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Horrifying article in Sunday Times

Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
a new comment added to their site in response:

"There is of course no suggestion that these alleged death threats came from researchers, doctors, or the vast majority of citizens with ME/CFS.
There is a danger that Simon Wessley’s repeated focus on an unknown person or persons, detracts from the scientific communities embryonic efforts to identify the cause(s) of ME/CFS.
The fact that ME/CFS has been classified by the World Health Organization for 50 years as a Neurological disease, and has been accepted as such by the UK government, DWP and NHS for more than a decade, it is therefore a surprising omission from this article.
Given that Professor Wessley must be aware that his views contradict the prevailing status of the disease, it is surprising that he focuses on a psychologically unbalanced individual, who sent him a letter some years ago, rather than addressing the 5,000 or so peer-reviewed articles that provide evidence contrary to his lonely position - including that reported in this paper just last week showing significant evidence of biological muscle abnormalities in patients. The idea that a death threat somehow validates someone's views is unsustainable."

An excellent response.
 

Marco

Grrrrrrr!
Messages
2,386
Location
Near Cognac, France
Lest anyone is tempted to leave a message there, hacks keep their job by stirring up controversy.

Hard to have a controversy when only one side engages.
 

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
Yes, I agree. It is quite ridiculous that the only ME patient he could find to interview was a cat-killing child-molester!
It seems almost as if the author has an agenda! o_O
Or just likes to make sensationalist headlines.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
I really think he is. The article is so over the top that a lot of people who don't know what ME/CFS is at all will read it and wondering why he goes to such efforts to illustrate everyone with a disease as child-molesting cat-killers who make death threats to the people trying to help them.

Without knowing WHY people with ME/CFS are upset about the psychologization, it is a very incomplete article, and people will pick up on it. He's tell half a story, and we aren't the only ones who will notice - everyone else will be scratching their heads and wondering how such a big question remains in such a lengthy article.

Hi Valentijn, someone who thinks critically and carefully about the article may realize all these points. However, most people won't, and there may have been a cultural shift away from critical thinking which they are relying on (this is debatable, some make this claim but its hard to find solid evidence). Or is that just readers of the tabloid press? Alex.
 
Messages
13,774
Just looks like more lazy hackery.

lol - it looks like they made their own scary threat letter to use as an example.

I posted this a couple of months ago:

Just saw this clarification pop up on list serv. I've seen a few things which indicate that lots of questions are now being interpreted as FOI requests (not just related to PACE). I wonder if there's an attempt to claim that they're being overwhelmed with harassing FOI requests, when equivalent requests sent to other researchers are just answered easily by e-mail. To me, it seems that psychosocial CFS researchers are really emphasising how victimised they are since PACE showed that their 'treatments' are so much less effective than had been claimed.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...n-in-the-pace-trial.21628/page-15#post-339884

Looks like Hanlon fell for it hook, line and sinker.
 

Enid

Senior Member
Messages
3,309
Location
UK
Quite bizarre - whatever happened so long ago is old hat now, especially in the light of the mass of science/medical findings of the pathologies revealed. Sounds like a big sulk to me and if I recall correctly from Uni psychology there is a special word to describe this type of behaviour. Obsession springs to mind.
 
Messages
15,786
Hi Valentijn, someone who thinks critically and carefully about the article may realize all these points. However, most people won't, and there may have been a cultural shift away from critical thinking which they are relying on (this is debatable, some make this claim but its hard to find solid evidence). Or is that just readers of the tabloid press? Alex.
Even the tabloid crowd will want a motive for our purported behavior - it's part of any story, and without it the story feels incomplete and not as believable.
 

jeffrez

Senior Member
Messages
1,112
Location
NY
That article is atrocious, one of the worst I've ever seen. Those poor, victimized doctors! Lol. And blatantly false to claim that the minority psychologizing view is "backed by the vast majority of doctors and researchers." How do they get away with such outright lies?

