“The researchers found that people in pain who felt entitled to more support from their partners were more likely to have excessive or exaggerated perceptions and thoughts about the extent of their pain and the disability it caused.”

How did the researchers manage to reliably assess “excessive or exagerated perceptions”? If the reseachers studied those afflicted with fibromyalgia, then the next question is wehther the reseachers used techniques beyond those that are embodied in SSA regulations and rulings. If they did, and if these techniques are demonstrably reliable, using them might ease the oh-so-difficult task of evaluating statements about symptoms for disability evaluation.

Here’s my speculation: the researchers may well have restricted their studies to those conditions that unlike fibromyalgia, come supplied with a variety of clinical and other similar finding thought to correlate with the severity of the underlying disorder. The reseachers might then have attempted to extrapolate from these more easily studied subjects. If I’m right about this raw speculation, then the reseachers ended up evaluating pain via assessing objective evidence alone—a technique largely barred to SSA adjudicators.

Mr. Morton:

Nice to have you back. I never erased the bookmark for your site. Although I confess that it took some few weeks to notice you were posting again.