Intimidation of PACE critics or critics of other Psychosocial research

Didn't MS tell countless people to actually read the trial?
Would that be spam, gaslighting, deflection, spotlighting all of the above?
 
The comments from the critiqued scientists in that Tuller piece remind me of the ME/CFS researchers who claimed that when I posted an e-mail from them verbatim in my blog I was violating their human rights. (When I used a summary instead, they complained I had missed stuff out.)
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????? :laugh::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

When will people learn that stuff sent over the internet is not a private communication?
 
2yS8SPc.jpg
 
Roy S said:
Wessely has been very skillfully manipulating people for a long time.


https://forums.phoenixrising.me/threads/illustrations-of-threats-issued-by-simon-wessely.11631/
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I love the journalists response to Wessely:

"An interesting development then occurred: on 11th October 2003 Wessely wrote to a journalist who had published articles on ME/CFS, asking the journalists opinion about Dr Cooks article: This was published in The Scotsman on Monday. Do you think this is fair comment? I dont think I need to tell you my feelings. This seems to be rapidly spiralling out of control. Your views / advice?

The journalist replied to Wessely, saying: You are obviously a hate figure (and) it might be interesting to enquire as to whether hate figures have any responsibility for the way they are perceived. The inescapable take-home message (that has been reinforced by newspaper headlines) is that this condition has a large psychological component, that these people are imagining it, making it up, being hysterical, suffering from neurasthenia etc. And that is not only seen as downgrading the reality of their condition but also has practical implications as far as benefits go. Whilst I take your point that you have looked into the physiological side and found nothing, it does seem to be the case that a number of other equally erudite / careful scientists have looked there and found something that they do think is significant. I have to admit that when you set that body of work against the conclusion of the MRC that the biological area was not worth major funding, it is hard to escape the conclusion that you and the MRC are not taking the biological side seriously and that you do regard this as a psychological condition. You may say that you do take on board the biological aspect but the inescapable fact is that you are getting 2 million plus to research more aspects of the psychological side, a degree of funding that is not matched in any way by the funding from the MRC going to the biological side. The public perception of what is going on is that your actions on the issue of definition have tended to reinforce the psychosocial basis of the disorder rather than the biological one, which is at the heart of the reason why you have been so vilified. My opinion is that you would not improve anything by attempting to take any legal or other steps you would be further seen as a major establishment figure attempting to silence / muzzle some poor powerless and chronically ill patients. A very simple step to change the perception of your position would be for you to give encouragement for a similarly sized grant to the one you have recently received, to look into some of the biological factors. It seems rather unlikely that there is something about CFS patients that makes them especially hostile and unreasonable, as opposed to people suffering from heart disease or multiple sclerosis (which) means the level of disagreement over CFS must reflect some underlying issue. I'm sure there is a lot of psychiatric literature on how denying another persons reality triggers all sorts of deep hostile responses."
 
Here's a post with the full text of that article, originally posted in The Scotsman, that Wessley campaigned (successfully) to have removed.

Not sure about its significance or I would've just inserted it into the MEpedia article.

ME sufferers have found enemy in Wessely - so they need friends

By Margaret Cook

THIS week at the Scottish Parliament Visitors’ Centre, I spoke to a cross-party group of MSPs on ME - myalgic encephalomyelitis. I am still amazed at how I came to be doing such an adventurous thing, for it is a topic on which I have minimal expertise or knowledge.

I am one of those people who tend to leap in at the deep end rather than reflecting on the brink, so I should have considered how improbable it was that a sufficient number of MSPs would have an interest in the low-profile illness ME to make up a group. On arrival, I found that most of my audience were either sufferers themselves, or carers of sufferers.

Now if there is anyone likely to have a thorough knowledge of a medical condition, it is someone who has found the Establishment uninterested and even sceptical about their problem. Think of Gulf War Syndrome, think of CJD and its association with BSE. The place where ME patients have come up against a brick wall is the Benefits System, and this is why they were interested, nay pressing, in inviting me to come along, as I have a passing acquaintance with that system.

There has been widespread scepticism among doctors as to whether ME exists at all. It has been labelled derogatorily as "yuppie flu"; and some patients have been called malingerers, hypochondriacs and worse when applying for state benefits.

If I found some of my audience identifying me with all the negative attitudes they had encountered and expressing themselves rather warmly, who am I to blame them?

They are particularly resistant to the view, embedded in current medical thinking, that ME is predominantly or partly a mental health problem. Now this is not an easy conundrum to disentangle, because it is quite common for people with chronic disabling conditions to become clinically depressed.

Simply treating for depression will not necessarily address the primary issue. And though there are no established diagnostic markers, it is not by any means the only condition which needs to be diagnosed on the basis of the history.

I’ve said before in this column that the most important thing I have learned in a lifetime of medical practice, is that you should LISTEN to what the patient tells you. So, following my own advice, and feeling somewhat humbled, when they asked if I needed to know more about ME, where would I go? I replied that I could do worse than coming to this particular group. That raised me in their estimation.

But I picked up a name, the significance of which did not strike me until afterwards. Simon Wessely, professor of epidemiology and liaison psychiatry at Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’s Schools of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, London. Ah, what a Big Cheese he sounds.

It seems that he has been central to the psychiatric perspective that ME does not exist at all, and that the related "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" is a mental condition best managed by a psychiatric therapeutic approach.

He has downplayed the need for research into diagnostic markers for the condition(s), and such is his influence that no state funding is forthcoming to support any other research than his own. For a mystery condition, this is closing down the portals and reducing the chance of the broad, open
perspective needed to break through the barriers of prejudice and ignorance.

