United Kingdom: Science Media Centre (including Fiona Fox)

In the meetings, I said this too. At one point people were saying, "GET has evolved from the trials. We do it differently now." To which I pointed out, "So you're basically offering an unevidenced treatment, then?" The point sunk in and we moved on.

I'm glad @Adam pwme found the bit in the roundtable minutes where NICE confirmed the GL was signed off before the resignations. That's crucial info. It also states it was an iterative process, which is important.

Every page was written by consensus, so was, in effect, signed off as we went, then signed off in total as the draft, and signed off in total again as the final version.

And their response to Cochrane (all valid, but I didn't have time to tackle Cochrane as well as PACE in my review) is concise and incisive. We noted that they pooled all exercise interventions, and that some of them were more like pacing than GET, so the results were uninterpretable.

 

The very fact they could not see a blindingly obvious trap of their own making they were blundering into here, shows their blinkered ineptitude. And that these people of science could not perceive this until pointed out to them by a savvy lay member of the committee. So very glad there were people like you to call these people out.

I find it very interesting to see the way this kind of forum (i.e. the NICE guideline committee discussion environment) gave people no option but to rely on evidenced argument, rather than fact-twisting and ad hominem attacking of legitimate critics.

 

It does feel time. Sometimes there are points where people go so far over the line that they are trying to set new precedents about what is acceptable and what truth is. My gut says we need to be smart here, but that highlighting this - certainly from the perspective of history once those radicalised by the lockdown (am I the only one who has noticed this) have calmed from being a bit brainwashed into thinking they did it only for vulnerable people - can only reflect badly on those who wrote all of this stuff.

Once a group culminate in writing a whole chapter with Nazi inferences, you'd hope the ruse is up that it is 'in the best of intentions' or that 'they are just quiet nice people trying to do a hard day's work'.

And particularly their idea that 'patients are only taking offence because we are from psych and they must be anti-mental health'.

If we inform the SMC and have no response then we can assume that an organisation - whatever it wants to term its mission in its statement vs its minutes regarding strategy and 'setting narratives' - is behind writing and publicising this. And the usual suspects are intricately involved with what is written and the organisation so should be firmly tied to it.

I think with a properly taking it seriously and realising it has to be done right approach (and gaming out all of the sophist retorts of victimhood), that this is the one.

 

It's spot on. I hope it felt as good writing it as it did reading it

 

Is John Grisham still doing novels?

 

I'll probably do the same (not that I think anyone I know would actually follow-through, but one can but hope)

@adambeyoncelowe is there already a copy on here? just thinking for posterity in case it disappears down the reviews or anything dodgy happens..

 

Here's my thread on the chapter.

It includes some videos, screenshots and references highlighting some of the main inaccuracies.

https://twitter-thread.com/t/1534218102291976193

 

Thank you, another excellent resource.

We do need a good book or documentary pulling all this information together and making it more generally accessible.

 

wow, a huge amount of work. thanks.

 

Ingenious of Sharpe to respond to Carol Monaghan by saying that he couldn't respond.

 

Excellent Sly Saint, thanks so much for all your work and sharing this.

 

This quote from Andrew Gelman's blog reminded me of this whole episode with Fiona Fox and her comparison of ME activists to Nazis:

"Science is kind of like . . . someone poops on the carpet when nobody’s looking, some other people smell the poop and point out the problem, but the owners of the carpet insists that nothing has happened at all and refuses to allow anyone to come and clean up the mess. Sometimes they start shouting at the people who smelled the poop and call them terrorists. Meanwhile, other scientists carefully walk around that portion of the carpet: they smell something but they don’t want to look at it too closely."

Source: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia....h-time-talking-about-cheaters-and-fraudsters/ ​

 

don't thank me, it was all @Adam pwme work

 

I hope it has the same effect as last time:

 

Can't find the quoted passage but in the book at some point Fox claims that the PACE follow-up papers were not publicized at the demand of the researchers, or something like that, because of all the harassment. Nothing to do with null results, of course.

In the end, the disclaimer in the book about how none of this is factual, merely her recollection, is going to do a lot of work.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1534559247178113026

 

"I have had many moments of despair on this issue over the years, but one I particularly remember was when we learnt that a scientist who had authored an update on PACE had asked the Lancet media team not to publicise the findings because of the potential backlash. Not wanting to do media interviews is one thing. Actively suggesting that new research findings are not put into the public domain because of fear is another. Surely anyone who believes in the scientific endeavour can see that this situation is untenable."