There are a few bright spots, however, as where the author points out that efforts of the CFS community have resulted in some of the psychologizers leaving the field completely. Thanks, Hanlon, for letting us know our efforts have not been in vain! Keep it up, activists. Although the author claims that Reeves "gave up" his work -but wasn't he actually "demoted" and replaced? I guess reporting the truth on what happened there would hurt the author's bias and attempt to paint the psychologizers as the victims.
 
Messages
13,774
A few months back I had a go at predicting the witty conclusion Hanlon would come out with:

The anti-psychiatry patients vs kind reasonable academics is just too appealing a narrative for the British media.

Any bet on whether Hanlon will go for the usual thoughtless drivel?: 'what's really sad is that whether CFS is best understood in psychiatric or physical terms should not really matter - and this is perhaps a distinction without any real meaning anyway. Whatever the cause of these poor patient's problems, we should be grateful to those researchers who have devoted themselves so successfully to helping them.'

So sophisticated and humane.

It seemed that he managed to come up with something even more ridiculous:


I believe that ME, whatever its true cause, is being used as an anvil by certain disturbed people on which to hammer out their particular beef with the medical profession, and science in general.

It takes a lot to go from a profound intellectual disagreement over research funding to producing propaganda videos and making even vague death threats.

I understand why someone would want to attack scientists who experiment on monkeys, even if l do not agree with them.

But this is a peculiar phenomenon in its own right, quite separate from the disease, with which it seems to have only a tangential relationship.

Perhaps someone should be brave enough to try to research its cause

Perhaps, someone would be brave enough to do some 'research' into it before writing an article about it? If you've just written a piece about something which seems to make no sense to you, maybe that should be taken as a sign that you may have misunderstood what's going on? Maybe those you have been talking to have not been entirely forthright?



I think that this is a very important part:

I am told there is a substantial crossover between ME activism and the anti-MMR brigade.

The British press feel that attempts to try to be 'balanced' about MMR caused a lot of harm, and I think that the recent CFS coverage has often been tinged with the desire to be 'brave' and 'bold' - although still thoughtless and ignorant.

It's a good move by Wessely et al. to try to associate those concerned with the impact their work has had upon patients with the anti-MMR movement. The fact that MMR and CFS are such completely different issues might make it hard for them to get away with... but going by the general quality of UK science journalism, probably not.


No one argues that it is wrong for medical research to be open to public scrutiny; indeed, all the researchers I spoke to wanted their findings to be openly disseminated and discussed.

But the desire to liberate information has had some unexpected and unwelcome consequences.

"A lot of people have left the field because of this," says an exasperated Professor Peter White, a psychiatrist at Queen Mary, University of London, and one of the world's leading researchers in the treatment of ME.

"I spend a quarter of my time dealing with Fol requests, complaints and other harassment, rather than doing more research and treating patients."

lol at that. Release the data! When PACE is refusing to release data for the outcome measures laid out in their own protocol, they look ridiculous claiming that they want their findings openly disseminated and discussed: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/pace_trial_recovery_rates_and_po

In America, where ME extremism is even more virulent, doctors have been hounded out of their jobs.

? Is that at all true? All of the most angry patients I know are stuck in Britain. I thought things were generally less heated in the US. There's terrible work like the Reeves/Nater stuff, but it seems to cause less harm to patients, as patients have more control over who treats them and how.

One person who did agree to talk was Laurence Swift, a Kent-based ME sufferer and former veterinarian whose name crops up on many forums.

I was just reading these rule for opinion writing:

Don’t debate straw men. If you’re arguing against an idea, you need to accurately describe the people who hold them. If at all possible, link to them and quote their argument. This is a discipline that forces opinion writers to prove that they’re debating an idea somebody actually holds. And quoting the subject forces them to show that somebody influential holds it — if the best example of the opposing view is a random blog comment, then you’re exposing the fact that you’re arguing against an idea nobody of any stature shares.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/david-brooks-and-the-role-of-opinion-journalism.html

If you decide to use, as your primary source for the ideas you are countering, a heavy drinking CFS patient (?!) who has sexually assaulted a child and is notable only because their name 'crops up on many forums' (anyone here heard of him?), then maybe you're a hack?

