently characterizing their work. We may well be witnessing a break in that control and the beginning of a decline effect, where independent critique and re-analysis of data make those flaws more inescapably obvious.
The emails that will be reproduced below came after the PACE investigators lobbied some members of editorial board and asked them to demand the article be retracted and to threaten resignation if it were not retracted.
I had my profile blocked by Action for ME for asking why they were supporting the pace research, when it was so obviously flawed. I asked once.