Sense about Science: Join our talks on science, scepticism and free speech (Garner et al)

It's easier to claim to be a victim of the close-minded that want to suppress your innovative ideas, than to admit your ideas are the same old shallow prejudice without merit.

With these people it's always about their ego, and never about the needs of patients. And that's also why they are totally unable to create anything useful for us patients.

 

also along with Munira Mirza, who was director of the No. 10 policy unit at the time when Boris Johnson was scrawling 'bollocks' and 'Gulf War Syndrome' on a briefing about Long Covid.

 

Somehow reminds me of this weird tweet I saw yesterday, which I'm not sure is satire but it's definitely believable, about how people who know the clitoris is not real are oppressed and have their rights trampled on. By Big Clit, I guess. Of course they blame feminism for this.

Like you say, this stuff is exactly the same kind of weird language you see from people who hold fringe conspiracy BS opinions that lack evidence, even in this case when it's the completely dominant model. The Oslo letter talks about a different understanding of the illness, which is literally us, since their opinion is the dominant one, but they're claiming to be oppressed even while they have their way completely, which is basically what defines reactionaries. I've even seen this stuff in the context of fossil fuels, like they're the small guys not given a fair chance.

Basically this, except instead of the opinion column being cut, it's constantly over-hyped:

 

Indeed! (See also: Elon Musk.)

When I saw Stockton Rush proudly show off his partially DIY built, one-button resurfacing, game controller-steered deep sea can, I was so strongly reminded of how some psychiatrist approach(ed) medical illness: simplistic, wrong and completely unsuitable, but utterly covinced that their kindergarten approach was visionary genius.

(These types really thought/think physicians are shortsighted and wrong when they treat illness biomedically; they think they work from "a flawed premise, that the biomedical model is an adequate scientific model for medical research and practice" and that they should accept the visionary genius view of the "truth" that all medical illness is for a large part psychiatric at its core, and that psychiatry has a key role to play in treating it. I wrote earlier on this here.)

 

Not so much "doing good" as "being right".

 

From: Anika Abedin
Date: Wed 17 Apr 2024 at 09:43
Subject: Hear from Paul Garner on How We Learned to Question Medicine






Dear friend,

Join Sense about Science Trustee Paul Garner for the second Science, Scepticism and Free Speech lecture. In How We Learned to Question Medicine, Paul will advocate for “scepticaemia”- a critical approach to ideas and data - and talk about the challenge of ‘belief mis-representation bias’ in research.

Professor Garner, former coordinator of the Centre for Evidence Synthesis in Global Health, will share examples of how insisting on robust evidence and research has led both to scientific breakthroughs and the exposure of malpractice. The lecture will take place at the Art Workers’ Guild (6 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AT) at 7.30pm on Wednesday 24 April, followed by a Q&A session.

Book your place


If you can’t attend in person, we will send you a Zoom link to join online, free of charge, shortly before the event.

The first lecture, What is Science and Why should we care by Professor Alan Sokal, is now available to watch on YouTube.

Best wishes,

Anika Abedin

Projects and Events Officer
Sense about Science

 

This lecture has been made publically avaliable by now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qMpaAEPdRQ

I'm unable to watch it myself, but I would be interested whether he brings up any new criticisms of the new NICE ME/CFS guidelines that had not yet been adressed in the rebuttal by Barry, Finlay et al. directed to White et al.

Also, what's with the comment by George Davey Smith? Did he at any point issue his own criticism of the new NICE guidelines, or is this just him still being butthurt over cutting his teeth on criticism of the PACE trial many moons ago? That said, for all I know, he might be referring to something entirely unrelated.

 

On Twitter Paul Garner has written multiple different posts quoting this video. They state

"We have fabulous methods for preparing evidence based guidelines, but we need to take conflicts of interest and ideology into account. NICE ME/CFS Guidance are a parody of these approaches #mecfs #nicecoms"

"we need patients and doctors to open up the contribution of psychophysiological mechanisms in #longcovid. Ideology is biasing research against approaches that may help"

"NICE ME/CFS Guidance is a failure of patient involvement. They remove hope and the possibility of recovery, and as such is harmful to public health. Patients are denied access to evidence-based treatments."

www.twitter.com/PaulGarnerWoof/status/1785614317909311943
www.twitter.com/PaulGarnerWoof/status/1785615675186143451
www.twitter.com/PaulGarnerWoof/status/1785614170177573078

For my own sanity, I quickly looked at the conflict of interest statement in Anomalies in the review process and interpretation of the evidence in the NICE guideline for (CFS & ME), 2023, White et al

 

It's always projection with these people.

Just absurd level of projection and complete lack of self-awareness.

 

Can you direct me to the transcript?

 

Those quotes you posted are so ridiculous I actually laughed.

This kind of nonsense is the preserve of the desperate-for-attention, and I'm not going to reward him with mine.

 

It is quite bizarre to listen to him:

Oh these dreadful people with ideologies about little green men under the bed. Rigorous science, in the form of me peeping in the night, proves that they are little red women after all...

And so on.

I think he has lost it completely.