Resistance To Science and Technology by Julian Vigo (Forbes.com)

You might think as a trans-woman she might me more sympathetic to a minority who've had rights taken away on the back of biased research and been labelled science denying militant activists when they complain.

*edit - Actually I take that back, apparently AFAB is assigned female at birth so I'm unsure of the transwoman status, also she wrote this.

 

Absolutely. Very well said.

 

I think people should probably retire this particular accusation against Sharpe. I obviously hold no brief for the good professor and have no particular reason to defend him. But in this case, the quote in full context is actually somewhat sympathetic to the plight of the patients, in my reading. The "undeserving" part was, from what I can tell, meant to convey how society views these patients, not how Sharpe views them, and to suggest that society's view is wrong or unfair. The word as transcribed should probably have been in "scare quotes" to indicate that it was not the speaker's opinion being expressed but that of others.

 

Sorry to be pedantic again but I’m sure we all appreciate the importance of accuracy when quoting these people. What he said was “nobody really liked them.” He used the past tense, referring to his time at Queen Square when he became interested in ME/CFS. He might argue that he was referring to the people who had been seeing ME/CFS patients at Queen Square before he took over, and that he did not share their dislike of us. However, he did not criticise the alleged prejudice of his colleagues, and did not distance himself from their remarks. It was a typically Wesselian remark, for the reasons Cheshire suggests.

 

Considering they couldn't even keep the older piece in Counterpunch for more than a couple of days...yes, it's possible they withdrew it, but why would they have done that? Regardless of any connection to Spiked, if I were Simon, and I wanted a journalist to do something sympathetic...is this the person I contact? I don't think so. I mean, even though he's a Knight and all, even if he can't create a storm like the 'death threats' thing from 7 years ago, surely he has a sympathetic ear or two that would be seen as more credible than this writer. Then again, Forbes hasn't dumped the piece, so who knows.

But I tend to believe that if this is the caliber of journalist that Simon has to rely on, he has less power, in general, than I certainly thought. I don't think that's the case. He couldn't convince his old school pal that his law was being invoked by some of us ruffians; if he desired to have us cast as science deniers, I think he'd go about it differently. I don't see it: with all that's happened since Trial By Error started, up to & including the involvement of Mike Godwin, I doubt an attempt to smear us that way would succeed. There's too much on the record, credibly sourced, that shows the opposite is true. Much as I thought two years ago, I still think this is a nasty contrarian who's trying to stick up for their friends, but ultimately this journalist is (even taking into consideration being published in Forbes) just not all that significant.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1012860109528199169

https://twitter.com/user/status/1012990357234208769

 

I do think it's the case.
Simon's power is waning and now he relies on people like this.

Simon only cares about the message being sent out, nothing else. Regardless of his involvement, he will likely think this a very successful outcome.

 

Reminds me of one of my favourite songs:

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rollin’ stone

You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
Nobody’s ever taught you how to live out on the street
But now you're gonna have to get used to it
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?

Etc.


Maybe I should do another Dylan adaptation.

 

I hope you're right, but I would not underestimate him. I am not 100% on this but when I first saw this piece I wondered if it was some kind of blog platform attached to Forbes (as opposed to the magazine proper), and I saw a tweet somewhere, maybe by Jen Brea, that said this was in fact the case. Anyone relying on someone operating on that basis is absolutely effin' desperate (we are also still talking about the person who's the head of the Royal Society of Medicine, assuming that means something). It would be great if that were true ("hey, why don't you write the same piece you couldn't get to stick two years ago in Cockburn's old rag, which for better or worse is not taken all that seriously to begin with"), but I don't see it.

If that was all the support these people could count on journalistically we'd be much further along, I think, with PACE likely retracted (and the Wikipedia CFS article actually reflecting the reality, instead of the authority of the Cochrane Review; then there's the seemingly endless bleatings of the SMC, which still does have fairly strong influence). Hopefully that's where we're headed, but I don't think all of Simon's friends have deserted him by any means.

 

I don't think she is. She doesn't seem to like trans people at all. Scratch that: she doesn't seem to like people at all, full stop.

 

I see a common strategy in her writing: find a maligned/stigmatized group, describe them as militant, discuss why they are and should be hated, and make unsubstantiated claims of death threats. What strategy is not taken: approach issue with a level of curiousness and attempt to learn something before casting judgment.

 

It's a common tactic. I hear it all the time.

 

So she's a TERF.

That fits.

 

Yes, I'm also a bit tired of the "we should be congratulated for taking these people seriously" line. If claiming patients are just imagining they're ill, and need reeducation to set them straight, they're not taking us all that seriously. Sure, they stop short of saying patients are intentionally making up their illness. They are making it up, but at a level just beneath conscious intent.

 

I noticed that Michael Sharpe has retweeted the article. Which is quite revealing. Means he's all for reviving the anti-science death threats narrative.

Interesting to know, just in case you were starting to believe his 'just a trial' line.

If questioned, he might protest that "retweet does not equal endorsement". But his twitter history shows it does in his case. Everything he has. previously retweeted is in line with his BPS narrative (or else is just fluff).

 

I’ve only had two GPs in the last 15 years and I’ve got along really well with both of them. I think of my current GP as a friend, and I’m pretty sure she would say the same about me.

Clearly I’m very special and the rest of you are absolutely horrible people.

 

I don't think they do, in any case. It seems more like they use a terrible problem (and the patients suffering from it) as a vehicle for taking themselves very seriously, without accomplishing anything positive. For God's sake, if you're going to take yourself as seriously as Jean-Luc Picard, you'd damn well better justify it with some historically positive achievements!

 

Try to be fair to them. It seems only right that third-raters should have a specialism of their own to play with.