Blog series: "Orthodoxy on trial: the pathogenesis of a diagnosis" by David Black

Haven't read the articles yet but the comments here sound promising, and I agree it would be worthwhile to get the two points found by @Peter Trewhitt corrected.

Didn't search for an account by the author, but if people would like to share and give feedback on Twitter, here's the journal's tweet of his latest article.

Code:

https://twitter.com/ScottishLegal/status/1504381124918878208?cxt=HHwWgIC92bOq0eApAAAA

 

I could not see any contact for the author on the article itself, and I am not on Twitter so I would welcome the two minor errors being pointed out to the author.

The two articles are very important accounts, especially as they hopefully will reach a wider audience than ME stories usually get to, and it would be a shame if trivial points provides critics with an excuse to devalue them.

 

He is on Twitter but not active https://twitter.com/Black_Scape . I think I tried to contact him either via Twitter or maybe via his work email at scottish legal, but got no response. I may have imagined this...but I do think he should write the screenplay for the Hollywood Blockbuster (or west end play) about this as he is a playwright! https://sceptical.scot/author/david-black/

 

Code:

https://twitter.com/keithgeraghty/status/1506913346595000321?cxt=HHwWgsC4sY3t0OkpAAAA

Did you point him to this thread and Peter Trewhitt's post?

@Tom Kindlon
@Keith Geraghty


(Edited to fix wording and links --- sorry, brain-fogged.)

 

Merged thread

https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/david-j-black-welcome-to-the-machine . David J Black: Welcome to the machine.

via tom kindlon.

worthwhile topic. seems related to https://www.s4me.info/threads/blog-...hogenesis-of-a-diagnosis-by-david-black.20819 but idk the relation as i cannot read them sufficientoy for health reasons.

 

Looking forward to reading this.

 

David J Black: Fact, law, and a spoonful of jurisprudence

29 Mar 2022


The final part in David J Black’s forensic examination of the ME/CFS
scandal looks at alleged scientific misconduct and a possible
cover-up. Read the last part here.
https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/david-j-black-welcome-to-the-machine

Twitter thread with a few extracts

 

25% Group Helen Brownlie alerted me to this. She may be in contact!

 

I'm definitely being obscure - but not sure how much in suggesting that when reading this idea I thought of the film of Roald Dahl's 'The Witches' film. Mainly it is the idea of them mingling in society then their masks/wig come off and the relief involved in that for them. Not because we are all the rest (that would be a rather different person's version). But hey I guess you could use that concept for either 'side' (?). That's sort of been the beauty of having a most people 'don't see behind closed doors' illness.

Anyway could make for a fascinating one given the messing with perceptions type angle, I guess there are so many ways to do this one - but maybe that isn't the hard bit?

 

I remember that movie, and understand exactly what you mean. It's for effect, of course, but yeah, it kinda applies, at least with some poetic license.

Even more applicable, we are basically like the kids turned into mice that even the hotel guests try to stomp, unaware of our true nature, but simply because the witches changed the perception other people have and they can't see us as people anymore.

Honestly this is a perfect metaphor.

 

I liked the way it was written. Everything was described the way it actually was from our point of view (the truth!)

I am used to writings about ME being respectful, in the Parliamentary "My learned colleague is an idiot" sort of way, or falsely even handed so it is seen as a a difference of opinion.

We are often put on the defensive too so things are written trying to explain why the allegations against us are wrong.

I get the same feeling seeing ME described like any other illness. It makes me realise how little that is done.

 

Yes, he seems to think she was part of the PACE trial.

 

seems likely legal action with significant consequences both to accused and for release of information can speed progress. when your colleague gets due-process-legally-nailed, it might make you pause before continuing. or rat out.

 

Yes, its one good feature of the US medicolegal system, though not without restrictions. I forget details, I looked into this like a decade ago. Elsewhere the standard for medical cases is high but with good evidence, clear wrongdoing, and not following established procedures, which usually give an out-clause, its possible to see. You see the problem there. Its George Washington all over again. Orthodoxy gives an out-clause for legal action. When they use established procedure its much harder to win in court.

This out-clause comment is based on reading I did on both Australian and UK medicolegal cases some years ago. There may be many countries that are different.

 

Merged thread

Article: Cherchez la shrink : David J Black

article about Wessely.

https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/david-j-black-cherchez-la-shrink

 

Good to hear a book on the BPS cabal’s hijacking of ME is on the way:

“David J Black’s forthcoming book The Great Psycho Heist: How the Management and Treatment of a Crippling Illness was Hijacked by a Cabal of Psychiatrists in Britain and America, and Why is currently in preparation.”

A trivial matter, but I suspect the point “The bid to downgrade CBT and GET would ultimately succeed, though NICE held out until 2021, when the emergence of Long Covid was beginning to spook the boffins” is unfair, given this downgrading was established in NICE’s evidence review and in the subsequent draft new guidelines (released November 2020) both well before the start of the pandemic.

There was some ‘shilly-shallying’ over the final publication of the new guidelines in 2021, but we have no evidence that NICE were in anyway trying to protect GET/CBT rather than just giving the BPS cabal enough rope to hang themselves with, which is what they did. That is not to say that there were not direct approaches to NICE through the medical Royal Colleges to try to protect GET/CBT as curative treatments and back channel attempts by an unnamed high profile individual to persuade NICE to retrospectively falsify its own evidence review.

 

At a time when the failure of his beliefs is the most exposed, has been revealed to be harmful junk, no less. Impressive example of failing upward, of being recognized for being successful despite having nothing to show for it other than massive suffering and ruin. Like being promoted in the middle of a disaster he created. Well, not so much "like" as exactly this.

It has exposed the lie of meritocracy in medicine. Although to be fair, this lie is pretty much universal, it's almost never the case. Everything is political, and being controversial in politics is often good for one's career.