Peter White (PACE) in the Guardian

[Valentijn]

British libel law makes it very dangerous to accuse anyone of anything, especially if the accusation regards a quality which would suggest that the accused is unsuitable for their job. So calling White a liar, or saying PACE is fraudulent could get someone taken to court and forced to prove that White is a liar and PACE is a fraud.

By "publishing" such statements in their comments sections, online newspapers and such might also be on the hook. Hence they will likely delete anything which crosses a pretty narrow line.

It also doesn't matter if the person (or website) posting the accusations isn't in the UK. They can still be sued in the UK. The US actually enacted a law to protect American citizens from having such judgements against them recognized in the US, primarily in reaction to the draconian libel law in the UK.

Anyhow, I suspect that those libel laws are part of the reason that it's so easy to get away with fraud and academic dishonesty in the UK. Even other academics probably prefer to turn a blind eye to blatant abuses of the scientific process rather than face a trial where they have the burden to prove that the other party has indeed engaged in fraud.

 

[Solstice]

The comments are great. Lots of insightful comments. I doubt anyone could be coming away from reading that piece and then the comments below it and thinking there are no problems with CBT and GET for ME.

 

[TiredSam]

British libel law makes it very dangerous to accuse anyone of anything, especially if the accusation regards a quality which would suggest that the accused is unsuitable for their job. So calling White a liar, or saying PACE is fraudulent could get someone taken to court and forced to prove that White is a liar and PACE is a fraud.

By "publishing" such statements in their comments sections, online newspapers and such might also be on the hook. Hence they will likely delete anything which crosses a pretty narrow line.

I wonder if the word "tweaks" could be considered libellous here. I'm not suggesting that anyone waste their time and resources suing Peter White for libel, but a case could certainly be made for demanding a correction and apology from the Guardian.

Peter White seems to have been very careful in how he crafted that sentence whilst still getting the word "tweaks" in:

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”.

"increasing" instead of "reverting to the original" is also sly, to give the impression that it was the new authors who deceptively moved the goalposts to get the results they want.

Certainly worth one of the injured parties firing off a letter to the Guardian I'd say.

 

[eafw]

I wonder if this is actually White's right to reply on Nathalie's article (which he mentions) and they've done the bare minimum that they could get away with.

I think there is a distinct possibility that they used Nathalie's article as a set-up, knowing that White's pack of lies was in the pipeline. So rather than publishing something like the Julie Rehmeyer piece which clearly set out the problems with PACE, they give him a nice softball to hit (those silly little girls "crying sexism" right ?) rather than anything that would require considered refutation.

 

[slysaint]

Peter White: "And by recovery we mean recovery from a patient’s present episode of illness – which is not necessarily the same as being cured, as someone might fall ill again."
That's what happens with a fluctuating illness

 

[user9876]

Nathalie's article is mostly about the protest, it only has one (or two?) lines about the recovery analysis. It was an excellent article, don't get me wrong, I'm just pointing out that White's opinion piece can't be a right of reply to a single line in an article, that would be ridiculous.

I was wondering it QMUL's press office is helping him co-ordinate damage limitation. Which I think would point to the level of unethical behaviour as an institution. They knew they couldn't appeal so instead try to do more spin. Ultimately they do more damage to their reputation.

 

[Mrs Sowester]

have you seen t6he moderATED comments, from some people here too.

looks odd, would white have any input on comment suiitability?

The moderators will pull pretty much any comment that somebody reports and they've been crusading to detoxify the comments sections in general because they were getting nasty.

 

[user9876]

British libel law makes it very dangerous to accuse anyone of anything, especially if the accusation regards a quality which would suggest that the accused is unsuitable for their job. So calling White a liar, or saying PACE is fraudulent could get someone taken to court and forced to prove that White is a liar and PACE is a fraud.

By "publishing" such statements in their comments sections, online newspapers and such might also be on the hook. Hence they will likely delete anything which crosses a pretty narrow line.

It also doesn't matter if the person (or website) posting the accusations isn't in the UK. They can still be sued in the UK. The US actually enacted a law to protect American citizens from having such judgements against them recognized in the US, primarily in reaction to the draconian libel law in the UK.

Anyhow, I suspect that those libel laws are part of the reason that it's so easy to get away with fraud and academic dishonesty in the UK. Even other academics probably prefer to turn a blind eye to blatant abuses of the scientific process rather than face a trial where they have the burden to prove that the other party has indeed engaged in fraud.

How about saying a statistician tweaked results. Does that come under the libel?

 

[Woolie]

I was wondering it QMUL's press office is helping him co-ordinate damage limitation.

Yes, I thought the same thing. There's probably a bit of PR machinery going into action behind the scenes. Some of the things White has said sound pretty PR savvy to me - avoid the facts, focus on the feelings type stuff. I think he's been getting some professional advice. QMUL's PR department, perhaps? I wonder also if those connections the PACE researchers have made with the Science Media Center are being put to good use now?