Also... if those are the most fearsome threats that have been received by all these people over two decades from patients who have had to face such quackery and mistreatment, then the amount of coverage it has received is laughable. When compared to the hardships faced by patients (and of course, so many other groups) it's absurd that it's seen as a topic worthy of such an endless stream of comments. The average school playground sees worse every day.

Overall, I think that this article is so poor that it's not likely to be that harmful to patients. It will play into some people's prejudices, but I also think that it will leave a lot of people thinking 'we're not being told the whole story here'.
 

David Egan

Hermes33
Messages
37
We, ME/CFS patients could use the same methods as Wessely. That is use the press and media and use a grouping of eminent doctors and scientists to co-author and co-sign letters and present articles to the Times, the Guardian, the Observer, the Mail, the New York Times, etc. etc. If we copy his methods to advance a biological agenda then we can battle him and win.

I have drawn up a listing of researchers and doctors we all need to contact and form into a group known as the 'Biological doctors and scientists group'. All letters and emails to the press and media and to scientific journals worldwide should be passed to these people first for co-authoring and co-signing. This will add scientific credibility to ME/CFS and its biological aspects.

Dr. Nancy Klimas
Dr. Daniel Peterson
Dr. Paul Cheney
Dr. Kenny De Meirleir
Dr. Byron Hyde
Dr. Derek Enlander
Dr. Hooper
Dr. Edward J. Conley
Dr. Charles Lapp
Dr. Kerr
Dr. Martin Lerner
Dr. Martin Pall
Dr. Olav Mella
Dr. John Chia
Dr. Jose Montoya
Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum
Dr. Konstance Knox
Dr. Buchwald
Dr. Jesse Stoff
Dr. CL Jardin
Dr. Sarah Myhill
Dr. Rosamund Vallings
Dr. Gorter
Dr. Majid Ali
Dr. Vance Spence
Dr. Julia Newton
Dr. Vincent Lombardi
Dr. William Weir
Dr. Nash Petrovic
Dr. Bridget Huber
Dr. Luc Montagnier
Dr. Anthony Komaroff
Dr. Ablashi
Dr. Jay Levy
Dr. Hornig
Dr. Ian Lipkin
Dr. Maes
Dr. Curriu (Spain)
Doctors from PHANU, Australia
Dr. Bateman
Dr. Daraniuk
Dr. Schutzer

You can add a few more to the list.
Can we all start this week ?
 

Daisymay

Senior Member
Messages
754
http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/Sensationalism-versus-Science.htm

Sensationalism versus Science?

Malcolm Hooper and Margaret Williams
5th May 2013

The long-promised article by Michael Hanlon on the “war” surrounding the neuroimmune disorder myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) was published today in the Sunday Times Magazine together with a photograph of Professor Sir Simon Wessely (“This man faced death threats and abuse. His crime? He suggested that ME was a mental illness”). Whilst the article focuses on the unacceptable actions of very few alleged sufferers and not on legitimate challenges mounted by scientists, it may be of interest to reproduce the questions which Hanlon sent to Professor Malcolm Hooper on 31st January and also Professor Hooper’s reply, since that reply provides the backdrop to the on-going “war”.

First, though, it must be said that much of Hanlon’s article is factually wrong. For example, Hanlon begins his article with the assertion that “Professor Sir Simon Wessely lives on the front line of science”, which immediately reveals a lack of understanding in that Sir Simon does not live on the front line of biomedical science but on the front line of psychiatry, a discipline with no biomarkers of disease. Indeed Sir Simon ignores, actively denies or dismisses the evidence of biomedical scientists that demonstrates whole-body inflammation in ME and does not accept that it has now been shown to be an autoimmune disease.

Hanlon goes on to state that Sir Simon “has done a lot of work for the military, helping to treat traumatised war veterans”, when there is irrefutable published evidence that Sir Simon has for decades denied the very existence of Gulf War Syndrome.

