People with Long COVID demand pause of McMaster University clinical trial

The trial, run by researchers at McMaster University in Canada, is testing the Lightning Process, a pseudoscientific mind-body program that outside experts have heavily criticized.

A close up of a grey stone building at McMaster University. Ivy crawls across the building, changing color in fall. It appears green, orange, and red. — Source: Bruce Barret, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Key points you should know:

A petition signed by 1,700 people asks for a pause and independent review of a trial run by McMaster University researchers who want to test the Lightning Process.
The Lightning Process is a pseudoscientific mind-body program to try to treat Long COVID that has been accused of exploiting people with Long COVID and related diseases.
The trial is designed in part by a Lightning Process practitioner and prescreens participants for motivation using a questionnaire that isn’t validated for Long COVID.
There are very few trials and little funding in Canada for Long COVID research, and advocates believe that studying the Lightning Process instead of pathobiological pathways is a waste of funding.

Over 1,700 people have signed a petition calling for a pause on a Long COVID trial by researchers at Canada’s McMaster University. The study, Fatigue in Long COVID (FALCON), aims to test a commercial, pseudoscientific course called the Lightning Process.

The program has been heavily criticized by experts and people with Long COVID and related diseases. Some advocates have accused the program of exploiting people with Long COVID, while other experts say it isn’t supported by any legitimate research. It also has faced pushback from regulators for false advertising.

Researchers at the university are currently applying for ethical approval to run the study. The trial registration indicates it will recruit people who may already be suggestible to the intervention and, like previous flawed studies of the course, use only subjective outcome measures. The petition calls for objective outcome measures and an independent review of the trial’s design, transparency, participant protections, and commercial conflicts.

“It hits close to home,” petition organizer Robert DeRosa, a former teacher who has severe Long COVID, told The Sick Times. DeRosa is originally from Hamilton, Ontario, where McMaster University is based. Both his sisters attended the university, and his mother previously worked there. “It’s just really unbelievable,” he said about researchers testing the Lightning Process when there’s so little funding for the disease in Canada.

In the petition, DeRosa notes that researchers continue to find a range of biological abnormalities in people with Long COVID. He claims trials like this may psychologize the disease, contributing to the stigma, dismissal, and delayed care many individuals report.

“Is it worthwhile discussing a trial that has not started? Without any results?” wrote investigator Jason Busse over email, when asked questions about the petition and critiques of the trial. “It seems that some people living with Long COVID are uncomfortable that we would even pursue such a trial, while several others have emailed our group asking to be enrolled.”

Busse has previously served as a consultant for the insurance company Prisma Health Canada, which manages long-term disability claims. He is also a senior author on a methodologically flawed review that claimed exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy “probably” improve Long COVID symptoms.

Busse wrote that he thinks it is worth evaluating rigorously if the program shows a benefit, especially since previous studies were designed by individuals who developed the Lightning Process or held “a vested interest in the program’s success.” However, he also noted that this study’s team includes a researcher trained to deliver the program.

Busse did not directly address any prior criticisms of the program from neurologists, clinical psychologists, and other experts who argue that the course is implausible and pseudoscientific. A set of U.K. guidelines that inform the country’s national health system specifically recommend against the Lightning Process for myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), for which many people with Long COVID meet the diagnostic criteria. Busse referred to those guidelines, as well as the Lightning Process itself, as “controversial.”

The Sick Times contacted the Hamilton Integrated Research Ethics Board, which reviews human trials conducted at McMaster University, for comment several times over email and phone but did not receive any responses.

What is the Lightning Process?

The Lightning Process is an expensive, three-day training developed in the 1990s by osteopath Phil Parker. It’s called the Lighting Process because it is intended to cure chronic illness in three days.

Over the years, Parker has claimed it can treat many conditions, including ME, Long COVID, pain, and multiple sclerosis. Surveys conducted by independent researchers and the Norwegian ME Association suggest few individuals improve from the program and many have been harmed. The Lightning Process has faced repeated scrutiny in the U.K. from the Advertising Standards Authority for making unsupported claims about its effectiveness.

The program draws from the pseudoscientific idea of neurolinguistic programming — which purports that one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can be changed by using language patterns and tricks — as well as osteopathy, another pseudoscientific practice that suggests diseases are caused by misalignment of the bones and can be treated by manipulating the muscles. Many of the trainers who deliver the expensive program were once participants. A 2024 BBC expose found that coaches who deliver the paid program falsely tell patients that “almost anyone can recover from Long COVID by changing their thoughts, language, and actions.”

In his comments to The Sick Times, Busse acknowledged that he is not an expert in the Lightning Process. He said it could help modify the impact of symptoms but “in no way implies the symptoms aren’t real.” Upon reviewing these responses, DeRosa said this doesn’t acknowledge the pathobiological findings across Long COVID studies.

The three-day program teaches people “strategies” that include saying “stop” when they feel negative thoughts or symptoms, and to choose to avoid symptoms by interrupting them through physical gestures and visualizing themselves feeling positive. Cambridge neuroscientist Camilla Nord told the BBC that it “strayed very, very far from neuroscience” and called it an “abuse” of scientific terms.

