Peter White (PACE) in the Guardian

[Cheesus]

The print edition is dying on it's arse. It's only the quinoa ultras who'll see it unrebutted. We definitely need a right to reply on this bollocks though.

My parents get the Guardian delivered, so this made me chuckle.

The comments section won't be in the print version. He's taking a Newt Gingrich approach - what matters isn't facts, but how people feel. So he's fighting for the hearts of people who don't have access to the facts.

There is a lot on the website that they do not publish in the paper. A newspaper has limited space whereas the website needs as many clicks as it can get so they get paid by the advertisers. I will ask my parents to look in the paper to see if they can find it in there.

 

[Cheshire]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/782164012171661312

 

[Large Donner]

Peter White:

The authors got their figures by tweaks such as increasing the pass-grade for what counted as recovery, and excluding patients who had reported themselves as “much better.

So why didn't you have an "I have recovered", category for the measurement of recovery you great big numpty!!

Its obvious why, its because the figures would have shown as good as zero just as the original protocol analysis shows.

Also it would have been easy to have a category "my illness has continued to fluctuate as before during the treatment and I am no better now that before the treatment".

That would have got rid of the ambiguity of "recovery form the current episode of illness".

Too bleeding obvious and too damaging to the prospect of double talk and spin.

How about a category "I have got worse during the treatment". Was there even such a category?

This week on Panorama there was a doctor showing how the depression questionnaire as used by the NHS was 100% negative association questions and then he revealed that the questionnaire had been devised by the pharmaceutical industry.

He took the questionnaire himself and it claimed he was suffering form a form of depression and that he should get advice from a doctor.

As he said, there was no way he was suffering from depression but there wasn't a single option for a positive response on the questionnaire.

Setting out a questionnaire with little scope for mixed answers can skew the conclusions one way.

Even having done similar the PACE study still managed to prove statistically insignificant results and that's why they had to change the protocol during the trial.

That's how bad it is!!

 

[Old Bones]

You wouldn't just happen across it unless you were making an ME specific search or you'd heard about the article through another channel like FB or Twitter.

@Mrs Sowester I agree, and this is my biggest disappointment regarding news articles about ME. For years, I've been expecting accurate information about the illness to reach mainstream society. Because, there have been many worthwhile medical/research developments. I have to remind myself that I find the associated on-line articles only because I'm looking for them. Most people aren't, and I gave up trying to educate them a long time ago. When their eyes "glaze over", I know they're just not interested.

 

[worldbackwards]

I agree, and this is my biggest disappointment regarding news articles about ME.

This one might be an exception though, eh.

 

[AndyPR]

Thought I had, perhaps the Guardian buried it so that it wouldn't be found by the average reader, thereby reducing the audience that White would get from it. Perhaps we have a secret supporter at the Guardian?

 

[worldbackwards]

Thought I had, perhaps the Guardian buried it so that it wouldn't be found by the average reader, thereby reducing the audience that White would get from it. Perhaps we have a secret supporter at the Guardian?

I bet he made a nuisance of himself and this is their revenge.

 

[Mrs Sowester]

I've been seriously bamboozled by the Graun's reluctance to cover the PACE scandal, I would have thought such an expose would be right up their street.
I looked at their community rules and FAQs this afternoon and they say they this about pre-moderation (which they did on the Nathalie Wright piece):

Q: Do you pre or post-moderate comment threads?
A: We reactively or post-moderate nearly all comment threads, which means that comments generally appear on the site before they’ve been seen by the moderation team. This is different from other community sites you may be used to, and can have the effect that comments appear on the site which may later be removed.
The only exceptions to this are certain special series or articles which may contain extremely sensitive content, such as Blogging the Qur’an. In these cases, all comments are pre-moderated before appearing on the site.

So ME is considered an extremely sensitive topic, equal to Blogging the Qur'an!
Normally they go for click bait articles, being largely funded by advertising they need the traffic, so the fact they are being so careful around of ME is interesting.
The optimist inside me hopes they are building up to a spectacular expose.

