Michael Sharpe skewered by @JohntheJack on Twitter

Godwin's Law isn't really a law. It's just the name given to a mildly amusing observation someone made which has become a bit of a thing.

 

"cfs researcher" is a troll whose job it is to spread propaganda and discredit the "opposition".
Always best to ignore, and simply post truth/facts without stepping in the trap.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1008019482504257536

 

There does seem to be a pattern of things like that. I wrote a response to Wessely's 'personal story', which included this bit on one of his autonomic papers that he now proudly presents as an example of his commitment to research on the biological underpinnings of ME/CFS:

 

Workwell considered this and decided a CBT/GET trial was unethical.

 

I like to distinguish between evil deeds and evil people. Some of the "evil people" in history have been dogooders. They mean well but the result is still evil. I take a pragmatic approach to evil. If something produces substantially more harm than good, as in harms a lot of people or even a single person to a great degree, the act is evil. The person is only evil if they knew the consequences beforehand. It is less clear if they did not know beforehand, and then learned about it, and covered it up. Is this evil or just amoral? Or a bit of both?

 

For me, the term ‘evil’ assumes malevolence. I think it’s entirely possible to do something that is very harmful without there being malevolent intent. I also think that it is possible to stick to a viewpoint which is harmful without malevolent intent. The interesting question is, for me, at what point does sticking to that viewpoint become unreasonable? How do you persuade someone to come out of the corner into which they are backed? How far does saving-face, or trying to avoid fracturing one’s world go before it breaks? Does it always break?

Of course the longer one goes without apologizing for wrong-doing, the harder it is to do so. But it’s never impossible.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1008072955602067458

Well, what else could he say.

 

I’m beginning to think he is clueless after all

 

i appreciate tremendously people posting the twitter messages. They seem terribly important to me and I don't have the mental capacity to engage with twitter. So thank you!

 

Yes, I have the same problem as @Daisybell. To me, malevolent intentions are part of the definition of evil. You can't inadvertantly do evil, while all the time believing what you're serving a wider, worthwhile purpose. Then its acting abhorrently, not evil.

When it comes to causing human suffering on a massive scale, the truly malevolent are not the ones we need to worry about. Its the ones that believe they are doing the right thing. Those people are much, much more dangerous. Hitler was definitely driven by a belief he was creating a better, greater Germany. From what I've seen of his writings, and learned in history, you couldn't even describe him as a psychopath, because that would imply little concern for anyone but himself, and he did care about people close to him. He just had beliefs that were extremely unpleasant and the power to act on them to create human suffering on an unimaginable scale.

If only Hitler had just been out to cause as much injury as possible to people for purely selfish motives. Then he would not have been anywhere near as dangerous.

Its probably time to retire the word evil from our vocabulary, as it harks back to a time when our beliefs about human nature (our 'folk psychology') was different. Back then, we thought people who did bad stuff had to "be" bad. We didn't realise that most of the bad in the world was done by people who thought they were acting for the greater good.

 

This could be an OT topic for the thread, but I normally want to stand up for the continued use of 'evil' as a term. I think that it can be applied to people who just fail to take their responsibilities seriously, ignore injustices, etc, rather than just those cackling at the horrors they've happily unleashed. It's a word that has baggage, and using it can lead to misunderstandings or people dismissing you (I wouldn't use it in relation to PACE, where there are already so many prejudices/complexities that make it difficult to have our concerns recognised by those whose views matter), but it also has an emotional power that I think can be valuable.

I can be drawn to tricky discussions, and trying to persuade someone that the way they live their life is evil is always a fun challenge!

 

Using Evil requires making judgements, which is often hard to justify. Its far better to just keep citing the provable problems.

 

Wonder how they would all score on MADS?

"The Maudsley Assessment of Delusions Scale (MADS; Wessely et al., 1993) is a standardized interview that assesses eight dimensions of delusional experience. The belief maintenance section of the MADS inquires about the evidence for the delusion, and two of its items have been used to measure aspects of belief flexibility (the possibility of being mistaken, PM, and the reaction to hypothetical contradiction, RTHC). The evidence for the delusion cited by participants is sensitively discussed, and they are asked whether it is at all possible for them to be mistaken about their delusional belief. The interviewer then asks how they would react in a hypothetical situation if some new evidence were to be generated which contradicts the delusion. If they report that this would alter in any way their level of belief, this is recorded as belief flexibility, each item dichotomously scored (yes/no). The scale has very good interrater reliability (Wessely et al., 1993), and kappas for these two items are reported as excellent (PM kappa = 0.91 and RTHC kappa = 0.90)."

(No doubt SW thought the acronym hilarious.)

 

I’m thinking

i presume he had in his head his idea of what ‘normal’ was when he wrote it? Presumably he also has a robust set of evidence ...oh no I just checked the abstract it looks like it’s just a load of unsubstantiated opinion with a lot of waffle around some dodgy low sample non controlled self reported ‘tests’ results


“Associations between delusions and abnormal behaviour were retrospectively assessed in a sample of 83 consecutively admitted deluded subjects. All were interviewed about events in the previous month using a new measure of delusional phenomenology and action. For 59 subjects this information was supplemented by informant interviews. Clinical consensus was reached concerning the probability that actions reported by informants were linked to delusions. Half of the sample reported that they had acted at least once in accordance with their delusions. Violent behaviour in response to delusions was uncommon. Information provided by informants suggested that some aspect of the actions of half of the sample was either probably or definitely congruent with the content of their delusions. However, there was no link between self-reports and informants' reports of such action. A latent class analysis of self-reported delusional action suggested three classes of action, namely aggressive to self or other, defensive action, and either none or single action. Self-reported action was associated with delusions of catastrophe. Informant data suggested that persecutory delusions were the most likely to be acted upon, but in contrast delusions of guilt or catastrophe appeared to decrease the chance of delusional behaviour. Actions associated with abnormal beliefs are more common than has been suggested.”


I’ll just do a quick peer review:

 

I guess that's why MS never answered my question...

https://twitter.com/user/status/999243109035921410

 

That is so very true. If this were to ever go before a jury one day, I think much of this would be demonstrable "beyond a reasonable doubt".

Also worth noting that in UK law guilt can be established on circumstantial evidence alone, if a strong enough case can be put together relying only on it. The PACE trial, the many evasive responses to highly valid scientific criticisms of it, the public money spent to avoid releasing the data, the banal interactions on twitter, and on and on and on ... to me this looks to be a whole swathe of circumstantial evidence.

https://assets.publishing.service.g...t_data/file/488508/Evidence_v3.0EXT_clean.pdf

Edit: Included more of Home Office quote.

And with some direct evidence as well ...