Wessely, on the other hand, seems to be going it alone!

 

[Valentijn]

I was wondering it QMUL's press office is helping him co-ordinate damage limitation. Which I think would point to the level of unethical behaviour as an institution. They knew they couldn't appeal so instead try to do more spin.

I don't know. Wessely & White's lies are getting more transparent. Previously the PACE authors & friends would avoid talking about anything where they're on shaky ground, and deflect to another topic. Directly engaging is a new tactic, and one which is obviously not working, so I think they might be going at it alone.

How about saying a statistician tweaked results. Does that come under the libel?

Excellent question!

 

[Chrisb]

"For many years Nice (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which oversees healthcare evidence) recommended just two treatments – graded exercise therapy (GET) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) – because it had the best evidence that these therapies worked."

This appears to be a possibly intentionally ambiguous statement. What does it mean?

Most people seeing this would assume that NICE had evidence, at the time of establishing the Guidelines, of the highest possible quality to support these interventions. If this were so there would have been no need for PACE, which was, as I understand it, supposed to provide that best quality evidence. I understood, perhaps wrongly, that there was evidence, but that it was weak evidence.

Perhaps it means that the evidence for CBT/GET was better than that for any other intervention, or that the best available evidence supported CBT/GET. It has to be borne in mind that the best available evidence might not be persuasive on a test of "balance of probabilities", let alone one of "beyond reasonable doubt".

One feels that they may be preparing the ground for an enforced acknowledgment of the failure of PACE, but then saying that there was evidence there all along and they will just stick with the NICE Guidelines as though nothing has happened.

 

[Mrs Sowester]

Did the piece even make it into the print version? I can't find it.
Perhaps this was the Guardian's token offer at PW's right of reply?
It is buried deep in the website and to have comments open for only 3 or 4 hours on a Friday afternoon seems odd. Also the tone of the comments were incredibly civilised when compared to the majority of their comment threads.
Curiouser and curioser.

 

[worldbackwards]

I think there is a distinct possibility that they used Nathalie's article as a set-up, knowing that White's pack of lies was in the pipeline. So rather than publishing something like the Julie Rehmeyer piece which clearly set out the problems with PACE, they give him a nice softball to hit (those silly little girls "crying sexism" right ?) rather than anything that would require considered refutation.

The problem here being that Nathalie's article was on the front page and given prime position in the comment section, whereas this was buried in Science, not even accessible from the front page, and took us eight hours to find on the site. None of which suggests that The Graun are in this instance part of a conspiracy to bring us to our doom, or particularly committed to prosecuting his agenda at all. An odd business.

It is buried deep in the website and to have comments open for only 3 or 4 hours on a Friday afternoon seems odd. Also the tone of the comments were incredibly civilised when compared to the majority of their comment threads.
Curiouser and curioser.

I expect the comments were rather good because it was only us who read it. I'm not entirely sure the people spreading this around on Twitter are doing us a service. Better to let it die the death it so richly deserves.

 

[Mrs Sowester]

@worldbackwards how was it bought to our attention here? Who was given advance notice?

 

[worldbackwards]

@worldbackwards how was it bought to our attention here? Who was given advance notice?

Ask @Old Bones, she put it up! I wondered that myself though. It's all over Twitter.

 

[Chrisb]

I don't understand the posts here discussing the difficulty in finding the article on the Grauniad website.. It's still clearly visible on the UK news page, Society section

 

[Countrygirl]

British libel law makes it very dangerous to accuse anyone of anything, especially if the accusation regards a quality which would suggest that the accused is unsuitable for their job. So calling White a liar, .

Apparently, the moderator is quite happy with the accusation (in capitals and in full) that PW is A BL***Y STUPID IDIOT as it has been permitted to remain as an uncensored comment. The mod. must have decided that it is not an unreasonable observation in view of events.

It is easy to find the page by googling Guardian health ME/CFS and up pops all the ME articles the Guardian has published over the years.

 

[Old Bones]

@worldbackwards how was it bought to our attention here? Who was given advance notice?

Ask @Old Bones, she put it up! I wondered that myself though. It's all over Twitter.

I'm not sure I'm answering the correct question. But, I easily found the article yesterday by Googling "myalgic encephalomyelitis" under the "News" category. It popped out mid-way down the first page of search results, and still does so. No advance notice -- just part of my routine every morning, searching for uptodate news articles.

 

[Wildcat]

Its unusual that there are no comments from the general public, ones who feel compelled to give their opinion despite stating they know nothing about the illness. Guardian ME article comments are usually full of such uninformed opinionators.

 

[Mrs Sowester]

Thank you Old Bones, I'd got the impression from another post that it had been expected or anticipated - I got the wrong end of the stick.
BTW we're not commenting that it is a hard to find article because we are having trouble finding it (I know that doesn't make sense) but that it hasn't been given prominence on the site. 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.