What about the nuclear warheads we're building in the Emotional Support subforum? Should we call off those too?and letter and pipe bombs!!!!!not releasing the data will surely "protect" them from that and also don't forget the anthrax letters.
Coyne - What it takes for Queen Mary to declare a request for scientific data “vexatious”
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John Mac
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Andrew Sabisky@AndrewSabisky4 Std.vor 4 Stunden
@RichardCann76 no, just people who send death threats & letter bombs. Also eminent psychs who engage in concerted social media bullying
So now it's letter bombs is it.
Lies on top of lies
@RichardCann76 no, just people who send death threats & letter bombs. Also eminent psychs who engage in concerted social media bullying
So now it's letter bombs is it.
Lies on top of lies
chipmunk1
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yes and Coyne is a nutjob who joined the group of mailbombers, terrorists, nutcases etc.
SOC
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Is there any solid evidence of death threats, letter bombs, and years of police protection (as Sabinsky claims)? I know some BPS supporters have claimed death threats and I think I heard they asked for police consultation on safety, but what is independently verified?
I'm guessing that if those claiming such things had anything of substance they'd be showing it to every journalist on earth and posting photos on social media. They aren't able to do that if it's all in their paranoid imaginination.
I don't remember hearing about any bombs. The 'death threats' I heard about were things like, "You'll pay someday for what you've done to patients", and I'm pretty sure I heard that the police refused to provide protection as it was deemed unnecessary. Anyone have better information?
I understand there's always the angry individual with a big mouth. Such a person may have issued something that we'd all agree sounds like a death threat. Sadly, every public figure is subject to bile of such people. That is not a campaign. What Sabisky is claiming is a massive campaign of death threats by ME activists. He needs to provide evidence... not SW's or EC's claims such things happened, but real evidence.
I'm guessing that if those claiming such things had anything of substance they'd be showing it to every journalist on earth and posting photos on social media. They aren't able to do that if it's all in their paranoid imaginination.
I don't remember hearing about any bombs. The 'death threats' I heard about were things like, "You'll pay someday for what you've done to patients", and I'm pretty sure I heard that the police refused to provide protection as it was deemed unnecessary. Anyone have better information?
I understand there's always the angry individual with a big mouth. Such a person may have issued something that we'd all agree sounds like a death threat. Sadly, every public figure is subject to bile of such people. That is not a campaign. What Sabisky is claiming is a massive campaign of death threats by ME activists. He needs to provide evidence... not SW's or EC's claims such things happened, but real evidence.
chipmunk1
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even if such a single case ever happened how can you associate an entire group of patients with it?
So it is acceptable to call all Arabs terrorists?
Their definition of terrorism is probably fighting back on social media or sending a hostile email.
It seems that Coyne has been called a nutcase not only once but twice. I have seen similar attemps to discredit him on other social media platforms. They don't have anything to suppport their position so they have to discredit him.
So it is acceptable to call all Arabs terrorists?
Their definition of terrorism is probably fighting back on social media or sending a hostile email.
It seems that Coyne has been called a nutcase not only once but twice. I have seen similar attemps to discredit him on other social media platforms. They don't have anything to suppport their position so they have to discredit him.
@CoyneoftheRealm actually just the people who send death threats and letter bombs. Also you.
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02:33 - 13. Dez. 2015
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Have you tried?@HylomantisL5 Std.vor 5 Stunden
@AndrewSabisky @CoyneoftheRealm you honestly just implied he's a nutcase? Step away from Twitter. Seriously.
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The CFS BPS crew have created a narrative where ME patients are psych patients who hate psychiatry. To add to this narrative, they discuss a few threats and extrapolate those to the larger number of ME/CFS patients who question their methodology and conclusions, and that then taints the entire ME/CFS community.
In this narrative, we are hateful violent extremists who despise anything involving psychiatry, presumably including patients with other disorders who do not dispute their psychiatric diagnosis. As violent psych haters, the normal rules are not expected to apply, and if we don't like it, then that's just our punishment for being bad patients and bad people.
