Conflict of Interest
16 APRIL 2018
by Steven Lubet
Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, where he specializes in professional responsibility and ethics.
When last we encountered Prof. Michael Sharpe, he was giving
a secret speech about ME/CFS at Oxford University’s St Cross College. Titled a “Special Ethics Seminar,” Sharpe’s presentation was closed to the public, in contrast to similar lectures in the same series, and neither Sharpe nor the college administrators responded to my request for information about his subject matter. Based on the posted abstract, however, we do know that Sharpe compared his critics – meaning those who reject the PACE trial’s biopsychosocial theory of ME/CFS – to climate change deniers, while complaining about what he called “the coordinated harassment of researchers.”
Sharpe deploys an unusually expansive definition of “harassment,” which seemingly includes emails, freedom of information requests, and most notably “the publication of comments on numerous blogs.” Regarding the latter, he no doubt had in mind David Tuller, whose
scrupulously researched investigative journalism, published on this site and elsewhere, has shown the flaws and ultimately discredited the conclusions of the PACE trial (of which Sharpe was a principal investigator).
Now Sharpe has apparently learned of Tuller’s
current crowdfunding efforts which... (
continue reading)
