Michael Sharpe skewered by @JohntheJack on Twitter

You're assuming that the BPS people dislike LP. Maybe LP is the brainwashing they always wanted to inflict on patients but never felt able to. If they believe that CFS is a sort of delusional illness belief, LP would appear to confirm their views.

 

You can see that Bruce Levin didn't actually read the study, as he repeats @davidtuller1's misinformation about the patient newsletter here http://www.virology.ws/2015/10/21/trial-by-error-i/ ….

This is surely a really dumb statement since the content of the newsletter was not in the paper. Nobody doubts that there was a newsletter with testimonials do they?

 

Quite.

No it wouldn't. The original paper, ie the original analysis, was a mass of uninterpretability, not the data itself. It is possible to interpret the data correctly, which is what the reanalyses did.

Because there isn't one. We can leave the acknowledgement of the non-existent to the BPS brigade.

 

The Wilshire reanalysis paper repeated Edward's point about the problem of subjective self-report outcomes in a nonblinded trial! Concerns about this clearly don't undermine the reanalysis paper... they're a key part of it!

I don't think it's worth thinking about CFS Research (jameson) and kdcfsme. There are millions of people in the world, and a couple of them will still try to present the Science Media Centre as an authoritative resource on PACE.

edit:

That Sharpe would retweet this is pretty funny though:

"You can see that Bruce Levin didn't actually read the study, as he repeats @davidtuller1's misinformation about the patient newsletter here http://www.virology.ws/2015/10/21/trial-by-error-i/ …. Very sad. Why do even top scientists make such basic rookie mistakes? Incomprehensible and not helpful to us."

I agree with @Sean... that David Jameson's twitter account with 44 followers now seems to be the most prominent defender of PACE is a good illustration of how much trouble they're in.

 

If you can’t prove someone is pretending to be someone else then I think it’s better to not make the accusation. It just plays right into their hands.

 

My point was more that kd's points are the exact same as Sharpe's, so they might as well be the same person. I actually assume kd is someone else. I like how Sharpe still tweets at me, as if he hadn't blocked me.

 

Sorry that wasn’t aimed at you Dave. More at the general speculation going on.

 

This twitter account seems to be fairly UK focussed so that might rule out Jameson (who I think is in Canada?), eg:

https://twitter.com/user/status/977713919044198400


There are a few clues here and there:

https://twitter.com/user/status/977274783921418240

https://twitter.com/user/status/976599764497195008


Although a lot of their early tweets about stress reminded me of two posters who both 'spontaneously' turned up on PR at the same time about six months ago but they both claimed to be North American (one from Canada and the other who said he'd seen NYC doctors).

EDIT: that being said, the person who runs this twitter account does have a similar approach to one of those questionable posters on PR in that they both offer to talk/mentor CFS patients via private message. Interesting.

 

I'm interested in these Canadian references for a project I'm working on.

I googled "Dr David Jameson wikipedia sciencewatcher" for pages from Canada but he didn't show up and I can't find any other relevant reference to him on Canadian pages.

Do you happen to have any other info you can point me toward that would confirm / deny if David Jameson is from Canada?

Or any info about the twitterer who claimed to be from Canada?

Thanks,
Scott

 

No worries. I think in general it's best not to do it, and I've stopped.

 

Jameson's website: http://www.mind-body-health.net/index.shtml
(Note the supposedly positive review from Fiona Godlee of the BMJ on the front page!!)

His 'paper' here lists his location as "Ladysmith, Canada".


This is the poster on PR who claimed to be from Canada:

https://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/recovered-from-cfs.57270/
https://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/recovery.57186/page-5#post-949590

 

Cult behaviour. He looks for inexperienced patients to indoctrinate and does it out of sight where nobody can intervene. I wonder what he tells them. Probably just a load of BS about how relaxing and positivity will cure them.

 

Sweeeet, thanks Art.

 

He has done this across reddit too, on the subreddit r/cfs where he got annoyed at “trolls”, I.e. patients pointing out that his points of view were toxic, and set up his own subreddit r/cfsme. Fortunately no one really visits it.

 

He made a new video about his CFS theory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYhFS5e7Y8g

He claims that CFS is caused by changes in brain structure and wiring and that it's possible to reverse these changes with his program, which seems to consist of advice such as avoiding stress and pacing.

 

The stupidity of CFS Research's replies on Twitter often astound:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1017870462058033152


Well yes, those indeed "aren't really synonyms" - that's because the CDC didn't "rename" them, they are entirely different things...

 

Jameson always comes across as so creepy.

He reminds me of Vogt - they both had periods of ill health where they got caught up in worrying too much about their health, and then when their symptoms improved they tied that to having overcome their fears and they seemed to become desperate to show that their mistakes are perfectly normal, or even that they're impressive for being able to stop worrying so much and recover... if only other people with subjective health problems would adopt a more positive attitude and spend more time reading inspiring recovery anecdotes!

Someone did write up a series of the most ridiculous problems with claims Jameson's made over the years, but I can't find it now. He seems to keep popping up promoting studies with no control groups while presenting himself as a rigorous 'science watcher'. He's someone who'll just fade away imo.

I think he's just a fan of positive and inspiring anecdotes and quackery.

 

Is it a given fact that cfs_research is Prof. Sharpe?

 

No, that's almost certainly not true.

 

No, cfs_research can spell.