

This blog post provides an alternative press briefing to compare and contrast with what was provided by the Science Media Centre for a press conference on Wednesday September 20, 2017.

The press release attached at the bottom of the post announces the publication of results of highly controversial trial that many would argue should never have occurred. The trial exposed children to an untested treatment with a quack explanation delivered by unqualified persons. Lots of money was earned from the trial by the promoters of the quack treatment beyond the boost in credibility for their quack treatment.

Note to journalists and the media: for further information email jcoynester@Gmail.com

This trial involved quackery delivered by unqualified practitioners who are otherwise untrained and insensitive to any harm to patients.

The UK Advertising Standards Authority had previously ruled that Lightning Process could not be advertised as a treatment. [ 1 ]

The Lightning is billed as mixing elements from osteopathy, life coaching and neuro-linguistic programming. That is far from having a mechanism of action based in science or evidence. [2] Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has been thoroughly debunked for its pseudoscientific references to brain science and ceased to be discussed in the scientific literature. [3]

Many experts would consider the trial unethical. It involved exposing children and adolescents to an unproven treatment with no prior evidence of effectiveness or safety nor any scientific basis for the mechanism by which it is claimed to work.

As an American who has decades served on of experience with Committees for the Protection of Human Subjects and Data Safety and Monitoring Boards, I don’t understand how this trial was approved to recruit human subjects, and particularly children and adolescents.

I don’t understand why a physician who cared about her patients would seek approval to conduct such a trial.

Participation in the trial violated patients’ trust that medical settings and personnel will protect them from such risks.

Participation in the trial is time-consuming and involves loss of opportunity to obtain less risky treatment or simply not endure the inconvenience and burden of a treatment for which there is no scientific basis to expect would work.

Esther Crawley has said “If the Lightning Process is dangerous, as they say, we need to find out. They should want to find it out, not prevent research.” I would like to see her try out that rationale in some of the patient safety and human subjects committee meetings I have attended. The response would not likely be very polite.

Patients and their parents should have been informed of an undisclosed conflict of interest.

This trial served as basis for advertising Lightning Process on the Web as being offered in NHS clinics and as being evaluated in a randomized controlled trial. [4] Promoters of the Lightning Process received substantial payments from this trial. Although a promoter of the treatment was listed on the application for the project, she was not among the paper’s authors, so there will probably be no conflict of interest declared.

The providers were not qualified medical personnel, but were working for an organization that would financially benefit from positive findings.

It is expected that children who received the treatment as part of the trial would continue to receive it from providers who were trained and certified by promoters of the Lightning Process,

By analogy, think of a pharmaceutical trial in which the influence of drug company and that it would profit from positive results was not indicated in patient consent forms. There would be a public outcry and likely legal action.

Why might the SMILE create the illusion that Lightning Process is effective for chronic fatigue syndrome?

There were multiple weaknesses in the trial design that would likely generate a false impression that the Lightning Process works. Under similar conditions, homeopathy and sham acupuncture appear effective [5]. Experts know to reject such results because (1) more rigorous designs are required to evaluate efficacy of treatment in order to rule out placebo effects; and (b) there must be a scientific basis for the mechanism of change claimed for how the treatment works.

Indoctrination of parents and patients with pseudoscientific information. Advertisements for the Lightning Process on the Internet, including YouTube videos, and created a demand for this treatment among patients but it’s cost (£620) is prohibitive for many.

Selection Bias. Participation in the trial involved a 50% probability the treatment would be received for free. (Promoters of the Lightning Process received £567 for each patient who received the treatment in the trial). Parents who believed in the power of the the Lightning Process would be motived to enroll in the trial in order to obtain the treatment free for their children.

The trial was unblinded. Patients and treatment providers knew to which group patients were assigned. Not only with patients getting the Lightning Process be exposed to the providers’ positive expectations and encouragement, those assigned to the control group could register the disappointment when completing outcome measures.

The self-report subjective outcomes of this trial are susceptible to nonspecific factors (placebo effects). These include positive expectations, increased contact and support, and a rationale for what was being done, even if scientifically unsound. These nonspecific factors were concentrated in the group receiving the Lightning Process intervention. This serves to stack the deck in any evaluation of the Lightning Process and inflate differences with the patients who didn’t get into this group.

