I've made a practice of not publicly calling out Esther Crawley in part because the issues we face are so much bigger than any one researcher.
26 tweets an hour ago
Embed Jennifer Brea @jenbrea Follow Read on Twitter
And because I think I still entertain a fantasy of one day sitting down to lunch with her and saying, "woman, if you mean as well as you say you do, what on earth are you doing?"
I'm also uncomfortable with personalizing scientific disagreement. I think good science does eventually win out (even if it takes decades) and that disagreement and radically different POVs are important, constructive, and worth defending.
But here's the thing – she personalizes her work and the criticisms of it in the media *every single chance she gets.* It's astonishing.
Rather than defend her work on the merits, or critique her critics on theirs, she constantly seeks to delegitimize them by portraying herself as a victim of harassment, a martyr on the altar of scientific truth.
And she may genuinely feel harassed and emotionally hurt by the emails and tweets she receives. She may feel bullied. She may deeply believe in the truth of her work and potential to help.
She may feel besieged. And the psychology of feeling besieged is to triple down on your belief that you are in the right.
And so the way she has responded to vociferous criticism is on the one hand, only human. And yet I find it completely shocking behavior in a scientist, and even more so in a healer.
Here's the thing, Esther. I too have been the "victim" of "harassment." I've been called all manner of horrible things, received the most appalling emails, and have been the victim of textbook cyberstalking.
I am pretty sure I have received as bad or worse. And you know what?
This is the internet. Humanity in its full diversity and spectrum of personality. And some of the people I've encountered are truly awful. So what?
I get on with it. I get on with the work because the task of reforming culture, medicine and science so that we can return millions to lives worth living matters more than anything anyone can do to try to hurt me.
The absolute worst thing you can do in response to ill treatment is to wrap it around yourself like a mantle. Or use it as a cudgel against legitimate critics in the media and on stage to score points with people who don't know better.
And that is what I see you doing every chance you get.
I find this even more disturbing than unblinded trials with subjective outcome measures or your complete disinterest in the methods and findings of the biomedical research of the last decade.
That at least one could confine to the realm of legitimate scientific difference. I'd say you're using an outmoded and weak epistemology. But that's at least a principled argument to have.
What I cannot abide is the way your response to legitimate criticism *every single time* is to throw a deeply disenfranchised group of disabled people under the bus. It's the ugliest form of punching down I've ever seen.
You have no problem getting quoted in almost every piece about ME (in which you never fail to talk about "death threats" and harassment).
And yet you claim you are being silenced.
You say you are being cyber bullied (in other words, we raise our voices too loudly) AND you claim to be the voice of the "voiceless."
Every time you are given a platform, you never fail to use it as an opportunity to add to our stigma, to add to our pain, to add to the public perception that there is something different about us as a class of people.
You do not need to "provide our voice." You do not need to "provide our voice." You do not need to "provide our voice." You do not need to "provide our voice." You do not need to "provide our voice." You do not need to "provide our voice." You do not need to "provide our voice."
We have voices and we use them every single day. We are speaking for ourselves *all the time.* The practice I believe you need to cultivate is that of listening. Try taking a media diet for one year. Stop attacking. Stop defending.
As a curious person, ask yourself, without judgment, why are tens of thousands of people so angry at me? Is there something I can learn from that anger?
Or at least, engage with your critics in a way that is intellectually curious and rigorous. Hint: the answer to "why unblinded trials and subjective outcome measures" is never "death threats."
Just as the answer to "we need to provide a voice to the voiceless" is never "because, death threats." Replace that mantra with "nothing about us, without us" and you are halfway there.
. (You have to read all her tweets).
