United Kingdom: Science Media Centre (including Fiona Fox)

Government, particularly the uk government has targeted the chronically ill especially in the last few years.

 

My letter to the Science Media Centre about BMJ Study

I have sent the following e-mail to Edward Sykes, the head of mental health and neuroscience at the Science Media Centre. The e-mail concerns the Lightning Process study published last year in Archives of Disease in Childhood. The SMC promoted the findings, which received widespread media coverage.

 

The SMC do not have a very good history with such correspondence unfortunately.
http://www.virology.ws/2017/12/18/trial-by-error-my-questions-for-the-science-media-centre/

 

Best line

 

I'm starting to feel dizzy trying to take in all these letters!

 

They must be circulars

 

Anyone know what was changed on this page between publication on March 22nd and...:

"This review was edited on 23rd April 2018."

http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/reanalysis-of-the-pace-trial/

 

It looks substantially different. It's not anywhere near as biased or outwardly hostile as it was the first time around. Presumably, they realised that they came across as corrupt and with vested interests?

 

How odd - that's never made them edit anything before.

 

was this there before?
"The authors have made little attempt to uncover the reasons for protocol deviations in the PACE trial or the point at which they were made; trialists could have been invited to comment."

also the SMC fact sheet appears to be the same:
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/w...dia-Centre-Factsheet-CFS-ME-Final-Version.pdf

 

This is a different piece to their 'CFS - the controversy' piece, that was always more biased and hostile: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/cfsme-the-illness-and-the-controversy/

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that, or something very similar, was there when it was first published.

 

whoever wrote this has no idea.............blood/stone (fois, repeatedly asked to give answers etc etc etc)

 

Oops. My mistake. You're right!

 

This makes me think that one or more of the PACE Trial team were involved in it or how would they know this?

 

Wouldn't amaze me if it was just an assumption stemming from a disinterest in the truth. The PACE researchers would know that it was not true!

 

"Tactics
The SMC in the UK says it has a database with 2700 experts and more than 1200 press officers, and mailing lists with more than 300 journalists representing every major UK news outlet.

SMC uses three main tactics to influence science coverage, according to its promotional video:

1. Rapid response to breaking news with opinion quotes from experts: When a science story breaks, “within minutes there are SMC emails in inboxes of every single national reporter offering experts,” said Fox.
2. Getting to reporters first with new research. SMC “has privileged access to about 10-15 scientific journals in advance of the embargo lifting” so they can prepare advance comments from third-party experts signaling whether new studies merit attention and how they should be framed.
3. Organizing about 100 press briefings a year that “proactively set the agenda by bringing new science or evidence to journalists” on a wide range of controversial topics such as nuclear waste, biotechnology and emerging diseases."

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1053338478405136384

 

http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/dont-be-complacent-about-the-gains-we-have-made/

Also includes at the end

 

Thank God they never offered me fellowship.

The irony of the final quote says it all.

The rest is drivel. Maybe this club should ask themselves why advances in medical science have largely ground to a halt in the last twenty years - as pointed out by James LeFanu in the Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine.

 

But think of the fun which could have been had by resigning.