Michael Sharpe skewered by @JohntheJack on Twitter

Tweeting quotes attributed to Richard Feynman, Einstein, the Dalai Lama etc etc isn't really an argument. You might as well say "Birds of a feather ...", "Takes one to know one ...", "He who smelt it dealt it ...", "same to you and no returns" or just stick your fingers in your ear and say "la la la la la". I mean, it's not really high-level scientific debate is it?

 

Nooooo! Those people musn't misuse Feynman! I can imagine all my former physics and maths colleagues making....Woahhhh!
(Well, we would also make nasty remarks and would have a good laugh... )

 

Either that, or he knows full well the score, and it tweeting such statements in an attempt to demonstrate that he has no guilty conscience on these matters. So he acts as if he believes himself, that way he believes he looks like a "good guy" really. There is no way he can admit out loud, that he understands his errors, so better to keep trying to paint himself as the hero he wants to be!

 

Makes you wonder what it would take - what it will take - for people like MS to actually realise for real that they are simply wrong, and have been all this time? Is it that he will always insist black is white, not matter what? Utterly delusional? Even when a 100% positive biomarker is found and disproves the BPS crap? I suspect that when that point is reached, they will just find another way of reframing what they spout; in fact I get the impression they are trying to do that already in preparation for the inevitable, by pushing the notion that mental and physical illness are much more closely related than us lesser mortals realise.

 

I think he knows. Maybe not at the start, but at some point in his career it dawned on him.

He won't admit it because he let it go for too long and it's become an integral part of his career. He can't see a way to admit it without damaging his career.

He doesn't want to admit it because if he does the others, Chalder, Wessely, Crawley etc., will throw him under the bus. If he's saying he knew it was wrong, the chances are they knew or he discussed it. No way.

This is all about their own self preservation and well being and we are just cannon fodder.

 

Yes, I believe that in order for his sense of self to remain in tact and healthy he is able like anyone to use language and concepts in a special way that can be reframed to continually mean the same thing (his original belief) but update the package as needed. So having people with ME in the trial was a mistake it was really about chronic fatigue. It was originally about incorrect beliefs that what people were experiencing was all in their heads is now the mind and the body are one so it's in their heads but in their body too. And so it goes.

 

It is a very rare person who can admit they were terribly wrong, especially in a professional context.
We know he is wrong, and trying to get him to admit it ought not be a goal or expectation.
It's never going to happen and it's not important.

He is the old guard and the new guard has already amassed and rushed the gates.
Best to leave him to babble into his drool cup in the corner while we get on with Reality.

 

This type of reality denier will never accept reality because their worldview and in his case reputation depends on him only accepting what he spouts.
Doublethink comes down to the need to defend a belief at all costs, as Upton Sinclair said

The point being you can't convince someone who has a vested interest in not believing something he does not want to accept. The PACE team probably rationalized doctoring their results, we got a bad cohort, or we are making the results clearer, we need to rephrase so scientists understand, its all the same disease so depressed people and ME patients belong in the same study and so on. Its absolutely incredible the lengths people will go to to lie to themselves.
They believe their own lies and will use confirmation bias, personal attacks, reality denial, implicit or explicit threats, obfuscations, rationalizations, rephrasing, ignorance, changing explanations, sowing doubt or any device needed to protect their house of cards.
Educating them out of it is futile because its not an educational deficit, they have chosen to believe something at any cost because they are not wrong. If they are not wrong then education can't fix being right...
Once PACE is retracted and we have a treatment expect them to still claim there is a psychosomatic component, or they were right all along and the medication just works better, or its an adjunct therapy and so on. The only way to get this out of our disease is to show their malfeasance, get them discredited and kicked out of scientific circles. They will then believe they are just persecuted but no one (except the gullible) will put any stock in their ramblings anymore.

 

I've been granted one question. What would you ask? (Remember the rules...)

https://twitter.com/user/status/999234194369900544

 

Ask him why he thinks unblinded subjective self reporting produces reliable results, and how he can defend this view in light of the rest of medicine consdering this methodology flawed, and whether he thinks that homeopathy could have obtained positive results as well with such methodology.

Probably the answer will be that the illness is subjective, and then you can point out the problems with that statement.

a) They themselves thought actometers were useful and various standardized tests of exercise capacity exist.
b) Lack of objective biomarker doesn't make unreliable methodology reliable. If the best they can do is misleading, then there is no point doing a trial.

 

They can never be wrong, there will always be tired people.

 

Interesting bluff. Once a question has been "addressed" does that make the answer evidence based and true?

You can ask me any question you want whereby our previous answers don't make sense as long as its been addressed before in the same way I will claim I don't need to address it now.

I am going to ask my mum how does santa get down our chimney if its blocked off? I am sure she will say "I have addressed that before, its because he is a magic man".

Once I question the existence of the magic man she can just say, "This been addressed before".

"Mum, the stalk brings babies to mummies and daddies?......god made us but who made god......how does the tooth fairy know my tooth fell out........

 

At what point and why did they decide to change the outcome recovery figure from 85 (?) to 60.

 

True and with the role out of IAPT (plus MUS,MUPS,PSS,BDS, BDD) in the UK the next stage of their plan is already being implemented. When PACE finally falls they will still have a ready supply of new victims.

 

The recovery question has already been asked many, many times. I don't think he's ever answered it though. I think they realise it was a mistake, and are hoping that if they ignore it, it will just go away.

 

OK, another question. QMUL say they can no longer access the data since Peter White left; does MS still have access/ have the relevant skills to access the data?