Michael Sharpe skewered by @JohntheJack on Twitter

[Daisymay]

Professor Sharpe avoids all direct questions with counter-questions or pseudo-responses. Classic strategy. Poor guy. He's seems seriously misguided or perhaps even deluded. Someone should stage an intervention before he causes himself even more rhetorical damage.

Rhetorical damage, sounds like some new category of disorder which might be included in the next DSM.

 

[Lucibee]

Aha!

 

[alex3619]

We need a new dictionary to deal with this stuff.

Harm means dying or winding up in hospital for a long period, or other similar damage. Worsening of an existing medical condition does not count.

Recovery means anything from a major improvement to a severe decline, with the patient somewhere between fully disabled and fully functional. A recovered patient can be simultaneously recovered, normal and seriously disabled.

Normal is a synonym for highly abnormal.

A study described as a thing of beauty can include deliberate and inappropriate manipulation of data to bias toward the preferred outcome.

A study cohort can include anyone with even vaguely related conditions, but you can then infer it applies to patient groups not included in the study.

Anyone care to add to this dictionary: The PACE Dictionary?

 

[Lucibee]

"How many doctors have even recognised that CFS/ME sufferers are genuinely ill...?"

To which I said, "ouchy!"

But it is probably more complex to unpack...

 

[Indigophoton]

Anyone care to add to this dictionary: The PACE Dictionary?

heresy /ˈhɛrɪsi /

• belief or opinion or (esp.) scientific evidence contrary to orthodox BPS doctrine;

• opinion profoundly at odds with what is (mistakenly) accepted: the heresy of being uncommitted to the right psychosocial dogma.

Origin: Middle English : from Old French heresie, based on Latin haeresis, from Greek hairesis ‘choice’ (in ecclesiastical Greek ‘heretical sect’), from haireomai ‘choose’.

 

[Woolie]

I detect a pattern with some of these folk such as Vogt and some of these twitterers:

They seem to believe that their own subjective experience is a Universal Truth applicable to all mankind.

It strikes me as some sort of psychological issue where they need to put their own experience above everyone else's to validate themselves, rather than just consider that maybe, just maybe the experiences are not the same.

Making a mountain out of their molehill as it were.

I have to admit to being guilty of the same general error from time to time. Thinking that all my symptoms are typical, and imagining that things that help me help others. Turns out I'm really not typical at all.

 

[Woolie]

Professor Sharpe avoids all direct questions with counter-questions or pseudo-responses. Classic strategy. Poor guy. He's seems seriously misguided or perhaps even deluded. Someone should stage an intervention before he causes himself even more rhetorical damage.

It seems obvious to me that his best self-preservation strategy at this point is to make a few platitudinous acknowledgements of the patient viewpoint, and then make specific excuses for the PACE trial e.g., it was done at an earlier time, etc.

The fact that he chooses not to go this route might just be due to lack of political nouse. But it also might be because he genuinely believes in his original position, and genuinely believes that patients' views are distorted and pathological... and that every right-thinking person will see this if he just points it out...

 

[dave30th]

One of my favorites for "PACE Lexicon" is "pre-specified," which turns to to mean: "after all data collection but before we claim to have looked at any data, so even though it's an open label trial with subjective outcomes we can pretend to have no idea that we got bad results, and Cochrane reviewers will pretend the same thing with us and use the same definition to determine that the trial has a low risk of bias."

 

[Sean]

Professor Sharpe avoids all direct questions with counter-questions or pseudo-responses. Classic strategy.

Yep.

This is all just obvious propaganda tactics from Sharpe. Sneer, smear, misdirect, misrepresent, obfuscate, etc. He is running through the whole standard playbook.

I don't hear a man confident in his position. I hear a man who is getting desperate. A man who knows that he is only one robust biological finding away from being discredited as a scientist and disgraced as a human being, and that he does not have the power to stop that from happening.

 

[alex3619]

A man who knows that he is only one robust biological finding away from being discredited

We can hope.

 

[Alvin]

In any exchange like this its important to realise you are very unlikely to sway someone like MS. Its not about that. Its only to a lesser extent about reaching the general audience. Its most important to reach any scientists and medical practitioners. You don't even have to convince them. You just have to induce them to start asking questions and finding out for themselves.

Of course we can't sway him, someone who chooses to deny reality has decided to not acknowledge it

This is not a scientific exchange, either. Its political, an aspect of medical politics. So evidence is important, and that does include scientific evidence, but clearly showing an issue is more important.

Indeed

Sharpe now seems to be just tweeting random patients and telling them that he disagrees with how they're living their lives. Is this sort of thing normal on twitter?

View attachment 3176

Its a measure of desperation, though i wonder if it legally can be considered harassment.
Besides, doctors usually like to stay above frays, not get into them.

I am torn between challenging him and ignoring him for reasons given by others above.

I would skewer his lies so others don't fall victim to them, thats it

Wow, passive aggressive tweeting at @Lucibee now

He likes to test for libel, i think testing for legality is in order, if responding and disagreeing is censorship then it cuts both ways, he can't disagree with a patient who makes a statement first if his "censorship" views are legally binding.

