..Celebrities can't even keep their own sex tapes secret, and they typically only involve 2 people.. 😬

..piece is here, from early Ukraine invasion, and there's been even more alarming comments from both since. So I am hopeful Connelly rejects this, as it would be a serious error to indulge either... bylinetimes.com/2022/03/17/p...

Have they tried a different dichotomisation?

It's fine when they give you excel - it's just bad when they think strikeouts, coloured text, and random 9999999 values mean anything to us!

Negative lookahead? Needs perl = TRUE to work..

x <- "A,B,C, D"
strsplit(x, ",(?!\\s)", perl = TRUE)

I use something similar is some of my code to clean up weird entries...

Ha, that reminds me - I've built a shiny app you might like that does something fun with retracted papers, I'll DM you..

It appears this is the complainant, too - a naturopath into craniosacral therapy..

www.stowefamilywellness.com/atara-jaffe-...

And before anyone says "well pitch your own piece!" the reality is that outlets like the @theguardian.com (and many others) are less and less receptive to freelance pitches, Correctives are highly unlikely to see the light of day, and never get the clicks of offending article either 🤷‍♂️

Since the piece went live, I've got a steady stream of worried people asking about it -I wish outlets would stop this kind of harmful journalism. In medical science, we need factchecking and expertise more than ever, not unhelpfully credulous pieces which elevate pseudoscience..

One response it is just a human interest story, but this doesn't negate responsibility of @theguardian.com to check things. As I wrote in The Irrational Ape, Andrew Wakefield's mendacious linking of autism to MMR vaccine only got traction in UK media due to such irresponsible credulity!

This is all well-known, written about by excellent people from @davidcolquhoun.bsky.social to @drjengunter.bsky.social and @drandrealove.bsky.social - why did the @theguardian.com run without modicum of fact-checking? UK doctors on reddit pretty annoyed about it too
www.reddit.com/r/doctorsUK/...

CLD isn't alone in this respect - there's many dubious conditions for which charlatans push expensive therapies; Adrenal Fatigue, Toxic Mould, Electromagnetic hypersensitivity. While patients might find label comforting, false diagnosis exploits them and may delay real treatment..

The major problem with the piece is that the author cites fringe figures and positions uncritically, whilst utterly ignoring the reasons why mainstream medical evidence doesn't support existence of CLD, nor the cottage industry of dubious tests and treatments offered at high cost..

Same doctor recommended test in a German lab, which author accepts uncritically. But basic check would reveal such "labs" are infamous for offering tests "confirming" a CLD diagnosis, despite (a) dubious diagnosis and (b) test having no clinical validation journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...