BBC: Chronic fatigue syndrome treatment 'should be withdrawn'

[TiredSam]

Well to be exact it was Charles Shepherd who was called a "leading expert" at the beginning of the article. Our dodgy friends who were given the last word at the end of the article were called "some of the country's leading ME researchers and clinicians".

However, did the BBC not notice that 4 of the 5 "leading ME researchers and clinicians" had psychotherapy, psychaitry, psychology, or psychological in their titles? The fifth being the Bristol childcatcher. Did it not occur to the journalist to ask what an expert who treats adults with medicine thinks, just for the sake of balance? To accept that this motley crew of BPS cult propagandists are the "leading ME researchers and clinicians" on ME is bizarre - it's like writing an article on emissions pollution and giving the last word to the "leading researchers" from Volkswagen. It would have been better if the journalist had dug a little deeper and perhaps called this bunch of PACE supporters "some of the country's politically dominant ME researchers and clinicians responsible for this scandal".

 

[Sly Saint]

if the journalist had dug a little deeper

10 minutes on Google (or better still me-pedia) would have sufficed; I was sending the BBC (named recipients) the same info as other media channels until my emails started being rejected.

But in a strange way it is good to see the public confirmation that Simon Wessely is still very much behind it all............ as I have said before, the journalists need to start joining the dots.

 

[TiredSam]

But in a strange way it is good to see the public confirmation that Simon Wessely is still very much behind it all............ as I have said before, the journalists need to start joining the dots.

Indeed. It didn't even take an FOI to get that letter. So far Sir Simon has been using journalists who just can't be bothered thinking about what they are doing to his advantage, so he must be very disappointed that it didn't quite work out that way for him this time .

 

[NelliePledge]

10 minutes on Google (or better still me-pedia) would have sufficed; I was sending the BBC (named recipients) the same info as other media channels until my emails started being rejected.

But in a strange way it is good to see the public confirmation that Simon Wessely is still very much behind it all............ as I have said before, the journalists need to start joining the dots.

also good to see that he feels he has to get behind it rather than taking a back seat

 

[Sly Saint]

eta: for anyone on twitter the petition to remove CBT/GET from NICE guidelines is still ongoing
https://www.change.org/p/nice-stop-harming-me-cfs-patients-take-cbt-get-out-of-me-cfs-guidelines-now

 

[Sean]

I see they have been downgraded to merely 'some' of the country's leading ME researchers and clinicians.

Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

 

[Invisible Woman]

Perhaps instead of " some of the country's leading ME researchers and clinicians"

that should read "some of the country's most militant ME researchers and clinicians"

 

[Esther12]

However, did the BBC not notice that 4 of the 5 "leading ME researchers and clinicians" had psychotherapy, psychaitry, psychology, or psychological in their titles?

Isn't Paul McCrone a health economist, or something like that?

 

[Trish]

Isn't Paul McCrone a health economist, or something like that?

Professor of Health Economics at Kings (home of Wessely and Chalder), and lead author on the PACE cost effectiveness paper published in PLOS one that currently has an expression of concern attached to it:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0040808

 

[Inara]

Professor of Health Economics at Kings (home of Wessely and Chalder), and lead author on the PACE cost effectiveness paper published in PLOS one that currently has an expression of concern attached to it:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0040808

During negotiations with the journal over these matters, we have sought further guidance from the PACE trial REC. They have advised that public release, even of anonymised data, is not appropriate. As a consequence, we are unable to publish the individual patient data requested by the journal.

Or differently said - as two people working in the psychology field once said: We can't release our raw data because people will see we're cheating and manipulating.

 

[Andy]

They've added this to the bottom of the article now.

*This is a combined statement from: Prof Trudie Chalder, Professor of Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy, Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London; Prof Esther Crawley, Professor of Child Health, University of Bristol; Prof Paul McCrone, Professor of Health Economics, Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London; Prof Michael Sharpe, Professor of Psychological Medicine, University of Oxford and Prof Sir Simon Wessely, Chair of Psychological Medicine, King's College London.

 

[Sly Saint]

They've added this to the bottom of the article now.

Cabal? What Cabal?......ha, talk about nailing your colours to the mast of good old ship PACE

 

[chrisb]

What do we presume the procedure would be? BBC contacts SMC. Does SMC then contact the duty psychiatrist and ask for a stock a see, or do they have the stock response on file?

So who wrote this? Which of them cannot distinguish between infer and imply? Do they then go to the trouble of informing the others and sending a copy of the response for approval, or do they just append the names? I find it hard to believe that they have taken the trouble to appraise all of them of the facts, and get approval of the response.

But perhaps they do.

 

[NelliePledge]

This article isn’t fantastic but at least we won the message headline and the first paragraphs. Many people will only have seen the headline. It’s been shown in web user testing that people skim very quickly spending most time on the first sentence and paragraph and often skip over information lower down the article.

Given they’ve now listed the usual suspects there’s now a case that next time there’s an article we need to be getting “our scientists” quoted for balance.

 

[TiredSam]

Isn't Paul McCrone a health economist, or something like that?

Yes, but the full title he gave himself when signing the letter to the BBC included "Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN)". What's a health economist anyway? Real economists have a poor enough track record in trying to sort out the economy, so why allow one anywhere near health?

 

[TiredSam]

Given they’ve now listed the usual suspects there’s now a case that next time there’s an article we need to be getting “our scientists” quoted for balance.

Quite. Instead of rounding up five of the usual suspects for a dodgy quote, they could have asked 42 real leading ME researchers and clinicians what they think. Too much work for a BBC journalist? Don't worry, someone's already done the work for them:

http://www.virology.ws/2016/02/10/open-letter-lancet-again/