Ben Goldacre: checking if clinical trials reported what they said they would

[wdb]

I think he was probably still a true believer until recently. Impossible to know though.

Entirely possible but why would he stop writing about officially the most interesting thing in medicine

 

[Esther12]

Entirely possible but why would he stop writing about officially the most interesting thing in medicine

It was just too challenging for him!

 

[Sean]

Because he discovered that before much longer it is actually going to become officially the greatest stuff-up in medicine in the last 50 years.

 

[actup]

To add to your comment, I ask readers to look at this http://davidhealy.org/fucked/ (sorry mods if this language is inappropriate)

BONUS FEATURE; Ben Goldacre calling another campaign for transparency and access to data names and accusing them of abuse.

This link is quite an eyeopener. Well worth the long read. The same techniques used by the Wessely school to silence ME activists were exactly those used by the Science Media Centre( Wessely is a trustee) to silence anti GM activists more than a decade ago. Thank you @Luther Blissett!

 

[Deepwater]

In case this has been missed, Ben Goldacre is a psychiatrist and friend of Simon Wessely. Wessely was his first boss.

Goldacre used to be the Guardian’s science man as well.

The Guardian’s long-standing hate campaign against ME sufferers seems to be driven entirely by cronyism so far as I can see. It’s quite sickening that they still have the image of an innocent investigative newspaper fearlessly promoting the right and the good.

 

[Hip]

The Guardian’s long-standing hate campaign against ME sufferers

What hate campaign? A quick look at the titles of all the Guardian’s ME/CFS articles does not show evidence of a hate campaign. There have been a few articles that support Wessely and Co, but that's probably true of most newspapers.

 

[Deepwater]

What hate campaign? A quick look at the titles of all the Guardian’s ME/CFS articles does not show evidence of a hate campaign.

Read all the articles over the years. The Guardian keeps repeating uncritically the claim that ME patient activists are hounding scientists, sending death threats, etc, whilst the good ME patients follow the scientists’ advice, do GET and recover. It repeatedly portrays any criticism of Wessleyites as dangerous harassment. It is as if over and over again they have simply published articles given them by Weasley and his friends. I know other newspapers have run junk articles on ME but none so often and vigorously as the Guardian.

I’m afraid I married a Guardian reader so I have more awareness of the effect of this constant drip feed than most. Essentially, it left an impression in my other half that remaining ill with ME was an act of selfish wilfulness. I even had to put up with being shouted at for membership of the ME Association because the Guardian had regurgitated Wessely’s claim that it is a “rogue organisation”. So I’d call that a hate campaign.

 

[Learner1]

Maybe it would be a great time to contact the Guardian, voicing your disappointment to date with their coverage, and sharing an opportunity for a new article. It would include links to:

• The PACE retraction
• Articles on mefical developments in ME/CFS aroynd the world
• Video link for OMF symposium
• Announcement of NICE guidelines revamp
• New NICE committee appointees with their links to PACE
• What this continued situation means to patients

Newspapers like controversy...might be worth a try...