Hanlon then states that ME “affects about 600,000 people in Britain”, an assertion not supported by the 2002 Report of the UK Chief Medical Officer, which found there to be about 250,000 sufferers in the UK, of which 25% are severely affected, being house or bed-bound. However, conflating “chronic fatigue” with ME would certainly increase the numbers of alleged sufferers, but lacks scientific credibility.

Hanlon states that “The primary symptoms of the disease is fatigue”; this, again, is inaccurate, because the primary symptom of ME is post-exertional muscle fatigability, this being the cardinal symptom of ME and quite different from fatigue or tiredness.

Hanlon goes on to state that “Most doctors who treat ME…believe that …cognitive behavioural therapy and exercise therapies provide the best hope for many sufferers to get better” but Hanlon does not explain that in general in the UK, the only doctors who treat ME are psychiatrists or those who work for the permanent health insurance industry, who adhere to their own now-disproven theory that ME is a behavioural disorder and thus does not qualify for insurance payments, neither does he mention the findings in a survey of 2,338 ME sufferers that “Graded exercise was reported to be the treatment that had made most people worse” or the further findings that 93% of respondents found GET to be unhelpful, with 82% reporting that their condition was made worse ( http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/magical-medicine.htm ).

Hanlon claims that these doctors are in the majority without telling his readers the reason, which is that for over 25 years, as well as acting as advisors on ME/CFS to Departments of State and the insurance industry, Sir Simon and his colleagues have flooded the literature with their own beliefs, to the extent that any doctor who opposed them would be in real jeopardy of losing his/her job and of being labelled naïve and unable to deal effectively with suggestible patients (Simon Wessely. Psychological Medicine 1990:20:35-53). It takes a courageous clinician to risk running such a gauntlet.

Whilst not mentioning the PACE trial by name, Hanlon refers to “a ground-breaking paper” which he claims shows that CBT and exercise therapies provide the best hope for many sufferers to get better, a trial over which Sir Simon is known to swoon: “For those who appreciate these things, the trial is a thing of beauty” (Health in mind and body. Simon Wessely. The Journal of the Foundation for Science and Technology, Volume 20, Number 7, December 2011) even though the Investigators themselves acknowledge that it was “only moderately effective”.
Hanlon mentions a new initiative – the UK CFS/ME Research Collaborative launched on 22nd April 2013 – of which Dr Esther Crawley seems to be in charge, but he does not mention that the Collaborative Charter stipulates that membership is open only to those who agree to the Collaborative’s insistence that “(3.2.3) Members will be required to sign a declaration that they will not take part in the harassment or abuse of researchers. Neither will they take part in orchestrated campaigns against those conducting peer-reviewed research”. Does this mean that the charities who have signed up to the Collaborative will be prevented from legitimate disagreement with the aims and objectives of the Collaboration? The press release hosted on the website of Action for ME states categorically that “Predisposing factors include female sex, functional somatic syndromes, and prior mood disorders” even though the Medical Research Council itself now acknowledges that there is evidence of inflammation in the brain and spinal cord. Will any legitimate disagreement continue to be construed as “harassment”?

Could these stipulations be the reason why, at the recent US FDA Stakeholder meeting held on 25th-26th April 2013 at which the PACE trial was discussed by world-renowned biomedical experts, Dr Peter Rowe said: " … and here is where I need my uniformed colleagues to provide me with some help because anyone who ventures into discussion of the PACE Trial probably needs an armed guard [.......] I suspect that most of my clinician colleagues in the room would agree with this comment and that is that if all you've been able to do with your treatment is change your fatigue score by three points on a thirty-three point scale over a year, that that's the kind of thing that would have made us hang up our licenses and our office headings and quit CFS in frustration, we usually do better than that ...". Dr Rowe was followed by Dr Christopher Snell, who also alluded to the parody being played out in the UK at the expense of severely sick people: " ... so both Peter and I will need an armed guard when we leave, because I'm also going to talk a little bit about the PACE Trial...".

