I post this on another thread http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ewcastle-13th-14th-october.36515/#post-610609 but thought it deserved highlighting in its own thread:
George Davey Smith gave a talk at a meeting of biopsychosocialists, but it looks like what he said wasn't popular with some/many/most there.
Maxhead (presumably the same @Maxhead that's on Twitter) posted the full chapter of Davey Smith's talk online:
http://issuu.com/maxhead/docs/bps_caution_davey_smith
Here's a sample summary to help use decide if you want to read it: http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/PROOF_POSITIVE.htm
George Davey Smith gave a talk at a meeting of biopsychosocialists, but it looks like what he said wasn't popular with some/many/most there.
Maxhead (presumably the same @Maxhead that's on Twitter) posted the full chapter of Davey Smith's talk online:
http://issuu.com/maxhead/docs/bps_caution_davey_smith
Here's a sample summary to help use decide if you want to read it: http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/PROOF_POSITIVE.htm
PROOF POSITIVE?
Evidence of the deliberate creation via social constructionism of “psychosocial” illness by cult indoctrination of State agencies, and the impact of this on social and welfare policy
Eileen Marshall Margaret Williams 30th August 2005
[..]
The one dissenting voice at the conference was that of George Davey Smith, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, who in a presentation called “The biopsychosocial approach: a note of caution” carried the torch for intellectual integrity. His contribution showed that bias can generate spurious findings and that when interventional studies to examine the efficacy of a psychosocial approach have been used, the results have been disappointing.
To quote from Davey Smith’s contribution: “Over the past 50 years many psychosocial factors have been proposed and accepted as important aetiological agents for particular diseases and then they have quietly been dropped from consideration and discussion”. The illustrations he cited included cholera, pellagra, asthma and peptic ulcer. He went on to quote Susan Sontag’s well-known dictum: “Theories that diseases are caused by mental state and can be cured by willpower are always an index of how much is not understood about the physical basis of the disease” (Illness as a metaphor. New York: Random House; 1978).
Davey Smith’s reasoned warning to brought to mind the validity of Susan Haark’s chapter “Concern for Truth: What it means, Why it matters” in “The Flight from Science and Reason”. (Eds) Paul R Gross, Norman Levitt and Martin W Lewis (New York Academy of Sciences, 1996; pp57-63), which finds that those who know only their own side of a case know very little of that, and that “sham reasoning” attempts not to get to the truth, but to make a case for the truth of some proposition to which one is already committed, a familiar phenomenon in contemporary academic life. “Sham reasoning” in the form of research bought and paid for by bodies with an interest in its turning out in a desired way, or motivated by political conviction, and “fake reasoning”, in the form of ‘scholarship’ that is in reality self-promotion, are all too common. Could this possibly apply to members of One-Health company?
In the discussion that followed Davey Smith’s presentation, Wessely appeared to be apoplectic: “That was a powerful and uncomfortable paper. There will undoubtedly be many people, including those who one might call CFS activists, who would have loved every word you were saying. There is a popular and seductive view of medical history in which we move implicitly from unknown diseases which are thought to be psychiatric, and as we become better, brighter scientists, they are finally accepted in the pantheon of real diseases. You should remember that there is an opposite trend as well, which you didn’t mention”.
Davey Smith’s response was succinct: he believed there is a need to distinguish association from actual causation: “My main point was about disease aetiology. As a disease epidemiologist I want to get the right answers about this. In my view, susceptibility has been overplayed and exposure has been under-appreciated in social epidemiology”.
The distinguishing between association and causation is a key issue: Wessely’s confusion, especially in relation to ME/CFS, of association with causality is a criticism that has long been directed at him and he has been reminded again and again that correlation is not the same as causation, and that he should not over-interpret results as having more practical importance than those results warrant. To do so is not only methodologically flawed, but contributes to the continued mis-perception of the disorder.
Nevertheless, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Professor Sir Michael Marmot sprang to support Wessely: “I would emphasize Simon Wessely’s point. It is easy to look back and say, ‘Gosh, how silly they were in the past to think all these silly thoughts; aren’t we clever now!’. Research has advanced beyond the examples you cite because there have been many advances in conceptualisation and measurement of psychosocial factors”, to which Davey Smith replied: “We can get more robust evidence from observational studies, but these approaches have not really been utilized in the psychosocial field”.