United Kingdom: Science Media Centre (including Fiona Fox)

This from 2017. It is a thorough investigation into the SMC, it's background and operation with a focus on examples of its bias. Includes some interesting quotes and links to other pieces.


"Does Science Media Centre Promote Corporate Views of Science?"
By Stacy Malkan in US RTK

https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/science-media-centre/

 

Thanks, that seems quite comprehensive.

Of course we are all aware of corporate corruption. The interest in the SMC is the apparent hypocrisy - the claim of being pro bono public when in fact the opposite be true.

With the current UK and US governments there seems to be no reason to think anyone in government would care about such hypocrisy. They make no claim to be guardians of the public good. And the alternative seems to be steeped in hypocrisy - as in Tony Blair taking a ride in Bernie Ecclestone's car.

I have put it in the notebook.

 

I have just read this quote from the article :

My perception of current news :

I remember years ago (in the 1990s and before?) that Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth would often be quoted in articles or would appear in interviews on the news. But they appear to have vanished off the face of the earth, based on the news programs I see on British TV and what I read in British newspapers on or offline nowadays. The same is true of Amnesty International - another group that would be mentioned quite often in years gone by, who now are almost never mentioned.

 

I agree with you @Barry. My post was just to show that his name appears as one of the original members of the Scientific Advisory Board for SMC, I did not intend for anyone to read anything else into it.

 

One such quote from Prof Malcolm Hooper:

“Discrediting Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

A 2013 paper by Malcolm Hooper, Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Sunderland, UK, reported evidence that SMC promoted the views of certain psychiatrists while ignoring other evidence that contradicted the psychiatrists’ theory, in an effort to discredit people with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

“For those not blinded by the SMC’s dazzling aura, it appears that its covert purpose is to ensure that journalists and the media report scientific and medical matters only in a way that conforms to government and industry’s ‘policy’ on the issues in question.”

“An organisation which behaves in such a blatantly unscientific way can have no legitimate claim to represent science.” “

 

It would be great for the SMC to get investigated regarding this in due course. But if, as many of us have suspected along the way, the SMC has indeed be covertly nurtured by forces aligned with government/industry ambitions, there will be equally strong forces lining up to prevent that.

 

http://www.meresearch.org.uk/news/forward-me-group-letter-science-media-group/

 

It will be interesting to see the response that gets. The SMC have such a long record of being appalling.

 

I cannot help wondering if there is a law being broken, by issuing something clearly labelled a "Factsheet", when it clearly includes factually incorrect and misleading information, that the authors cannot have been unaware of at the time of writing it.

 

I realised that this bit is actually correct:

CFS/ME is highly controversial with longstanding disagreements between the mainstream medical community and campaigners about its cause and treatment.

Note that the campaigners are the BPS crowd.

 

Yes, it's funny how BPS in practise means psychological therapy. The external social/societal issues that hold disabled people back are rarely if ever challenged, even though that is a central pillar of BPS...

 

They may well have had the hack job done on them by now wherby such groups get infiltrated divided to rule and then either disbanded or fall under complete controlled opposition.

That tactic has happened since the beginning of time and is still flourishing now.

 

It dosn' t mean they are not active. Look at how media reporting is dealing with Brexit- there have been many public demonstrations in the past few months - not seen much in the mainstream media about them though....

 

From what I can see on Wikipedia I have a suspicion that organisations like Greenpeace may have morphed rather in the way that the Revolutionary Communist Party and SMC have morphed. The original people started going off in weird directions. That may of course be spin but I am not sure. It may be less infiltration with subversives and more infiltration with the usual phoneys. Plus ça change...

 

? I didn't know that Groves was a part of that group. Where did you hear that?

 

Am I mixing her up with someone else, I was pretty sure it had been discussed here numerous times?

 

Fiona Fox? Tracey Brown? I don't remember seeing Trish Groves mentioned as being a part of that group.

 

Ah I think its my mistake then.

Ive deleted the original post.

 

who advertises via science media centre wouldn't be the insurance industry by any chance wh o else has the most to gain by abusing the chronically ill .