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Trial By Error, Continued: My Questions for Lancet Editor Richard Horton

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By David Tuller, DrPH

In January, I posted a list of the questions I still wanted to ask the PACE authors, who have repeatedly refused my requests to interview them about their ethically and methodologically challenged study. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, has similarly declined to talk with me, ignoring my e-mails seeking comment for the initial investigation, posted on Virology Blog last October, as well as for several follow-up articles. Now Dr. Horton has doubled-down on his efforts to keep a lid on the controversy by rejecting a letter that he personally solicited—a major breach of professional courtesy to the 43 well-regarded researchers and clinicians who signed it.

As Dr. Racaniello explained this week at Virology Blog, he submitted the letter on behalf of the group in March, in response to an express invitation from Dr. Horton. The invitation came right after Virology Blog posted an open letter, based on my investigation, that outlined the trial’s major missteps. Dr. Racaniello presumed from the wording of Dr. Horton’s invitation that the letter would, in fact, be published, as did the other signatories. On Monday, having been dissed by The Lancet, Dr. Racaniello finally posted the letter on PubMed Commons. He also called the PACE trial “a sham.” (I’ve called it “a piece of crap.” I might also have referred to it somewhere as “doggie-poo,” but I’m not sure.)

In rejecting the letter that he himself solicited, Dr. Horton certainly appeared to be trying to squelch the growing public controversy over PACE and its recommendations that graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavior therapy are effective treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome (or myalgic encephalomyelitis, CFS, ME, CFS/ME, or ME/CFS, or some other name). But The Lancet’s effort to shield PACE is doomed, not only because the study is so bad but because the emerging science presents a completely different portrait of the illness. On Monday, a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported distinct patterns of metabolites in the plasma of ME/CFS patients—an important finding that, if confirmed, could finally lead to diagnostic tests. The PNAS paper and other recent research support the conclusion of reports last year from both the Institute of Medicine and National Institutes of Health: ME/CFS is a devastating physiological disease.

Back in January, Columbia statistics professor Andrew Gelman blogged about the harm Dr. Horton was already inflicting on his journal by not addressing the serious questions that serious critics were raising about PACE. The longstanding claim of the PACE authors, The Lancet and the trial’s other defenders—that the opponents were a small cabal of irrational, dangerous, and anti-psychiatry patients—has been exposed as false. The PACE authors, The Lancet and their colleagues wielded this narrative for years to discredit those challenging the trial. To their dismay, this tactic is no longer working.

The Lancet’s decision to reject the Virology Blog letter will only compound the journal’s growing reputational damage over the issue. It also seems deeply short-sighted, in light of last month’s powerful court decision ordering Queen Mary University of London, the professional home of principal PACE investigator Peter White, to release the raw trial data. That would allow others to determine whether the PACE investigators altered their outcome assessments strategies to produce results more likely to get published in The Lancet and other journals. (The answer should not surprise anyone except those in extreme stages of denial.)

The decision involved a freedom-of-information request filed two years ago by Alem Matthees, an Australian patient. Since the published results did not include the results per the assessment methods outlined in the PACE trial protocol, Matthees wanted the data necessary to calculate those results for the two primary outcomes of fatigue and physical function, as well as for the original definition of “recovery.” Last October, the Information Commissioner’s Office, an independent agency, found that QMUL had no grounds for refusing to provide the data. QMUL appealed that ruling to the First-Tier Tribunal, which issued the recent decision.

The U.K. medical-academic-media establishment has wholly endorsed the PACE trial’s unreliable findings and accepted the authors’ unsubstantiated claims that they have been subjected to a concerted campaign of threats and harassment. In contrast, the tribunal demonstrated a refreshing unwillingness to play along. In robust language, the tribunal smacked down the specious arguments raised by the university in its attempt to shield the data from public disclosure.

The chance that any participant could or would be identified from the anonymized data was “remote,” the tribunal found. The scenarios envisioned ed by QMUL’s data security expert, who sketched out far-fetched strategies that “activist” patients might pursue to re-identify and then harass trial participants, were “grossly exaggerated” and “a considerable amount of supposition and speculation,” wrote the tribunal. In fact, noted the tribunal, the only incident of “harassment” proven by QMUL’s experienced legal team was that someone somewhere once heckled Trudie Chalder, a principal PACE investigator who also testified at the tribunal hearing. (I also have some thoughts on Dr. Chalder’s testimony, but will hold those for another time.)

In contrast to the QMUL portrait of PACE opponents, the tribunal cited Virology Blog’s open letter to The Lancet as evidence of a robust scientific debate, noting that “the identity of those questioning the research…was impressive.” The tribunal also noted that QMUL’s decision to share data with friendly researchers but not with others had created the impression that it was acting out of self-interest, not principle. “There is a strong public interest in releasing the data given the continued academic interest so long after the research was published and the seeming reluctance for Queen Mary University to engage with other academics they thought were seeking to challenge their findings,” declared the tribunal in the decision.

The PACE authors, QMUL, Dr. Horton, and The Lancet are stonewalling the obvious, at the expense of millions of sick patients. Although Dr. Horton will never grant me an interview, I want to highlight some of the questions I have about his actions, claims and thoughts, in case someone else gets the chance to talk with him. This list of questions is certainly not exhaustive, but it’s a decent start.

So, Dr. Horton–Here’s what I’d like to ask you:

1) Do you agree that the invitation you sent to Dr. Racaniello certainly implied, even if it didn’t explicitly promise, that The Lancet would publish the letter? Since the letter submitted by Dr. Racaniello, on behalf of himself and 42 other experts, reflected the points made in the Virology Blog open letter that triggered your invitation, what changed your mind about whether it added something to the debate? Since you personally solicited the letter from Dr. Racaniello and his colleagues, do you feel you should have sent him a personal apology, rather than leaving your correspondence editor, Audrey Ceschia, to answer for your behavior?

