Busted
I was happily writing another magnum, and didn't realize the big news had broken. Way to go Laurel! Here's what I posted on the Doktor's website: and TWIV:
From:
http://alandove.com/content/2010/08/xmrv-cfs-and-the-nature-of-science/comment-page-1/#comment-54
WHY THE HEAVY PSYCHIATRIC BIAS?
Initially I was perplexed on reading Dr Alans strident, unscientific, and illogical comments about patients with ME/CFS here (
http://www.twiv.tv/2010/08/08/twiv-94-xmrv-with-dr-ila-singh ,
http://dovdox.com/content/2010/08/xmrv-cfs-and-the-nature-of-science/comment-page-1/#respond ). To whit a few gems:
1) A couple of other studies have tried to reproduce those results, and failed.
Clearly Dr Alan hadnt done his homework or didnt know that a reproduction (aka replication) of science required that the same patient cohort definition be used (it wasnt); and that the same testing methods be used (they werent). Puzzling, to have this apples-and-oranges confusion coming from a PhD in Microbiology, and from an ostensibly prepared interviewer.
2)Theyre ill (the ME/CFS patients) often debilitatingly so and want clear answers and a cure immediately, if not sooner. Im not ill (thankfully), and I think like a scientist. And thats the real problem. The great Doctor clearly determined that he cornered the market on scientific thought, while the rabble those pesky patients were mired in emotion. An entertaining comment albeit false. Time after time, patients attempted to educate the good Doctor on ME/CFS cohort definitions; glaring methodological flaws in the failure studies (i.e. patients with persistent viral symptoms were explicitly eliminated from the BMJ study); sweeping and unscientific conclusions made in liberally-interpreted CFS studies that have historically obliterated precise scientific into ME/CFS; and the myriad of physical studies that support a viral etiology (
http://dovdox.com/content/2010/08/xmrv-cfs-and-the-nature-of-science/comment-page-1/#respond ). Interestingly, Doctor Alan was incapable of grasping the scientific reality that if you pack enough depressed or out-of-shape patients with no physical findings of illness into Graded Exercise Therapy they will get better! And the minority of genuine ME/CFS patients swept up in the excitement of this CFS cohort will appear as a tiny blip of background noise. Their often devastating immunological response to exercise will be ignored as it has been for decades.
3)The second feature of science is its unique claim to truth. Its conclusions are equally valid for Christians, Muslims, Jews, and atheists.. What Dr Alan has adoringly missed is that science is a product of humans, and at the end of the day, human frailties can railroad the best of science and its interpretations. Just ask Galileo. Thus scientific conclusions are NOT equally valid for retrovirologists versus psychiatrists in the bizarre inferno that is ME/CFS research. Thats the whole problem! If this podcast were This Week in Psychiatry, I could understand Doktor Alans segues into the psych domain. But the TWIV podcast should have been an objective discussion on the retroviral and lab science on XMRV without psychiatry-infused overtones, such as that embodied in Alans comment on nausea being an example of an outbreak.
4)Following the scientific evidence means following all of the scientific evidence, not choosing only the studies you like. The extremely vocal CFS community (just look at this comment thread) is not shy about shaping policy to favor their views. Thats acceptable practice in politics, but I wouldnt call it scientific validation. And I wouldnt call the psychiatrists who believe CFS is psychosomatic a small group. I started to get that Spidey Sense about HERE. As Alan noted himself, he left laboratory research to become a science journalist, a job better suited to his short attention span (
http://dovdox.com/content/about-2 ). Why then was he so clearly invested with the psychiatric paradigm of ME/CFS? Why was he using emotive and motivational lines such as, Many folks here seem to be laboring under some serious misconceptions. First, and by far most disturbing, is the subtext that calling a disease psychiatric is tantamount to calling it bullshit. (
http://www.twiv.tv/2010/08/08/twiv-94-xmrv-with-dr-ila-singh ). Would the good Doctor expect any other reaction if he were to say that another retroviral illness say AIDS was psychiatric - and that hence "treatments" should be psychiatric? Would he expect any different reaction if AIDS patients had almost exclusively been offered exercise-and-mind-control-as treatment for nigh on 3 decades? Arent interviewers supposed to be scientifically impartial?
SO I DID SOME DIGGING.
All it took really was one click from Alans petulant and ponderous XMRV, CFS, and the NATURE of SCIENCE page (
http://dovdox.com/content/2010/08/xmrv-cfs-and-the-nature-of-science/comment-page-1/#respond ) to his About Us page (
http://dovdox.com/content/about-2 ) and presto, things started to fall into place.
THE IMPACT OF SCIENTIFIC DISCLOSURE ON SCIENTIFIC CREDIBILITY
One of the marks of an objective scientist is that (s)he will openly and freely make disclosures about factors that may impact their scientific objectivity particularly when they are serving as an interviewer in a hotly contested subject. If ever there was a time to make such a disclosure, Alans TWIV interview on XMRV (and his grandiose, sweeping statements on ME/CFS) was IT!
Yet he chose to remain curiously silent on the fact that he is not only married to a psychiatrist, but that her Areas of Interest are uniquely:
Areas of Interest
Consult/Liaison Psychosomatic Medicine (
http://www.baystatehealth.org/AcademicAffairs/Main+Nav/Departments/Psychiatry/Faculty/Dove)
Knowing how much Alan loves science, and in the interests of transparency, I thought it might be helpful for his followers to see the following:
Psychiatric Fellowship
Dr. (Laura) Dove completed a fellowship in Psychosomatic Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT. (
http://www.umassmemorial.org/WingIP.cfm?id=5470 )
And so it is with tongue wedged firmly in cheek that I provide the following exact quote from Allans About Us section
http://dovdox.com/content/about-2
Dovdox is the personal site of Alan Dove, Ph.D. (who actually writes the blog), and Laura Dove, M.D. (who keeps Alan in line).
This pun is just too good to pass up. Did someone mention sleeping with the devil?
Postscript: Does the fact that Dr Alan Dove is married to a psychiatrist with a specified Interest in Psychosomatic Medicine automatically render his comments on ME/CFS null and void? No. Not automatically. And certainly not if his interview and subsequent comments on ME/CFS and XMRV reflect thoughtful, objective science and an unfettered thirst for the truth.
However given Doktor Alans unscientific comments on XMRV and ME/CFS and his pro-psychiatry bias presented without disclaimers nor disclosures we might be heading in that direction.
Busted