I have tried over the years to provide a decent return on investment. I have always been enormously touched that enough people agree to make this project viable! To donate this time around, here's the link: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/42302

(Please don't click the READ UPDATE button below--that goes to a previous campaign.)

I have tried over the years to provide a decent return on investment. I have always been enormously touched that enough people agree to make this project viable! To donate this time around, here's the link: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/42302

(Please don't click the READ UPDATE button below--that goes to a previous campaign.)

I've been trying to do more video interviews. If you haven't yet listened to my recent interview with Guardian columnist and activist George Monbiot, here it is. So far, it has received more ethan 6000 views. --David

Dear Trial By Error Supporter--

As I wrote the other day, May is the month for this spring's crowdfunding--and it has now been launched!  This is the link: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/42302

Thanks again for your past support! I expect to do another crowdfunding campaign in the fall, as usual, which will carry the project through June, 2025--the end of the next academic year. As I've mentioned, I am likely at that point to end the project in its current form. (However, I reserve the right to change my mind about that, depending on circumstances; I assume I'll have a better idea about that in the fall.) 

Pursuing this project has certainly been one of the hightlights of my career. Although it was not what I had thought I'd be doing in this decade of my life, I am very, very glad that it came my way.--David

Dear Trial By Error Supporter--

Thanks much for your donation during Berkeley's November, 2023, campaign for my Trial By Error project! Usually the spring crowdfunding is in April; this year it's happening next month. Before it starts, I thought I'd share a few hightlights of my work during the last six months. (You can see all of my Virology Blog posts here.)

Last week I posted an interview with Guardian columnist and political activist George Monbiot--well-known in the UK but not in the US. George recently wrote a scathing account of the decades-long mistreatment of ME/CFS patients in which he blasts the same folks I've been criticizing for years. The post has so far had 5000+ views on youtube.

I also recently posted about guidelines published by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners promoting graded exercise therapy--rechristened as "incremental physical activity"--and actually reference as evidence the fraudulent PACE trial. 

Earlier this year, I conducted an interview with journalist Ed Yong, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the pandemic in The Atlantic and brought widespread attention to the issue of Long Covid. My other interviews included a conversation with Dutch investigator Rob Wust about his study of muscle abnormalities in Long Covid and one with the authors of the European ME Alliance's survey of treatment of patients in mutliple countries.

After an extended back-and-forth, the prominent journal NeuroImage: Clinical finally published the letter I spearheaded explaining how neurologists and others promoting the diagnosis of "functional neurological disorder" (FND) have routinely inflated prevalence rates while mis-citing a seminal study in their field of expertise. Nine colleagues--equally troubled by what seems to be a flagrant case of research misconduct--co-signed the letter. I will have more to say about FND in upcoming months.

I have sent letters to The BMJ seeking a correction in a widely publicized paper about a rehab program for Long Covid--the first was co-signed by 11 colleagues, the second by 23. The paper declared the intervention to be clinically effective even thought the results did not meet the designated threshold for clinical significance. 

I'm looking forward to continuing the project for another year. After that, we'll see-it might be time to call it a day. But these issues are not going away, so there is still much work to be done.

Thanks again for the past support, I will alert you when the May crowdfunding starts. Please do not click on the link below--there is no active crowdfunding site at the moment. 

Best--David

Thanks to all of you for helping the crowdfunder reach the goal! I appreciate the support! 

This week I wrote about a Dutch patient survey that found CBT and GET to be "the worst" treatment approaches for ME/CFS. At the same time, Professor Hans Knoop, one of the Netherlands' leading CBT/GET fanatic, continues to promote CBT as effective for Long Covid on the basis of his bogus study.

Ignore the button below--this campaign is over!--David