CFS etc over on Bad Science

[Angela Kennedy]

Hi all

Just to warn you there are some 'CFS' threads started over on the Bad Science Forum.

I will NOT be engaging - we are talking about a bunch of anonymous people who cannot think outside the box, have NO idea of the problems in claims to 'EBM', have a quasi-religious belief in psychogenic explanations, CANNOT see the problems of science or logic in those, they support CBT etc., make ad hominem and appeals to authority their way of arguing, they have already spouted the usual tired old platitudes (accusing critics of mind-body dualism, of looking down on the pyschiatrically ill etc. etc.).

To even explain the situation and do it justice will take a gargantuan effort against extremely negatively-disposed people who will even put up pictures of cats ad nauseum just to derail the argument. I like cats - but I'm sick of them now! There's even been the 'these CFSers seem to have a lot of stamina' bullcrap (on the Myhill thread I think- but you'd need to check.)

Plus there is a thread on 'Wessely', which i think is a rather dangerous red herring.

I do feel attempting to engage with these people will be dispiriting and ultimately possibly prejudicial. Their prejudicial treatment of Sarah Myhill, for example, is horrifying.

So it's just a warning - you don't have to heed. But I think it will be a waste of time- there's too much entrenchment in irrational positions- but appeals to 'EBM' trumps all it seems. Plus I think anyone getting fed up or angry will be used as examples of 'mad CFS'ers'.

So proceed at your peril!

 

[Min]

Well said Angela, I will not be engaging with them either & wish others with M.E. had not.

They are boasting about baiting us.


The thread is mainly rude, puerile, sexist rants from closed minded people claiming to be 'scientists'.

 

[Dr. Yes]

So it's a site for Bad Scientists?

I think that's nice. It's good to keep them all in one place.

 

[fred]

So it's a site for Bad Scientists?

I think that's nice. It's good to keep them all in one place.

@Angela, sounds like good advice. As you say, they don't want a rational debate: they just want to wind people up.

 

[V99]

It's a pity that they believe themselves to be a part of the caring profession. What type of mind wants to bait patients?

They think we don't want to have a psychological diagnosis because of stigma. No, we already have stigma. It's the science that doesn't support the psychological assumption. So why only fund psychological studies? It would help if it was psychological, as then we could be cured.

 

[lotusflower]

I've been reading the thread with horror but have no intentions of joining or engaging with any of it.

I have found the inhumane attitude of these medics seriously terrifying

 

[Robin]

I doubt most of those people are physicians or scientists; the board in the spirit of /b/ -- cruelty for the sake of amusement. I don't think posting there would be constructive, nor anything other than traumatic unless you're made of stone.

Here are Ben's forum rules:

Try to be combative, intelligent, and rude, but remember these four things:

# personal anecdotes about your MMR tragedy will be deleted for your own safety;

# childish personal attacks are only permitted when they are funny;

# I may delete people and posts arbitrarily and entirely at random;

# and if your post is more than one thousand words long then you are officially a loser*.

*(or possibly a "tw@t", in which case you will be labelled as such)

(note: the censorship is mine) Hopefully that will give you a heads up as to what type of an environment it is there (a mean nerd frat party.)

 

[Angela Kennedy]

Hi Angela,



+1 - quite so, quite so: It is very probably an utter waste of time and energy.

Best wishes,

Maarten.

Hi Maarten, yes I'd agree.

I note they're going for discrediting Hooper now. Also - the Ean Proctor incident is being played with - and Wessely's part in that situation being downplayed. Someone called Shodan1 is already slagging off other advocates for what happened with the Wessely page on Wikipedia in order to boost her cred with the 'forumites'. The same old mind-body crap being spouted on the 'physical versus psychological' thread. Evidence from patient advocacy sites is being dismissed as 'conspiracy sites' etc.

A lot of these anons seem to have boundless time and energy to write reams and reams of repetitive nonsense - then complain about the volume of thread postings etc. It's crazy over there.