Hanlon had the opportunity to provide balance by using comments from informed commentators whose opinion he had canvassed: he opted instead to quote an unfortunate patient who is a self-admitted alcoholic who had been struck off the Veterinary Register and who has a conviction for indecent assault on a 12-year old girl. This person is hardly representative of the quarter of a million sufferers with ME in the UK: was this a deliberate attempt by Hanlon to smear the entire ME patient population?

Perhaps the most telling sentence in Hanlon’s article is this: “As for the 2009 XMRV paper, Wessely snorts with derision”. It is this derision and absolute triumphalism over the XMRV debacle that personifies the way people with ME have been – and still are – treated. Indeed, the Wessely School have advised that the first duty of the doctor is to avoid legitimisation of symptoms (The MRC’s own summary of the CIBA Foundation Symposium on CFS held on 12-14th May 1992).

In 1994, one of the world’s most renowned ME/CFS clinicians, Dr Daniel L Peterson from the US, went on record: “In my experience, it is one of the most disabling diseases that I care for, far exceeding HIV disease except for the terminal stages” (Introduction to Research and Clinical Conference, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, October 1994; published in JCFS 1995:1:3-4:123-125).

In 1995, Professor Mark Loveless, Head of the AIDS and ME/CFS Clinic at Oregon Health Sciences University said in his Congressional Briefing that an ME/CFS patient: “feels effectively the same every day as an AIDS patient feels two weeks before death; the only difference is that the symptoms can go on for never-ending decades”.
In 2004, Dr William Reeves, Chief of the ME/CFS research programme at the US Centres for Disease Control, (CDC) reported that ME/CFS patients “are more sick and have greater disability than patients with chronic obstructive lung or cardiac disease, and that psychological factors played no role” (Press Release, AACFS, 7th October 2004).
Also in 2004, a randomised clinical trial found “In comparison with other chronic illnesses such as multiple sclerosis, end-stage renal disease and heart disease, patients with (ME)CFS show markedly higher levels of disability” (Am J Occup Ther 2004:58:35-43).

On 15th October 2009, Professor Nancy Klimas, then Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Miami, famously said in the New York Times: “I hope you are not saying that (ME)CFS patients are not as ill as HIV patients. I split my clinical time between the two illnesses, and I can tell you that if I had to choose between the two illnesses I would rather have HIV”

Wessely has long trivialised a devastating disorder from which people die, referring to it as a “myth”: the recent tragic deaths from ME of three young women in the UK, all in their 30s (Sophia Mirza, Lynn Gilderdale and Emily Collingridge) should shame all “non-believers”, including Sir Simon.

As one eminent UK consultant physician -- who bravely stands firm against the doctrine of Sir Simon --commented on Hanlon’s article: “No-one has apparently perceived the whole psychiatric paradigm as dogma, not science”.
Professor Hooper’s reply to Hanlon’s questions, sent to him on 5th February 2013, is reproduced below:


Dear Mr Hanlon

I notice that your couple of questions has multiplied to six which I will deal with in numerical order as best I can, although I am but one of very many national and international opponents of the PACE trial.

1. Is it true, as Peter White asserts, that after the 2011 publication of the PACE trial you wrote several hundred pages of criticism to both the Lancet and the GMC?

No; it is not true. You have been misinformed.

In February 2010, before the PACE trial paper was published in The Lancet, together with many others I wrote “MAGICAL MEDICINE: HOW TO MAKE A DISEASE DISAPPEAR -- Background to, consideration of, and quotations from the Manuals for the Medical Research Council’s PACE Trial of behavioural interventions for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, together with evidence that such interventions are unlikely to be effective and may even be contra-indicated”. It is a 442 page report and was sent to the Medical Research Council, who dismissed most of it but conceded some of it. I also sent it to Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, Chairman of NICE, whom I know personally, having worked with him in the past, but who returned it unread.

In March 2011, after publication of the PACE trial paper in The Lancet and the accompanying Comment by Bleijenberg and Knoop, I submitted a formal complaint amounting to 46 pages to The Lancet; the senior editor confirmed in writing that the Comment was erroneous and should be corrected, but the rest of the complaint was dismissed after interventions by Professor Peter White.

