new york magazine

Trial By Error: Correctives from Putrino & Iwasaki (and Others) to the Long-Covid-Is-Psychosomatic Claims

18 February 2023 by David Tuller

By David Tuller, DrPH

When the pandemic began, everyone involved in the ME, CFS, and ME/CFS domain assumed that there would be a wave of post-acute, prolonged complications, since every virus seems to leave in its wake a small but still significant number of people who report a range of non-specific symptoms. It was also widely predicted that many in the medical world would interpret these physical complaints as psychosomatic, psychogenic, or “functional,” to use the current buzzword in this complicated field.

That has all come to pass.

Trial By Error: Is the Long Covid Phenomenon an Expression of “Psychosocial Distress”?

14 December 2022 by David Tuller

By David Tuller, DrPH

For the second time in a few weeks, a major US news organization has provided Professor Michael Sharpe, lead PACE investigator and one-time Virology Blog commenter, with a high-profile platform to disseminate his typical blather and nonsense. Both articles—the first in New York Magazine, the second in The New Republic–-have presented the long Covid phenomenon as largely psychosomatic.

I wrote an extended twitter thread and a blog post about the pretty awful New York Magazine piece, which highlighted my 15,000-word investigation of the PACE trial but misrepresented my criticisms. I won’t bother more about that article for now. As for The New Republic‘s iteration by Natalie Shure, an experienced science and health journalist, poet Meghan O’Rourke, author of The Invisible Kingdom, has written an excellent thread about it.

Trial By Error: More on that New York Magazine Piece Pushing Psychogenic View of ME/CFS and Long Covid

12 November 2022 by David Tuller

By David Tuller, DrPH

So getting back to that long, ill-informed and poorly reported New York Magazine article on the purportedly psychogenic nature of both long Covid and ME/CFS…I responded in a twitter thread to the article’s misrepresentations of my criticisms about the PACE trial.

The journalist, a science writer named Jeff Wise, didn’t interview me. But he did interview three other critics of the CBT/GET paradigm—Columbia physician-scientist Mady Hornig; Lucinda Bateman, a physician who specializes in ME/CFS and related diseases; and Solve ME/CFS Initiative’s director of advocacy, Emily Taylor. All felt their words and positions were misrepresented and have voiced their objections in a public statement.