The Guardian's Science Weekly podcast - 2 November 2018 - What role should the public play in science?

I agree with @Esther12. Th Mail seems to get things right remarkably often, even if it has 60 pages of getting things wrong every day. And the Guardian commits the additional crime of hypocrisy. The Mail makes no bones about being the paper for the voyeuristic I'm all right Jack. The Grauniad claims to be saving the planet single handed.
 
Sly Saint said:
here is the full transcript:
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A new section has been added to the Guardian's old podcast on Cochrane ( https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2018/nov/02/what-role-should-the-public-play-in-science-science-weekly-podcast ),
woman's voice: The Guardian

man's voice: Hi. I'm Ian Sample and before you listen to this episode from early November 2018, which asks 'what role should the public play in science?', I wanted to let you know that since we aired the episode, we have received a number of complaints from listeners. We value this feedback and wanted to add this introduction to the episode to address those complaints and give new listeners some context.
The aim of the podcast was to look at the relationship between science and the public. In recent times scientists and medical researchers have found themselves under increasing pressure from activists and members of the public, meaning that some researchers have chosen to avoid certain areas of study. In this episode we used chronic fatigue syndrome, sometimes called CFS/ME, as an example of this broader theme because it's an area where this has, historically, been known to happen. It was not the intention of the podcast to focus solely on CFS, but we have heard from listeners who feel strongly that CFS was singled out, in particular by the inclusion of two authors of a controversial study called PACE, which looked at the effectiveness of certain treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome. Their inclusion aimed to show the personal perspective of scientists who have received criticism of their work by the public and fellow scientists, but some listeners felt that, as a result, the podcast became one-sided and mischaracterised all complaints against research into CFS as extreme and misguided.
To give you a bit more background before you listen: in the podcast we talk about a paper on CFS interventions that appeared in the prestigious Cochrane database of systematic reviews. It was later temporarily removed after a complaint from the public. This was our starting point when looking at the role of public pressure when it comes to science and when we made the podcast we didn't know the exact nature of the complaints or who had made them. We asked, but we weren't told.
Since our show, the details of the complaint have been made public and they show that it was based in science. As a result the paper has been revised. According to a note on Cochrane's website dated June 2019, the revised version is with the editors and they expect to publish it in the next two months.
You can find the details of the paper and the complaint in this episode's description at theguardian.com.
Thank you, as always, for listening and for writing to us.
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This was our starting point when looking at the role of public pressure when it comes to science and when we made the podcast we didn't know the exact nature of the complaints or who had made them. We asked, but we weren't told.
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And you didn't think to follow up on that and find out why, without being prompted by others to do so? Really?

Where is the famed journalistic skepticism of those in authority? Where is the urge to seek the truth, to hear all sides of the story, and hold abuse by the powerful to account?

The Guardian don't seem to quite grasp that there is one hell of story to be told here. Just not the one they have been mindlessly regurgitating thus far.

That said, I appreciate that they did listen to the feedback and acknowledged their lapse in due diligence. It's a start, and might just open some eyes at the Guardian.

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Pro tip for all journos & editors in the UK: If you assume that, until proven otherwise, any statement about ME/CFS/MUS/etc coming from (the UK branch of) the SMC is actually the opposite of the truth, you will rarely go far wrong.

Best just to remove the SMC from your contact list, IMHO. Save yourselves a lot of bother and grief.
 
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Whilst it is better than nothing it is still pretty meaningless. Nobody is going back and listening to old episodes, they should have done the required investigative journalism before hand instead of almost a year later after several complaints.
 
I'm impressed by how much they've managed to fudge that correction.

They've used dozens of words to reiterate the same old bollocks about how ME/CFS activists are pressuring researchers out of their jobs, and then when they get to the meat of the complaint, all they can manage is shoving in "Since our show, the details of the complaint have been made public and they show that it was based in science" at the very end???

Lol. What is that even going to mean to the average listener? They've managed to avoid every kind of word like "valid", or "correct", or "reasonable". Shameful, mealy-mouthed nonsense.
 
sb4 said:
Whilst it is better than nothing it is still pretty meaningless. Nobody is going back and listening to old episodes, they should have done the required investigative journalism before hand instead of almost a year later after several complaints.
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I agree but maybe there is a tiny sliver of hope that they might question what they are spoon-fed by the SMC et al next time. Given the author of the podcast is the science editor, they can't claim they didn't know there had been problems before.

I think this is also a glimmer of light in that they have had to admit that their premise of patient pressure was wrong - which might be a first.
 
I don't see it as a glimmer of light, particularly as it comes just after the latest article with the Guardian promoting Sharpe's bigoted view of his critics. It looks like more spin to try to evade responsibility for the fact that their podcast was indefensible BS.

feeb said:
I'm impressed by how much they've managed to fudge that correction.

They've used dozens of words to reiterate the same old bollocks about how ME/CFS activists are pressuring researchers out of their jobs, and then when they get to the meat of the complaint, all they can manage is shoving in "Since our show, the details of the complaint have been made public and they show that it was based in science" at the very end???

