Hannah Barnes’s otherwise excellent article on censorship (The NS Essay, 27 September), “The intolerant age”, is let down by one inaccurate example. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) guidelines no longer recommend cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise therapy for chronic fatigue not because of the influence of “patient experience”, but because of concerns about methodological flaws in the research that had claimed to demonstrate their benefits. These doubts arose after the data in the PACE study was re-analysed by other experts following a freedom-of-information request. An independent regulator taking a view on whether evidence for a treatment reaches the appropriate threshold is entirely different from the other cases cited by Barnes, where jobs and careers were lost, research papers suppressed, books rejected or disciplinary procedures started. Should Nice recommend treatments without robust evidence of their clinical effectiveness?
Anna Lyndsey, Basingstoke, Hampshire
Lawrence Freedman exposes in his analysis (Cover Story, 27 September) that the Middle East is as much exposed to the “strongman” concept as the rest of the world. These are men who, because of ego or psychopathy, see war as a validation of obscure ethnic or religious difference. That the majority of families, be they Jewish or Arab, just wish to lead their lives in peace is not of interest to them.
Felicity McGowan, Cardigan, Wales
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