2) In your invitation to Dr. Racaniello, you noted that the PACE authors would have a chance to respond, alongside the published letter. That was a fair plan. When did that plan of offering them a response morph into the plan of offering them a role in discussions about whether to publish the critical letter in the first place? What impact did their views have on your decision? Did the PACE authors argue, as they have in the past, that they have already answered all these criticisms?

This repeated claim that they have answered all questions is simply untrue. They have never explained, for example, how it is possible to be disabled and “within normal range” on an indicator simultaneously, and why 13 % of their participants were already “within normal range” on one or both primary outcome sat baseline. When anyone asks legitimate questions, they evade, ignore or misstate the issues—including in the correspondence following The Lancet’s 2011 paper. (This pattern of non-response is clear from their non-responsive responses to the charges raised in my Virology Blog investigation, and my rebuttal of their non-responses.)

3) What’s your reaction to the First-Tier Tribunal’s decision ordering the release of the PACE trial data? Do you agree with the tribunal’s observation, referring to Virology Blog’s February open letter to you and The Lancet, that the roster of scientists and researchers now publicly questioning the methodology and findings of PACE is “impressive”?

4) Do think QMUL should spend more public money to appeal the decision?

If QMUL decides to appeal, do you think this will fuel the already-widespread assumption that PACE had null findings per the original protocol methods of assessment?

5) The PACE interventions, as described in The Lancet, are based on the premise that deconditioning rather than any pathological process perpetuates the illness, and that increased activity and a new psychological mind-set will fix the problem. The descriptions of the interventions categorically exclude the possibility of a continuing organic disease as the cause. Do you think this portrait of the illness squares with the view emerging from this week’s study in PNAS and other recent research, including last year’s reports from the Institute of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health?

6) The IOM report identified “exertion intolerance”—the prolonged relapses patients often suffer after minimal activity–as the core symptom of the illness. Yet a key aspect of the PACE rehabilitative interventions, GET and CBT, is urging patients to increase their activity and to interpret a resurgence of symptoms as a transient event, not a sign of deterioration. Given the IOM’s focus on “exertion intolerance” as the central phenomenon, isn’t the PACE approach contraindicated?

7) Does it bother you that you published a paper in which 13% of the sample had already, at baseline, met the outcome thresholds for one or both primary measures? These outcome thresholds, which represented worse health than the entry criteria, were variously defined as being “within normal range” (the Lancet paper), “back to normal” (Dr. Chalder’s statement at the press conference for the Lancet paper), and “a strict criterion for recovery” (the Lancet commentary by colleagues of the PACE authors). Can you point me to any other studies published in The Lancet, or anywhere, in which positive outcome scores represented worse health than entry criteria?

8) Does it bother you personally that the PACE authors did not inform you or your editorial staff that a significant minority of patients were already “within normal range” on at least one primary outcome at baseline? (I presume they didn’t mention it to you because, well, it’s hard to imagine you would have published the paper if you or anyone there had been told about or noticed the inexplicable overlap in the entry criteria and the post-hoc “normal range” thresholds.)

9) During a 2011 Australian radio interview not long after The Lancet published the first PACE results, you said the following about the trial’s critics: “One sees a fairly small, but highly organised, very vocal and very damaging group of individuals who have I would say actually hijacked this agenda and distorted the debate so that it actually harms the overwhelming majority of patients.” Given that the First-Tier Tribunal expressed a different perspective on the stature and credibility of those criticizing PACE, do you still agree with your 2011 characterization of the trial’s opponents?

10) During the same interview, you stated that the PACE trial had undergone “endless rounds of peer review.” Yet the trial was also “fast-tracked” to publication, as indicated on the version of the article in the ScienceDirect database. Can you explain the mechanics of “fast-tracking” a paper to publication while simultaneously subjecting it to “endless rounds of peer review”? How long was the fast-track process for the PACE paper, and how many actual rounds of review did the paper undergo during that endless period?

11) Can you explain why the Lancet’s endless peer review process did not catch the most criticized aspect of the paper—the very obvious fact that participants could be simultaneously disabled enough for entry yet already “within normal range”/”back to normal”/”recovered” on the primary outcomes? Can you explain why the reviewers did not request the authors to provide either the original results promised in the protocol or else sensitivity analyses to assess the impact of the mid-trial changes they introduced?

12) Do you think it was appropriate for the PACE investigators to publish a mid-trial newsletter that promoted the therapies under study and included glowing testimonials from earlier participants about their excellent outcomes? Can you point to other published studies that featured such mid-trial dissemination of personal testimonials and explicit descriptions of outcomes? The PACE authors have stated that the newsletter testimonials did not identify participants’ trial arms and therefore could not have created any bias. Do you agree with this novel and creative argument that influencing all remaining participants in a trial in a positive direction is not a form of bias?

13) Did The Lancet’s peer review process include an evaluation of the PACE trial’s consent forms, given the authors’ explicit promise in the protocol to abide by the Declaration of Helsinki? The Declaration of Helsinki requires investigators to disclose “any possible conflicts of interest” not just to journals but to prospective participants. Yet the PACE consent forms did not disclose the authors’ close financial and consulting ties with the insurance industry. Do you agree this omission violates their protocol promise, and that given this violation the PACE authors failed to obtain legitimate informed consent from their participants? Without legitimate informed consent, did the PACE authors have the right to publish their findings in The Lancet and other journals? What should happen to the PACE papers already published, since the authors do not appear to have legitimate informed consent from participants?

14) Who do you think should be held responsible for the $8,000,000 in U.K. government funds wasted on the PACE trial? Who should be held responsible for the harm it has caused? What responsibility, if any, does The Lancet bear for the debacle?