After I left the meeting, that name echoed in my subconscious mind, until a day or so later, I suddenly remembered where I had met it before.

In May 2003, a revolutionary issue of the BMJ challenged the age-old association between doctors and their lavishly-generous sponsors, the pharmaceutical companies. The attack was bold, and very shocking to those who had not thought of how the profession prostitutes itself for funding, and how both treatment and research are distorted as a result.
Well done, the editor, said some of us. But not all.

One of the foremost who objected to the challenge to our collective integrity was the aforementioned Professor Simon Wessely, who (using a reductio ad absurdum argument), refused to countenance the possibility of his judgment being swayed by any such paymaster.

He wrote: "It is time we doctors grew up." He no doubt subscribes to the principle of the double-blind, randomised clinical trial, yet is himself blind to the possibility that doctors can be biased by that most powerful motivator, money.

You can tell from every sentence of his letter that he is used to dictating principles and having everyone in his orbit humbly accept his gospel. If I needed persuading that the ME community merited my support, this letter and its author would convince me. When you have enemies like him, you need a powerful lot of friends.

--------
(c) 2003 The Scotsman
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And Wessley's reply:

Margaret Cook’s article "ME sufferers have found enemy in Wessely" (Doctor’s Notes, 6 October) shows the real battle is not between myself and sufferers of ME but between your correspondent and the facts.
　
I have never suggested that CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) does not exist. Unlike Margaret Cook, I have spent the past 15 years of my life looking after sufferers from this condition, and do not need reminding of the reality of the illness or the damage it can cause.
　
Likewise, I would delighted if anyone could find a diagnostic marker for CFS. She might like to read our 20 or so papers dealing with immunological, virological, nutritional, endocrine and even haematological aspects of CFS. No, we haven’t found a marker, but we keep trying.
　
Quite how Margaret Cook thinks that I, or any single individual, could block research into this condition is beyond me, but if she had read the recent Lancet editorial I co-wrote with the chief executive of Action for ME, she would have seen a powerful plea for more, not less, research into all aspects of CFS/ME.
　
She begins her article by saying she has "minimal expertise or knowledge" of the subject. Indeed so.
(PROF) SIMON WESSELY
Director, CFS Research Unit
King’s College London
Camberwell
London
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Wessley did do some biomedical research initially, but has not for some time.
 
Daisymay said:
I love the journalists response to Wessely:

"An interesting development then occurred: on 11th October 2003 Wessely wrote to a journalist who had published articles on ME/CFS, asking the journalists opinion about Dr Cooks article: This was published in The Scotsman on Monday. Do you think this is fair comment? I dont think I need to tell you my feelings. This seems to be rapidly spiralling out of control. Your views / advice?

The journalist replied to Wessely, saying: You are obviously a hate figure (and) it might be interesting to enquire as to whether hate figures have any responsibility for the way they are perceived. The inescapable take-home message (that has been reinforced by newspaper headlines) is that this condition has a large psychological component, that these people are imagining it, making it up, being hysterical, suffering from neurasthenia etc. And that is not only seen as downgrading the reality of their condition but also has practical implications as far as benefits go. Whilst I take your point that you have looked into the physiological side and found nothing, it does seem to be the case that a number of other equally erudite / careful scientists have looked there and found something that they do think is significant. I have to admit that when you set that body of work against the conclusion of the MRC that the biological area was not worth major funding, it is hard to escape the conclusion that you and the MRC are not taking the biological side seriously and that you do regard this as a psychological condition. You may say that you do take on board the biological aspect but the inescapable fact is that you are getting 2 million plus to research more aspects of the psychological side, a degree of funding that is not matched in any way by the funding from the MRC going to the biological side. The public perception of what is going on is that your actions on the issue of definition have tended to reinforce the psychosocial basis of the disorder rather than the biological one, which is at the heart of the reason why you have been so vilified. My opinion is that you would not improve anything by attempting to take any legal or other steps you would be further seen as a major establishment figure attempting to silence / muzzle some poor powerless and chronically ill patients. A very simple step to change the perception of your position would be for you to give encouragement for a similarly sized grant to the one you have recently received, to look into some of the biological factors. It seems rather unlikely that there is something about CFS patients that makes them especially hostile and unreasonable, as opposed to people suffering from heart disease or multiple sclerosis (which) means the level of disagreement over CFS must reflect some underlying issue. I'm sure there is a lot of psychiatric literature on how denying another persons reality triggers all sorts of deep hostile responses."
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Wow. Which journalist said that?
 
rvallee said:
Found it: https://www.s4me.info/threads/micha...ohnthejack-on-twitter.3464/page-53#post-81416
More than once, and vice-chancellor to chancellor is just excessive. If that's not harassment...
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Just so everyone is aware. California where @dave30th works is a state that has "employment at will" which means that an employee can leave their job, or an employer can fire someone with no notice and no reason.

It is quite common for employees to be terminated and "asked" to leave the building immediately.
 
Daisymay said:
...I'm sure there is a lot of psychiatric literature on how denying another persons reality triggers all sorts of deep hostile responses.
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Anger (and fear) are natural responses to trauma. Especially toward the perpetrators causing the trauma.

All psychiatrists, especially Wessely, know that invalidated trauma, deepens trauma.

Intentionally causing trauma is a sign of a sociopath.
 
I remember Keith Geraghty had another story of intimidation by S or W with his employers but I’m not able to find it on PR.
 
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