Flat Earth and PACE - both on the wrong side of science (Blog)

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Bob

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Short blog about PACE.

Flat Earth and PACE - both on the wrong side of science
https://facebook.com/notes/ella-per...n-the-wrong-side-of-science/10153972681452577

Last week quite a stir was raised when Nature published an argument for avoiding data sharing in which patients and scientists questioning the claims made by PACE authors were equated with tobacco industry supporters and climate change deniers.
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White, Chalder, Wessley and company have much more in common with climate change deniers (aka the fossil fuel industry) financially, culturally, and politically, than with the scientists desperately trying to illuminate an emergent and critical threat to life and health.
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This group of psychologists, without any actual proof that “false illness beliefs” can even be the cause of the disease called ME or CFS, they are like the Catholic Church in the time of Gallileo. They just “know” (believe!) that they’re right...
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If PACE has to be retracted, so will many other papers. A knighthood may be rescinded; high-paying insurance industry consulting fees may be lost. Expensive medical research will have to be funded, insurance companies and social support networks will have to acknowledge that the disability is legitimate, and patients will have to be treated with the respect and care that sufferers of diseases like cancer and MS receive.
Click to expand...

Click through to read full blog:
https://m.facebook.com/notes/ella-p...n-the-wrong-side-of-science/10153972681452577
 
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msf

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It´s a good but rather depressing analogy, since some people are still Flat Earthers four hundred years after Galileo...
 
Asa

Asa

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Reminded me of something I just recently heard; From episode 1 of the (award-honored) PBS introductory-physics series, The Mechanical Universe (ca 1985):



"Even the earliest human inhabitants of this planet must have looked up at the sky and across the landscape and asked, 'How does it all work?' And without even knowing it, they had taken the first tentative steps to discovering and understanding….

Greek mathematicians added immensely to the world of science… But despite…such brilliant discoveries [i.e. pi], the Greeks fell behind. Once the Golden Age was over, they placed a lower value on the questions than on the answers. So with too few questions, the world bought Aristotle’s mechanics…

Answers instead of questions that went almost unchallenged… The intellectual direction of Western civilization had fallen into line behind the endless circular argument of the Platonic ideal…



It [i.e. the shape of a new world] began when an extremely curious Polish monk, Nicolaus Copernicus, looked to the stars and saw things in a different light… Pillars of an age old academic community were beset with threatening questions.

No one was better equipped to fill the intellectual void than Galileo Galilei. Though Aristotalian thinking still ruled the world of the Italian Renaissance, Galileo was an exception to the rule… An army… arose in defense of the status quo… For a change, the answers were more dangerous than the questions.

The church, which considered him a threat… warned him to leave things in their proper places. Nonetheless, Galileo spoke the truth…"
 
A.B.

A.B.

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This is exactly the type of the article that we need. The whole PACE circus is just tobacco science with predetermined conclusions made to protect special interest groups.

As long as we're busy defending ourselves from accusations of harassment and irrational thinking or whatever else they come up with, this story isn't being told. We need to tell this story more often!

Wessely et. al. want us to ignore their conflicts of interest and the science showing they're very wrong.
 
Daisymay

Daisymay

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Excellent blog.

Quote from the blog:

"The PACE group has been buttressing up their version of reality for years, against substantive and copious emerging science showing that their stance is at best ineffective and at worst, extremely harmful."

This sentence brought to mind just how the psychiatrists have used and twisted words to great effect over the years to help to "buttress up" their flat earth view of reality, in defiance of the scientific facts:

To quote from http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/The-UK-Governments-three-pronged-strategy-for-CFSME.htm Margaret Williams, 15th July 2014:

"The Wessely School often fail to declare fully the extent of their vested interests (ie. their work for the permanent health insurance industry and their work as advisors on “CFS” to Departments of State); they ignore elementary rules of procedure; they defy established research principles that require new research to be grounded on what is already known and published about the disorder in question and they proceed as if this substantive body of mainstream knowledge did not exist. Some would regard that as professional misconduct.

The Wessely School repeatedly uses a well-thought-out strategy: first they actively ignore the extant biomedical evidence base, failing to reference it in their papers and websites (leading people to believe it does not exist), then they diligently promote the notion that the biomedical model of ME/CFS is merely a “view” or a “belief” held by a few misguided clinicians, patients and activists, yet the existence of ME as a neuroimmune disease is not a “view” or a “belief” but a fact.

A “view” is a belief firmly held but with no proof of its truth, whereas a fact is a concept whose truth can be proved.

By referring to the biomedical model as simply a “view”, they instantly downgrade its validity in public perception. This “view” or “belief” held by patients is further degraded to a symptom of the disorder, the more strongly the view is held being “proof” of the need for “cognitive restructuring” to change these “aberrant illness beliefs” (the Wessely School advises that there is no need for any biomedical testing, claiming that this would increase the wrong illness beliefs).

At the same time, aided by the lazy and unquestioning media, the Wessely School promote as fact the psychosocial model, when in reality it is nothing more than their own “view”, a view which is invalidated by the scientific evidence. Undaunted, they disseminate the impression that there are these two divergent points of view, as evidenced by the Judgment of Mr Justice Cranston – see below.

Distressingly for patients, the top echelons of the UK Establishment, including science editors, senior BBC reporters, the Medical Royal Colleges, the Royal Society and the Judiciary have been taken in by the Wessely School’s assertions about “CFS/ME” and are all convinced by them (hence the award of the inaugural John Maddox prize to Wessely for his “courage” in “standing up for science” and for “facing difficulty or hostility in doing so” – see “Professor Simon Wessely’s award of the inaugural John Maddox Prize for his courage in the field of ME and Gulf War Syndrome”. Malcolm Hooper. 12th November 2012).

As a direct consequence of the Wessely School’s false belief system, biomedical research has been side-lined and starved of funding, and a whole generation of doctors has been brought up believing ME/CFS to be a psychosomatic condition, with patients being disparaged accordingly."


The recent IOM and P2P reports concluded that the scientific evidence proves that ME is a serious, multi-system disease and that the point of view that ME/CFS is a behavioral disorder is scientifically untenable ie the evidence proves the earth is indeed round not flat.

I think we need to be really aware of the langauge which is used and clearly and repeatedly emphasis that the behavioral view of ME is scientifically invalid, that this isn't up for discussion, facts trump points of view, the earth is round.
 
Forbin

Forbin

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The only minor quibble I have with this blog is that it conflates the concept of "Flat Earth" with Galileo's trial over the "heliocentric system" in 1633. Galileo came into conflict with the Catholic church because of their differing views on whether the Earth orbited the Sun or vice versa. The church insisted that the Earth was the immovable center of the universe, but Galileo argued that the Earth orbited the Sun.

So far as I know, the Catholic church never had a doctrine about the Earth being flat. The concept of a round, spherical Earth had been around for 2,000 years and, by Galileo's time, had long been the view of most educated people, including members of the church. Magellan had already sailed around the world 100 years before Galileo's trial.

Some uneducated people may still have believed in a "flat Earth" at the time of Galileo's trial, but that simply distinguished them as uneducated - which is how we employ the term today. It had nothing to do with Galileo's heresy trail before the Roman Inquisition.

I realize that this isn't the point of the article, but it is in the title.
 
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Sean

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7,378
Excellent post. Thank you, Ella.

But where is the 'Like' button for it on that page? I'm logged into FB, and can see other people's Likes, but can't see the button to add mine.
 
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