Trial By Error: The BPS Brigades Score Another Own Goal
15 AUGUST 2018
By David Tuller, DrPH
Not long ago,
Sir Simon scored an own goal by enticing a childhood buddy to enter the PACE debate. That buddy, attorney and social commentator Mike Godwin, soon pronounced the trial—which Sir Simon had called “a thing of beauty”–to be “so profoundly flawed that it cannot be trusted.” Sir Simon tweeted out a brave front in the face of his friend’s rejection of PACE, reaffirming his own belief that the trial was well-conducted. Whatever. Godwin agreed to sign the open letter to
Lancet editor Richard Horton.
Now Professor Michael Sharpe has done something similar. He recently tweeted out
a Guardian essay by Keith Kahn-Harris, a sociologist and author of
a new book about denialism in science. Professor Sharpe has often framed criticism of PACE’s methodological and ethical lapses as a form of scientific denialism, akin to climate-change skepticism. Perhaps he believed that Dr Kahn-Harris’
Guardian essay somehow proved his point.