On 26th April 2010 I lodged a formal complaint to the GMC about Dr William Trevor Hamilton, chief medical officer of three insurance companies, because we have evidence that he knowingly misled the High Court in the Judicial Review of the NICE Clinical Guideline on CFS. He was reprimanded by the GMC who, for the record, are still willing to pursue the matter.

2. What, in essence (and not several hundred pages please!) was your objection? To the existence of the trial itself? To its findings? To the way it was conducted?

The PACE Trial -- which cost £5 million -- I have described as a travesty of science and a tragedy for patients; the conclusions were flawed; the primary outcome measures were dropped; ratings that would qualify a participant as sufficiently impaired to enter the trial were deemed by the Principal Investigators to be “within the normal range” when recorded on completion of the trial; there were significant conflicts of interest in that all three PIs work for the insurance industry (whose managers insist that claimants undertake a course of CBT and GET -- called “rehabilitation” -- which, if people are too ill to do so or if they know from their own experience that it makes worse and therefore decline, payments are stopped on the basis that claimants do not to want to get better); the PIs intentionally studied a heterogeneous population and it was conceded only after publication of selective results in The Lancet that the Investigators did not purport to be studying ME but simply chronic “fatigue”; there was a failure to control the trial; there was downgrading of what constituted serious adverse events; there were many changes to the entry criteria; data was not reported and objective outcome measures were dropped; methods of scoring were changed so as to produce only minimally statistically better results that were blatantly misreported in The Lancet.

3. What is your relationship, if any, to the ME campaigner Margaret Williams?

I am inclined to respond that this is none of your business, nor of your readers. However, the truth is that we have known each other and worked together for many years on issues surrounding ME and GWS. Margaret Williams formerly held a senior clinical post in the NHS. Together with an established team of clinicians and medical researchers, our aim is to expose and prevent the injustice perpetrated on patients with ME/CFS in the UK by those whose job is to help, not abuse or denigrate them. We are concerned about the current situation in the UK for people with ME/CFS and their carers who are seeking recognition of the extensive sound science that underlies the biomedical basis of the disease, the provision of an accurate diagnosis, a therapeutically useful intervention and appropriate care of patients. ME/CFS is a devastating chronic multi-system, multi-organ disease which can be life-threatening; those who neither accept nor understand this should not be working in the field.

4. Do you have ME yourself?

No.

5. What sparked your involvement in this area?

I am Chief Scientific Advisor to the Gulf Veterans Association and President (since 2000) of the National Gulf War Veterans and Families Association. I was increasingly being consulted by Gulf War veterans who had been diagnosed with ME accompanied with other “acronyms of ignorance” such as MUS (medically unexplained symptoms) and MUPS (medically unexplained physical symptoms), which led to my involvement with the wider issues surrounding ME/CFS.

6. Do you support the continuing research into ME by people like White and Wessely and Crawley? Or do you think it should be stopped?

I do not support the work of Professors Peter White and Michael Sharpe, nor of Professor Sir Simon Wessely (in his case, not only with ME/CFS but with Gulf War Syndrome and his involvement with military health), nor of Dr Esther Crawley. There are several others, collectively known as “the Wessely School” in Hansard.

I do think it should be stopped. I believe their work on ME/CFS to be seriously flawed, as it disregards the underlying pathology of the disease and may not even be looking at ME/CFS but at chronic fatigue that can have many origins. The cardinal feature of ME is profound post-exertional malaise, also described as post-exertional neuroimmune exhaustion, ie. it is characterised by an inability to produce sufficient energy on demand.
In particular, the Wessely School’s long association with the insurance industry is a matter of concern, as noted by the report of Parliamentarians in 2006:

“At present, ME/CFS is defined as a psychosocial illness by the medical insurance companies. We recognise that if ME/CFS remains defined as psychosocial then it would be in the financial interests of the medical insurance companies.

