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Paul Garner on Long Covid and ME/CFS - BMJ articles and other media.
Jonathan Edwards
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Right, because why would he need apheresis after all, if he is all recovered?
Arnie Pye
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Has there been any sign of him complaining or whinging or tweeting about this?
Fainbrog
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Suspect most of us have blocked him for the benefit of our sanity! But, I’ve taken one for the team and had a look..
He’s retweeted/entered a few convos about microclots (obviously, nothing positive about them) including some piece written by Deb Cohen, who, I think was the BBC journalist who had him on Newsnight and Natalie Shure who I recall wrote some god-awful piece on ME or LC recently.
So, perhaps this is him limbering up to more gnashing of teeth about activist/militant patients shutting him down and it’s those pesky ME folks that are leading the charge to have him cancelled - or some-such bilge.
rvallee
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
And others, apparently. I guess word of mouth got around.
I remember Vogt tried this a few times on Reddit. It did not go well.
It's truly amazing how these people can be so delusional about how they are perceived. They'll still go around thinking that the right patients like their stuff. You know, the ones who would have recovered anyway. It's really staggering the dept of this ideology, how perverse it can be.
rvallee
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Given his recent Cochrane review, likely trying to badmouth the community. Probably in the Norwegian press, or something like that. Do a bit like what Afflicted did to the participants. That was truly revolting stuff.
I'd worry about something like this, picking out comments or behaviors then refer to his observations generally.
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Charles B.
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Im sure this will be ascribed to militancy and evil ME activists. The militants with transnational tentacles and the ability to browbeat public health organizations, governments, academics, and Nobel winners. It couldn’t be that Garner is actually wrong.
The difficult thing is that Garner has chosen a Facebook group on aphaeresis to bring his truth to, to save people from themselves. And, he probably does have actual truth on his side as he does that. I think most of us would share his concerns about clinics making money by providing an unevidenced treatment to desperate people. Perhaps it's a cunning plan, perhaps it's just a happy coincidence for him, but he's making the criticism we would make of him rather complicated.
But, we don't see him coming here to engage with us about the ideas that CBT, GET or the Lightning Process will fix us, and that it's just our fear of life or exercise that is keeping us sick. He doesn't seem to understand that the very BPS views that he supports have helped make people desperate. Those BPS views have historically made the field of ME/CFS horribly unattractive to most smart clinicians and researchers and, instead, happy hunting ground for pedlars of woo of all sorts.
But, we don't see him coming here to engage with us about the ideas that CBT, GET or the Lightning Process will fix us, and that it's just our fear of life or exercise that is keeping us sick. He doesn't seem to understand that the very BPS views that he supports have helped make people desperate. Those BPS views have historically made the field of ME/CFS horribly unattractive to most smart clinicians and researchers and, instead, happy hunting ground for pedlars of woo of all sorts.
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dratalanta
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Paul Garner has indeed been touting his free speech credentials:
https://www.livpost.co.uk/p/tinker-tailor-teacher-spy-the-liverpool
Sending death threats is absolutely unacceptable, and it's quite wrong (and illegal) for anyone to have made physical threats against Professor Garner or anyone else. That is not part of academic free speech or any other kind of free speech.
I agree with Professor Garner that researchers should have 'unrestricted liberty' to question established ideas and theories. I hope, then, he will agree that it was disappointing that JNNP decided to take down a plainly worded but perfectly legal Rapid Response questioning the ideas and theories put forward in the article to which he put his name.
https://www.livpost.co.uk/p/tinker-tailor-teacher-spy-the-liverpool
Sending death threats is absolutely unacceptable, and it's quite wrong (and illegal) for anyone to have made physical threats against Professor Garner or anyone else. That is not part of academic free speech or any other kind of free speech.
I agree with Professor Garner that researchers should have 'unrestricted liberty' to question established ideas and theories. I hope, then, he will agree that it was disappointing that JNNP decided to take down a plainly worded but perfectly legal Rapid Response questioning the ideas and theories put forward in the article to which he put his name.
If it actually happened, and the provenance of the alleged threats is properly established.
If.
It is, of course, a qualified immunity. In return for that freedom and protection, and their expertise derived authority, academics are required to rigorously adhere to a vastly higher methodological and ethical standard than the layperson.
And there's the rub: He doesn't.
You, Prof. Garner, are among the last in this world to be lecturing anybody on civil honest debate about critical technical issues.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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rvallee
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Sure but I'll freely say that I don't care. It has nothing to do with us. At all. Not even one bit. Blaming a community of millions on the behavior of a few is despicable behavior. It's wrong in every single way.
Just as we shouldn't blame the entire medical community for his own misbehavior, and that of his fellow fanatics, even though it applies far more since many of them choose to exert coercive power over us while the rest, at least, tacitly approve by doing nothing about it. Even though they are technically supposed to.
Lots of people get abuse, even death threats, on a regular basis and generally for ridiculous reasons. I'm sorry but this is completely irrelevant and he is fully in control of the abuse he gets. He is deliberately antagonizing the entire patient population by being insulting, by goading this abuse with clear purpose, that he and his fellow quacks then use, as here, to excuse their own immoral pursuit.
It justifies nothing but, again, literally has nothing to do with us. We are not an organization, an institution or anything like that. This is mindless bleating used to excuse his horrible behavior and I don't care one bit if he feels bad about it. Which he probably doesn't, if the precedent of the PACE ideologues is any indication.
Receipt for how much they don't even care and it doesn't affect their lives one bit:
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I would love to see a robust compare and contrast of their claims with those a range of public figures (politicians, actors, climate scientists, etc), and every private citizen online who just happens to be female, are actually subject to in order see just how 'bad' the alleged harassment and threats really are.
I bet the Garners and Wesselys and Sharpes and Chalders and Crawleys of this world will be exposed as ruthlessly weaponising bogus complaints and accusations to defame a whole community of sick people, and deflect legitimate and long overdue scrutiny of their own behaviour.
As many of you would recall, I have long argued we should demand a formal public inquiry (in the UK), with serious legal teeth, into the exact nature and seriousness and extent and provenance of these alleged threats. Until then those making the allegations will continue unrestrained with their disgusting lies and smears.
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