Once Again, Lancet Stumbles on PACE

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Last February, Virology Blog posted an open letter to The Lancet and its editor, Dr. Richard Horton, describing the indefensible flaws of the PACE trial of treatments for ME/CFS, the disease otherwise known as chronic fatigue syndrome (link to letter). Forty-two well-regarded scientists, academics and clinicians put their names to the letter, which declared flatly that the flaws in PACE “have no place in published research.” The letter called for a completely independent re-analysis of the PACE trial data, since the authors have refused to publish the results they outlined in their original protocol. The letter was also sent directly to Dr. Horton.

The open letter was based on the extensive investigative report written by David Tuller, the academic coordinator of UC Berkeley’s joint program in journalism and public health, which Virology Blog posted last October (link to report). This report outlines such egregious failings as outcome thresholds that overlapped with entry criteria, mid-trial promotion of the therapies under investigation, failure to provide the original results as outlined in the protocol, failure to adhere to a specific promise in the protocol to inform participants about the investigators’ conflicts of interest, and other serious lapses.

Virology Blog first posted the open letter in November, with six signatories (link to letter). At that time, Dr. Horton’s office responded that he would reply after returning from “traveling.” Three months later, we still had not heard back from Dr. Horton–perhaps he was still “traveling”–so we decided to republish it with many more people signed on.

The day the second open letter was posted, Dr Horton e-mailed me and solicited a letter from the group. (He did not explain where he had been “traveling” for the previous three months.) Here’s what he wrote: “Many thanks for your email. In the interests of transparency, I would like to invite you to submit a letter for publication–please keep your letter to around 500 words. We will then invite the authors of the study to reply to your very serious allegations.”

Dr. Horton’s e-mail clearly indicated that the letter would be published, with the PACE authors’ response to the charges raised; there was no equivocation or possibility of misinterpretation. In good faith, we submitted a letter for publication the following month, with 43 signatories this time, through The Lancet’s online editorial system (see the end of this article for a list of those who signed the letter). After several months with no response, we learned only recently by checking the online editorial system that The Lancet had flatly rejected the letter, with no explanation. No one contacted me to explain the decision or why we were asked to spend time creating a letter that The Lancet clearly had no intention of publishing.

I wrote back to Dr. Horton, pointing out that his behavior was highly unprofessional and requesting an explanation for the rejection. I also asked him if he was in the habit of soliciting letters from busy scientists and researchers that his journal had no actual interest in publishing. I further asked if the journal planned to reconsider this rejection, in light of the recent First-Tier Tribunal decision, which demolished the PACE authors’ bogus reasons for refusing to provide data for independent analysis.

Dr. Horton did not himself apologize or even deign to respond. Instead, Audrey Ceschia, the Lancet’s correspondence editor, replied, explaining that the Lancet editorial staff decided, after discussing the matter with the PACE authors, that the letter did not add anything substantially new to the discussion. She assured us that if we submitted another letter focused on the First-Tier Tribunal decision, it would be “seriously” considered. I’m not sure why she or Dr. Horton think that any such assurance from The Lancet is credible at this point.

The reasons given for the rejection are clearly specious. The letter for publication reflected the matters addressed in the open letter that prompted Dr. Horton’s invitation in the first place, and closely adhered to his directive  to outline our “serious allegations”. If outlining these allegations was not considered publication-worthy by The Lancet, it is incomprehensible to us why Dr. Horton solicited the letter in the first place. Perhaps it was just an effort to hold off further criticism for a period of months while we awaited publication of the letter, unaware of the journal’s intention to reject it. It is certainly surprising that The Lancet appears to have given the PACE authors some power to determine what letters appear in the journal itself.

Dr. Tuller’s investigation, based on the groundbreaking analyses conducted by many savvy patients and advocates since The Lancet published the first PACE results in 2011, has effectively demolished the credibility of the findings. So has a follow-up analysis by Dr. Rebecca Goldin, a math professor at George Mason University and director of Stats.org, a think tank co-sponsored by the American Statistical Association. In short, the PACE study is a sham, with meaningless results. In this case, the emperor truly has no clothes. Dr. Horton and his editorial team at The Lancet are stark naked.

Yet the PACE study remains in the literature. Its recommendation of treatments that are potentially harmful to patients–specifically, graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavior therapy, both designed specifically to increase patients’ activity levels–remains highly influential.

Of particular concern, the PACE findings have laid the groundwork for the MAGENTA study, a so-called “PACE for kids” that will be testing graded exercise therapy in children and adolescents. A feasibility study, sponsored by Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust, is currently recruiting participants. It is, of course, completely unacceptable that any study should justify itself based on the uninterpretable findings of the PACE trial. The MAGENTA trial should be halted until the PACE authors have done what the First-Tier Tribunal ordered them to do–release their raw data and allow others to analyze it according to the outcomes specified in the PACE trial protocol.

Today, because of the urgency of the issue, we are posting on PubMed Commons the letter that The Lancet rejected. That way readers can judge for themselves whether it adds anything to the current debate.

Please note that the opinions in this blog post are mine only, not those of any of the other signers of the Lancet letter, listed below

Vincent R. Racaniello, PhD
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
Columbia University
New York, New York

Ronald W. Davis, PhD
Professor of Biochemistry and Genetics
Stanford University
Stanford, California

Jonathan C.W. Edwards, MD
Emeritus Professor of Medicine
University College London
London, England, United Kingdom

Leonard A. Jason, PhD
Professor of Psychology
DePaul University
Chicago, Illinois

Bruce Levin, PhD
Professor of Biostatistics
Columbia University
New York, New York

Arthur L. Reingold, MD
Professor of Epidemiology
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California

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Dharam V. Ablashi, DVM, MS, Dip Bact
Scientific Director – HHV-6 Foundation
Former Senior Investigator
National Cancer Institute, NIH
Bethesda, Maryland

James N. Baraniuk, MD
Professor, Department of Medicine
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.

