BPS proponents don't respond well to criticism

The paperback version is not sold any more, and the reviews were there. When you search bokus.com, you now only find the audio version and the e-book. However, if you want to read the paperback reviews, the following link is still active:

https://www.bokus.com/bok/978917765...kt-trotthetssyndrom-tragisk-gatfull-omstridd/

 

When I have called out BPSers in publications such as Richard Brown in the Psychologist and TC et al., in Psychological Medicine, my experience has been that they don't respond or engage. Annoying really as I enjoy debate and discussion....... I guess that they just don't.

On both occasions the authors were invited to reply and to my knowledge they did not

 

An Amazon seller tried to bribe me. I told Amazon and they refunded the full price of the item AND my review stayed put.

Most authors don't engage with bad reviews for their own wellbeing. But some go absolutely ape-shit.

Kate Clanchy, a Scottish poet, wrote this book about the children she worked with at schools, referring to their body traits with such odiously colourful language as a 'Cypriot bosom' and 'Ashkenazi nose' (bear in mind these are kids!).

There was also some awfully ableist stuff about autistic kids and how she couldn't suffer to be around them for too long, how poor they were at socialising, and how she'd trick them with mindless, endless tasks so she didn't have to deal with them.

A reviewer pointed all this out in GoodReads, some two years after the book came out, so she went ballistic, called the reviewer a liar, implied that anyone who had read the book and thought the same was a liar, and watched as three women (well known writers who confirmed the reviewer was accurate) got death threats and racist abuse on Twitter.

Then Philip Pullman waded in--with half the facts and without having read the book at all, mind--and said anyone who judged a book without reading it was akin to the Taliban or ISIS.

Only, the three women getting all the abuse were two South Asian women and a Turkish woman, so it didn't go down well to imply they were Islamist terrorists, as he had done.

Eventually, Clanchy gave a vague apology to 'anyone she'd hurt' (but not to the three women who were harassed, who she carefully avoiding mentioning at all) and Pullman said he'd mistaken a post about something else as being about Clanchy's book and responded too quickly (the irony!).

So two well regarded authors tainted their brands in a matter of days, all over a bad review--which was true! One of whom I'd expected rather a lot more from, but who was obviously more concerned about sticking up for a mate than checking his facts.

 

Yes, that was astonishing. If the author of the study is happy with it, so is Henrik. How nice.

 

Oh dear, I just looked at that link (through Google Translate) and had to chuckle at the reviews. All are 1-star, except one glowing 5-star which must have been a buddy of his? According to one of the reviews, the book was self-published, therefore had no editorial review. (Not that I have anything against self-publishing, I've done it too, but mine were fiction.) (Although, having read the reviews, this book does sound like fiction... oops)
https://translate.google.com/transl...kt-trotthetssyndrom-tragisk-gatfull-omstridd/

 

I'm sorry @Obermann you have to deal with this telling behavior of a BPS proponent.

I'm not well enough ATM to comment properly -- just leaving here the idea to expand the content if this thread a bit, and adding some hopefully self-explaining cues and links here.

1) Rejecting FOI requests as vexatious

example: Queen Mary University of London/ Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) , Decision notice, 18 March 2015

"The complainant has requested information from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) regarding the timing of changes to the PACE Trial recovery criteria. QMUL has refused the request on the basis that it is vexatious citing FOIA section 14(1)"

[...]
The request for information was:

https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/decision-notices/2015/1043579/fs_50558352.pdf

2) Hesitance to acknowledge factual errors

The second point is more complicated as it involves the editors of the papers or organizations that publish BPS proponents' papers or reviews but we can't be sure if they are BPS proponents themselves.

That appears to apply to the PACE trial, the Cochrane exercise review for GET and the SMILE trial.

At least there are now editorial notes on both the Cochrane review and the SMILE trial paper, and the latter had to be corrected with -- don't remember the number now -- amendments. But none of these notes and amendments appear to be sufficiently clearly worded to so that l I think it still would be better to retract the mentioned review and paper.

More recent examples:

BMJ's CBT-Music Therapy Study

PRINCE Secondary: transdiagnostic CBT for persistent physical symptoms

https://www.s4me.info/threads/princ...ptoms-2021-tack-and-tuller.21930/#post-372916

I realize that there were some nastily worded and unfounded reactions among all the criticism BPS proponents have received since their involvement with ME research and health care, but that doesn't justify their rejection of the reasonable criticism they get. As academics, they should be able to differentiate.

On that occasion, huge thanks to everyone for their reasonable and sharp criticism, including my appreciation for those who currently are too unwell or not able to contribute for other reasons.

Also, can't post this without thinking of Bob Courtney.

Edited to add about Tom Kindlon's and Bob's criticism of the Cochrane review:

Trial By Error: More on the Revised Cochrane Exercise Review

Bob's 2018 complaint:
https://www.virology.ws/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Cochrane-Report-on-Courtney-Complaint.pdf

 

(Continued from above)

3) Intimidation and bullying of PACE trial critics

https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Intimidation_and_bullying_of_PACE_trial_critics