United Kingdom: Science Media Centre (including Fiona Fox)

What one generation learns another forgets
I wonder if this phenomenon has a name

 

I think the point was, the BPSers control a lot of the high impact journals. They would block any counter-narrative quick smart. Do people remember that awfully biased rejection this group got when they tried to submit to the BMJ? Similar article, I think. The reviewer banging on about how he didn't believe that any of the authors were genuine patients because he hadn't diagnosed them personally.

 

I think you've misunderstood how it works. If you don't take something you haven't been exposed to the water's memory of the active ingredient. Pay attention Sam!

 

Yes. Vaccines are popular. Childhood vaccination rates continue to reach new highs across virtually all of the world, English speaking countries included and the impact of the now-disproven Wakefield scare only occurred in the UK with a dip in MMR vaccination rates that completely reversed in just a few years. Vaccination rates in other countries were barely affected.

Claims like anti-vaxxers are having a meaningful impact on national vaccination rates in this decade are easily disprovable.

 

[My bold]

Erm ... yes it would:

1. If one group were being prescribed pills that said on the box "these pills are similar to what you have always been taking", whilst another group were taking pills which said on the box "these are the wizzy new treatment we are trialling", then expectation bias will inevitably manifest itself into the self reporting of how people feel about their illness.
2. Additionally, and very different to and distinct from '1', if the wizzy new treatment is explicitly designed to change how people feel about their illness, then a "treatment induced perception bias" will feed through into the self reporting of how people feel about their illness.

Self reports are all about how people feel about their illness, not how it actually is.

They seem to miss the point about unblinding, as if unblinding inflates everything? Unblinding can both inflate and deflate.

 

Sorry. I've never really been able to understand how homeopathy works. Guess I'm just not clever enough

 

That is explicitly what psychiatrists care about - how patients feel about the illness. Central to the psychiatrist mindset is if patients say they feel better and don't complain to medical doctors etc, then this means they have done their job.

 

It occurs to me that the SMC is a registered charity and is therefore accountable to the Charity Commission.

https://www.gov.uk/complain-about-charity:

I think one could make a case that the SMC is “not doing what it claims to do” and “harming people”.

Does anyone know if a complaint has ever been submitted to the CC? @dave30th @JohnTheJack

 

Don't forget personal profit or gain.

Simon had a lot to gain from those press briefings.

 

You clearly need to study the science a bit more .

 

Exactly. Which is why these sort of psychiatrists should never be let anywhere near patients who need objectivity from their ... Oh, wait a minute ... I think I should have stopped after 'patients'.

 

Isn't that a rather odd setup? The notion that most of the BBC's science reporting is vectored through a charity? I can't quite put my finger on it at the moment, but it feels not quite right. Conflicts of interests and all that. Are there any other examples in the UK of news being channelled through a charity? Are charities really allowed to do that?

 

from 2013
UK taxpayers unwittingly subsidise Science Media Centre with £370k per year to manipulate the science agenda
" It hires friendly "experts" to give carefully manufactured "expert comments" to the press, and it pretends to represent a "scientific consensus" even where no such a thing exists. It depends, for its continued success, on a pliant and uncritical media in which there are hardly any good investigative science journalists left, and in which science editors prefer to receive ready-made stories which can be regurgitated. Many of its press briefings are essentially private affairs, to which only trusted journalists are invited."

http://gmwatch.org/en/news/archive/...science-media-centre-to-tune-of-370k-per-year

 

Very interesting indeed. The SMC's shenanigans seem not to be confined to ME at all - they seem to be undermining good science on an industrial scale! What is it that actually drives them? Greed? Politics? Etc? They seem to be a scandal worth exposing all in their own right. I wonder how many other branches of science they have p*ssed off?

 

@Sly Saint 's post here ...

https://www.s4me.info/threads/scien...ss-and-the-controversy.3104/page-6#post-56250

... makes me realise the SMC's dodgy science collation is by no means confined to just ME issues, and there might well be a lot of other science sectors in the same boat with them.

So please keep this thread on track, and post links, with relevant chat if on track, of any reports you come across about the SMC's unwarranted influence on science reporting and debate. Like I say, not confined to ME ... any science, any unwarranted influence.

 

From 2014:

https://www.scidev.net/global/journ...-lambasted-for-pushing-corporate-science.html

Plus lots more. It's a good read.

 

I've started a thread here ...

https://www.s4me.info/threads/issue...ce-media-centre-smc-not-just-me-related.3159/

... for collating issues (ME or other) people discover relating to the SMC.

 

Corrected.

When I looked through all the forum headings, this was the only one I could see that it seemed to fit in. Suggested alternative welcomed. Or maybe we need another public forum? Moderators please move if appropriate.

 

People involved in SMC have a track record of odd political affiliations and strange angles on things like GM, global warming, tobacco, animal rights etc etc. Dr Paul has some inside knowledge of the community involved and seemed to think that in most cases it did not matter too much but that the bias relating to ME was a real problem.