Lisa F. Barcellos, PhD, MPH
Professor of Epidemiology
School of Public Health
California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences
University of California
Berkeley, California

Lucinda Bateman MD PC
MECFS and Fibromyalgia clinician
Salt Lake City, Utah

Alison C. Bested MD FRCPC
Clinical Associate Professor of Hematology
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

John Chia, MD
Clinician/Researcher
EV Med Research
Lomita, California

Lily Chu, MD, MSHS
Independent Researcher
San Francisco, California

Derek Enlander, MD, MRCS, LRCP
Attending Physician
Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York
ME CFS Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
New York, New York

Mary Ann Fletcher, PhD
Schemel Professor of Neuroimmune Medicine
College of Osteopathic Medicine
Nova Southeastern University
Professor Emeritus, University of Miami School of Medicine
Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Kenneth Friedman, PhD
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology (retired)
New Jersey Medical School
University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ
Newark, New Jersey

Robert F. Garry, PhD
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
Tulane University School of Medicine
New Orleans, Louisiana

Rebecca Goldin, PhD
Professor of Mathematics
George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia

David L. Kaufman, MD,
Medical Director
Open Medicine Institute
Mountain View, California

Susan Levine, MD
Clinician, Private Practice
Visiting Fellow, Cornell University
New York, New York

Alan R. Light, PhD
Professor, Department of Anesthesiology
Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah

Patrick E. McKnight, PhD
Professor of Psychology
George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia

Zaher Nahle, PhD, MPA
Vice President for Research and Scientific Programs
Solve ME/CFS Initiative
Los Angeles, California

James M. Oleske, MD, MPH
Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Pediatrics
Senator of RBHS Research Centers, Bureaus, and Institutes
Director, Division of Pediatrics Allergy, Immunology & Infectious Diseases
Department of Pediatrics
Rutgers – New Jersey Medical School
Newark, New Jersey

Richard N. Podell, M.D., MPH
Clinical Professor
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
New Brunswick, New Jersey

William Satariano, PhD
Professor of Epidemiology and Community Health
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California

Paul T Seed MSc CStat CSci
Senior Lecturer in Medical Statistics
King’s College London, Division of Women’s Health
St Thomas’ Hospital
London, England, United Kingdom

Charles Shepherd, MB BS
Honorary Medical Adviser to the ME Association
London, England, United Kingdom

Christopher R. Snell, PhD
Scientific Director
WorkWell Foundation
Ripon, California

Nigel Speight, MA, MC, BChir, FRCP, FRCPCH, DCH
Pediatrician
Durham, England, United Kingdom

Philip B. Stark, PhD
Professor of Statistics
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California

Eleanor Stein, MD FRCP(C)
Assistant Clinical Professor
University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

John Swartzberg, MD
Clinical Professor Emeritus
School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California

Ronald G. Tompkins, MD, ScD
Summer M Redstone Professor of Surgery
Harvard University
Boston, Massachusetts

Rosemary Underhill, MB BS.
Physician, Independent Researcher
Palm Coast, Florida

Dr Rosamund Vallings MNZM, MB BS
General Practitioner
Auckland, New Zealand

Michael VanElzakker, PhD
Research Fellow, Psychiatric Neuroscience Division
Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, Massachusetts

Mark Vink, MD
Family Physician
Soerabaja Research Center
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Prof Dr FC Visser
Cardiologist
Stichting CardioZorg
Hoofddorp, The Netherlands

William Weir, FRCP
Infectious Disease Consultant
London, England, United Kingdom

John Whiting, MD
Specialist Physician
Private Practice
Brisbane, Australia

Marcie Zinn, PhD
Research Consultant in Experimental Neuropsychology, qEEG/LORETA, Medical/Psychological Statistics
NeuroCognitive Research Institute, Chicago
Center for Community Research
DePaul University
Chicago, Illinois

Mark Zinn, MM
Research consultant in experimental electrophysiology
Center for Community Research
DePaul University
Chicago, Illinois

TWiV 397: Trial by error

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Journalism professor David Tuller returns to TWiV for a discussion of the PACE trial for ME/CFS: the many flaws in the trial, why its conclusions are useless, and why the data must be released and re-examined.

You can find TWiV #397 at microbe.tv/twiv, or listen below.

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An open letter to PLoS One

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Update: July 30, 2018

This letter inaccurately explained the issues with the PLoS One study. Specifically, when I wrote it I misunderstood which analyses had and hadn’t been done. The letter was e-mailed to PloS One long ago, so I can’t correct what has already been sent. But the following three paragraphs should have replaced the middle section of the letter:

“The PACE statistical analysis plan included three separate assumptions for how to measure the costs of what they called “informal care”–the care provided by family and friends—in assessing cost-effectiveness from the societal perspective. The investigators promised to analyze the data based on valuing this informal care at: 1) the cost of a home-care worker; 2) the minimum wage; and 3) zero cost. The latter, of course, is what happens in the real world—families care for loved ones without getting paid anything by anyone.

In PLoS One, the main analysis for assessing informal care presented only the results under a fourth assumption not mentioned in the statistical analysis plan—valuing this care at the mean national wage. The paper did not explain the reasons for this switch. Under this new assumption, the authors reported, CBT and GET proved more cost-effective than the two other PACE treatment arms. The paper did not include the results based on any of the three ways of measuring informal care promised in the statistical analysis plan. But the authors noted that sensitivity analyses using alternative approaches “did not make a substantial difference to the results” and that the findings were “robust” under other assumptions for informal care.

Sensitivity analyses are statistical tests used to determine whether, and to what extent, different assumptions lead to changes in results. The “alternative approaches” mentioned in the study as being included in the sensitivity analyses were the first two approaches cited in the statistical analysis plan—valuing informal care at the cost of a home-care worker and at minimum wage. The paper did not explain why it had dropped any mention of the third promised method of valuing informal care—the zero-cost assumption.”