“There have been numerous cases where advisors to the DWP have also had consultancy roles in medical insurance companies, particularly the company UNUMProvident.

“Given the vested interest private medical insurance companies have in ensuring CFS/ME remains classified as psychosocial illness, there is blatant conflict of interest here.

“This Group finds this to be an area for serious concern and recommends a full investigation by the appropriate standard body” ( http://erythos.com/gibsonenquiry/Docs/ME_Inquiry_Report.pdf ).

Those parliamentarians who expressed this concern included the former Chairman of a House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee and former Dean of Biology at the University of East Anglia; a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee; a Minister of State for the Environment; a former President of the Royal College of Physicians; the Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, and a former Health Minister and Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. To date, nothing whatever has been instituted to remedy this unacceptable situation.

I hope this reply will help you to compile a factual and fully representative article, which I look forward to reading.

Yours sincerely

Professor Malcolm Hooper
 

bertiedog

Senior Member
Messages
1,738
Location
South East England, UK
Why didn't that journalist even try to provide some balance by mentioning the work of Julia Newton recently published which showed that there were many abnormalities in the muscle cells taken from ME/CFS sufferers compared with sedentary controls. She was not working with the patients she was working just with their cells in test tubes so perhaps Wessley could explain how that has come about. It was only last week this work was published in the Times.

Its so ridiculous to have all this negativity come up now just over one week after the positive report but having just written that maybe there is no coincidence.

Pam
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
This article by journalist Michael Hanlon is second rate; it does not come across as insightful, just opinionated.

I particularly don't like it when journalists write popular science books — only leading scientists in their field should write such books — but Michael Hanlon has had the temerity to write five such popular science books so far, including this one: Ten Questions Science Can't Answer (Yet!). A quick glance at that book soon confirms Michael Hanlon is a second rate science journalist.

It is also extraordinary that Hanlon, who presents himself as a kind of defender of science (which is good), does not appreciate that the concept of a somatoform disorder to which Wessely has dedicated his career is pure pseudoscience. These Medieval concepts need to be expunged from scientific literature, because they are not science, they are backward Medieval thinking, divorced from logic, common sense and empirical evidence.

In science, you cannot define something as being inexplicable! Yet somatoform disorder are defined as precisely that: as a set of symptoms that cannot be explained by a medical diagnosis or by a physiological mechanism. That is a ridiculous definition. Just because you have not yet discovered a physical explanation for a disease and its symptoms, that does not mean you give up looking for an explanation, and throw a disease into the dustbin category of a somatoform disorder.
 
Messages
13,774
I particularly don't like it when journalists write popular science books — only leading scientists in their field should write such books — but Michael Hanlon has had the temerity to write five such popular science books so far, including this one: Ten Questions Science Can't Answer (Yet!). A quick glance at that book soon confirms Michael Hanlon is a second rate science journalist.

I disagree with that. Also, it would be easy to feel dismissive of his work just because we're irritated by the poor work he did on this new article. The book didn't look like my sort of thing though.
 

Enid

Senior Member
Messages
3,309
Location
UK
dasiymay - thanks again to Prof Hooper and Margaret Williams for still trying to engage with SW (et al) on any meaningful scientific level over so many years.

Can we suggest he attends the Iime London conference at the end of this month for a little medical science education.
 
Messages
53
Could he be hoping to get a backlash for some reason? Perhaps so as to lend support to the claims that we are a load of deranged psychos?

I am guessing that the backlash has not hurt his career. I am also not so naive to think that the insurance industry has nothing to do in promoting him and his absurd "science". This could be seen as nothing more than an attempt to relaunch his product. I think ignoring him personally and doing continuing our education campaigns is the best way to respond.
 
Messages
38
Hanlon knows very well what the facts are. It is beyond me to imagine what could make a journalist so completely turn his back on facts. Not to mention reproducing "news" that is already four or five months old about the psychiatrist's bizarre accusations. If anyone is absolutely dying to write a comment in the Sunday Times I think the only appropriate comment is to point out that it is very old news and the S.Times is last in line. Yawn.