Special Report - Online activists are silencing us, scientists say Reuters March 2019

@dave30th quoted the email that Michael Sharpe sent to the editors of STAT News to get them to retract @julierehmeyer (is she not a member here?)'s 2016 piece detailing the problems with the PACE study.

If I remember correctly, it was Peter White who contacted University of Manchester to complain about Keith Geraghty (I was sure he was a member but the autofill isn't showing up various iterations of his name that I've tried) but don't have the link at hand.

 

Yes, that was my memory too. So Sharpe's reply doesn't contradict that information as complaining to editors about an article would generally not be seen as being the same as complaining to a researchers institution.

 

But he did try to get STAT to retract Julie Rehmeyer's paper.

 

Says also, the man who (allegedly) lodged complaints with the employer / host University of an academic, who dared to criticise the PACE trial.
Says also, the man who (allegedly) asserts that it is a conflict of interest to suffer from the same illness that you're researching.

https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Intimidation_and_bullying_of_PACE_trial_critics#Keith_Geraghty

 

In The Times too:



simon wessely
Daily update ⋅ Trolls force Oxford expert to stop research into ME
The Times
Sir Simon Wessely, of King's College London, said that he had also stopped researching CFS treatment after “relentless internet stalking”. One tweet ...

 

It's looking like another orchestrated propaganda campaign like 8 years ago as documented here:

https://www.s4me.info/threads/the-harassment-campaign-references.661/

One thing that disgusts me is that some people involved in this know how badly this affects some patients.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1105931501110288389


https://twitter.com/user/status/1105937828184289281

 

I would love to see it retracted, is there an ethics board we can appeal to?

 

One has to wonder what is the duty of disclosure of a supposedly serious news outlet. One sometimes sees reports in which it is stated that the report is produced in conjunction with others and providing reference to further extrinsic material. That seems absolutely legitimate. In this case there seem to be only two possibilities. Either the report was produced to coincide with publication of the Sharpe et al correspondence, in which case readers should have been informed. Or it wasn't, in which case there should be a caveat printed explaining the unfortunate co-incidence.

There must also be some contractual duty to those outlets which have, presumably in good faith, produced syndicated copies of the article. Were they all made fully aware of the circumstances and that they might be made to appear to be part of an orchestrated campaign?

 

I was wondering if it would be worth lodging a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation, this is the new regulatory body that replaced the Press Complaints Commission in 2014. However, apparently they only regulate press organisations that are members, and, inconveniently, I don't see Reuters listed. I'm just noting this in case anyone else had the same thought.

I've no idea what the complaints procedure is for Reuters then, if there is any external regulator we can appeal to or an internal process only.

 

Sigh.

Can anyone who's a Times subscriber tell me if there's anything new in this piece? And are they allowing comments?

 

I didn't read the original article but this version seems very short. And comments are accepted, subject to moderation. Free sign up to the Times allows 2 articles a week to be viewed and comments to be left.

 

I wrote an email complaint about the last awful Reuters article Kate Kelland wrote, (the Cochrane one), citing that it betrayed their own Trust Principles and received no acknowledgement whatsoever.

https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/about-us/trust-principles.html

 

www.customercare.org/thomson-reuters-complaints

This link seems to suggest that they recognise a problem in dealing with initial complaints and have in place a mechanism for dealing with it. Whether it works is another matter.

 

Perhaps it would be a good idea to encourage jounalists/editors to watch Voices from the Shadows.