Psychology Today blog - The Dark Side of Social Media Activism in Science, 2019, S. Camarata

I have recently made a resource to be edited and added to regarding Professional Codes of Conduct/Ethics for relevant fields. https://www.s4me.info/threads/profe...uct-for-psychiatry-psychology-medicine.10527/

I have just now made a thread to encourage discussion about resourcing each other regarding voicing our discontent or doing some sort of group complaint https://www.s4me.info/threads/makin...spite-currently-pouring-from-the-media.10563/

These are in the Members only area.

 

Honestly, I doubt it. The site used to just display the comments inline at the end of each article, and it took me more time than I care to admit to find where they'd hidden them. I can't imagine that anyone who isn't already highly motivated to comment on ME/PACE articles will bother to find the button and look.

I wonder if they changed the design to cut down on toxic comments from the peanut gallery - the comments section across the whole site has been a trash fire for years.

 

@feeb

I was concerned this might be the case. There are some really excellent comments so unfortunate if this is the case.

 

Well, this came out of nowhere, a few hours ago:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1155887249608851456


This guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker

Quite a few people have stepped in to, ahem, discuss this with him. So far, no response. There was one person who seemed to want to step in to challenge anyone's questioning of Pinker's apparently uncritical view on the article, but he seems to have gone away.

 

Perhaps S4ME ought to send him an e-mail? Or some other communication more likely to enlighten than tweeted on-liners?

 

from: Tom Chivers, Does psychology have a conflict-of-interest problem?
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02041-5

 

The problem is the quantity of replies seems to prove the point to those people who are unable or unwilling to look at the details.

 

The man clearly felt he had not been receiving sufficient attention lately. Poor dear.

 

Is the old boy network working overtime?
Pinker was in uk recently ( he did appear on a TV panel show and was not particularly impressive)

For a specialist in language nuances should really be better understood.

 

The thing I remember most about Pinker's stellar career in linguistics is that I can never remember what it was he said.

 

It’s a pity for Camarata that Sharpe’s latest article in the Observer didn’t come out before he wrote his article. He could have referenced that a few times as well.

 

I think.one of the most compelling pieces of advocacy was @Emsho ' s testimony at the Scottish parliament, particularly the part when she describes GET ( walking in and wheelchair out and being considered recovered)

If someone has the technical skills to snip the video to this part as a reply to Pinker it would succinctly capture all that is wrong with this treatment approach and the research upon which it is based.

 

could a twitter user direct Mr Pinker to JEs comments under the article.

eta:
there is a long list of rcts done on exercise in pwME here
https://paradigmchange.me/me/exercise/

 

I agree. I'm afraid that linking to biomedical studies or TED talks will only reinforce the view that we hold a "sacred theory & get outraged & aggressive when a finding seems inconsistent with it."

EDIT: IMHO, all ME/CFS patients organizations are responsible for this mistake being repeated over and over. Overemphasizing the importance of biomedical research into ME/CFS isn't helping us, rather the contrary. If all those responding on twitter would have linked to the reanalysis by Wilshere et al., Pinker might have taken the time to read it, or some of his twitters followers would have. Now, we look like an angry mob.

 

I'm not sure if the quantity of replies is necessarily a problem, but those don't sound like helpful things to link to.

 

Perhaps it is as a result of it.

Or perhaps they tossed a coin to see whose piece went out first after a highly intellectual group chat on skype with Fink and some others who still think the ship has landed safely in the harbour.

I am counting them all on the fingers of one hand and I've still got two fingers spare.

 

Just make sure you hold them up the right way round.

 

There is a problem of patients believing all sorts of ideas about their illness. Not because of a mental illness but because they don't realize that not everything that they're reading is true. It is not so easy to distinguish what is true from what is false.