Yann04
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Maybe it’s stigmatising and derogatory to the fantasies Sharpe, Carson, Stone et al have been institutionalising
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Replicated blood-based biomarkers for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis not explicable by inactivity, 2024, Beentjes, Ponting et al
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ME/CFS Skeptic
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I also think Carson has never done any research on ME/CFS, yet he has been able to comment as an SMC expert on multiple ME/CFS studies.
For example:
expert reaction to cytokines for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome | Science Media Centre
expert reaction to study linking higher levels of antibodies against Lachnospiraceae bacteria in people with CFS/ME | Science Media Centre
For example:
expert reaction to cytokines for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome | Science Media Centre
expert reaction to study linking higher levels of antibodies against Lachnospiraceae bacteria in people with CFS/ME | Science Media Centre
From the abstract of the Nature paper:
There seems to be little to no overlap between significant results in the two papers. By similar results, does he mean they both did 'omics studies?
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Yann04
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I don’t think it matters. He’s betting on the fact journalists won’t spend too much time, just see a nature link and think ooo good point. He’s also betting on the fact that any critique of his critique will have far less exposure to journalists so it doesn’t matter if the points he makes are low quality as long as they appear convincing to a journalist at first glance.
When your theories have been unquestionable in medical discourse for decades any dissent is going to feel like a personal attack.
And the thing is no matter how politely we dissent, we are still saying that their entire career is built on a house of cards.
Of course the stigmatising and derogatory language may well be another repeat of the 'accept your mentally ill or you're discrimiating against the mentally ill' nonsense
John Mac
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Chronic fatigue is not in your head, it's in your blood - experts
University of Edinburgh researchers said the findings could pave the way for a "game-changer" diagnostic test.
www.bbc.co.uk
Chronic fatigue is not in your head, it's in your blood - experts
People with ME - or chronic fatigue syndrome - have major differences in their blood compared with healthy individuals, experts have found.University of Edinburgh researchers said their findings could pave the way for a "game-changer" diagnostic test.
Prof Chris Ponting said: "For so long people with ME/CFS have been told it's all in their head. It's not. We see it in their blood."
The study used data from the UK Biobank – a health database of over half a million people – to compare 1,455 ME/CFS patients with 131,000 healthy individuals.
The research showed the results were mostly unaffected by activity levels.
The university team said the volume and consistency of the blood differences support their long-term goal of developing a diagnostic blood test.
Researcher Dr Sjoerd Beentjes told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland: "One thing that our evidence points at is that ME is very much a condition in the blood.
"Perhaps previously held perspectives are not quite the case.
"It is really not due to inactivity and we hope that this helps with problems where individuals are disbelieved of their symptoms."
What are the symptoms of ME?
ME stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis and is also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).The largest ever biological study of ME/CFS - which is estimated to affect 50,000 people in Scotland - identified consistent blood differences associated with chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, and liver disease.
The main feature of the condition is post-exertional malaise (PEM) - a delayed and dramatic worsening of fatigue that comes after minor physical effort.
Other symptoms include pain, brain fog and tiredness that does not improve with rest. Causes are unknown and there is currently no diagnostic test or cure.
Dr Beentjes also said ME was a "female bias" condition with the ratio of patients estimated to be 3:1.
The Edinburgh researchers examined more than 3,000 blood-based biomarkers and accounted for differences in age, sex, and activity levels.
The results were replicated afterwards using data from the US
Prof Chris Ponting, of the university's MRC human genetics unit, said: "For so long people with ME/CFS have been told it's all in their head.
"It's not. We see people's ME/CFS in their blood.
He said the evidence should "dispel any lingering perception that ME/CFS is caused by deconditioning and exercise intolerance".
Dolphin
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
News release:
"People with ME/CFS have significant differences in their blood compared with healthy individuals, a new study reveals, suggesting a path towards more reliable diagnosis of the long-term debilitating illness"
www.ed.ac.uk
"People with ME/CFS have significant differences in their blood compared with healthy individuals, a new study reveals, suggesting a path towards more reliable diagnosis of the long-term debilitating illness"
Scale of how ME/CFS affects blood revealed
People with ME/CFS have significant differences in their blood compared with healthy individuals, a new study reveals, suggesting a path towards more reliable diagnosis of the long-term debilitating illness.
www.ed.ac.uk
MSEsperanza
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I thought it was very nice evidence on how biased Carson is and how remarkable it is that the SMC publishes such an obviously factually incorrect and logically muddled statement that looks even more silly in company with Prof Conway's expert statement.
Just in case the SMC decides that's too much evidence on their own past (?) bias maybe it's good to have Carson's statement saved. So here's the Internet Archive link:
expert reaction to observational study of blood biomarkers in ME/CFS patients | Science Media Centre
Above all, thank you to @Chris Ponting and the other study authors and everyone who contributed.
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JemPD
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Ah ok thanks
MSEsperanza
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Agree with what others have said about Carson's false assumptions. Still, I'm afraid I think @Chris Ponting your comment would have been even better without the bit about "... people with ME/CFS have been told it’s all in their head. It’s not: we see people’s ME/CFS in their blood."