According to its registration, the FALCON trial will recruit 100 international participants randomized to the Lightning Process or activity pacing, both arms to be completed virtually. The main measure used to determine the trial’s success is changes in self-reported fatigue after a year. The trial’s secondary outcomes are self-reported measures of breathing, post-exertional malaise (PEM), pain, physical function, and other symptoms.

Questions about eligibility, outcome measures

To participate in the trial, people are screened with a questionnaire called “readiness to change,” to ensure that those who participate are already motivated to shift their behavior.

This questionnaire is a common tool to measure motivation but is generally used in contexts when an effective treatment is already available, explained Michael Hoerger, an associate professor of psychology, psychiatry, and oncology at Tulane University.

“Motivation has little relevance when combating most serious illnesses like cancer or Long COVID,” Hoerger said.

Since rehabilitation is affected by the perspectives of patients, Busse said, the questionnaire could probe for an association that tells patients if the intervention is useful for them. He said he is unaware of any other Long COVID study that has used the questionnaire.

In the real world, Lightning Process practitioners prescreen individuals to ensure they are “ready to engage” with its tenets. Researchers and experts have criticized this practice as it selects for people who are highly suggestible and more likely to have positive expectations, impacting reports on the course’s effectiveness.

Participants “are taught that for the method to work, they must tell themselves and others that they are recovered,” Nina E. Steinkopf, an ME advocate who writes the MElivet blog, said to The Sick Times over email. “So, when asked, there is a risk that their responses might not reflect the actual situation. Participants are also instructed to keep the method secret.”

DeRosa’s petition also argues that the trial is dependent on self-reported outcomes, which is problematic when the intervention intends to change how participants perceive symptoms.

“If the researchers really wanted to investigate the effectiveness of the method, they would apply objective measurements, such as VO2max, heart rate monitoring, step count, and employment status,” said Steinkopf.

If the researchers really wanted to investigate the effectiveness of the method, they would apply objective measurements, such as VO2max, heart rate monitoring, step count, and employment status.
Nina E. Steinkopf, ME advocate & author of MELIVET

Busse said that the active pacing provides a control that helps “balance treatment expectations, attention, and engagement between groups,” and could mitigate the extent to which any changes come from expectations of benefit rather than the treatment.

“It sounds like they’re trying to set themselves up for success by their own measures,” said physician Zeest Khan. “And that’s very concerning.”

U.K. guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends, “Do not offer the Lightning Process, or therapies based on it, to people with ME.”. This trial will include people with Long COVID who may meet the criteria for ME and have PEM. Since the course involves teaching participants to reframe their symptoms, it risks pushing them past their limits, triggering PEM, and potentially affecting their baseline.

“Participants also need to know that the LP instructors are not healthcare professionals,” said Steinkopf. “As far as I can tell there are no contingency plans for how this study will handle any adverse events experienced during or after the course.”

The study is funded for $188,904 CAD (around $136,000 USD) through the Hamilton Academic Health Sciences Organization, and part of the funding will be used to pay the occupational therapist and LP practitioners their typical hourly rate, according to emails reviewed by The Sick Times. The average cost, listed on the Lightning Process website is £900, roughly $1,200 USD. That means a substantial portion of funding may go toward paying practitioners. Active pacing, meanwhile, will be delivered by senior occupational therapy students.

Edzard Ernst, a retired physician and specialist in critically reviewing alternative medicine, also criticized the trial. “By investigating a proprietary, fee-based intervention without incorporating objective biological markers, the trial risks lending academic legitimacy to bogus quackery,” he wrote in a recent blog post.

McMaster University previously tested another pseudoscientific mind-body program called the Dynamic Neural Retraining System. The results were never published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal but are used by the company that sells the program on its website. It is currently being tested in a clinical trial in Alberta, Canada.

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Canada’s Long COVID landscape

The FALCON trial is one of a small number of Canadian Long COVID trials.

As of September, 2026, there are 16 active or ongoing trials testing potential treatments registered on ClinicalTrials.gov taking place in Canada. Including FALCON, three are testing exercise or mind-body interventions.

Funding is sparse from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, with only about $20 million funding Long COVID Web, a cross-country research collaboration focused on Long COVID, and another $44 million addressing the “wider health impacts”of COVID-19, which includes studies of Long COVID. The Public Health Agency of Canada also awarded McMaster University $9 million to develop Long COVID guidelines — which experts have called flawed and contradictory.

By comparison, the U.S. has committed $1.8 billion through the NIH RECOVER initiative, though some researchers and advocates have questioned how wisely much of that funding was spent. Germany, which has roughly double Canada’s population, has committed €500 million euros ($577 million USD) to Long COVID and other post-infectious conditions over the next ten years.

“It just is really embarrassing,” DeRosa said of the landscape. “It seems like we’re in the dark ages in Canada.”

It just is really embarrassing. It seems like we’re in the dark ages in Canada.
Robert DeRosa, Petition Author

Simon Spichak is a Toronto-based science and health writer with a MSc in neuroscience. His work has been published in Being Patient, National Geographic, MIT Tech Review, The Guardian’s Scientific Observer, The New York Times, and other outlets. He was a recipient of the 2025 National Press Foundation’s Rare Disease Reporting Fellowship. He is the founder of a low-cost online therapy clinic called Resolvve and runs a newsletter about underreported health and disability issues in Canada.

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