Also, Lotus flower, although I think you're right about the inhumane attitudes of 'these medics' - I'm not sure how many of them are doctors. They could all be on-call squirrel-catchers for all we know lol! I don't think it's even worth trying to engage with them seriously- the evidence is they're not out to understand the issues (or maybe they can't).

You're right Min. I too wish ME sufferers wouldn't engage. People are being slagged off for getting their html formatting wrong! As I said, understanding the issues NOT the raison d'etre of these threads.

 

[lotusflower]

Hi all


So it's just a warning - you don't have to heed. But I think it will be a waste of time- there's too much entrenchment in irrational positions- but appeals to 'EBM' trumps all it seems. Plus I think anyone getting fed up or angry will be used as examples of 'mad CFS'ers'.

I agree with you Angela and think the threads may have been started delliberately with that very intention so if anyone gets angry , orupset it will be used a confirmation and used to demonstrate they are mad cfs ers and as you say if people are repeatedly posting that will be used as cfs ers having enough energy blah blah. Although I thiink I saw him/her say she was mostly recovered

I hope people stop, I don't think they are all sufferers of cfs or even patients of Dr Myhills, despite what is being said

 

[natasa778]

Oh is that blog by someone named Orac by any chance. I'm not going to google or click on it, but if it is than that guy has a serious personality disorder. If WPI and others continue publishing good biological studies on CFS and those findings get media coverage we can expect him and his trolls to become even more hysterical in their attacks.

 

[Angela Kennedy]

It's getting REALLY ugly there now - about Ean Proctor and his parents in particular. They've been alleged to be abusers and Ean himself an unreliable witness.
I really wish people hadn't engaged with this bunch.

It's been like seeing a football team deliberately sabotage the brakes of a bus carrying an opposing team on their way to a game (with no regard as to whether that act will kill the opposing team I might add!), then claim victory because the opposing team hasn't been able to turn up - and then really believe they won the game on their sporting prowess.

But worse than that: there has been so much mud slung at the ME/CFS community and key people, it's likely the less critical will swallow that.

I think this is really bad.

 

[Angela Kennedy]

It's getting REALLY ugly there now - about Ean Proctor and his parents in particular. They've been alleged to be abusers and Ean himself an unreliable witness.
I really wish people hadn't engaged with this bunch.

It's been like seeing a football team deliberately sabotage the brakes of a bus carrying an opposing team on their way to a game (with no regard as to whether that act will kill the opposing team I might add!), then claim victory because the opposing team hasn't been able to turn up - and then really believe they won the game on their sporting prowess.

But worse than that: there has been so much mud slung at the ME/CFS community and key people, it's likely the less critical will swallow that.

I think this is really bad.

And now someone is claiming Sohia Mirza died of an overdose.

 

[fred]

Is there a 'trading standards' for blogsites that he can be reported to?

 

[Gerwyn]

Hi all

Just to warn you there are some 'CFS' threads started over on the Bad Science Forum.

I will NOT be engaging - we are talking about a bunch of anonymous people who cannot think outside the box, have NO idea of the problems in claims to 'EBM', have a quasi-religious belief in psychogenic explanations, CANNOT see the problems of science or logic in those, they support CBT etc., make ad hominem and appeals to authority their way of arguing, they have already spouted the usual tired old platitudes (accusing critics of mind-body dualism, of looking down on the pyschiatrically ill etc. etc.).

To even explain the situation and do it justice will take a gargantuan effort against extremely negatively-disposed people who will even put up pictures of cats ad nauseum just to derail the argument. I like cats - but I'm sick of them now! There's even been the 'these CFSers seem to have a lot of stamina' bullcrap (on the Myhill thread I think- but you'd need to check.)

Plus there is a thread on 'Wessely', which i think is a rather dangerous red herring.

I do feel attempting to engage with these people will be dispiriting and ultimately possibly prejudicial. Their prejudicial treatment of Sarah Myhill, for example, is horrifying.

So it's just a warning - you don't have to heed. But I think it will be a waste of time- there's too much entrenchment in irrational positions- but appeals to 'EBM' trumps all it seems. Plus I think anyone getting fed up or angry will be used as examples of 'mad CFS'ers'.

