Researcher Interactions Science for ME written Q&A with Prof Chris Ponting

I think Chris is obviously a good egg, which means I'm feeling more patient with the CMRC than I would have been. Really, the people I want to ask questions of are Harrison and the (non-board member) Mark Edwards.

On hype: I understand that feeling. There's a lot being promised, it feels like, but little being delivered. But OMF has a bunch of Nobel winners, so I think we can be cautiously optimistic that they may at least find something. My largest concern is that the number of study participants is still so small.

 

Playing devil's advocate here.

The main point of your question was asking, "is the CMRC pledge to focus on biomedical research undermined by that approach?". Chris didn't directly deal with the 'undermining' aspect but did say, "The CMRC is 100% committed to its focus on biomedical research. This is absolutely clear.", which would seem to be a clear commitment to biomedical research.

"Does this mean Harrison intends to disown the paper?" - I would suggest only Harrison can answer that. Has anybody tried engaging with him?

 

To be fair, yes, I was asking Ponting something that should be asked of Harrison. It probably should be put to him too, though it is always good for the vice chair to be under a little bit of pressure in regards to this, because then he's more likely to do something about it. Basically, there are still some questionable elements in the CMRC, and if he knows that we know this, and are continuing to mention it, next time there's an overhaul of the board, some of those people may disappear for good.

 

Agree.

Adam, will you email Harrison? I wrote to Mark Edwards (the one who is apparently no longer on the CMRC board) to ask him which effective CFS treatments he was referring to in the abstract of A unified Medhanism for Functional Neurological Symptoms (http://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR/M02363X/1) when he wrote:

In keeping with my experience of writing to BPS proponents, and in complete contrast to my experience of writing to scientists involved in any other types of research, I received no reply.

If Adam or anyone else from the forum writes to Harrison and receives no reply, I suggest we go back to Chris.


Finally, I’d like echo the other positive comments that have been made about Chris. I very much appreciate what he is trying to do and I hope he will be able to turn the CMRC around.

 

I could try. If you have his email address, please inbox me.

 

Very grateful to Chris Ponting for answering all these questions and to Andy for organising.

Lots of interesting snippets, including this one: