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Scientists trade insults over ME (JHP special issue)

snowathlete

Senior Member
Messages
5,374
Location
UK
I think the article is good. We want people to take note and this article is much more interesting than most. It will lead to some new ppl looking at the JHP to understand what has caused this fallout.

I think as well that had Coyne not attacked patients last year we would look at his insults in this case more favorably. In this case, unlike last year, he has every right to discharge some insults.

I think it may prove to be important to have the behind the scenes lobbying exposed in public. Its easy to lobby for friends behind the scenes but much harder to publicly back bad practice.

Like any thing done behind people's backs, once it is exposed the power is largely removed; it can even reverse and become a liability for those doing it. In my view it has been, and continues to be, the greatest difficulty we face in the ME/CFS world. More so than the research even because that is published and can be tackled. Secret lobbying means only influential people doing it getting heard, with no opportunity to correct or provide an alternative truth.

I agree with Coyne's wish to get all the back channel bullshit into the open. There are several examples of this secret lobbying going on that we know about. There will be dozens or hundreds more incidents that we do not know about yet. We need focus the story here more, I hope and expect that Coyne, Tuller and others will write about it to highlight the issue. And I hope people will be brave and tell what they have experienced.
 

snowathlete

Senior Member
Messages
5,374
Location
UK
Telling potential authors to fuck off is entirely reasonable?

I can cut angry patients some slack, but people like Coyne who are merely speaking on our behalf, not so much.

At the point that was said, I dare say he was not a potential author any longer and we don't have the context. When did this exchange take place? What words or events preceded it? For all we know Davy-Smith had done or said who knows wht to trigger the insults from Coyne.

Also the article only quotes Coyne, not Davy-Smith. That to me suggests that the emails were provided by Coyne to the Times - which is also in keeping with his statement about getting this out in the open. So even if Davy-Smith had written something even worse, it seems to me the Times wanted to only quote the person who provided the emails, not the other party who had not consented to their private quotes appearing in the paper.

I think Coyne is a controversial figure. Patients have been burnt by him themselves. Patients are aware of and are cautious about not appearing too unreasonable because of the long-running smear campaign against us. But I think we will make progress from several different avenues, using several different styles of advocacy. I think Coyne is worth having around, on balance.

Maybe it is also shows that if academics are losing their temper and throwing around insults at the BPS lobby then maybe patients who have done it to a lesser degree weren't being so unreasonable after all.
 

Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
I've been saying this for years: the PACE authors are not misguided fools, they know what they're doing and don't care how many patients are hurt through their actions.

White knew that physical function doesn't follow a normal distribution because before PACE he published a paper that examined this issue.
IIRC, he did the same when reviewing immune studies, and accidentally on purpose forgot to mention a study of his that showed immune issues.

Lucky for him that the eagle-eyed @Tom Kindlon was on the case and helpfully reminded him of it in a letter to the journal.

That's not the behaviour of misguided fools but that of callous fraudsters and serial liars.
The PACErs are not just a bit misguided, a little over zealous, etc. Those excuses long ago lost what little credibility they may have had to start with.

They are sociopathic charlatans who have repeatedly and deliberately chosen to sell-out and shit all over millions of sick, vulnerable, innocent people rather than simply admit they got it wrong. They have no legitimacy and need to be immediately removed from any further influence over us, or anybody else.

The UK establishment is not doing itself any favours in protecting them.
 
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Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
I think Coyne is a controversial figure. Patients have been burnt by him themselves. Patients are aware of and are cautious about not appearing too unreasonable because of the long-running smear campaign against us.
Coyne may well have deliberately pissed off a few patients in order to not seem too close to us, and also to give us some cover to appear reasonable – the old good cop-bad cop routine.
 
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Stewart

Senior Member
Messages
291
Also the article only quotes Coyne, not Davy-Smith. That to me suggests that the emails were provided by Coyne to the Times - which is also in keeping with his statement about getting this out in the open. So even if Davy-Smith had written something even worse, it seems to me the Times wanted to only quote the person who provided the emails, not the other party who had not consented to their private quotes appearing in the paper.

Personally, I think the most likely explanation by far is that GDS gave The Times the emails. He could have given them selected excerpts - ensuring that Coyne alone looked bad - or it could be that he gave The Times the full email exchange, and Coyne was the only participant to use the 'colourful' language that The Times focussed on.

I think Coyne is a controversial figure. Patients have been burnt by him themselves. Patients are aware of and are cautious about not appearing too unreasonable because of the long-running smear campaign against us. But I think we will make progress from several different avenues, using several different styles of advocacy. I think Coyne is worth having around, on balance.

Right around the time Coyne got involved in ME/CFS advocacy he said (and I'm paraphrasing) "I'm not one of you - I'm an outsider, not a patient. Consequently there are things I can get away with doing that you can't. I'm going to create a lot of fuss and noise - that's part of how I operate. When I do things that anger or embarass you - and I will - you should distance yourselves and disown me and say 'He's not one of us' - because it's true, I'm not."

Whatever your opinion of him, I think it's fair to say he's been true to his word.
 
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15,786
Also the article only quotes Coyne, not Davy-Smith. That to me suggests that the emails were provided by Coyne to the Times - which is also in keeping with his statement about getting this out in the open. So even if Davy-Smith had written something even worse, it seems to me the Times wanted to only quote the person who provided the emails, not the other party who had not consented to their private quotes appearing in the paper.
Coyne's modus operandi is to post on his own blogs, not to go to UK newspapers. I very much doubt he was the source.
 
