worldbackwards
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Everyone enjoying themselves?
http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/20...e-syndrome-is-not-actually-a-chronic-illness/
The Spectator have already followed up with this from Isabel Hardman, presumably to offset criticism. Basically pushing the Sharpe line...
http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/20...ed-that-me-is-not-actually-a-chronic-illness/
Which she now, from my observations on Twitter, probably wishes she hadn't bothered writing.
OK, obviously Liddle is a scumbag. Nothing new there.
Hardman's reactions are more interesting and I feel sorry for her, and understand why she might think twice before "defending" ME patients again. She's in a situation where she's debunked a false claim. She's done everything by the book, she's gone to the researchers themselves, she's accepted their authority. She's also found out that, for ME patients, this isn't up to much and she doesn't understand. Oxford University! What could be more solid and respectable than that. Why should she dig deeper? Why would there be any question over the veracity of such a solid institution?
And this is where we lose every time. When Sharpe and co published that paper, they knew full well that it showed CBT/GET to be, long term, no better than doing nothing. But they also knew that the credibility of the people likely to point this out is zero. Less than zero. If there is a measure of credibility equivalent to 0 degrees Kelvin, the "absolute zero" of temperature, that is where our credibility lies.
And so they knew that they could say whatever they wanted, because the only people who would gainsay them look like cranks and conspiracy theorists, rather than patients who have discovered from bitter experience that the agenda of these treatments is not to make them well, whatever else it is.
And essentially decent journalists like Hardman, a political lobby hack who's job is not to know the ins and out of scientific papers and long running medical feuds, end up on the receiving end of a lot of criticism, by and large measured from what I've seen, about something they know nothing about. But, if they default to received wisdom and their own experience, what it comes down to is; that distinguished Professor Sharpe and his polite statements vs an anti-science rabble who don't want to hear the inconvenient news.
And so we end up in a situation where the truth is in plain sight and nobody wants to see it. Because it comes from the wrong mouth.
http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/20...e-syndrome-is-not-actually-a-chronic-illness/
The Spectator have already followed up with this from Isabel Hardman, presumably to offset criticism. Basically pushing the Sharpe line...
http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/20...ed-that-me-is-not-actually-a-chronic-illness/
Which she now, from my observations on Twitter, probably wishes she hadn't bothered writing.
OK, obviously Liddle is a scumbag. Nothing new there.
Hardman's reactions are more interesting and I feel sorry for her, and understand why she might think twice before "defending" ME patients again. She's in a situation where she's debunked a false claim. She's done everything by the book, she's gone to the researchers themselves, she's accepted their authority. She's also found out that, for ME patients, this isn't up to much and she doesn't understand. Oxford University! What could be more solid and respectable than that. Why should she dig deeper? Why would there be any question over the veracity of such a solid institution?
And this is where we lose every time. When Sharpe and co published that paper, they knew full well that it showed CBT/GET to be, long term, no better than doing nothing. But they also knew that the credibility of the people likely to point this out is zero. Less than zero. If there is a measure of credibility equivalent to 0 degrees Kelvin, the "absolute zero" of temperature, that is where our credibility lies.
And so they knew that they could say whatever they wanted, because the only people who would gainsay them look like cranks and conspiracy theorists, rather than patients who have discovered from bitter experience that the agenda of these treatments is not to make them well, whatever else it is.
And essentially decent journalists like Hardman, a political lobby hack who's job is not to know the ins and out of scientific papers and long running medical feuds, end up on the receiving end of a lot of criticism, by and large measured from what I've seen, about something they know nothing about. But, if they default to received wisdom and their own experience, what it comes down to is; that distinguished Professor Sharpe and his polite statements vs an anti-science rabble who don't want to hear the inconvenient news.
And so we end up in a situation where the truth is in plain sight and nobody wants to see it. Because it comes from the wrong mouth.
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