There were no objective measures of outcome. The one measure with a semblance of objectivity, school attendance, was eliminated in a pilot study. Objective measures would have provided a check on the likely exaggerated effects obtained with subjective seif-report measures.

The providers were not qualified medical, but were working for an organization that would financially benefit from positive findings. The providers were highly motivated to obtain positive results.

During treatment, the Lightning Process further indoctrinates child and adolescent patients with pseudoscience [ 6 ] and involves coercion to fake that they are getting well [7 ]. Such coercion can interfere with the patients getting appropriate help when they need it, their establishing appropriate expectations with parental and school authorities, and even their responding honestly to outcome assessments.

It’s not just patients and patient family members activists who object to the trial. As professionals have gotten more informed, there’s been increasing international concern about the ethics and safety of this trial.

The Science Media Centre has consistently portrayed critics of Esther Crawley’s work as being a disturbed minority of patients and patients’ family members. Smearing and vilification of patients and parents who object to the trial is unprecedented.

Particularly with the international controversy over the PACE trial of cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome, the patients have been joined by non-patient scientists and clinicians in their concerns.

Really, if you were a fully informed parent of a child who was being pressured to participate in the trial with false claims of the potential benefits, wouldn’t you object?

Notes

There is no scientific evidence supporting the claims made by NLP advocates and it has been discredited as a pseudoscience by experts.[1][12] Scientific reviews state that NLP is based on outdated metaphors of how the brain works that are inconsistent with current neurological theory and contain numerous factual errors.[13][14

LP trains individuals to recognize when they are stimulating or triggering unhelpful physiological responses and to avoid these, using a set of standardized questions, new language patterns and physical movements with the aim of improving a more appropriate response to situations.

* Learn about the detailed science and research behind the Lightning Process and how it can help you resolve your issues.

* Start your training in recognising when you’re using your body, nervous system and specific language patterns in a damaging way

What if you could learn to reset your body’s health systems back to normal by using the well researched connection that exists between the brain and body?

The Lightning Process does this by teaching you how to spot when the PER is happening and how you can calm this response down, allowing your body to re-balance itself.

The Lightning Process will teach you how to use Neuroplasticity to break out of any destructive unconscious patterns that are keeping you stuck, and learn to use new, life and health enhancing ones instead.

The Lightning Process is a training programme which has had huge success with people who want to improve their health and wellbeing.

Believe that Lightning Process will heal you. Tell everyone that you have been healed. Perform magic rituals like standing in circles drawn on paper with positive Keywords stated on them. Learn to render short rhyme when you feel symptoms, no matter where you are, as many times as required for the symptoms to disappear. Speak only in positive terms and think only positive thoughts. If symptoms or negative thoughts come, you must stretch forth your arms with palms facing outward and shout “Stop!” You are solely responsible for ME. You can choose to have ME. But you are free to choose a life without ME if you wish. If the method does not work, it is you who are doing something wrong.

[1] “To date, neither the ASA nor CAP [Committee of Advertising Practice] has seen robust evidence for the health benefits of LP. Advertisers should take care not to make implied claims about the health benefits of the three-day course and must not refer to conditions for which medical supervision should be sought.”[2] The respected Skeptics Dictionary offers a scathing critique of Phil Parker’s Lightning Process. The critique specifically cites concerns that Crawley’s SMILE trial switched outcomes to increase the likelihood of obtaining evidence of effectiveness.[3] The entry for Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) inWikipedia states:[4] NHS and LP Phil Parker’s webpage announces the collaboration with Bristol University and provides a link to the officialSMILE trial website.{5] A provocative New England Journal of Medicine article, Active Albuterol or Placebo, Sham Acupuncture, or No Intervention in Asthma study showed that sham acupuncture as effective as an established medical treatment – an albuterol inhaler – for asthma when judged with subjective measures, but there was a large superiority for the established medical treatment obtained with objective measures.[6] Instructional materials that patient are required to read during treatment include:[7] Responsibility of patients:

Special thanks to the Skeptical Cat who provided me with an advance copy of the press release from Science Media Centre.













