The BMJ

The BMJ (previously the British Medical Journal) is a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal.

Cover image of The BMJ weekly print edition

Peer review controversy

An early version of the PACE reanalysis paper by Carolyn Wilshire et al was submitted to The BMJ and received two peer reviews, one which recommended publication, the other being described by Prof James Coyne as "patently unprofessional".

This second review can be viewed in its entirety both on Coyne's blog and on the Science for ME forum. As part of his blog on the review, Coyne highlights a number of noteworthy points in it, including that:

• The reviewer notes that the paper is billed as a collaboration between patients and scientists, but questions whether any of the authors qualify as “clinicians” or “scientists.”
• The reviewer expresses doubts that the patients meet criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome.
• The reviewer reiterates the doubt the patients meet criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome and suggests that they were erroneously self-diagnosed.
• The reviewer suggests that the authors were erroneously self-diagnosed and went doctor-shopping until they found agreement.
• After earlier mentioning that he had not obtained the author’s published review, he questions whether it is a major review.

Additionally a comment on Coyne's blog on the review from the blogger Neuroskeptic says, "This is a bizarre, arrogant and unprofessional review. I say this as someone who has called PACE “solid” and “not ‘bad science'”. Wherever you stand on the issues here, this review is just shocking. Shame on the reviewer."

Professor Jonathan Edwards, posting on the Science for ME forums, called for an apology from the BMJ, stating that he felt that the "reviewer and the journal have made complete fools of themselves".

The reanalysis was later submitted to and published by BMC Psychology.

Alleged bias

Melvin Ramsay (1989):

For many months we have been in difficulty by the influence exerted by a psychiatrist, Dr. Simon Wessly [sic] who has secured for himself the position of referee to the BMJ whose Assistant Editor has been strongly anti-ME and we cannot get anything published in British medical journals in our favor. Simon Wessly cuts right across my fundamental tenet of “rest” for chronic M.E. cases and tries to get them admitted to Psychiatric Units where they are immediately put on vigorous exercise.

Ellen Goudsmit wrote a paper detailing her accusation that the British Medical Journal had displayed bias towards the psychological model of ME/CFS (2011).

Given the findings, our knowledge of papers which have been rejected, plus the fact that between 1995-2000, only one study was published clearly linking CFS with a non-psychological aetiology, there remains little doubt that the editorial policy of the BMJ is uncritically supportive of the psychiatric view of CFS. This has seriously compromised the quality of information provided on CFS to the readers of the BMJ. Moreover, our analysis shows that the journal has consistently ignored non-psychiatric professional views on CFS. Based on our knowledge of this illness, we are unable to find sufficient scientific reason to justify this stance.

David Tuller on Virology Blog (2020):

In multiple interactions with Virology Blog over the past few years, BMJ has demonstrated a singular lack of editorial integrity. This has been most apparent in the egregious handling of the 2017 study of the Lightning Process as a treatment for adolescents with chronic fatigue syndrome, conducted by Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s ethically and methodologically challenged pediatrician. (As a reminder, the Lightning Process was created by British Tarot reader and aura specialist Phil Parker.) In that study, as Virology Blog documented almost three years ago, Professor Crawley and her colleagues recruited more than half the participants before trial registration; swapped primary and secondary outcome measures based on early data, thus being able to report positive rather than null results; and failed to disclose these actions in the published paper. Rather than retracting the paper for violating core principles of scientific research, BMJ rewarded the investigators for their misbehavior last summer by republishing the original findings–albeit with a 3,000-word correction/clarification and a 1,000-word editor’s note justifying the unjustifiable decision to leave the paper in the medical literature.

Margaret Williams (2025) (emphasis added):

After the publication of the English Chief Medical Officer’s Report on ME/CFS, the CMO himself, Sir Liam Donaldson, went on public record on BBC News on 11th January 2002 stating that treatment must improve and that it should be classed as a chronic condition with long-term effects on health, alongside other illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease. Wessely School psychiatrists disagreed: the week after the CMO made his announcement, the British Medical Journal highlighted psychiatrist Michael Sharpe’s pronouncement that doctors would not accept a particular strategy just because the CMO’s Report recommended it (BMJ:2002:324:131).

David Tuller on Virology Blog (2025):

The BMJ...is a long-time champion of the “biopsychosocial” ideological brigades. (I use the “scare quotes” because the term is a misnomer, given that these experts focus pretty much exclusively on the “psycho” and “social” while largely ignoring the “bio” part of the equation.) So it should not surprise anyone that The BMJ recently published yet another ignorant and misguided screed from this crew—a commissioned opinion piece titled “Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care,” from Miller et al.

Notable articles

• 1978, Epidemic myalgic encephalomyelitis
• 2004, What causes chronic fatigue syndrome? (21 October)
• 2011, Living with CFS/ME, by patient Ollie Cornes
• 2011, Dangers of research into chronic fatigue syndrome (Nigel Hawkes, June 22)
• 2011, Ending the stalemate (Fiona Godlee, editor, June)

Notable podcasts

• 2010, Chronic fatigue syndrome

Online presence

• The BMJ web site
• The BMJ Twitter
• The BMJ Facebook

Learn more

• The BMJ