Fortunately we have heard this narrative for years now ... long enough that when it gets trotted out again, it's greeted by a collective eye-roll from the patient community, rather than the vehement outrage which our accusers seek to provoke. It's interesting to see that real academics treat these accusations as a mild curiosity which is utterly irrelevant to the examination and discussion of the data. Those accusers are accustomed to the media gleefully running with the sensational story, and their buddies comforting them for being the victims of supposed abuse.
This narrative was deliberately created and widely disseminated by the Science Media Centre and some associated CFS researchers in the UK. Most likely it was created for the express purpose of explaining to other researchers and politicians, etc, why large numbers of ME/CFS patients loudly object to the methodology and conclusions of those researchers. And now that this tactic seems to be spectacularly failing in the Twitterverse, I think it will be interesting to see how the SMC escalates the harassment narrative or changes course with it.
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Regarding alleged death threats, I lean toward what Coyne is saying in this tweet. Polite way of saying "preexisting/long-standing anxiety disorder".
SOC
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At first glance I thought this was a response to Sabisky and someone was finally pointing out the concerted social media bullying campaign of 'eminent psychs' like SW....
I'm thinking we let this guy Sabisky roll. He's making a pretty good case for us with the intelligent scientists who we want to understand what's been going on in ME BPS research. It's good for them to see the hatefulness and lies trotted out to shore up the BPS lying narrative. Good scientists will better understand that these 'researchers' are not reputable scientists, but political hacks abusing science (and patients) for personal gain.
At the rate they're shooting themselves in the foot, they soon won't have a leg to stand on.
@charles shepherd, can you make a formal complaint about Sabisky to his employer for his unprofessional statements? He is embarrasing the UCL, isn't he. And the ME/CFS community.
worldbackwards
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I think that this is a kind of rhetorical escalation. I'm sure researchers have been threatened at some point - if Charles Shepperd has been threatened, then it's likely enough and there was plenty of bullshit thrown around over XMRV and the like. There will always be a few idiots involved in any activist cause who act out a bit, especially when people in that cause are marginalised and mocked without right to reply. It goes with the modern social media territory.
But bombs, police protection...surely the person most likely to be availing himself of protection would be Sir Simon Wessely. That would be the same Sir Simon who is currently revelling in his high profile, media heavy role as President of the Royal College of Psychiatry, and who frequently chatters away quite cheerfully on Twitter with members of the patient community who disagree with him, who usually quite cheerfully chatter back. I can't say that Sharpe seemed to be conspicuously in hiding when he was touring the TV and radio studios earlier this year on his press junket. New identity? Looked and sounded like the same old Sharpe to me.
Are these people likely to be running around if there is a patient conspiracy out to get them? I look at ME activists on Twitter (the home of the angry, threatening moron let us remember) and all I see is largely rational argument. Maybe the occasional bit of 'why haven't you agreed with me yet' but hardly anything remotely threatening. Where are all the terrorists? Are they hiding in between the tweets? Even on here where we're off the leash a bit, the only campaigns organised are a petition here, a talk there, the odd graph maybe. I don't feel very scary. Does anyone? Have you ever threatened anyone with a rogue bar chart?
I think, as others have suggested, that we can expect more of this in the proper media in days to come, but it begs a question: Why not just reel out all the people who've been cured by CBT and GET? Are they not grateful? Do they not want to spread the word? Even the Lightning Process seem to be able to trot out a few victories with all sorts of different illnesses. Why not finish us off by showing off their successes? Because it strikes me that I've never heard a CBT/GET recovery, a proper, full blown, "cast off my sickness beliefs and saw the light" one, from anyone.
I find it very hard to believe that a consultant psychiatrist or any kind of mental health professional would genuinely be afraid of ME/CFS patients or that they genuinely felt safer in a war zone. This is just mendacious spin. As a career psychiatrist, Wessely will have interacted with countless patients with schizophrenia. Although persons with this diagnosis constitute only 1% of the population, they commit 5-20% of all homicides according to the literature. In unmedicated first-episode psychosis, 1 in 629 of such patients will commit murder. I have never heard of a single instance of an arrest for threats/intimidation, let alone an actual violent crime against a researcher, by a person with a diagnosis of ME/CFS. I don't doubt they receive some nasty hate mail but to say they fear for their safety any more than they'd fear for their safety working in any psych hospital is a lie.
