It's probably unfair of me to pass judgement when only half the article is published - but at the moment this reads like a straw man. It's a very well written and clearly laid out article to be certain, but the central argument seems to be based on deconstructing a claim that Dr Nath never made - namely that the NIH was receiving angry and abusive emails. Jennie may have jumped to this conclusion (as many other people did) but Nath didn't say or even imply it in either of the quotes that the article uses from his webinar.
The first quote was his response to the issue of bias (in which he said this was best dealt with by designing a good study rather than excluding everyone with any sort of bias) and his second quote was about the media and patient reaction to the early trial announcements, and how (in his opinion) the public scrutiny had led to other researchers and scientists indicating that they didn't want to get involved. There's nothing in either of these quotes complaining about 'angry abusive emails' or even suggesting that people were indulging in 'inappropriate or unreasonable' behaviour. He was just making the point that some researchers - now they knew the level of scrutiny they would be subjected to - were backing away from getting involved in ME research, and that this may not be in the best interests of the patient community.
From my recollection, the only time that Nath mentioned emails from the public during the webinar was when he said that he was trying to reply to as many of them as he possibly could, and he asked people to keep them short or he wouldn't have time to read them properly. I don't remember him making any complaints about the tone or language that people were using.
I'll definitely read Part 2 (like I said, it's well written) but it does concern me that - despite the title - no fact checking of anything Dr Nath actually said has occurred so far.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments, Stewart. I hope you will consider posting them on the blog because I think they are worthy of discussion there as well.
Your main point is that I focused on emails when Nath himself did not specifically say there had been angry emails. You are correct that he did not specifically say there were a lot of angry emails. I started with the assumption that there had been such emails, for two reasons.
First, I assumed that if scientists were upset enough that they did not want to do the science, then it must be in response to some pretty heavy public pressure. One cranky email or even general displeasure expressed in social media spaces did not seem to me to be likely to cause the level of antagonism that Dr. Nath was describing.
Second, in filing FOIA requests, I was limited by the kind of material producible under FOIA. Emails from the public are producible (with names redacted, which I agreed to in advance to speed the production). Internal emails among the NIH employees might be producible under certain circumstances, but in my experience this requires longer waiting times and appealing many redactions. I've had requests and appeals take more than two years to ultimately get the full documents. I didn't want to wait that long for this story.
My original plan when I made the requests was that I would reach out to Dr. Nath after seeing the emails in order to get his perspective and to follow up on the sources of antagonism. Unfortunately, he would not speak with me. Marian Emr from the NINDS communications office did speak with me, but she was not able to answer many of my questions with great specificity.
I hope this answers your question. I look forward to your thoughts on part 2.
And no it's not as a result of all my head banging.