Should Authors Declare a Conflict of Interest If They Suffer From the Illness They Are Writing About?

Recalling the interference from the PACE trial investigators in the editorial decisions of the Journal of Health Psychology concerning the #PACEgate Special Issue

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The untold story of the PACE trial investigators efforts to block publication of re-analysis of their trial data

Repetition of myths and outright lies have distorted the collective memory of how much power the PACE trial investigators wielded over the publication of re-analyses of their data, after they lost a costly legal battle to keep the data from being released to the patients and their allies.

Communicating through their own allies on the Journal of Health Psychology editorial board, the PACE investigators intimidated Editor David Marks into barring me from submitting a response to his call for commentaries. They accused me of having a nonfinancial conflict of interest that was obvious from opinions that I had previously expressed in a letter published in Lancet Psychiatry and in blog posts and on social media.

Instead of allowing me to even submit a proposal in the form of an abstract, David Marks asked me to assist in the editorial decisions about the issue. He never made…