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

... needs to be ...



Edit: Hmm, thought I'd posted a corrected link, but somehow the extra '/' creeps back in. So will have edit as above, as per @Lucibee's post.

Edit 2: Actually @Arnie Pye's post #561 is more helpful.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1107359256729268224

 

Knowing my wife for 30 years before her ME, and 11 years since, and of course the transition, I am absolutely certain her disability is not perpetuated by her beliefs, and never has been; quite the opposite in fact.

 

We have categories for such conditions and they are known as neurological and or neurodegenerative diseases. I understand that most logical people would not conclude they had a mental cause.

But why would anyone bring the word mental into the overall category labelling aspect. It just adds to the confusion and probably allows some level of double speak damage from certain psychologists or psychiatrists who would be more than willing to capitalise on such a concept.

As I said we have names for such conditions, we don't need to support the notion of a "mental illness but not mental cause" label.

A bad case of the flu can affect ones cognition and thinking but we wouldn't call the flu a "mental illness of non mental causation".

 

Somebody suggested archived versions be posted.

Here is the article in Danish:
http://archive.is/cAA29

Here is the Google translation:
http://archive.is/KVFJm

 

I tend to agree with this. I'm actually not a big fan of the ME Association's "It's real. It's physical. It's ME" slogan for those very reasons:

• We should not imply that a mental illness is in some way 'not real' (I know this is not the case but it can be misread as so by the juxtaposition of the first two sentences);
• We should not imply that our main concern is whether this is physical or not. Personally, I couldn't give a monkeys in the brain vs. blood debate, I'd just like somebody to demonstrate a pathology so that research can then focus on that. It's too easy to write off all complaints against PACE and similarly-flawed research as being patients not wanting to accept a brain-based cause.

The objection to trials that are based on the biopsychosocial model should never be, in and of itself, that they are underpinned by the wrong theory. It's that if said theory was actually correct, the results should have been so much more positive by now (demonstrate the patient's belief is false, get them moving, deconditioning falls away and hey presto) and much more in line with the successes of curing other phobias. And (more importantly), the testers' beliefs seem to have the unfortunate side effects of (a) not worrying about the potential for harm (how can you harm somebody suffering from little more than a false belief?) and (b) no need to worry about controlling for placebo effect, because when it comes to false belief placebo effect is a treatment in itself.

 

I cringe every-time I see that slogan. It's really not good.

 

is there a way to estimate the cost of publishing these articles, in these newspapers, as if they were an advertisement, rather than favour-for-mates propaganda ?

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1107401801438060545


from that usrtk.org article-

"Kelland’s bias in favor of the group is evident, as she appears in the SMC promotional video and the SMC promotional report, regularly attends SMC briefings, speaks at SMC workshops and attended meetings in India to discuss setting up an SMC office there"

 

I have contacted Monbiot, but I think I may have done before without getting a response. Just as I am puzzled by journalists not being bored with the Kelland approach I am puzzled that someone does not jump at exploring the wider ramifications of the story David has so far been telling on his own from a blogspot in New York (OK with Julie and one or two others but nobody on the regular outlets like BBC or Guardian). There is a 'Long Read' article sitting waiting to be written.

 

I get the impression that these are sort of establishment intellectual groupies. In this case science establishment groupies. The odd thing in this case is that the 'establishment position' they are supporting has been unanimously trashed in the House of Commons in a cross party debate.

 

I think the motivation is "The Science Media Centre have handed me this story and told me how to report it, which I am happy to do because; a) that's what I usually do; b) I want them to feed me more stories in future; and c) they might nominate me for an award if I do a good job."