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1,055
I think that's a generous interpretation of his eruptions @Sean. I'm more of the opinion Coyne is a bit fiery and hot headed by nature, sometimes that works in our favour, sometimes not (in this case I think it was well directed anger). He's doesn't strike me as Machiavellian - unlike Weesely who keeps his opinions to himself so he can play all sides to his advantage.
It's human nature to look backward and construct a narrative that makes sense of past events, but more often than not stuff just happens and people react instinctively.
 

snowathlete

Senior Member
Messages
5,374
Location
UK
Personally, I think the most likely explanation by far is that GDS gave The Times the emails. He could have given them selected excerpts - ensuring that Coyne alone looked bad - or it could be that he gave The Times the full email exchange, and Coyne was the only participant to use the 'colourful' language that The Times focussed on.

Coyne has previous when it comes to releasing private communications into the public domain. We obviously don't know but my money remains on it being Coyne who provided the emails. It's possible Coyne will reveal more on his blog shortly.
 

snowathlete

Senior Member
Messages
5,374
Location
UK
Coyne's modus operandi is to post on his own blogs, not to go to UK newspapers. I very much doubt he was the source.

We know it was the Times who contacted him, Coyne posted that on Facebook or wherever yesterday. So Times heard about this story from some other source. But I suspect that triggered Coyne to release the emails to the Times.
 

TiredSam

The wise nematode hibernates
Messages
2,677
Location
Germany
Right around the time Coyne got involved in ME/CFS advocacy he said (and I'm paraphrasing) "I'm not one of you - I'm an outsider, not a patient. Consequently there are things I can get away with doing that you can't. I'm going to create a lot of fuss and noise - that's part of how I operate. When I do things that anger or embarass you - and I will - you should distance yourselves and disown me and say 'He's not one of us' - because it's true, I'm not."
Coyne's justification for his infamous wild abusive facebook rant which left quite a few ME sufferers with exacerbated symptoms (no small matter, but then he wouldn't know because he's not a sufferer) was if I remember rightly because the "ME community" wasn't policing itself effectively to prevent the NIH (was it?) from receiving critical emails when we should in his opinion have been responding with undying gratitude. He also stooped to using a few falacious BPS arguments (scarring scientists off etc) and threatened to strop off in a huff (seems to be a lot of that around lately) if "something wasn't done".

So after lecturing us about the tone of our emails and how it can risk setting back the hard work of more moderate advocates, here we see Coyne's chosen email tone hogging the limelight in a Times article, where other advocates are relegated to "Coyne's allies". There's a pot and a kettle in this somewhere. I'm actually quite happy with how the Times article turned out, but it could have gone horribly wrong if the article had been more SMC sympathetic, which was a very real risk given their past coverage of ME and obsequiousness to the SMC.

I'm not convinced Coyne has a grand plan. He just has a habit of sometimes losing it and not giving a shit any more. This can sometimes work to our advantage, sometimes to our disadvantage. We've been relatively lucky so far. He is not here to save us (something he said himself), his beef is with UK psychaitry. His interests happen to overlap with ours to that extent. On any occasion where the same criticisms that can be made of the UK BPS brigade can be levelled at a North American (actually Canadian) academic such as the sex-obsessed and delusional Edward Shorter, Coyne has reacted towards us with the same filth and the fury we all know and love him for. Ditto if we criticize the US NIH. Off limits I'm afraid, just stick it to the Brits and leave it at that.

So we should take him at his word - give him a cheery wave when our interests coincide and things turn out well, but be ready to distance ourselves from him at a moment's notice.
 

user9876

Senior Member
Messages
4,556
. At least one pro-PACE offering was turned down but we had the chance to see that on a blog and it was about as bad as one could get.

I would like to have seen more of the PACE defense. What we have seen so far doesn't seem very good. But it is often from people who use dodgy methodology not understanding what is wrong.

So even if Davy-Smith had written something even worse, it seems to me the Times wanted to only quote the person who provided the emails, not the other party who had not consented to their private quotes appearing in the paper.

I do wonder what Davy-Smith feels about this being in the open and whether he will actively put forward arguments to defend PACE.
 
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2,391
Location
UK
I do wonder what Davy-Smith feels about this being in the open and whether he will actively put forward arguments to defend PACE.
More to the point, what would his defence be for PACE? My impression from elsewhere on PR is that he is a very competent scientist, so he must realise that fluffy words just don't cut it, and instead requires concrete reasoning that can stand up to real peer review. Where is he really going to go with that for PACE?
 
Messages
2,391
Location
UK
So we should take him at his word - give him a cheery wave when our interests coincide and things turn out well, but be ready to distance ourselves from him at a moment's notice.
Trouble is by the time we need to distance ourselves from him the horse has already bolted. No-one else will see any distance, and any belated attempt by us will be seen - by normal observers - as colluders trying to flee the scene.
 
Messages
2,391
Location
UK
What I love about the article is that GDS was looking for sympathy but will be forever known as a

"disgusting old fart neoliberal hypocrite”

Warning: journalists are to be approached with caution :p
Yes, it does come across as one of those old software programs that used to assemble random insults from semi-randomly selected words ... and just occasionally come up with something really cracking.