So proceed at your peril!

how do you get on the dam thing I feel in the mood for a ruck!

 

[Woody]

Dear Angela,



... and soon they will also conclude that there were no concentration-camps either... I agree with Natasa, whether it is Orac or no: Leave 'm be, there be nutters. (In fact, the biggest nutters I have met in my life were academic degreed psychologists and philosophers and medical professors - Jeez, what a bunch of evil idiots !)

Best wishes,

Maarten.

Do I detect a hint of sarcasm, topped with a copious amount of reality?

 

[lansbergen]

how do you get on the dam thing I feel in the mood for a ruck!

I think this the link http://www.badscience.net/forum/

Are you sure you want to spend time and enery there?

 

[dannybex]

So it's a site for Bad Scientists?

I think that's nice. It's good to keep them all in one place.

:Retro smile:

 

[Gerwyn]

I think this the link http://www.badscience.net/forum/

Are you sure you want to spend time and enery there?

It always amuses me to hear psychiatrists talk about bad science.On the one hand they are well qualified to speak on the topic because they have been engaged in producing the majority of it.On the other hand however psychiatry has nothing to do with science as the subject is atheoretical and produces no explanatory models about causation let alone test such.It is ironic therefore for a psychiatrist to complain about bad science when the discipline is without any.they cling to Freud like a child clings to a security blanket which has seen much better days.Practitioners(I suppose they need as much practice as they can get!) devise subjective labels to attach to people and then treat those labels as objective.They then use these labels as the basis for their research(presumably if they do that long enough they might find something) and claim causation when they mean correlation. No wonder real doctors treat psychiatrists with disdain and think of them as failed doctors.

 

[Min]

The people supporting Dr Myhill by posting on Bad Science are doing Dr Myhill a great diservice- 'Jonas' has now "informed the GMC that Dr Myhill’s campaign is now attempting to directly intimidate complainants.

http://badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15693&p=338529#p338529

There is one person, xmrv77, there who has apparently sent him an abusive private message. This is a typical post of that person, who does seem rather divorced from reality:


"Master..... Stuart /JONAS.....your underlings grow restless .........and sweet PV needs your teet to suck upon.....


The enformation and confession of Joan Robinson, taken by me Brian Darcey esquire, one of her Majesties Justices of peace, the xxv.day of March.

The saide Joan saith, shee went to the house of T. Rice to borrowe a Heyer two dayes before a flawe of winde which was denied her: but denieth that she hath any impes or caused his calfe to die, or that she hurt her brood goose. Also shee remembreth that her husband went to W. Carter to bie a house & an acre of ground, & to hire a cow pastor, & to borrow a Hayer, of goodwife Carter. But denieth that she sent any impes to hurt any of his beasts, or his ambling mare, or caused any cow of his to be drowned."

 

[Min]

Let us not forget who owns this site, Ben Goldacre who studied for his Phd in Wessely's department at Kings College Hospital, London.


from http://homeopathy4health.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/goldacres-conflicts-of-interest-exposed/

"...Liaison psychiatry is a form of psychiatry in which the psychiatrist informs unsuspecting ordinary citizens who report to hospitals with organic illnesses that they are actually mentally ill. This diagnostic ability is particularly acute when the Liaison psychiatrist meets up with anyone who has suffered an environmental illness, a chemical insult, or any industry-related illness.

For some time now, Kings College has been deeply involved in the programme of spin designed by industry and the New Labour government. However, as is evident from the involvement of Goldacre there, the relationship between The Lobby, the University and the hospital, is not simple. As well as Wesselys role, ex-Revolutionary Communist Party members have also played a part in bringing vested interests to the college. Together with pseudo-scientific research into mental illness and environmentally caused illness, Kings is deeply involved in risk analysis for various controvertial environmental factors.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

Can there be any doubt that the industry directed research at Kings, with which Goldacre is associated, or his association with Professor Wessely, whose research on ME, Gulf War Syndrome and EMF never benefits patients but always government or industry, constitutes a conflict of interest that should from the beginning have been declared by Goldacre, every time he says anything about science in the Guardian
or anywhere else?