Thread by @ABrokenBattery

Thread of clips from Michael Sharpe's retirement interview on the Today programme - BBC Radio 4 in 2019.

He describes "A small group of campaigners."

At the time over 80 charities (almost all of them) and 100 academics signed an open letter calling for PACE to be reanalyzed.

He claims that campaigners "stalk researchers" and mentions "threats of violence"

When QMUL refused to release the PACE data it went to tribunal. A witness compared ME/CFS activists to animal rights groups and claimed there were serious risks of violence.

However, the tribunal concluded that "It was clear that his assessment was "grossly exaggerated and the only actual evidence was that an individual at a seminar had heckled Professor Chalder”

He describes the Journal of Health Psychology as a "campaign" and its very important "we don't have science bent by campaigning"

The journal dedicated an entire issue to understand the problems with the PACE trial. 40 experts from both sides of the debate were invited and commentaries were peer reviewed. The PACE authors tried to have sections removed because a peer was a patient & didn't want to engage.

Michael Sharpe claims the objections to his research are because the application of psychological treatments says to the patients your illness isnt real and this "fuels the hate".

He fails to mention the harm caused by his treatments. Over 50% of ME/CFS patients report that Graded Exercise makes them worse (11 surveys/18,000 patients) Watch this clip of Emma Shorter describe her experience in Scottish Parliament which left her in a wheelchair.

Or the problems with the research (e.g. moving the goal posts, no objective improvement, promoting treatments during the trial.... ). NICE have now graded PACE as either low or very low in quality after an extensive 3 year review.