From The Centre for Welfare Reform, 13 March 2017.
An open letter to the editors of the journal Psychological Medicine, calling for the retraction of the 2013 article “Recovery from chronic fatigue syndrome after treatments given in the PACE trial” has been published with 101 signatories from leading experts, charities and ME groups.
The PACE trial was the first medical trial to receive funding from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), and was assessing the benefits of biopsychosocial interventions at a time when the DWP was using the adoption of a biopsychosocial model of disability to justify reforms which cut spending on disability benefits.
Serious concerns have been raised that problems with the trial, and the way in which results were presented, have led to misleading claims about the benefits of biopsychosocial rehabilitation.
So far the trial's researchers, and the journal which published their paper, have failed to correct even the clear factual errors that were a part of their analysis.
Read the letter in full here: www.virology.ws/2017/03/13/an-open-letter-to-psychological-medicine-about-recovery-and-the-pace-trial/
An earlier news item on the PACE scandal can be read here: www.centreforwelfarereform.org/news/major-breaktn-pace-trial/00296.html
Our full report on the PACE scandal – In the Expectation of Recovery – can be downloaded free here:
www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/type/pdfs/in-the-expectation-of-recovery.html