SOC
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I say let him embarrass UCL.
His tweets are sounding increasingly paranoid and hysterical. They lack any substance and are full of hate and prejudice. They are demonstrating to the scientific community the kind of mindset that is supporting PACE and related research. His tweets are not negatively influencing the scientific readers, rather the opposite, I'd say. As calm, intelligent people doubt Sabisky's hysterical narrative, they will also begin to doubt the peculiar narrative he's basing his rants upon. Letter bombs? Really? Hoards of insanely hostile ME patients violently attacking respectable researchers if the research data is released? Doesn't seem likely, now does it?
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Do we know if the trial participants had to sign some sort of confidentiality agreement? Given that over 600 people took part in this trial there has been remarkably little feedback from participants about it.
SOC
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There's a big difference between nasty letters and name-calling, and actual death threats.
Indeed.
There you have it. Anyone who wants to look around the internet is not going to find the ME terrorists of the BPS narrative. People who are wondering about the violent ME terrorist narrative should be encouraged to look around in places ME patients talk. They may find insults to BPS researchers (nothing special on social media), but the death threats and murderous planning are conspicuously absent.
Re: the claims of death threats, and now letter bombs (a new one to me), I think there might just be some real value in a well-targeted FOI request about this. I'm putting this out there in the hope that somebody has more time available than I do, and can work on this...
There was a claim at some point (I forget by whom and where) that there is now a special unit in the Met Police (or somewhere - who/where exactly this alleged unit is, is crucial) for dealing with incidents of ME/CFS-related harrassment. So: an FOI request to the Met (or the relevant police authority) for the number of incidents, in each year for the last 5 years, of (a) email death threats, (b) letter bombs, (c)... etc - and details like the number of prosecutions of perpetrators that resulted from the investigations. Perhaps also ask for the number of ME activists who are considered by the police to be dangerous and a threat to researchers. Oh, and the number of working hours per week that the special police unit dedicates to this issue. The answer to that might be funny...
It would all have to be worded just right and ask the right questions, but I think we're all rightly quite confident that the numbers are going to be very small and that in terms of actual legal action / prosecutions there have actually been very few, or probably none. Getting a statement on the record, from the police, of just how small these numbers are, that ought to be the perfect rebuttal in future for anybody making these claims.
The details of the actual incidents themselves are typically not going to be things that can legally be discussed in public. It's the same with forum moderation: if somebody writes something really offensive to somebody, you simply can't repeat their abuse of that person by telling the world what they said or did that got them banned. So we can't expect people to produce the evidence of exactly what was said, by whom and to whom, but getting some total numbers of incidents in various categories ought to be possible, and likely very useful.
There was a claim at some point (I forget by whom and where) that there is now a special unit in the Met Police (or somewhere - who/where exactly this alleged unit is, is crucial) for dealing with incidents of ME/CFS-related harrassment. So: an FOI request to the Met (or the relevant police authority) for the number of incidents, in each year for the last 5 years, of (a) email death threats, (b) letter bombs, (c)... etc - and details like the number of prosecutions of perpetrators that resulted from the investigations. Perhaps also ask for the number of ME activists who are considered by the police to be dangerous and a threat to researchers. Oh, and the number of working hours per week that the special police unit dedicates to this issue. The answer to that might be funny...
It would all have to be worded just right and ask the right questions, but I think we're all rightly quite confident that the numbers are going to be very small and that in terms of actual legal action / prosecutions there have actually been very few, or probably none. Getting a statement on the record, from the police, of just how small these numbers are, that ought to be the perfect rebuttal in future for anybody making these claims.
The details of the actual incidents themselves are typically not going to be things that can legally be discussed in public. It's the same with forum moderation: if somebody writes something really offensive to somebody, you simply can't repeat their abuse of that person by telling the world what they said or did that got them banned. So we can't expect people to produce the evidence of exactly what was said, by whom and to whom, but getting some total numbers of incidents in various categories ought to be possible, and likely very useful.