Lol. What is that even going to mean to the average listener? They've managed to avoid every kind of word like "valid", or "correct", or "reasonable". Shameful, mealy-mouthed nonsense.
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I think this is the key point - they've completely evaded the fact that the appalling 'pressure' these scientists faced was having members of the public point out that the evidence they presented did not support the claims they were making.

Who thinks that the problem was just their selection of guests, rather than the BS and prejudice they promoted?

This non-correction non-apology is just further evidence of how appalling and uninterested in the truth Ian Sample and the Guardian is.
 
sb4 said:
Whilst it is better than nothing it is still pretty meaningless. Nobody is going back and listening to old episodes, they should have done the required investigative journalism before hand instead of almost a year later after several complaints.
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Or at the very least, apologise for screwing up!

As others have pointed out, many problems with the review were clearly detailed in the comments section of the review. It's not like they were top secret.

This was our starting point when looking at the role of public pressure when it comes to science and when we made the podcast we didn't know the exact nature of the complaints or who had made them. We asked, but we weren't told.
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Did you read the review to see if you could find any problems with it? Wouldn't that have been a good 'starting point'?
 
It was later temporarily removed after a complaint from the public. This was our starting point
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The Cochrane review was never removed.
when looking at the role of public pressure when it comes to science and when we made the podcast we didn't know the exact nature of the complaints or who had made them. We asked, but we weren't told.
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If you don't know the nature of the complaint than perhaps you shouldn't do a podcast accusing Cochrane and the ME/CFS patients community of damaging the integrity of science.

I also doubt that they couldn't figure out the nature of the issues involved here. The podcast was published on 2 November 2018. And I think James Coyne had published a blog post on Robert Courtney's complaint to Cochrane on 21 Oktober 2018 - The blog post is no longer available it seems, but here is a tweet about it:
Tom Kindlon and Robert Courtney had pointed out the major issues with the Cochrane review in the comments section, which was published in the same document as the review itself. So any journalist reading the review should have been aware of the issues raised there. And a couple of days before the Reuters article, Vink had published his detailed critique of the Cochrane review of GET. That should have been enough information for a journalist to understand that there was valid scientific criticism on the Cochrane review. Also: if they really contacted Cochrane and asked what was going on, then they would probably have been given the same answer as Kelland, that this is not about patient pressure. So why then do a podcast on patients pressure overruling science?

The only information Cochrane had given about its review was a note on 25/10/2018:

"Addition of new published note 'This review is subject to an ongoing process of review and revision following the submission of a formal complaint to the Editor in Chief. Cochrane considers all feedback and complaints carefully, and revises or updates reviews when it is appropriate. The review author team have advised us that a resubmission of this review is imminent. A decision on the status of this review will be made once this resubmission has been through editorial process, which we anticipate will be towards the end of November 2018'." ​

It didn't speak of withdrawal of the review nor about pressure from patient activists, but about a formal complaint, an ongoing process of review and a pending resubmission. So the whole argument that they could not have known at the time that the criticism of the review was valid, is not very persuasive. They based their whole podcast on a misleading Reuters story, while there was ample evidence to the contrary.

An interesting question is: since the podcast was published on 2 November 2018, why did they issue a correction, approximately 9 months later? David Tuller wrote about Robert Courtney's complaint and how it was vindicated by Cochrane, back in March. So why did it take so long to issue a correction and what has eventually prompted them to do so? Did they become aware of the internal emails of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health or was it because of the complaints about the recent article in the Observer where Sharpe's word was presented as the truth?
 
chrisb said:
Didn't we have an admission recently that scientists do not think it necessary to read a paper. The abstract is quite sufficient. A brief summary is no doubt equally valid.
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Quite some time back there was something regarding development of the current 2007 CFS/ME NICE guidelines, where it was acknowledged that only the abstracts of papers were read when researching.
 
Michiel Tack said:
An interesting question is: since the podcast was published on 2 November 2018, why did they issue a correction, approximately 9 months later? David Tuller wrote about Robert Courtney's complaint and how it was vindicated by Cochrane, back in March. So why did it take so long to issue a correction and what has eventually prompted them to do so? Did they become aware of the internal emails of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health or was it because of the complaints about the recent article in the Observer where Sharpe's word was presented as the truth?
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They did issue an update in April, but the addition of the extra point was only made yesterday:
Since publishing, the complainant has been named by Cochrane. And the details of the complaints have been made publicly available. Read them here.
Updated: 07/08/19.
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All of this information was available when they published their first update. It's taken them 4 months to correct that. How they can call themselves a news organisation, I do not know!
 
Michiel Tack said:
Does anyone have a version of Coyne's blog post about Robert Courtney's complaint and what information was given in it? I can't seem to find it. Coyne's tweet suggest it was published 21 Oktober so well before the Podcast was aired.
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Doesn't seem to be available online. The Wayback Machine/Internet Archive doesn't have it saved, so it doesn't look available unless someone saved the text off-line. It was discussed fairly briefly here, https://www.s4me.info/threads/james...e-cochrane-review-of-exercise-withdrawn.6272/
 
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