 

[Christian Godbout]

This desperate article doesn't stand a chance against everything which is now out there regarding the PACE trial, all the investigation, the re-analysis, it doesn't stand a chance against the very comments below it, it doesn't stand a chance against logic pure and simple…

But still, I am bothered by its existence and more specifically by the statement regarding those "tweaks", which we know are their doing but are here presented as "our" doing, as this statement could give birth to a new rumour among psycho-biased MD's, along the lines of:

"Nonsense, PACE authors never manipulated their data, the data was manipulated by subsequent critics of the study".

Out of naïveté maybe, I never saw that potential rumour coming!

It would only be a rumour, easily deconstructed, but for those who want to believe it, it is now published, unfortunately.

 

[Sidereal]

Could demand retraction/correction of the 'tweaks' part. It's insulting and completely inaccurate.

 

[Glycon]

he's there with his hand in the cookie jar. We have it on CCTV, his DNA is everywhere and the police have him surrounded. He refuses to make a statement and when he does, he blames the cookies.

If you have your hand in a cookie jar and your "DNA" is everywhere, you'll probably say ANYTHING to avoid going to prison!

 

[Luther Blissett]

So ME is considered an extremely sensitive topic, equal to Blogging the Qur'an!
Normally they go for click bait articles, being largely funded by advertising they need the traffic, so the fact they are being so careful around of ME is interesting.
The optimist inside me hopes they are building up to a spectacular expose.

In my cynical mind, the Guardian's function is to leave just enough hope to it's readers that it will do the right thing, while never actually doing it.

Here's a journalist's account of how it works https://bristle.wordpress.com/2012/...vestigative-journalism-and-the-guardian-2001/

Note that he was never sued after publication of his book, which names people directly.

 

[Mrs Sowester]

I know @Luther Blissett I'm hopelessly niave! Cognitive bias, innit?!
My little voice of hope still says 'New editor since Rusbridger' though.

 

[trishrhymes]

Last October the Telegraph published their infamous article on the front page headlined something like 'ME can be cured with exercise and positive thinking' with an extremely biased report (via SMC press release no doubt) pretending that the PACE follow up showed CBT and GET were effective when in fact it showed the opposite.

I, along with many others, complained to the Press complaints organisation. The MEA managed to get them to publish a very good piece by Charles Shepherd.

I raise this now because their idea of putting things right was to put Charles' article on the website, not in the newspaper, and to hide it so you had to know it was there and search for it.

I suspect this is standard practice for anyone who complains loudly enough - offer them equal space, then only put it on the web in an obscure place.

 

[Luther Blissett]

I know @Luther Blissett I'm hopelessly niave! Cognitive bias, innit?!
My little voice of hope still says 'New editor since Rusbridger' though.

Well, at least its readers still provide interesting and informative comments , (amidst the trolls and tabloid refugees) though usually pointing out how the article is flawed or wrong.

I admire the persistence, and the hope.

 

[Mrs Sowester]

Thank you for the trophy @Luther Blisett - can I have it engraved "For the Triumph of Optimism Over Experience" ?

 

[Luther Blissett]

Thank you for the trophy @Luther Blisett - can I have it engraved "For the Triumph of Optimism Over Experience" ?

Of course. I think a representation of Sisyphus would be a good design too.

 

[Chrisb]

Of course. I think a representation of Sisyphus would be a good design too.

I used to think that Sisyphus was the ideal metaphor for us, not only because of Camus, but I now find it hard to choose between that and Heracles and the Augean stable. According to Graves the stables housed three hundred white legged black bulls, and two hundred red-stud bulls as well as twelve outstanding silvery-white bulls. That means an awful lot of.....oh well, you get the picture.

 

[slysaint]

Sisyphus

Pardon my ignorance; I had to look this up and in doing so thought I found the perfect definition for PW but then realised it was for 'hubris'
'Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments or capabilities'

 

[Cheshire]

Good synthesis of the problems in PW's opinion piece:

https://spoonseeker.com/2016/10/01/barefaced/