People wanting to read a new and wide-ranging collection of critiques about the PACE Trial are no longer banging their heads against an academic journal's paywall. That's because – thanks to another publishing coup by the ME Association – all the commentaries in The Journal of Health Psychology are being made open access.
Following an exchange of correspondence with journal editor Dr David Marks, it has been agreed by the publisher that ALL of the commentaries on the PACE trial will be made Open Access at no charge to the authors.
Below is a list of the related articles published so far.
Investigator bias and the PACE trial (Steven Lubet)
The PACE trial missteps on pacing and patient selection (Leonard Jason)
The problem of bias in behavioural intervention studies: Lessons from the PACE trial (Carolyn Wilshire)
‘PACE-Gate’: When clinical trial evidence meets open data access (Keith J Geraghty)
Do graded activity therapies cause harm in chronic fatigue syndrome? (Tom Kindlon)
How have selection bias and disease misclassification undermined the validity of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome studies? (staff of the UK ME/CFS Biobank).
PACE team response shows a disregard for the principles of science (Jonathan Edwards)
Several more commentaries have yet to be loaded up on the journal's website, including one from our medical adviser Dr Charles Shepherd. We don't have a date when they will all be in place.
In an email to journal editor Dr Marks, MEA medical adviser Dr Charles Shepherd wrote:
“I'm sure we both agree that the numerous controversies surrounding the PACE trial are a very important issue affecting people with ME/CFS, clinicians and researchers, and that it would be really helpful if there could be open access to the complete commentaries.
“The MEA has recently paid for open access to the Wilshire et al PACE trial data re-analysis paper:
www.meassociation.org. uk/2017/03/thanks-to-the-mea-you-can-now-read-the-whole-independent-re-analysis-of-the-pace-trial-recovery-paper-22-march-2017/
“But this is not something that we want to repeat – when our main duty as a small medical charity is to use our very limited financial resources to advise and support people with this illness and to fund much needed biomedical medical research into ME/CFS/
“So I'm basically asking if there is some way in which the full commentaries could be made open access – without any great expense being involved.”
In a follow-up email yesterday, Dr Marks thanked Dr Shepherd for his helpful suggestion, adding:
“This generous and insightful decision on the part of SAGE Publications will greatly facilitate the open discussion and debate of the PACE Trial that we are conducting in JHP.
“Please kindly inform interested parties in your network.”