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Edward Shorter reviews SO'S book It's All in your Head

JaimeS

JaimeS

Senior Member
Messages
3,408
Location
Silicon Valley, CA
Forbin said:
I don't know why he seems to think that patients "suggest themselves into" dizziness because it is "culturally appropriate," by which he appears to mean "untestable."

It is certainly easy enough for a doctor, particularly a neurologist, to objectively confirm dizziness by checking for nystagmus (involuntary eye movements). With a little more effort, balance impairment can even be quantified by objective tests of the vestibular system.

An M.D. would know this.
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Luckily, no MD is required to be considered an 'expert'.

chipmunk1 said:
See the female patients are always less sick than they would like to be.
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You know how the ladyfolk like their 'drama' especially when it's in 'quotation marks'.

-J
 
S

Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
You can’t prove that someone is not fatigued, or not in pain. But you can prove that they don’t have multiple sclerosis or another upper motor neuron lesion. So malingerers choose symptoms that can’t be disproven.
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Which must be why – at least in the ME/CFS world – that us 'fraudulent sponging malingerers' are the very ones demanding the use of objective measures, and the professional neutral experts are the ones refusing to use such measures, or ignoring or downplaying the results when it doesn't suit them.

Yeah, that explains it. :rolleyes:

The man is not just a vicious creep, he is also a moron.
 
V

Valentijn

Senior Member
Messages
15,786
Edward Shorter said:
You can’t prove that someone is not fatigued, or not in pain. But you can prove that they don’t have multiple sclerosis or another upper motor neuron lesion. So malingerers choose symptoms that can’t be disproven.
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That's interesting. So before there was a way to prove that MS patients had MS, by Shorter's definition they were malingers choosing to present with symptoms which could not be disproven at the time.

You have to admire a hypothesis which is so ridiculous that it confidently proclaims that one day you are a malingerer, and the next you have a real disease, based entirely on the discovery of a new technique to detect the disease.
 
chipmunk1

chipmunk1

Senior Member
Messages
765
malinger
məˈlɪŋɡə/
verb
gerund or present participle:malingering
  1. pretend to be ill in order to escape duty or work.
    "people who had psychosomatic complaints were probably malingering"
    synonyms: pretend to be ill,feign/fake illness,pretend to be an invalid
 
Comet

Comet

I'm Not Imaginary
Messages
694
I don't know about the rest of you, but I have super powers which allow me to change not only my body chemistry, but also the way my brain functions.

I can do this at will and often morph according to what tests my doctor has ordered so that I can remain undetected. :ninja:

I do this so that I can lay in bed, in poverty, and watch my life pass me by. I am so clever!

Imagine if someone walked into a doctor's office and claimed to have such a super power. He or she would be laughed right out of the office. :bang-head:
 
alex3619

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Valentijn said:
That's interesting. So before there was a way to prove that MS patients had MS, by Shorter's definition they were malingers choosing to present with symptoms which could not be disproven at the time.
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A corollary to this, and pointed at in my signature, is that its not OK to have unprovable causation by physical disease, but mental disease is special, it does not have to be provable.
 
K

Keith Geraghty

Senior Member
Messages
491
http://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humani...ze-winner-2016-its-all-in-your-head-reviewed/

Prof Shorter claims ME/CFS families are worse than Himmler commenting on how Dr OSullivan puts up with patients families

Are the BMJ really printing this stuff - its outrageous

I have posted a reply in comments, but its not there - may have been blocked by BMJ

please also write

My comment:
Does the BMJ really allow academics such as this professor to write that he feels patients' with ME/CFS have families that are worse than the leaders of Hitler's Nazi party - perpetrators of a world war and the extermination of millions of Jews and others in death camps?

"Physicians on the front line of medicine, at Queen’s Square and
elsewhere, have to cope as best they can – and with relatives that make
Himmler seem like Santa Claus. (O’Sullivan’s patience in dealing with
these furies is remarkable.)”



If that’s the case, I might as well compare Prof. Shorter to Joseph Goebbels for the selective and flawed propaganda he asserts with his very selective and misinformed thesis that illnesses of the mind are basically the result of 'suggestion'. ME/CFS as one example. The idea this illness was a form of social construction or mass hysteria was raised in the 1970s - a 19th century Freudian hang-over. Such out-dated and erroneous views of ME/CFS have been confined to history (ironically Prof Shorter being a medical historian, he should know this). Contemporary research has helped to elucidate that ME/CFS is an organic illness.



I might also go on to compare Dr. O'Sullivan to the death camps Dr. Mengele. Her book might be seriously harmful if taken seriously. She writes a chapter on ME/CFS – yet she admits that she has no expertise in ME/CFS, she does not see patients with ME/CFS, nor does she keep up to date with the research in this area. A more balanced critique of her book might be that her book is a great example of professional self-indulgence - with Dr. O’Sullivan writing anecdotal reports from her patients, using subjective interpretations, not much supported by science - and how could we even verify if any of those patients were real or suffered the complaints Dr. OSullivan claims, or even suffered the psychological trauma she recounts - we can’t, ‘it’s all in her head’, rather than ours. Her book is not book of scientific merit, perhaps being better positioned in the science-fiction section. If it was a scientific paper, rather than a book, it would struggle to get published, yet books are easier vessels to publish ones’ selective biased views - Prof. Shorter seems to be also indulging himself in the same process of putting personal views out in the ether – however it’s important someone points out the potential harm of such views, as well as the obvious flaws. What we might see is that Dr. O’Sullivan, Prof. Shorter and Joseph Goebbles have something in common – they know how to use the printed press to forward an agenda.

However, I don’t think we should be comparing patients or doctors with Nazi’s – yet Prof. Shorter does seem free to view patient families as worse than… - and the BMJ feel free to publish such views.
 
K

Keith Geraghty

Senior Member
Messages
491
I need to contact the BMJ blog team - for them to allow this person speak of patients' families as worse than Himmler and at the same time block comments is beyond the pale - I will make a stand here on this topic as its plainly wrong - unless they are happy to denegrate patients and their families as worse than Nazi's
 
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