Trial By Error: And Another Prebuttal…

Now there's a let down. I think they have cold feet.

 

That's alright. I'm sure CBT would cure it.

 

Evidence that they are trying to silence critics by spreading false information?

 

The is pretty strange. It sounds like this article might turn out to look like one investigative reporter investigating another investigative reporter. I wonder how other investigative reporters, and reporters at large, are going to feel about that.

Someone once said that it is the duty of journalism to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." If the comfortable don't feel a bit afflicted, you're probably doing it wrong.

This is why good journalists have always taken pride in giving a voice to the underdog. I guess I just find it hard to see how a warmly cocooned mutual admiration society like the BPS crowd could be taken as anything like the "underdog" in this situation.

 

But how can that be when their feet are in the fire

 

A good point. Maybe either David or another investigative reporter needs to investigate this other investigative reporter. They could ask them questions about who pays them and whether they are running a campaign or have a doctorate that makes them in a position to write about what they write about.

 

Well, in all fairness to those abusing this tactic: it works. Until it doesn't. And then it backfires spectacularly because of this nice, long public record that exposes the emperor's tiny... failure.

It's the cover-up that gets you. It's always the cover-up.

 

Excellent, thats an ace up our sleeve.

 

Wouldn’t it be nice if in fact a balanced article appears - but I rather think it is more likely no article will appear if the newspaper has suddenly realised they may have a problem with the suggested narrative....

 

@dave30th coud you ask them to time the appearance of the article so it coincides with your next crowd funding? It may help

 

Ha! Good point.

 

How about a third investigative reporter reporting on the second? We can call it Gategategate.

 

The internet contains all sorts of surprising revelations. Not about ME, of course.

 

They could always trying rebutting with sound scientific arguments, but for some strange reason they never seem to do that .

 

Sounds an awful lot like the editors weren't entirely comfortably with the objectivity of the piece, asked for a rewrite w/ room for a response and then said go back to the drawing board after having more time to think about it.

Who knows, maybe the editors actually looked just a little bit into any of the criticisms of PACE/EC papers and realized a hit job on Tuller's investigation of them wasn't sound.

 

Perhaps there was some recognition, from someone, somewhere along the line, that this was the case and the article needed to be delayed until it could be addressed. I guess I'm optimistic today.

 

Well, they have. It's just that every response is "we refuse the premise of this specific criticism and all criticism of our work is wrong" and that's the end of that. And somehow the editors all basically adopt the "don't ask me, I just work here and they say it's fine" approach, which is kinda weird since this is essentially the main part of the science editing job, to actually check the substance of the work, not just rubber-stamp it and defer all questions to the researchers as if the journals had no influence on any part of the process.

It seems to be one of those loopholes that isn't covered anywhere because no one thought someone could be so brazen as to just not care at all about the substance of criticism and just yell back "screw you, whiner" in response and basically make stuff up to discredit their critics. When it's a flaw in maths it's hard to just ride it through, but this is research that exists only by creating confusion and basically rests on a bunch of "may be"s and "could be"s so it's more like literary criticism than scientific review because the entire field is subjective and make-believe.

This works best in politics but there is always some weird place for success granted to people who can just bullshit with utmost confidence and simply refuse the premise of any criticism labeled at them, even when it's blatant and egregious. It takes a special kind of shamelessness and amorality but it can work for a long time. Until it backfires massively, of course.

 

The UK Editors Code from IPSO has a section on Harassment from Journalists. David is obviously not bound by this code. It only applies to magazines and newspapers in the UK and then only if their Editor has signed up to it.

It is useful as a guide to how a UK Journalist would be expected to act and may have some bearing on any possible claims that he is guilty of harrassment.

There is another section of the Editors Code on the Public Interest which over rides the Harrassment clause.

It is clear from reading this that David's work is in the Public Interest and so should be immune from charges of harrassment.

Under the Public Interest section it includes things like

Protecting public safety
Protecting the public from being misled
Raising or contributing to a matter of public debate...., unethical conduct,
Disclosing concealment of any of the above

 

I don't see those responses as sound science, which was my point.

 

Absolutely.

https://www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice/





I think Carol Monaghan's recent HoC debate is a strong indication that @dave30th's work can very definitely be demonstrated to be in the public interest.