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PLoS One
1160 Battery Street
Koshland Building East, Suite 100
San Francisco, CA 94111

Dear PLoS One Editors:

In 2012, PLoS One published “Adaptive Pacing, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Graded Exercise, and Specialist Medical Care for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis.” This was one in a series of papers highlighting results from the PACE study—the largest trial of treatments for the illness, also known as ME/CFS. Psychologist James Coyne has been seeking data from the study based on PLoS’ open-access policies, an effort we support.

However, as David Tuller from the University of California, Berkeley, documented in an investigation of PACE published last October on Virology Blog, the trial suffered from many indefensible flaws, as patients and advocates have argued for years. Among Dr. Tuller’s findings: the main claim of the PLoS One paper–that cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy are cost-effective treatments–is wrong, since it is based on an erroneous characterization of the study’s sensitivity analyses. The PACE authors have repeatedly cited this inaccurate claim of cost-effectiveness to justify their continued promotion of these interventions.

Yet the claim is not supported by the evidence, and it is not necessary to obtain the study data to draw this conclusion. The claim is based solely on the decision to value the free care provided by family and friends as if it were compensated at the level of a well-paid health care worker. Here is what Dr. Tuller wrote last October about the PLoS One paper and its findings:

        The PLoS One paper argued that the graded exercise and cognitive behavior therapies were the most cost-effective treatments from a societal perspective. In reaching this conclusion, the investigators valued so-called  “informal” care—unpaid care provided by family and friends–at the replacement cost of a homecare worker. The PACE statistical analysis plan (approved in 2010 but not published until 2013) had included two additional, lower-cost assumptions. The first valued informal care at minimum wage, the second at zero compensation. 

       The PLoS One paper itself did not provide these additional findings, noting only that “sensitivity analyses revealed that the results were robust for alternative assumptions.”

Commenters on the PLoS One website, including [patient] Tom Kindlon, challenged the claim that the findings would be “robust” under the alternative assumptions for informal care. In fact, they pointed out, the lower-cost conditions would reduce or fully eliminate the reported societal cost-benefit advantages of the cognitive behavior and graded exercise therapies. 

        In a posted response, the paper’s lead author, Paul McCrone, conceded that the commenters were right about the impact that the lower-cost, alternative assumptions would have on the findings. However, McCrone did not explain or even mention the apparently erroneous sensitivity analyses he had cited in the paper, which had found the societal cost-benefit advantages for graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavior therapy to be “robust” under all assumptions. Instead, he argued that the two lower-cost approaches were unfair to caregivers because families deserved more economic consideration for their labor.

        “In our opinion, the time spent by families caring for people with CFS/ME has a real value and so to give it a zero cost is controversial,” McCrone wrote. “Likewise, to assume it only has the value of the minimum wage is also very restrictive.”

       In a subsequent comment, Kindlon chided McCrone, pointing out that he had still not explained the paper’s claim that the sensitivity analyses showed the findings were “robust” for all assumptions. Kindlon also noted that the alternative, lower-cost assumptions were included in PACE’s own statistical plan.

      “Remember it was the investigators themselves that chose the alternative assumptions,” wrote Kindlon. “If it’s ‘controversial’ now to value informal care at zero value, it was similarly ‘controversial’ when they decided before the data was looked at, to analyse the data in this way. There is not much point in publishing a statistical plan if inconvenient results are not reported on and/or findings for them misrepresented.”

Given that Dr. McCrone, the lead author, directly contradicted in his comments what the paper itself claimed about sensitivity analyses having confirmed the “robustness” of the findings under other assumptions, it is clearly not necessary to scrutinize the study data to confirm that this central finding cannot be supported. Dr. McCrone has not responded to e-mail requests from Dr. Tuller to explain the discrepancy. And PLoS One, although alerted to this problem last fall by Dr. Tuller, has apparently not yet taken steps to rectify the misinformation about the sensitivity analyses contained in the paper.

PLoS One has an obligation to question Dr. McCrone about the contradiction between the text of the paper and his subsequent comments, so he can either provide a reasonable explanation, produce the actual sensitivity analyses demonstrating “robustness” under all three assumptions outlined in the statistical analysis plan, or correct the paper’s core finding that CBT and GET are “cost-effective” no matter how informal care is valued.  Should he fail to do so, PLoS One has an obligation itself to correct the paper, independent of the disposition of the issue of access to trial data.

We appreciate your quick response to these concerns.

Sincerely,

Ronald W. Davis, PhD
Professor of Biochemistry and Genetics
Stanford University

Rebecca Goldin, Ph.D.
Professor of Mathematical Sciences
George Mason University

Bruce Levin, PhD
Professor of Biostatistics
Columbia University

Vincent R. Racaniello, PhD
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
Columbia University

Arthur L. Reingold, MD
Professor of Epidemiology
University of California, Berkeley

An open letter to The Lancet, again

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On November 13th, five colleagues and I released an open letter to The Lancet and editor Richard Horton about the PACE trial, which the journal published in 2011. The study’s reported findings–that cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy are effective treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome–have had enormous influence on clinical guidelines for the illness. Last October, Virology Blog published David Tuller’s investigative report on the PACE study’s indefensible methodological lapses. Citing these problems, we noted in the letter that “such flaws have no place in published research” and urged Dr. Horton to commission a fully independent review.

Although Dr. Horton’s office e-mailed that he would respond to our letter when he returned from “traveling,” it has now been almost three months. Dr. Horton has remained silent on the issue. Today, therefore, we are reposting the open letter and resending it to The Lancet and Dr. Horton, with the names of three dozen more leading scientists and clinicians, most of them well-known experts in the ME/CFS field.

We still hope and expect that Dr. Horton will address–rather than continue to ignore–these critical concerns about the PACE study.

****

Dr. Richard Horton

The Lancet
125 London Wall
London, EC2Y 5AS, UK

Dear Dr. Horton:

In February, 2011, The Lancet published an article called “Comparison of adaptive pacing therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, graded exercise therapy, and specialist medical care for chronic fatigue syndrome (PACE): a randomized trial.” The article reported that two “rehabilitative” approaches, cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy, were effective in treating chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, ME/CFS and CFS/ME. The study received international attention and has had widespread influence on research, treatment options and public attitudes.

The PACE study was an unblinded clinical trial with subjective primary outcomes, a design that requires strict vigilance in order to prevent the possibility of bias. Yet the study suffered from major flaws that have raised serious concerns about the validity, reliability and integrity of the findings. The patient and advocacy communities have known this for years, but a recent in-depth report on this site, which included statements from five of us, has brought the extent of the problems to the attention of a broader public. The PACE investigators have replied to many of the criticisms, but their responses have not addressed or answered key concerns.

The major flaws documented at length in the recent report include, but are not limited to, the following:

*The Lancet paper included an analysis in which the outcome thresholds for being “within the normal range” on the two primary measures of fatigue and physical function demonstrated worse health than the criteria for entry, which already indicated serious disability. In fact, 13 percent of the study participants were already “within the normal range” on one or both outcome measures at baseline, but the investigators did not disclose this salient fact in the Lancet paper. In an accompanying Lancet commentary, colleagues of the PACE team defined participants who met these expansive “normal ranges” as having achieved a “strict criterion for recovery.” The PACE authors reviewed this commentary before publication.

*During the trial, the authors published a newsletter for participants that included positive testimonials from earlier participants about the benefits of the “therapy” and “treatment.” The same newsletter included an article that cited the two rehabilitative interventions pioneered by the researchers and being tested in the PACE trial as having been recommended by a U.K. clinical guidelines committee “based on the best available evidence.” The newsletter did not mention that a key PACE investigator also served on the clinical guidelines committee. At the time of the newsletter, two hundred or more participants—about a third of the total sample–were still undergoing assessments.

*Mid-trial, the PACE investigators changed their protocol methods of assessing their primary outcome measures of fatigue and physical function. This is of particular concern in an unblinded trial like PACE, in which outcome trends are often apparent long before outcome data are seen. The investigators provided no sensitivity analyses to assess the impact of the changes and have refused requests to provide the results per the methods outlined in their protocol.

*The PACE investigators based their claims of treatment success solely on their subjective outcomes. In the Lancet paper, the results of a six-minute walking test—described in the protocol as “an objective measure of physical capacity”–did not support such claims, notwithstanding the minimal gains in one arm. In subsequent comments in another journal, the investigators dismissed the walking-test results as irrelevant, non-objective and fraught with limitations. All the other objective measures in PACE, presented in other journals, also failed. The results of one objective measure, the fitness step-test, were provided in a 2015 paper in The Lancet Psychiatry, but only in the form of a tiny graph. A request for the step-test data used to create the graph was rejected as “vexatious.”

*The investigators violated their promise in the PACE protocol to adhere to the Declaration of Helsinki, which mandates that prospective participants be “adequately informed” about researchers’ “possible conflicts of interest.” The main investigators have had financial and consulting relationships with disability insurance companies, advising them that rehabilitative therapies like those tested in PACE could help ME/CFS claimants get off benefits and back to work. They disclosed these insurance industry links in The Lancet but did not inform trial participants, contrary to their protocol commitment. This serious ethical breach raises concerns about whether the consent obtained from the 641 trial participants is legitimate.

Such flaws have no place in published research. This is of particular concern in the case of the PACE trial because of its significant impact on government policy, public health practice, clinical care, and decisions about disability insurance and other social benefits. Under the circumstances, it is incumbent upon The Lancet to address this matter as soon as possible.

We therefore urge The Lancet to seek an independent re-analysis of the individual-level PACE trial data, with appropriate sensitivity analyses, from highly respected reviewers with extensive expertise in statistics and study design. The reviewers should be from outside the U.K. and outside the domains of psychiatry and psychological medicine. They should also be completely independent of, and have no conflicts of interests involving, the PACE investigators and the funders of the trial.

Thank you very much for your quick attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Ronald W. Davis, PhD
Professor of Biochemistry and Genetics
Stanford University

Jonathan C.W. Edwards, MD
Emeritus Professor of Medicine
University College London

Leonard A. Jason, PhD
Professor of Psychology
DePaul University

Bruce Levin, PhD
Professor of Biostatistics
Columbia University

Vincent R. Racaniello, PhD
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
Columbia University

Arthur L. Reingold, MD
Professor of Epidemiology
University of California, Berkeley

****

Dharam V. Ablashi, DVM, MS, Dip Bact
Scientific Director, HHV-6 Foundation
Former Senior Investigator
National Cancer Institute, NIH
Bethesda, Maryland

James N. Baraniuk, MD
Professor, Department of Medicine,
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.

