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Simon Wessely wins prize for "Standing Up For Science."

Min

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1,387
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UK
He is on the board that allocated the award!

There has never been any evidence provided that a person with M.E. has sent him a death threat. If such letters even exist they could have been sent by anyone, including himself. No-one has ever been arrested or prosecuted for making serious threats.

His vile smear campaign against the patients he pretends to help continues to gather momentum. Meanwhile, the patients themselves continue to suffer and die.

RIP Emily Collingridge whose funeral was today; she suffered dreadfully since developing severe M.E. at the age of 6. She died because the psychiatric profession, with known links to he health insurance industry, have for the last three decades inappropriately taken all research and treatment funding for the neurological illness myalgic encephalomyelitis.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfr...tigue-syndrome?cat=commentisfree&type=article
 

taniaaust1

Senior Member
Messages
13,054
Location
Sth Australia
He is on the board that allocated the award!

LMAO now why doesnt that surprise me.

There has never been any evidence provided that a person with M.E. has sent him a death threat. If such letters even exist they could have been sent by anyone, including himself. No-one has ever been arrested or prosecuted for making serious threats.

He should be made to prove it happened.. otherwise its slander of the whole ME/CFS community which has impacted all of us. Where's all the death threat letters and why didnt he go to the police about them and have it followed up? surely if you are getting death threats which really concern you (obviously it really really concerned him as this keeps being brought up over and over), that is what a person does.
 

Guido den Broeder

Senior Member
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278
Location
Rotterdam, The Netherlands

biophile

Places I'd rather be.
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http://www.nature.com/news/john-maddox-prize-1.11750

Two strong-minded individuals are the first winners of an award for standing up for science. [...] The British psychiatrist Simon Wessely and the Chinese science writer Shi-min Fang are the two inaugural winners of the John Maddox Prize. [...] John was distinguished for his championing of robust science. The prize rewards individuals who have promoted sound science and evidence on a matter of public interest, with an emphasis on those who have faced difficulty or opposition in doing so.

Err, the cognitive behavioural model of CFS with CBT/GET, is not exactly a great example of "sound science" (in fact it is at serious risk of collapsing as a primary model), so the award must be more due to the alleged harassment. It is no surprise that Wessely has faced "difficulty or opposition" in promoting his opinions and studies on CFS. It strikes me as odd that out of all the candidates, a mediocre researcher in the backwaters of medical science is getting such an award, especially if he supposedly retired from CFS 10 years ago due to harassment ie cowering away from the very field he is supposedly bravely sticking up for. And we all know how Wessely views cowardice in the military!

Sponsored by Nature and the Kohn Foundation, and stimulated and organized by the UK-based charity Sense About Science, the prize commemorates a former Editor of Nature, John Maddox.

I am sure you all would be shocked, *SHOCKED*, to discover that Wessely is on the "Sense About Science" advisory board (http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/advisory-council.html).

He and his colleagues demonstrated substantial overlap in symptoms between chronic fatigue syndrome and clinical depression. He carried out a massive and ambitious study to test the link between common viral infections and later fatigue, and found that there is no simple causal association. He subsequently developed a treatment approach using cognitive-behavioural therapy techniques, which in many cases brought about substantial improvement and in some was life transforming. This treatment was tested in large clinical trials and can now be found in the guidelines of the United Kingdom’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

High praise for mediocre and controversial research. Reminds me of how the Science Media Centre praised the PACE Trial as the "highest grade of clinical evidence", despite being a non-blinded trial without placebo control and purposely dropping an important objective outcome while relying almost entirely on self-reporting.

“All along the way,” says the individual who nominated him for the prize, “Wessely has had to suffer continued abuse and obstruction from a powerful minority of people who, under the guise of self-help organizations, have sought to promote an extreme and narrow version of the disorder. This version repudiates any psychological or psychiatric element to the extent that psychiatry is viewed as a contemptible discipline, which, by association, denigrates psychiatric patient.

Powerful advocates? LOL. Starting to sound like a conspiracy theory to me. CFS and ME advocates have to be one of the most *powerless* groups of people in modern society. Their efforts have fallen on deaf ears and/or frequently ridiculed. Everything gets conveniently labelled as "militancy" if it disagrees with the party line.

Wessely's pet view that CFS is a psycho>somatic functional disorder primarily perpetuated by mental factors, is arguably also "an extreme and narrow version of the disorder". And regarding psychiatry as a "contemptible discipline", anyone care to estimate the suffering and body count of psychiatry throughout its history? Comparatively, it appears that the darkest chapter in ME and CFS advocacy is an online cyber scuffle over XMRV, while the body count of the entire history of ME and CFS advocacy is a big fat 0.

Hostile letters, e-mails and even death threats have been directed at Professor Wessely over two decades. Mischievous complaints have been made against him and his clinical team, and bogus questions raised in the Houses of Parliament. He has suffered a vigorous Internet assault and coordinated attempts have been made to turn him into a hate figure. [...] Wessely is the first to acknowledge that others working in this field have received similar or even worse abuse. Nevertheless, the prize recognizes the very public stand that Wessely has taken over these issues.

