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Offensive Tweets

JAH

Senior Member
Messages
497
Location
Northern California
Hi Everyone,

I was reading James Coyne's Twitter feed (as I do every day), when I ran across this repost:

Andrew Sabisky @AndrewSabisky

If I were researching ME/CFS I wouldn't be very keen on sharing my data either. This is a field where death threats are not unknown...

....if you draw politically incorrect conclusions. Hard to think of any other area of psychology with such dangerous activist nutcases

So basically, I can understand where King's are coming from on this one cc @lakens @sTeamTraen


Hard to know where to start with this. So to be charitable, it's Twitter, world of 140 characters of flame, everyone either takes offense (me) or give offense (him). And I don't really know who this guy is, he has a psych degree from institute of education in London, and fancies himself a "contrarian" which is always a bad sign. (A fearless truth teller!) a lot of great responses to the "nutcases" thread already, including Phoenix rising's own @Simon, david tuller, Janet Dafoe, and of course @CoyneoftheRealm. So for those with Twitter accounts, please think about adding to this misguided/wrong/ offensive/ ill informed/libelous post, there are just so many ways to go...

JAH

P.S. He is afraid of you

@lakens @foxyforecaster @sTeamTraen a real discussion in this case could easily mean death threats, letter bombs, years of police protection


He gets this all from the Wessely Wikipedia entry. This particular thread is particularly laughable. All you bedridden folks, start makin' letter bombs. What a joke...
 

Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
Remember not to post replies when feeling frustrated or upset. Post calm information and corrections. And don't make any personal comments. We want to reinforce the idea that the accusations are ridiculous, and undermine the accusations, by posting calm, polite, reasonable arguments. He already looks like an idiot, and we want to reinforce that by contrasting his behaviour with our very reasonable behaviour. (I know I don't need to say any of this, but we can all get caught up in the moment sometimes on Twitter. So I'm just saying it as a precautionary measure. It applies to me too.)
 

JAH

Senior Member
Messages
497
Location
Northern California
Remember not to post replies when feeling frustrated or upset. Post calm information and corrections. And don't make any personal comments. We want to reinforce the idea that the accusations are ridiculous, and undermine the accusations, by posting calm, polite, reasonable arguments. He already looks like an idiot, and we want to reinforce that by contrasting his behaviour with our very reasonable behaviour. (I know I don't need to say any of this, but we can all get caught up in the moment sometimes on Twitter. So I'm just saying it as a precautionary measure. It applies to me too.)
I agree and think the comments from patients (as far as I can tell) has been great, especially considering that they were just basically called terrorists nuts. The one that seems to have riled him up is Coyne, who called him a "troll". Each one playing the appropriate character in their Twitter narratives.
 
um you guys
technically forced exercise for ME patients, esp Severe ME patients, is torture.
that makes Wessely and friends torturers.
now i'm not condoning letter bombs, but what these researchers have done is inexusable, inhumane, cruel, etc. I can totes understand why some severely ill patient of 30 yrs on the point of suicide who just didn't give a flip anymore might have told him to "fuck off you c***", although judging from his character it's not entirely clear that it wasn't from his ex-wife.
maybe it's time to turn the tables; let's be the ones throwing the accusations and slander now.
 

JayS

Senior Member
Messages
195
Well, we actually can, being that this sort of thing is out there. A few weeks ago on one of the Spectator blogs some wag wrote a comment that could be taken as a death threat towards ME patients, but I didn't read it as something that was meant to be taken seriously. However, I screenshotted it & put it on Twitter. If someone's going to write something that stupid, whether they're being serious or not, then their stupidity at least deserves to be seen. I wouldn't make any more out of that, though, past the initial WTF-ness of it.

Likewise, I agree with Bob--point made on Sabisky. I saw that someone last waded into that thread a few hours ago, at least last I checked. There are going to be situations where it's difficult to resist the temptation to pile on. This guy stepped in it, got some pointed and deserved responses. Yeah, we can throw accusations, but...if we can continue to be smart about things like, what not to say, and knowing when enough is enough, it'll be helpful moving forward. Something tells me there will be more of these people expressing their frustrations, perhaps even in an attempt to goad us. I'm fairly confident we can continue to handle ourselves well.
 

chipmunk1

Senior Member
Messages
765
from my understanding there have never been any letter bombs.

If that had happened Wikipedia or any other media source would have mentioned it.

It seems certain people have concluded that there must have been letter bombs because Wikipedia mentions that he had his letters x-rayed for years. Wikipedia does not mention letter bombs.

You could as well conclude from that that someone is anxious or paranoid.

I would say the story is entirely made up.

The death threats?

Little is known about that but since S.W is a somewhat notable person, in the Internet Age, it's probably not unusual to receive some bizarre letters from a few crazies.

You have literallly millions of people affected. You need just one single individual losing their temper for a few minutes to write a very hostile email.

Someone very ill and disabled for decades, unable to qualify for benefits, ridiculed by the medical profession sends email: "you will pay for this soon" or "You need to die" and you have your death threats.

Strange that Fibromyalgia sufferers are not viewed as dangerous. After all they are just the same somatisers. Like CFS the majority are housebound middle-aged females, a group well known for violent crimes and murder.
 
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JAH

Senior Member
Messages
497
Location
Northern California
from my understanding there have never been any letter bombs.

I would say the story is entirely made up.

Like CFS the majority are housebound middle-aged females, a group well known for violent crimes and murder.
Great post. I was wondering the same thing re the Wessely claims. Is any of it remotely true. The letter bombs in particular seems completely ridiculous.

You basically summed up my tweet - as a bedridden, exhausted, severely ill person, dangerous is the last word you could to describe me. (though I would certainly never refer to my age, character limits:) the idea that someone with CFS/me is lying in bed building a letter just seems beyond the pale...J
 

JayS

Senior Member
Messages
195
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