I see that people who want to misunderstand will misunderstand no matter how carefully you word an argument. I just think that particular wording makes it too easy for those who don't want to see the argument behind it but welcome any opportunity that allows them to distract from the actual findings.
Edit: Quote is from the press release: https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/scale-of-how-mecfs-affects-blood-revealed
I see that people who want to misunderstand will misunderstand no matter how carefully you word an argument. I just think that particular wording makes it too easy for those who don't want to see the argument behind it but welcome any opportunity that allows them to distract from the actual findings.
Edit: Quote is from the press release: https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/scale-of-how-mecfs-affects-blood-revealed
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rvallee
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
With the added twist of this being done through the Media Science Center, whose stated role is to precisely to do journalists' thinking for themm including what to think about it, in ways that please them. How very... LLM of them.
Quite funny seeing all the outrage at "LLMs are very good at sounding confident in their answers but they are actually very wrong" when it's the most human thing to do just that. Media outfits like the SMC are gatekeepers of truth, where The Truth(TM) has little to nothing to do with what's actually true, but instead exist to promote a particular, and often false, version of it. Such as Carson having any relevant expertise dealing with ME/CFS, about which he has always shown to have no understanding of. Then again neither do any of the Wessely gang, but that's never stopped anyone from citing their speculative opinions as some sort of valid facts.
All of which contributes massively to discredit all sources of information. If scientists (although with Carson this very loosely applies), physicians, gatekeepers of truth including health care institution, medical journals, a semi-private journalistic resource and mass media lie so easily, why trust them at all? And they shouldn't be trusted, they make it clear they don't deserve it by so often having contempt for what's true, preferring what they want to be true instead.
Same as it ever was. The only thing that matters in what's true is whether someone can make money from it. Science and technology do that, and so they are often accepted, for that reason alone. Not because they are true, but because the first to use or produce them can make fortunes. Because they work, no matter what one thinks of them. But as a whole, humanity still has the same very distorted relationship to the truth, this example is one of millions fueling the crisis of confidence in institutions.
rvallee
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
One thing I noticed the other day, is how, like most people, unfortunately, they judge themselves on their intentions, while we judge them on their results, or lack thereof. So they do take our criticism as personal attacks, because they apply the criticism onto their intentions, which we could not care less about.
We judge them for the outcomes they create. Those outcomes are harmful garbage, malicious alternative medicine pseudoscience contributing to misery and early death for millions. Scandalous horror that should see thousands of people go to prison for, but no one ever will, because it's socially acceptable to do it.
This is in addition to how intensely personal it would be for them to have everything they built be invalidated, which is the inevitable outcome. There is a huge crisis of basic professionalism in this segment of the medical profession. And I can't find fault with this fact, that they judge themselves based on what they aspire to do, never based on what they actually deliver, despite having decades to show it.
In part because they deliver nothing but misery, but also because it's naturally human to do so. It's just that, normally, professional structures reduce that, instead of enabling, protecting and amplifying it. But those structures are the sum of the people involved, so the fault is within the whole professional class here.
Ah, he's pretty much explicitly saying that depression is "all in your head". And his point is that 'omics studies of "all in your head"-diseases find markers in the blood, so the present study's results don't show ME/CFS isn't all in your head.Carson said:
Not to mention whether or not patients looked down the barrel of that psychosomatic gun in a sufficiently manly manner.
It's a nice compare and contrast.
Leaving aside the question of how accurate that claim is, how is he reliably discriminating the critical issue of which causal pathway delivers those results? If for no other reason than any treatment protocol will be different in each case.
Or is it going to the usual rhetorical hand-waving about the futility of dualism, and how the mind and the body are just opposite but equipotent sides of the same unitary causal coin?
Yann04
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
It’s weird. Because why is that a relevant thing to say if they see mental illness as physical. (As they so often claim), why do a contrast between “physical and mental” illness. When they always claim “the mind is a part of the body”. Whenever it’s convinient to them they employ mind body dualism and all of a sudden when they have to defend their ideas they revert back to a non-dualistic stance.
Why say that physical abnormalities are found in depression [thus it is implied finding them in ME/CFS is meaningless]. It seems depression is used as a shorthand for “not a physical illness”, which rests on popular conception more than any scientific data.
They are very careful to only use exaggerated things like “all in your head”, “figment of the imagination”. They likely think that “mental illness” might show signs in the body but is primarly caused by “faulty thinking”, [psychological] “trauma” or whatever.
Yann04
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
When Carson says:
“Studies of depression show similar results.”
I don’t think he’s offering a real scientific critique. He’s basically just saying:
Which isn’t a scientific argument.
[This is ignoring what @forestglip pointed out that even the study they cite doesn’t shown similar findings in Depression]
“Studies of depression show similar results.”
I don’t think he’s offering a real scientific critique. He’s basically just saying:
Which isn’t a scientific argument.
[This is ignoring what @forestglip pointed out that even the study they cite doesn’t shown similar findings in Depression]
Utsikt
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
It’s like the FND people. «This patient has an FND, but we found signs of a stroke. Turns out FNDs can look like strokes, so we were right all along, they definitely have an FND.»
Yann04
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Noting that Carson is probably the second most influential person in the FND field, behind Jon Stone.
[Edited for accuracy, before I said most influential but I dont think that’s true]