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Daisymay
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From "Comments on the PACE debate held in the House of Lords (Grand Committee) on 6th February 2013"
by Margaret Williams, http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/Commen...d-in-Grand-Committee-on-6th-February-2013.htm
"Naming Myra McClure and Esther Crawley as well as Simon Wessely as victims (Lord Winston referred to Dr Esther Crawley as “Esther Cranley”, and this can be clearly seen on YouTube), he went on to introduce the topic of the alleged vilification of his colleagues by patients with CFS/ME which, in a debate supposedly about the effects of the PACE trial on CFS/ME patients, was inappropriate. It is, however, a recurring theme used by Wessely to discredit by implication all CFS/ME patients and those clinicians and medical scientists who support their view that it is not a psychosocial but a primary biomedical disorder. Does Lord Winston see legitimate, rational criticisms of the PACE trial made by the Countess of Mar, Professor Malcolm Hooper, consultant physician Dr William Weir and others in the UK, as well as by many international experts, as “vilifying” the psychiatrists who espouse the psychosocial model of CFS/ME? Despite being requested, no evidence of alleged death threats to Wessely or of related Police crime numbers has been provided.
As for the threats allegedly suffered by Professor Myra McClure and Dr Esther Crawley, whilst a few desperate patients may have given vent to their understandable frustration (particularly at the triumphant way in which Myra McClure’s negative XMRV retroviral studies were proclaimed), it seems the “death threats” may be a matter of interpretation. Quite certainly, it is known that Professor McClure has dealt with a correspondent’s valid concerns about her work by sending a receipt six weeks later which said “Your message was deleted without being read” and Dr Crawley admitted in a radio broadcast in July 2011 that she had not received explicit death threats but had misinterpreted one email to constitute a death threat and that her local police force had taken no action(http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b012nlcv)."
And on the topic of Wessely claiming harassment, the Countess of Mar in an open letter to Professor Sir Simon Wessely in December 2012, http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/lady-mar-writes-to-prof-wessely.20750/
"I have heard and read the extraordinary way in which you and some of your colleagues have denigrated people with ME and have tried (and to some extent succeeded) to persuade others that people with ME are not really ill at all; they merely have 'aberrant illness beliefs'. You have deliberately obfuscated the terminology surrounding ME by linking it with chronic fatigue and attempting surreptitiously to reclassify it as a psychological condition under the WHO ICD classifications. In doing this you appear to have totally ignored the first exhortation to doctors - "First do no harm". Yet when this beleaguered population has reason to look at your work critically you deny what you have said and written and plead persecution and harassment from the very people you purport to be helping. I would have thought that any thinking person would ask themselves why this is happening; would ask the individuals who are clearly angry what is angering them, and try to put things right. You are in an exalted position - a Professor of Psychiatry with all sorts of awards. Why on earth do you need to play the victim?"
"Patients must be able to trust doctors and scientists. You have betrayed this trust. A scientist should be able to accept honest criticism. You have misconstrued criticism and turned it into harassment. You have much to answer for, so it ill behoves you to employ diversionary tactics in an attempt to portray yourself as the injured party."
There have been a few people who have commented on their experience generally in a negative way. One was in the MEA report recently.
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...pace-trial-protocol.3928/page-130#post-635698
and another comment
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...pace-trial-protocol.3928/page-131#post-657663
Large Donner
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And this comes from someone using social media to proclaim hate speech against a patient group!!!?
If we are the nutcases this person is the case and the kernel.
mango
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not too long ago i read something in a news article (IIRC) that said something along the lines of "CFS patients are bombing researchers with letters" which obviously was a way of saying "CFS patients are sending lots of letters". however, it clearly was intentionally written in a way that could be interpreted differently ("sending exploding letter bombs", for example).
i tried to find the exact quote and the source, but wasn't able to. sorry.
it's just like when Sharpe in a recent news article was quoted saying “It’s wrong to say people don’t want to get better, but..."
as i see it, these are examples of their manipulative rhetoric. saying something without actually saying it...