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Guardian article — response to PACE follow-up and mention of Tuller

sarah darwins

Senior Member
Messages
2,508
Location
Cornwall, UK
I can't see a thread for this one.

This is something more like actual journalism than the hyped-up nonsense which dominated yesterday's papers after publication of the Oxford follow-up to PACE.

The article puts the views of patient groups on record and mentions the Tuller critique of PACE.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/...cise-oxford-university-study-exercise-cbt-cfs

Edit: it appears that comments have been disabled on this article.
 
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Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
Great idea to encourage the better journalism, even if it's not perfect. Have done so on Twitter.

These are the guardian journalists' tweets:
https://mobile.twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/659393585209548800
https://mobile.twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/659391426149658626

I'm not on Twitter, but if anyone is, and agrees that this is a standard of impartial reporting to be encouraged, perhaps they could give the journalist, Jennifer Elgot, a thank you - https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot

(I can't see any other way to contact her)

We should definitely encourage good reporting as well as criticising the bad.
 

worldbackwards

Senior Member
Messages
2,051
This just showed up on Jessica Elgot's Twitter under her plug for the article:
Screen Shot 2015-10-29 at 14.09.16.png

Errr...right. It's the job all the ambitious coppers are after.

Actually, that might be a pretty good post for someone with ME. Short hours, low workload. You could probably do it from in bed. Without a computer. Or a telephone...
 

sarah darwins

Senior Member
Messages
2,508
Location
Cornwall, UK
This just showed up on Jessica Elgot's Twitter under her plug for the article:
View attachment 13261
Errr...right. It's the job all the ambitious coppers are after.

Actually, that might be a pretty good post for someone with ME. Short hours, low workload. You could probably do it from in bed. Without a computer. Or a telephone...

Bother! I nearly phoned the bookmakers yesterday to ask what odds I could get on that one doing the rounds today. Easy money.
 

SOC

Senior Member
Messages
7,849
Does the Met actually have an entire ME-hate crimes unit? It seems incredibly unlikely they'd need an entire unit to deal with a few crazies writing nasty letters. To say nothing of the fact that the Met is unlikely to have funding for such a trivial pestilence when there's terrorism, drugs, and organized crime to deal with.

I call BS.
 

worldbackwards

Senior Member
Messages
2,051
I'm picturing the scene: four people sat around playing cards and getting pissed eight hours a day. Every six months there's a phone call: a "suspicious" package has arrived at Peter White' s house. Is it something he ordered on eBay and forgot about? The suspense is unbearable...
 

Chrisb

Senior Member
Messages
1,051
Given the tactics used by the met to investigate other cases no woman on this site can consider herself safe. As they have given a whole new meaning to entryism.

Not sure whether the paternity suits have been settled yet.
 

Chrisb

Senior Member
Messages
1,051
I think we may need to follow up on this hate crime idea. Presumably there is no suggestion of racial or religious prejudice, or question relating to sexual orientation. Could there possibly be an inference that some researchers suffer from some disability. It is not a suggestion I have heard made..........
 

sarah darwins

Senior Member
Messages
2,508
Location
Cornwall, UK
I've had enough engagement with this stuff the last couple of days and don't have the energy to do more research, but I'm pretty sure this began with comments by Wessely.

I'm also pretty sure I've read that the Met was once asked for details of how many complaints they had received regarding such threats, and the answer was zero.

This long ago reached urban legend status. I don't doubt that threats and abuse occasionally happen, but I'm not aware of any evidence that it happens to British ME researchers more than to any other group of people engaged in disease research.

Yet it is constantly trotted out, especially by BPS folk and their pals in the media, invariably in the form of vague allusions rather than specifics. Reporters frequently find ways to work it into any report on M.E. As I recall, when The Telegraph profiled Charles Shepherd a while back, this took up a paragraph or two of that 'profile'. The reporter asked him about it and he had no choice but to respond by condemning any such actions (of course). I think CS commented on that somewhere here on PR if you want to search for it.

There's an example of SW making reference to this in an interview with The Times as carried by the MEA here: http://www.meassociation.org.uk/201...fessor-simon-wessely-the-times-6-august-2011/ [Warning — make sure you're sitting down before reading. Take a deep breath. Brace yourself]

Right, I'm not looking at a newspaper site for the next few days.
 
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Chrisb

Senior Member
Messages
1,051
Does anyone know who Jessica Elgot is? Given that the claim about the met seems transparently false, the possibilities seem to be either that she is someone innocently passing on, in good faith, misinformation which she has received, or that she is part of someone's spin operation. It would be easy to imagine that the main medical qualification of some is spin doctor. It's always as well to find out about the modus operandi of opponents.

One suspects that there might be a joke on the lines of "what do you call a psychiatrist unable to diagnose paranoid delusions?" But I do not intend to give it further thought.
 

Chrisb

Senior Member
Messages
1,051
It was tweeted to her not by her. It came from Jack Sommers who appears to be a journalist at the Huff. I don't know what he was thinking of. Neither did she. Her reply was simply "what"
Thanks for that. Understanding tweeting is well beyond me. It seems quite concerning that a journalist would pass on such information. I thought the Huff was supposed to be reasonably reputable. Sounds to be nothing important.