I've read things that are just as insulting towards Wesseley on this and other sites. Not that this justifies anything but my point being that it's so easy to criticize others and not realize that we are doing the same thing.
I just want to be clear that I wasn't saying: 'Look at the terrible people on Bad Science posting about how an elderly women deserves to be beaten until their hands are bruised, we cannot possibly take anything they say seriously', I was just pointing out that they seem appalled by 'harassment' from CFS patients which is less extreme that they which they themselves engage in.
Personally, I expect quite a lot of extreme content on the internet, and don't particularly care about it either way. I'm more interested in trying to find good arguments than unreasonable ones, and if there'd been any serious defence of, for example, the way in which results from PACE were spun I'd have been interested to read it. However, if people are going to claim that 'harassment' includes saying that the PACE researchers lied about their results, or whatever Mar said about Wessely, then it should probably also include someone saying: "I think that the countess of Mar, like volcano, needs a really good slapping. Hard enough to bruise your hand. I'd volunteer."
This widening of what is viewed as "harrasment" for CFS patients does trouble me, particularly when it's taken to include Freedom of Information requests (I'll whack in another link to this thread about an FOI for PACE recovery data:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...d-releasing-data-on-recovery-from-pace.20243/). A number of important and influential CFS researchers have been spinning results to make false claims about the efficacy of treatments, and patients are right to be angry about that. There does seem to be a trend towards trying to present all of that anger as being a result of cartesian dualism, or a fear of the stigma of mental health, not believing psychiatric illnesses can be 'real', and so on.... this is such bullshit. It's particularly ridiculous to me coming from Bad Science at a time when Goldacre has a book out about how data from trial is manipulated and the importance of researchers releasing data, and how deviations from protocol can lead to misleading claims. Given the nature and tone of the forum there, I do think that it's fair to hold them to higher standards for looking at and understanding the evidence than those of random people who just happen to fall ill, and yet the discussions around CFS there don't seem to dig seriously in to the details or evidence about why so many patients are upset and angry, reducing it all to foolish dualism instead.
PS: Just to be clear, @ IVI not slagging off your posts which were there, or anyone elses. It is mainly the way that patient concerns are dismissed as being stigmatising mental health that really pisses me off. Especially as I didn't see anyone there saying 'But I don't think mental health problems are 'real' ' or anything remotely similar. Constructing straw-arguments like that is like the worst of CFS 'advocacy', but being presented as a sophisticated and reasonable response.
This is pretty much exactly the thing that I find most irritating right now, so perhaps I'm responding too forcefully... but fucking hell!