The obesity wars and the education of a researcher: A personal account, 2021, Flegal

Arnie Pye

Arnie Pye

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
This paper/article appeared in the journal "Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases".

It isn't related to ME but so much of what is described reminds me of some of the experiences of writers and researchers on the subject of ME - people like David Tuller ( @dave30th ) and Keith Geraghty ( sorry, couldn't remember or find his member name).

Title : The obesity wars and the education of a researcher: A personal account

Author : Katherine M. Flegel

Link : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033062021000670

Attacks on our paper continued and appeared in some unexpected places. A 2007 story appeared in Scientific American21 by a leading health journalist who had never even contacted the CDC press office or spoken to me but nonetheless asserted that our conclusions were “probably wrong,” quoting two PSPH faculty at length. “It's complete nonsense, and it's obviously complete nonsense, and it's very easy to explain why some people have gone astray,” said one.

In the same year, a post-doc at PSPH posted the following on a blog: “Numbers from Flegal's paper had been subsequently RETRACTED [sic] by the CDC, and she has subsequently been demoted at the CDC for writing the erroneous paper.” Every single one of these statements was false. CDC had not retracted our findings, and I had not been demoted. In fact, our paper had received CDC's highest science award, the Shepard award, in 2006. After I called the post-doc to point out his errors, he apologized and deleted the post. He was unable or unwilling to tell me where he had gotten his misinformation, although he assured me it was not from anyone at PSPH.

A 2007 article22 from a different PSPH group claimed falsely that CDC had “recanted” our 2005 article. I was impressed that this unreferenced statement could have been written to begin with and then could get through reviewers, editors and copy editors without anyone asking for clarification or evidence. At our request and after some negotiations, the authors reluctantly published an erratum23.

Around the same time, some unusual statements were anonymously inserted in the Wikipedia entry on “overweight.” These statements asserted with no references that our article had been “widely discredited and regarded as fatally flawed by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, American Cancer Society, and even the CDC agency itself, which has backtracked on the findings from the Flegal report.” This was part of what appeared to be an ongoing campaign to present our article incorrectly as having been repudiated by reputable sources.
Click to expand...

I also liked this sentence :

It took me far too long to understand that our findings were being treated by some as a partisan issue rather than as a topic of scientific discussion.
Click to expand...

and I wondered if the reactions to ME/CFS research could be described as a partisan issue as well? But it might not fit.
 
I remember that at the time Flegal's paper was published. The criticism was astonishing. I've since realised that a false narrative for obesity is promoted in the same way as that for ME. There is no doubt in my mind that they are similar. I can see a political motivation for it (neoliberalism), but I have no idea how it happens, i.e. how scientists and clinicians get involved in promoting these false narratives at the expense of their integrity and professionalism.
 
I think this paper is very important because it shows that using dirty tactics to talk down criticism exists and is used in research that is not ME related to shore up professional careers.

We are mocked for seeing conspiracies and not being willing to accept any research that does not support our beliefs. When we try to explain the truth to, say, Hilda Bastien, it easily sounds as if we are just paranoid but the experience of these researchers shows it happens.
 
I don't know anything about this issue, but just reading the paper, I was struck how Sharpe, White and Wesseley could read it and identify with Kathy Flegel, and claim that exactly the same thing had happened to them. All the things that were said about Flegel's paper are things that we have said about the PACE trial, and Flegel says
It became clear that one of the things that critics found disturbing was that what they called the “lay media” or the “popular press” (which apparently extended to the New York Times, Scientific American and even Nature, a leading scientific journal) had reported on our findings as though they were worthy of serious discussion. One of the effects of the public insults may also have been to deter or intimidate other investigators.
Click to expand...
This is exactly what the BPS brigade say.

Like I said, I know nothing about this issue and have no reason not to accept Flegel's paper at face value. But it strikes me that anyone, including her opponents and ours, could say exactly the same thing and believe that it applies to them. It wouldn't surprise me to see Sharpe or White tweeting it as an example of what they have suffered.
 
That is because they use the tactics of bullies or the abusive husband by painting themselves victims and accusing others of what they are doing.

The thing that shows they are wrong and that Flegel and us are right is that science debates the issues and differences. There are big differences of opinion in cosmology for instance but the people involved give reasons for their opinions and an outsider can consider the data and decide where they stand.

Science is not decided on twitter or in sound bites but that is all we get from the BPS.
 
TiredSam said:
I don't know anything about this issue, but just reading the paper, I was struck how Sharpe, White and Wesseley could read it and identify with Kathy Flegel, and claim that exactly the same thing had happened to them. All the things that were said about Flegel's paper are things that we have said about the PACE trial, and Flegel says

This is exactly what the BPS brigade say.

Like I said, I know nothing about this issue and have no reason not to accept Flegel's paper at face value. But it strikes me that anyone, including her opponents and ours, could say exactly the same thing and believe that it applies to them. It wouldn't surprise me to see Sharpe or White tweeting it as an example of what they have suffered.
Click to expand...

Trying to think how they could identify with the quote from a student who was told that Flegel couldn't be taken seriously on obesity because she was a little plump herself.
 
Well they complained that Keith Geraghty's paper was suspect because he had ME. Completely ignoring the fact that someone with the disease could be said to be less ideologically biased towards any particular approach because all they would want is a proper treatment that works.
 
Mithriel said:
Well they complained that Keith Geraghty's paper was suspect because he had ME. Completely ignoring the fact that someone with the disease could be said to be less ideologically biased towards any particular approach because all they would want is a proper treatment that works.
Click to expand...

That's true!

Also I remember a comment a while back to say that a piece of research should be discounted because it was paid for by one of the ME Charities

(can't remember though who said that and what the research was - although brain setting me off in the direction of it being blood circulation or POTS related?)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom