Hip
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My guess is that they are more put off by the dismal availability of research grants. That makes the prospect much more of a nonstarter than the possibility of unpleasant politics.
I agree, but the research grants issue is more what I meant regarding the politics of ME/CFS.
The corrupt politics of ME/CFS started in the 1980s, when there was a large increase in ME/CFS cases, and disability insurers as well as government social welfare departments got very worried about how much ME/CFS disability payouts would cost them. So they seized upon the very convenient "all in the mind" somatization views of ME/CFS that Wessely and his colleagues were promoting, as many insurers have clauses which stipulate that psychologically-caused conditions are not eligible for disability support.
So in essence, the bad politics revolve around using bad science or pseudoscience to dishonestly make it seem that ME/CFS is a psychologically-caused condition, in order to save billions on disability payouts.
The harassment and death threats that surrounded the XMRV fervor were just a very short episode of a few months in this many decade long history of bad politics. I agree that this unfortunate episode of harassment is unlikely to put off those wanting to enter ME/CFS research.
And I agree that the fact it is hard to get grants to do ME/CFS research will be off-putting to researchers. And we are only going to see an increase in grant awards when medical science becomes, well, scientific, and universally adopts a biomedical approach to ME/CFS, rather than the psychological pseudoscience of somatization.
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