Michael Sharpe on Radio 4 Today / Tom Feilden BBC (18th march 2019)

On reflection, what this reminded me of was the interview with Crawley on You and Yours when there was a perfectly sensible programme for 40 minutes or so and then a last minute interview with Crawley was awkwardly levered in at the end. The presenter's heart was not in this. It was something imposed from above.

 

Again this 'small minority of people' who 'object'. (MS)
take a look on #MillionsMissing Professor Sharpe, and anyone from the BBC.

 

Tom Fielden wasn't the presenter then?

 

No. I think it must be assumed that he had more of a liaison role.

 

For the SMC presumably.

 

He probably wrote the questions. He may have helped with the answers as well.

 

He was the Editor for the day and tried to shoehorn the piece into a day themed around scientific rationalism and liberal humanism, so ‘framing’ the story as criticism of MEcfs research as irrational & anti-science.

 

Fortunately was placed literally at the fag-end of the show. Previously eg for SMILE Trial, put it in a prime time slot between 8 and 8.30am (from memory).

 

He claims the results have been replicated. Considering what the NIH had to say about the Oxford Criteria...I would question what good that replication amounts to. Besides a lot of wasted money, of course.

 

This is what it sounded like.

I am reminded of an interview with Andrew Wakefield where he complained that everyone was ganging up against his science.

 

If his attempt at replication is to change the recovery criteria halfway through the trial and drop all the objective measures because you know you won't get the results you want then there has been replication. So what does that also say about the other studies previously. The justification for the PACE trial was that they didn't have a definitive answer
from all previous trials.

 

I've done a transcript... [eta: apols for spelling "Kearney" incorrectly though. oops!]

 

I think we should all congratulate Martha for an excellent interview! I don't think MS came across well at all.

 

Do I really want to read this?

 

Probably not - but given the work @Lucibee put into it, I think you should. It's only a short interview and, as Lucibee said, Sharpe doesn't come over that well.

 

Sounds like he is going on the offensive and is desperate.
This often works for a while until the house of cards shatters. A biomarker or treatment will do that and its likely part of their goals is to prevent money going to biomedical research.
Is lying or fraud any sort of breach of his professional ethics or employment? I have no idea how things work in the UK but in other countries there are ethics boards, employers can terminate employees who act unethically and doctors have to belong to professional organizations with licenses that discipline members who breach medical ethics or harm patients.
Is any of that similar in the UK?

 

I think she did the best she possibly could with the material presented to her for presentation.