Professor Michael Sharpe

Lucibee said:




I couldn't find the second quote as a response to his June 20th tweet, although one did mention "flawed research":



Second quote appears here though:



It's clear that he blocks once he's got what he wants.
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Thanks for collecting them - always good to see exactly what this intimidation and harassment really is. It's quite clear that the 'Actions of a man whose world is about to crumble' tweet refers to Sharpe accusing Monaghan of behaviour unbecoming of an MP, not Sharpe's question about what treatment 'activists' want.

I wonder if the journalist at De Monitor realises that Sharpe can block people from replying to his tweets. Not that it seems that they care about fairly representing even those who did reply.
 
NelliePledge said:
Wondering if there are any links between the De Monitor people and SMC
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Impossible to say who, but it's hard to believe that this was a legitimate journalistic effort. If so, that's almost worse considering how poorly researched and biased the outcome is. Hanlon's razor only goes so far, oftentimes it's a healthy mix of both incompetence and malice.

Wild prediction, but someone likely got paid to publish this, not necessarily in currency but possibly in some other form of quid pro quo. As legitimate journalism, this is just embarrassingly bad. It's clear that there is a pushback by vested interests to mounting evidence that national policies were implemented based on fraudulent research and piss-poor quality research in many countries.

Once exposed, many careers will be destroyed and institutions will face serious litigation, many medical licenses will be revoked and civil lawsuits will ensue. I'm not suggesting there is a conspiracy here, just people with aligned interests covering their asses against inevitable consequences. That's generally how this goes, people with bad ideas being promoted far higher than their skill warrants and having to bullshit way past the expiration date.
 
This looks exactly like smug, lazy journalists trying to put together the 'best' story they can to me. I'd be amazed if there was any corruption beyond their prejudices and desire to seem 'moderate' and 'sensible' without bothering to understand the details of the dispute.
 
NelliePledge said:
I didn’t mean financial links I just meant the sort of networking links SMC seem to work on, whether one of the ex revolutionary ex communist crowd now works over in Netherlands or someone from there is part of their group. A different type of old boy network.
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The SMC know their target audience: smug, lazy journalists uninterested in looking carefully at the evidence. I'm sure that Knoop will have been happy to encourage those at De Monitor to absorb the results of the SMC's work.
 
The CDC came to its conclusion under pressure from patient associations and now writes: 'There is no cure or approved treatment for ME / CFS'.
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Wow, it's déjà vu all over again. By March 21, 2018, the SMC had a "fact sheet" out that said:
“After sustained pressure from activists the CDC has removed mention of CBT and GET from its website and currently states that there is no approved treatment for CFS/ME despite evidence to the contrary."
https://web.archive.org/web/20180321231900/http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/cfsme-the-illness-and-the-controversy/
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By May 18th, after @Robert 1973 informed the CDC of the SMC's assertion that the CDC had bowed to pressure from patient associations, the SMC had quietly changed their fact sheet to read:
“The CDC has removed mention of CBT and GET from its website and currently states that there is no approved treatment for CFS/ME.”
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Of course, correlation does not imply causation...;)

Thread on this here: https://www.s4me.info/threads/cdc-responds-to-false-smc-factsheet-claim.4355/
 
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Peter Trewhitt said:
He continues to assert that the use of CBT has no implications in relation to the causation of the condition, but conveniently skirts over the fact that the PACE version of CBT is based on the belief that ME is caused by false cognitions and aims to teach the patient that their understanding of their condition is deluded. This is not what most readers understand by CBT and to hide this is to seek to deliberately mislead.
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I think this is a particularly clear example of their dishonesty and ill-intent.
 
Weird article. I didn't discern any arguments for or against the quality of the research or the validity of the findings. Just tribalistic emotion when it comes down to it...
Well, that is appropriate in a way; unfortunately it is an accurate reflection of the general level of argumentation from the 'pro-PACE' authorities and experts - 'If you're against us, the august scientific authorities, you're against Science! Therefore you are bad so we refuse to substantively engage with your criticisms!... Oh yeah, and, Think of the children!'
 
I'm not sure but I think it's the Dunning kruger effect. You read an article in a newspaper that you are somewhat informed on and realise it's absolute trash and the journo doesn't know what he is talking about; Then you turn the next page and read an article that you don't know anything about and have a tendency to assume it's legit as it's coming from a big paper.

I think journalism has become a right state, maybe it's always been this way except now with the internet BS can be spotted more easily? First comes clicks (does it generate money and get people interested?), 2nd comes does it fit with our news organisations narrative, and last comes the truth.
 
Fair comment. It is confusing. Most people, including many ME activists, conflate CFS and ME into CFS/ME. I personally do not regard them as identical as there appear to be some different symptoms. Neither did the PACE paper. But is a tricky area that needs clarifying.

This suggests the man really has no idea what he is talking about. There cannot 'appear to be some differences' unless you know what the two illnesses are. At the moment these are simply categories defined by criteria - which vary all over the place. Any different symptoms are just the differences in the lists in criteria someone has dreamt up. Sharpe gives the impression that he already knows which illness people have or what it is that the criteria are recognising. If so then he must KNOW there are different symptoms in order to know which illness it is. Again, it seems he has no understanding of scientific thinking.
 
Sly Saint said:
Also, if he has washed his hands of CFS 'research' and still thinks PACE needs no further analysis, why is the MRC 'supporting the authors' in anonymising the PACE trial data? Or is it just Chalder doing it now?
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Maybe it becomes a way of avoiding helping the MRC and then he hopes the data will never be shared. I suspect he knows he is making a fool of himself in his defense of PACE and so wants a way out.

In the end he is an academic and therefore needs to pull research grants in and write papers. His only idea is to run CBT trials for ME and there is only so much of that you can do so he needs to look for new areas where he can apply the same old ideas in the hope of getting new research grants.
 
large donner said:
Well if going off to pick on the elderly with the same bullshit is a different field then he has opted for a different field.
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I misread this to begin with as "Well if going to pick off the elderly with the same bullshit is a different field then he has opted for a different field."

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