As I've said in the past, I think most people model their world in terms of truths and untruths, and interact with others on that basis. But others, and MS very possibly, seem to model the world in terms of cause and effect, and interact with others primarily on that basis. I don't see his comments as being in the slightest bit concerned with engaging in real dialogue, nor even reality necessarily. I see his comments as all about aiming to manipulate those he is engaging with. One day, it could be exceedingly enlightening (we may get the chance) for all these comments to be analysed by (don't laugh!) a forensic psychologist, because I think MS is giving much much more away about himself than he realises, despite his professional credentials.

I agree but he is desperately trying to save his reputation by any means necessary. I'll bet money he doesn't understand why we are not knighting him.

Professor Sharpe avoids all direct questions with counter-questions or pseudo-responses. Classic strategy. Poor guy. He's seems seriously misguided or perhaps even deluded. Someone should stage an intervention before he causes himself even more rhetorical damage.

I personally like it when reality deniers write their own epitaphs

The fact that he chooses not to go this route might just be due to lack of political nouse. But it also might be because he genuinely believes in his original position, and genuinely believes that patients' views are distorted and pathological... and that every right-thinking person will see this if he just points it out...

Yes, this is what he thinks.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Sharpe now seems to be just tweeting random patients and telling them that he disagrees with how they're living their lives. Is this sort of thing normal on twitter?

He sounds desperate and I think he's deliberately trying to provoke people into abusing him.

My guess is that he's scared of the Myhill GMC complaint and he's trying to gather evidence so he can brush off the complaint as part of 'a coordinated campaign of harassment'. It's been their standard tactic for a long time now [edit]: but I think their failure at the Information Officer's Tribunal made him realise they didn't have any concrete evidence of harassment.

 

[Amw66]

Yep.

This is all just obvious propaganda tactics from Sharpe. Sneer, smear, misdirect, misrepresent, obfuscate, etc. He is running through the whole standard playbook.

I don't hear a man confident in his position. I hear a man who is getting desperate. A man who knows that he is only one robust biological finding away from being discredited as a scientist and disgraced as a human being, and that he does not have the power to stop that from happening.

I think it may come from GWI study first. I don' t know if he is being engaged on that.
So perhaps a double whammy to come ....

 

[adambeyoncelowe]

'A thing of beauty' kinda gives the game away. They admire it for its supposed cleverness. Because it hoodwinks a bunch of people in what they thought was a well crafted way.

Why else would you call an honest, scientific study 'a thing of beauty'? You might call it 'an example of rigorous science' or 'a solid piece of research'. But 'beauty' implies craft and artifice, aesthetics over science, or style over substance...

It was always a kind of psychiatric fairy glamour. An illusion that looks pretty and seductive.

 

[chrisb]

A thing of beauty' kinda gives the game away

It's all in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Sean]

A giant steaming turd looks like heaven to a dung beetle.

 

[WillowJ]

worth pointing out:

This is the legal definition:
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/l...different-types-of-discrimination/harassment/

Harassment is unwanted behaviour which you find offensive or which makes you feel intimidated or humiliated.
...
Harassment is unlawful under the Equality Act if it’s because of or connected to one of these things:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment

• marriage and civil partnership

• pregnancy and maternity

• race

• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

Unless he's calling his PACE ideas a "belief", he doesn't fit into any "protected class" (afaik).

On the other hand, we patients do. We are disabled and many of us are women, and some meet other protected statuses.

That of course doesn't mean we can gang up and try to intimidate him (though I don't see evidence of that), but rational debate keeping him and PACE groupies accountable should be fine (and that's what I see people doing, though I haven't looked a lot; maybe I missed something).

Just pointing out that if his strategy is trolling for harassment, that's a poor strategy. Because by definition, bullying flows down the power gradient.

 

[Alvin]

Just pointing out that if his strategy is trolling for harassment, that's a poor strategy. Because by definition, bullying flows down the power gradient.

This is why it can be worth not calling him out when he looks for patients to troll, a pattern of trolling will make him look fabulous in any future legal setting

 

[WillowJ]

This is why it can be worth not calling him out when he looks for patients to troll, a pattern of trolling will make him look fabulous in any future legal setting

I agree patients should be careful to avoid harassment, but I don't see how this relates to my post (which was about how MS has more power, and we have protected class).

Assuming he reads this forum, I was telling him he's wasting his time.

Scientist at leading university bullied by disabled patients who have so little power most can't even get diagnosed? Not how bullying works.

Beleaguered patients harassed by a close-knit group of scientists with cushy jobs trolling them on social media, in the literature, on the radio, in tabloids and newspapers, and directly and indirectly (through guidelines) in doctor's offices around the world? That's how bullying works.

 

[Alvin]

I agree patients should be careful to avoid harassment, but I don't see how this relates to my post (which was about how MS has more power, and we have protected class).
...
Beleaguered patients harassed by a close-knit group of scientists with cushy jobs trolling them on social media, in the literature, on the radio, in tabloids and newspapers, and directly and indirectly (through guidelines) in doctor's offices around the world? That's how bullying works.

I am saying if he looks for patients to harass and keeps doing it it can be used to make him look bad the next time he is challenged in a formal setting.
That said i am not actually advocating accepting harassment just to create a paper trail and i agree he should show some dignity befitting his profession (and treat us with dignity)