Lisa F. Barcellos, PhD, MPH
Professor of Epidemiology
School of Public Health
California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences
University of California
Berkeley, California

Lucinda Bateman, MD
Medical Director, Bateman Horne Center
Salt Lake City, Utah

David S. Bell, MD
Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York

Alison C. Bested MD FRCPC
Clinical Associate Professor of Hematology
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Gordon Broderick, PhD
Director, Clinical Systems Biology Group
Institute for Neuro Immune Medicine
Professor, Dept of Psychology and Neuroscience
College of Psychology
Nova Southeastern University
Miami, Florida

John Chia, MD
Clinician/Researcher
EV Med Research
Lomita, California

Lily Chu, MD, MSHS
Independent Researcher
San Francisco, California

Derek Enlander, MD, MRCS, LRCP
Attending Physician
Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York
ME CFS Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
New York, New York

Mary Ann Fletcher, PhD
Schemel Professor of Neuroimmune Medicine
College of Osteopathic Medicine
Nova Southeastern University
Professor Emeritus, University of Miami School of Medicine
Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Kenneth Friedman, PhD
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology (retired)
New Jersey Medical School
University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ
Newark, New Jersey

David L. Kaufman, MD,
Medical Director
Open Medicine Institute
Mountain View, California

Nancy Klimas, MD
Professor and Chair, Department of Clinical Immunology
Director, Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine
Nova Southeastern University
Director, GWI and ME/CFS Research, Miami VA Medical Center
Miami, Florida

Charles W. Lapp, MD
Director, Hunter-Hopkins Center
Assistant Consulting Professor at Duke University Medical Center
Charlotte, North Carolina

Susan Levine, MD
Clinician, Private Practice
New York, New York
Visiting Fellow, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York

Alan R. Light, PhD
Professor, Department of Anesthesiology and Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah

Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik, PhD
Professor and Co-Director
National Centre for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases
Griffith University
Queensland, Australia

Peter G. Medveczky, MD
Professor, Department of Molecular Medicine, MDC 7
College of Medicine
University of South Florida
Tampa, Florida

Zaher Nahle, PhD, MPA
Vice President for Research and Scientific Programs
Solve ME/CFS Initiative
Los Angeles, California

James M. Oleske, MD, MPH
Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Pediatrics
Senator of RBHS Research Centers, Bureaus, and Institutes
Director, Division of Pediatrics Allergy, Immunology & Infectious Diseases
Department of Pediatrics
Rutgers – New Jersey Medical School
Newark, New Jersey

Richard N. Podell, M.D., MPH
Clinical Professor
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
New Brunswick, New Jersey

Charles Shepherd, MB, BS
Honorary Medical Adviser to the ME Association
London, United Kingdom

Christopher R. Snell, PhD
Scientific Director
WorkWell Foundation
Ripon, California

Nigel Speight, MA, MB, BChir, FRCP, FRCPCH, DCH
Pediatrician
County Durham, United Kingdom

Donald Staines, MBBS MPH FAFPHM FAFOEM
Professor and Co-Director
National Centre for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases
Griffith University
Queensland, Australia

Philip B. Stark, PhD
Professor of Statistics
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California

Eleanor Stein, MD FRCP(C)
Assistant Clinical Professor
University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

John Swartzberg, MD
Clinical Professor Emeritus
School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California

Ronald G. Tompkins, MD, ScD
Summer M Redstone Professor of Surgery
Harvard University
Boston, Massachusetts

Rosemary Underhill, MB BS.
Physician, Independent Researcher
Palm Coast, Florida

Dr Rosamund Vallings MNZM, MB BS
General Practitioner
Auckland, New Zealand

Michael VanElzakker, PhD
Research Fellow, Psychiatric Neuroscience Division
Harvard Medical School & Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, Massachusetts

William Weir, FRCP
Infectious Disease Consultant
London, England

Marcie Zinn, PhD
Research Consultant in Experimental Neuropsychology, qEEG/LORETA, Medical/Psychological Statistics
NeuroCognitive Research Institute, Chicago
Center for Community Research
DePaul University
Chicago, Illinois

Mark Zinn, MM
Research consultant in experimental electrophysiology
Center for Community Research
DePaul University
Chicago, Illinois

Trial By Error, Continued: A Few Words About “Harassment”

by

By David Tuller, DrPH

David Tuller is academic coordinator of the concurrent masters degree program in public health and journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

 

Last week, a commentary in Nature about the debate over data-sharing in science made some excellent points. Unfortunately, the authors lumped “hard-line opponents” of research into chronic fatigue syndrome with those who question climate change and the health effects of tobacco, among others—accusing them of engaging in “endless information requests, complaints to researchers’ universities, online harassment, distortion of scientific findings and even threats of violence.”

Whatever the merits of the overall argument, this charge—clearly a reference to the angry response of patients and advocates to the indefensible claims made by the PACE trial–unleashed a wave of online commentary and protest on ME/CFS forums. Psychologist James Coyne posted a fierce response, linking the issue specifically to the PACE authors’ efforts to block access to their data and citing the pivotal role of the Science Media Centre in the battle.

The Nature commentary demonstrated the degree to which this narrative—that the PACE authors have been subjected to a wave of threats and unfair campaigning against their work and reputations—has been accepted as fact by the UK medical and academic establishment. Despite the study’s unacceptable methodological lapses and the lack of any corroborating public evidence from law enforcement about such threats, the authors have wielded these claims to great effect. Wrapping themselves in victimhood, they have even managed to extend their definition of harassment to include any questioning of their science and the filing of requests for data—a tactic that has shielded their work from legitimate and much-needed scrutiny.

Until recently, complaining about harassment worked remarkably well for the PACE team. Maybe that’s why they tried claiming victimhood again last October, when Virology Blog ran “Trial By Error,” my in-depth investigation of PACE. The series was the first major critique of the trial’s many indefensible flaws from outside the ME/CFS patient and advocacy community. Afterwards, the investigators complained that “misinformation” and “inaccuracies” in my stories had subjected them to “abuse” on social media and could cause them “a considerable amount of reputational damage.”

These claims were ridiculous—an attempt to deploy their standard strategy for dismissing valid criticisms. The PACE authors amplified this error in December, when they rejected Dr. Coyne’s request for data from a PACE paper published in PLoS One as “vexatious.” They had called previous requests from patients “vexatious” without attracting negative comment or attention—except from other patients. But applying the term to a respected researcher backfired, drawing howls from others in the scientific community with no knowledge of ME/CFS—the PACE team’s action was “unforgivable,” according to Columbia stats professor Andrew Gelman, and “absurd,” according to Retraction Watch.

