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

I appreciate you sharing your perspective.

Stay counter-hegemonic, bro.

 

Am very slowly re-reading Harry Potter series- big, spaced out print, know story well enough to compensate for lack of memory, and novelty of all bits I have forgotten.

Can't think why Rita Skeeter and her Quick -Quotes Quill makes me think of this thread?...

Elphias Doge's remark on Skeeter's biography of Albus Dumbledore, "Skeeter's book contains less fact than a Chocolate Frog Card."

 

erm...so no one else thinks they are terribly written?

 

Stephen Fry elevates the poor writing (although they're not terrible; just not brilliant) to real entertainment. Reading the books is a relatively breezy but okay experience; listening to them read is fabulous.

I rather think it's the world JKR creates that captures the imagination most, anyway, rather than her prose. Tolkien is another one whose writing style is considered iffy (read: waffly and often dry), but again, it's the vast worlds people love.

Pratchett often surprises with the odd bit of exquisite prose that sneaks in among the puns and madness. Douglas Adams, at his best, was much the same, with perhaps slightly more of the lovely prose but usually a less elegant narrative (the Dirk Gently books are a bit all over the place until they get going).

Jeff Vandeermeer is an excellent stylist who creates wonderful and sometimes terrifying worlds, and he's thankfully still alive to write more. He wrote the book that became the Netflix film Annihilation with Natalie Portman in. I was very excited to include one of his weird short stories in the first literary journal I set up back in 2008. I always speak very fondly of his work because he's one of our best science fiction/fantasy writers, and a proper gentleman to boot.

 

New blog post from David Tuller: Trial By Error: My Follow-Up Letter to Reuters

Earlier this month, as I have reported, I sent a letter to the Reuters global editor for “ethics and standards” about my concerns relating to last month’s hit piece on ME/CFS patients and me. (I put those words in quotation marks because I have seen little in the reporting and publication of this piece that would meet any legitimate journalistic understanding of “ethics and standards.”) After reviewing the matter, Reuters agreed to add the fact that I hold a current academic position at one of the world’s great universities–a detail that Kate Kelland, the reporter, apparently felt was irrelevant and of no interest to readers.

Yet the story still describes me–falsely–as a “former reporter.” So on Friday, I sent a follow-up letter to Alix Freedman, the editor I’d contacted. As of this posting, the story continues to contain this untrue statement about my professional life.

 

I noticed a handful of glaring factual mistakes that a basic fact-check and minimal effort would have caught in editing. Being factual was not the point of this PR blitz, so I don't expect a correction until it becomes too embarrassing to leave it published, but that will take a while.

 

It's funny that KK also made a 'thing' of David not being a medical doctor.......
so what medical qualifications or for that matter, journalistic qualifications does she hold? (I can only find that she has a BA in Russian and German [on Linkedin]).

 

I don't understand the failure to correct simple errors, which could easily be put right. KK is presumably going to be writing another piece about Cochrane. She may already be being briefed about it, for all we know. Why would they want outstanding complaints to remain on the record when that comes out? Far better to have them expunged, and be starting with a "clean sheet",even if it means consuming a little humble pie. But I realise that I am out of touch with modern ways.

 

Articles about the death threats have not been retracted (or even corrected) despite the claims having been debunked, now reduced to some angry (though accurate) tweets that even Sharpe and Wessely walked back quickly, down to "people criticize our work in scientific journals and that's unacceptable".

Those claims were far too effective and extraordinary to admit they were blatant lies. A few weeks back I saw a random comment on Reddit that there had been assassination attempts against the PACE researchers. Making their accusations by implication and leaving the details (Wessely has to have his mail screeeeened!) to the reader's imagination has been incredibly effective.

There aren't rules about this, it's usually left to shame and accepting blame, no one enforces people to not lie in public, even make discriminatory insults. It's mostly self-policed when organisations value honesty above all, which is a rare thing. They are not repeating the old lies, but retracting them from past publications would open up more scrutiny than they expect to face in the future. Anyway, by that point their career would be finished so they have every incentive to walk nothing back unless forced to.

 

Presumably that would have been the occasion on which someone was found to be in possession of a small knife, for use in aiding the consumption of her packed lunch.

 

Ha! I think it mentioned a bomb. But memory hazy, I didn't bother replying as it was a pretty hostile thread to begin with.

 

Glaring errors are the norm for mainstream media...

It is just that we don't notice most of the time...
See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RIscpbQzhA

 

The article is used as a reference in a debate in Norway about patients with gender dysphoria. It's used as an excuse to not listen to another patient group either.

The healthcare system has long been terrorized by ME / CFS proponents to conceal that there is effective treatment for the condition (2). I realize that there are difficult professional and ethical choices related to complex illness and suffering, but should we not, as professionals, be able to stand morally upright in some cases to reject patients' expectations of diagnoses and dysfunctional self-interpretations? I think the answer must be "yes". The alternative is that the health service develops into a permissive repression apparatus in "the good of service".

Source is a reply in the debate:
Tidsskriftet for den norske legeforening - Kjønnsvariasjon, medisinsk behandling og vårt ansvar
google translation: The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association: Gender variation, medical treatment and our responsibility

It's not the first time these patient groups have been linked together as difficult and demanding. Here's another debate article from last year in a newspaper about medicine:

Dagens Medisin: Kjønnsdysfori - den nye ME?
google translation: Gender dysphoria - the new ME?

Based on my views above, I have long thought that the ME epidemic will eventually culminate and be replaced by another, socially contagious state.

ETA: Google translation made a mistake (who would have thought?) about why ME proponents have terrorised. The correct word is in order to conceal there is effective treatment.

 

"Based on my views above, I have long thought that the ME epidemic will eventually culminate and be replaced by another, socially contagious state."

This reminds me very much of the views of Elaine Showalter who had a very influential book published which claimed that ME was a fashionable way of dealing with the hysteria evoked by the end of the millennium. It was very well received. (She also claimed to be under threat from patients but when pressed could only give as evidence one incident when a patient said to her something like karma would give her what she deserved)

Sadly the millenium came and went and the only good thing that came out of it for ME patients was a silence from Ms Showalter.

SW (or friend) also made a big thing about ME being a fashionable disease spread by the internet rather than a virus.

 

So they don't care that there is zero substance to the claims? Being told "you're not doing your job properly" is not an excuse to continue not doing your job.

Do they have no self-respect? It's "concealed" in plain sight in international medical journals, clinical guidelines and literally the freaking status quo. All of it was bullied through in complete disregard for safety and reliable evidence, on which we had no success in countering despite having the facts on our side.

This is extremely bad faith.

 

Look at us, breaking causality and inventing an Internet disease before the Internet even existed.

We're basically like wizards, I guess.