Such abuse is terrible and unacceptable, if it is occurring. The problem is however, the evidence for such seems to be lacking. Every time it is raised, we are just supposed to take their word for it, even though AFAIK no evidence has ever been presented and no one has ever been arrested and convicted of a crime in related to the alleged harassment. Furthermore, these claims are always presented in a way which smears all critics as dangerous criminals: [only radical extremists criticize Wessely's EBM approach]. It is the latter which I find particularly irritating and slanderous, the blanket dismissal of all criticism, under the guise of promoting science and defending against ideological extremism.

He has been compared to Josef Mengele — particularly hurtful since Simon is the son of holocaust survivors. Simon has, perhaps naively, tried to deal with most of these by seeking dialogue and trying to educate and reassure, rather than by responding in kind.

He continually smears his critics in articles and has recently compared his critics to violent extremists who threaten and kill when insulted. That is "responding in kind". Anyone who has been threatened, or had family threatened or killed, by violent extremists, could take offense too.
 

biophile

Places I'd rather be.
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8,977
http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/john-maddox-prize.html

The prize is open to nominations for any kind of public activity, including all forms of writing, speaking and public engagement, in any of the following areas:

• Addressing misleading information about scientific or medical issues in any forum.

• Bringing sound evidence to bear in a public or policy debate.

• Helping people to make sense of a complex scientific issue.

IMO, the irony here is that "sticking up for science" in ME and CFS also means applying scientific skepticism to Wessely's claims. I nominate McPhee et al of ME Analysis on the PACE Trial.
 

biophile

Places I'd rather be.
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8,977
Some more information ...

http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/2012-maddox-prize.html

Simon Wessely, Professor of Psychological Medicine at Kings College London, is awarded the Prize for his ambition and courage in the field of ME (chronic fatigue syndrome) and Gulf War syndrome, and the way he has dealt bravely with intimidation and harassment when speaking about his work and that of colleagues.

[...]

The winners are congratulated:

Professor Colin Blakemore, University of Oxford and judge:

“We were overwhelmed with the number and quality of nominations, but the two winners stood out. In different ways, in very different environments, Simon Wessely and Fang Shi-min have worked with courage and dignity to uphold the standards of science and evidence against the forces of prejudice and greed.”

[...]

Words from the winners:

Professor Simon Wessely:

“I was surprised but also delighted to be one of the first two recipients of the John Maddox Prize. There have been times over the years when standing up for science has indeed been difficult, but it has always been worthwhile and never lonely, as I been helped and sustained by the support of so many other wonderful clinicians and scientists who work in the same field and have had similar experiences to me over the years, any one of whom would have been equally worthy of this honour.”

Enjoy.
 

Holmsey

Senior Member
Messages
286
Location
Scotland, UK
Sticks and stones... Nothing we say here is going to hurt him, in fact we only ever support the suggestion we're irrational when we express our personall feelings in public like this.

Revenge is a meal best served cold... There's not much cold or scientific in this thread, as was pointed out earlier, Nature could come to regret this as 'real' science finally unravels the mystery, even accepting that their intentions are pure, they're still going to be open to ridicule.

But in the end I think the clue is in the opening post where it states - "The prize rewards individuals who have promoted sound science and evidence on a matter of public interest, with an emphasis on those who have faced difficulty or opposition in doing so".

SW has faced difficulty, even if you think that difficulty has often been exagerated, or is far less than our own. Our illness is also, I hope, a real matter of public interest. That only leaves the promotion of sound science, I'll always argue that science is the study of the objective Universe and that as soon as we step into the realms of subjective analysis or subjective concepts then that's no longer science. Clearly Nature disagrees, or perhaps they're giving credit for the non psychiatric aspects of his work, does it matter.

We're never going to be privy to the process, friendships, prejudices, business objectives, support or sponsorship that lead to these types of awards being made, or why Nature and the Kohn Foundation would choose to make them.

I'd urge everyone to abandon this thread, saying nothing serves us far better than venting our feelings in this way. The only purpose our comments can serve is in the hands of a critic trying to convince others we are all irrational, spite filled and bordering on violence.

One always worth remembering... Pride comes before a fall.
 

Enid

Senior Member
Messages
3,309
Location
UK
Just come across - who's been a busy little bee then - spreading hiis "science" about to those who will listen. Of course ignoring the real science in ME/CFS.
 

Merry

Senior Member
Messages
1,378
Location
Columbus, Ohio, USA
A friend in the UK just emailed to say that this is the "first awarding" of the prize and went on to deride it by saying, "It looks like one of those awards the pop music and book industries give each other in a spirit of self-congratulation and media puffery. . . ." Biophile confirms that this is a new prize in #34 (a quote from Simon Wessely about his happiness at being a first recipient).
 

heapsreal

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10,089
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australia (brisbane)
I have never heard of any patients who have seen him and be helped by him. You would think if he was having success treating this illness he would be showing off his success stories, but the truth is he has very little success stories and probably alot of patients who have gotten alot worse.
Hands up if u have been helped by SW and or by his methods???
 

Enid

Senior Member
Messages
3,309
Location
UK
No hands up heaps - but I can report my successful escape from 3 Docs and the psycho - "all in your mind"- they imposed in A & E following collapses. The best was getting home in one piece and the distance between.

Still trying to spot the science there ....... but there's a good book " Psychiatry - The Science of Lies" by Emeritus Prof of Psychiatry Thomas Stephen Szasz (NY Upstate Medical Uni Syracuse). And googling "is psychiatry a science" produces volumes who agree with that.