(In fact, the PLoS One data, when ultimately released, will show that the paper’s main claim—that the PACE-endorsed treatments are cost-effective—is based on a false statement about sensitivity analyses, as I reported on Virology Blog.)

How did this theme of harassment and “vexatiousness” become part of the conversation in the first place? Starting in 2011, a few months after The Lancet published the first PACE results, top news organizations began reporting on an alarming phenomenon: Possibly dangerous chronic fatigue syndrome patients were threatening prominent psychiatrists and psychologists who were researching the illness. These reports appeared in, among other outlets, the BMJ, the Guardian, and The Sunday Times of London. The Times headline, a profile of Sir Simon Wessely, a longtime colleague of the PACE authors, was typical: “This man faced death threats and abuse. His crime? He suggested that ME was a mental illness.”

One patient had supposedly appeared at a PACE author’s lecture with a knife. Other CFS researchers had received death threats. Sir Wessely famously said that he felt safer in Afghanistan and Iraq than in the UK doing research into the disease—a preposterous statement that the press appeared to take at face value. News accounts compared the patients to radical animal terrorists.

According to the news reports, the patients objected to the involvement of these mental health experts because they were anti-psychiatry and resented being perceived as suffering from a psychological disorder. Editorials in medical journals and other publications followed the news accounts, all of them defending “science” against these unwarranted and frightening attacks.

In fact, the Science Media Centre orchestrated the story in the first place—not surprising, given its longtime association with the PACE team and its uncritical promotion of the various PACE papers. According to a 2013 SMC report reviewing the accomplishments of the first three years of its “mental health research function”: “Tom Feilden, science correspondent for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, won the UK Press Gazette’s first ever specialist science writing award for breaking the story the SMC gave him about the harassment and intimidation of researchers working on CFS/ME. The SMC had nominated him for the award.”

It’s great that the SMC not only spoon-fed Feilden the story but was so pleased with the reporter’s hard work that it nominated him for a prestigious award. In a brochure prepared for SMC’s anniversary, Feilden himself thanked the centre for its help in organizing the scoop about the “vitriolic abuse” and the “campaign of intimidation.”

Of course, patients were attacking the PACE study not because they were anti-science or anti-psychiatry but because the study itself was so terrible, as I reported last October. Luckily, a growing number of scientists outside the field, like Dr. Coyne and the top researchers from Columbia, Stanford and Berkeley who signed an open letter to The Lancet demanding an independent review, have now recognized this. How are patients supposed to react when a study so completely ignores scientific norms, and no one else seems to notice or care, no matter how many times it is pointed out?

The PACE study’s missteps rendered the results meaningless. Let’s recap briefly. The investigators changed their primary outcomes in ways that made it easier to report success, included outcome measures for improvement that were lower than the entry criteria for disability, and published a newsletter in which they promoted the therapies under investigation. They rejected as irrelevant their own pre-selected objective outcomes when the results failed to uphold their claims, and used an overly broad definition for the illness that identified people without it. Finally, despite an explicit promise in their protocol to inform participants of “any possible conflicts of interest,” they did not tell them of their work advising disability insurers on how to handle claimants with ME/CFS.

Patients and advocates have raised these and other legitimate concerns, in every possible academic, scientific and popular forum. This effort has been framed by the investigators, The Lancet and the Science Media Centre as a vicious and anti-scientific “campaign” against PACE. The news reports adopted this viewpoint and utterly failed to examine the scientific mistakes at the root of patients’ complaints.

Moreover, the reports did not present any independent evidence of the purported threats, other than claims made by the researchers. There were no statements from law enforcement authorities confirming the claims. No mention of any arrests made or charges having been filed. And little information from actual patients, much less these extremist, dangerous patients who supposedly hated psychiatry [see correction below]. In short, these news reports failed to pass any reasonable test of independent judgment and editorial skepticism.

Despite their questionable scientific methods and unreliable results, the PACE authors have widespread support among the UK medical and academic establishment. So does the Science Media Centre. Media reports, including last week’s Nature commentary, have presented without question the PACE authors’ perspective on patient response to the study. The reality is that patients have been protesting a study they know to be deeply flawed. Sometimes they have protested very, very loudly. That’s what people do when they are desperate for help, and no one is listening. To call it harassment is disgraceful.

Update 2/3/16: After reading some of the comments, I thought it was important to make clear that I don’t doubt the PACE investigators and some of their colleagues might have received very raw and nasty e-mails or phone calls. Perhaps some of these felt threatening, and perhaps they called in the police. (I’ve worked as a reporter for many years and have also received many, many raw and nasty e-mails, so I know it’s not enjoyable—but pissing people off is also part of the job.) The news accounts, however, provided no independent verification of the investigators’ charges. And the point is that, whether or not they have been the recipient of some unpleasant communications, the investigators have repeatedly used these claims to justify blocking legitimate inquiry into the PACE trial.

Correction: I reviewed the three major articles I linked to, not every single article about the issue, so my description of the coverage applies to those three. I originally wrote that the articles contained “no” interviews with actual patients. However, the Sunday Times article did include a short interview with one ME/CFS patient–a convicted child-molester who blamed his crime on fall-out from his illness. I apologize for the mistake, although I leave it to readers to decide if interviewing this person represented a sincere effort on the reporter’s part to present patients’ legitimate concerns.

I also wrote that the articles included no statements from law enforcement confirming the claims of threats. The Guardian article contained this sentence: “According to the police, the militants are now considered to be as dangerous and uncompromising as animal rights extremists.” This statement is vague, anonymous and impossible to verify with anyone in particular, so I don’t view it as an authoritative statement from law enforcement.