Steven Lubet: Trial by Error: Professor Sharpe's intemperate remarks for whom is he speaking?

http://www.virology.ws/2018/06/25/t...-intemperate-remarks-for-whom-is-he-speaking/

 

Curiouser and curiouser!

 

I'll delete mine.

 

From Steve Lubet's post:

But even taking the highest possible road, there is an uncomfortable question that must be asked: Why won’t any of the PACE brigade disown, or at least try to moderate, the outbursts of Prof. Michael Sharpe?

It is understandable that Sharpe is unhappy about the discrediting of the PACE trial. He has devoted much of his professional life to the CBT/GET theory, and it must be frustrating and painful to see it so broadly rejected by patients and scientists. His reaction, however, has been anything but graceful. He repeatedly lashes out at those who disagree with him, often leveling intemperate charges. This cannot be unknown to the other PACE investigators.​

Excellent point. I've always wondered what the silent majority of the entire PACE team are thinking, and why none of them have spoken out in the interest of patients.

If I was a research who'd gone into this trial in good faith and had seen the travesty that had been made of it - with my name on it - I'd be spitting feathers.

 

Looking at the number of names that have reputations at risk of serious damage a quotation comes to mind that may explain the silence.
"We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." - Benjamin Franklin

 

I find it hard to believe that a majority of the team don't understand that having improvement/recovery criteria for the main measures that are below the trial entry thresholds isn't a serious problem, just to give one example. If they've read the Wilshire paper - and that's part of their job, frankly - they should understand how awful PACE is.

I can understand the little cabal of principal investigators being locked into groupthink, but not the wider team.

Some of these people are surely senior enough to speak out without fear.

Time they did.

 

Good post

But...

At best they started out in good faith and i'll accept this may have been the case

I can agree to this, they thought they were right and designed a trial to prove it once and for all

They may have started out willing to follow where science led but it led away from their theory so they used malfeasance to get it "back on track"

This is an assumption we can give away in the interests of politeness but in reality their malicious intent is apparent and they tried to hide it with taxpayer money (and lost). We are fortunate they did not try to destroy the data instead of releasing it, but only committing one malicious act is not a reason to let them get away with not using another to attempt to hide their original sin.

So all that said i agree with the points your making but i think thats giving away too much, the reality is they committed fraud and are using threats, lies, doublethink and claims of persecution to defend it.

 

Actually, looking again at the full team, some of the more senior people (Tim Peto, for example) as listed as 'specialist medical care doctors', not as contributing to the paper or design, so actually, yes, the more junior co-authors really would be sticking their necks out.

 

@Trish good point, I'll send him that review. I'm not sure he's seen it.

 

Good faith/best intentions doesn't cut it IMO, this has now been going on for years, the collision, lies, intimidation, quite apart from the fact they knew that they were harming the people they were supposed to be helping.

Regardless of their thoughts/motives/perceptions in the beginning their actions since damn them and act as evidence that they knew, why try intimidation and suppress data if they didn't think they had done anything wrong?

So...assume good faith, no, I don't just want the whole edifice destroyed in the most public way possible, I want the wrongdoers punished which won't happen if everyone accepts "good faith".

 

I agree but i would then follow it up with reality because we give up too much when we respond to fraud with politeness.

 

Steven Lubet is a professor of law, and therefore I would think have an extremely pragmatic eye on the ball from a legal perspective. I would not pretend to fully understand his strategy here (for strategy I'm sure it is) but I would not be surprised if it helps our BPS folk to perhaps dig deeper holes for themselves, maybe into a legal minefield (can always hope). I am a weird mix of idealist and pragmatist (the idealist in me realised long time back that the pragmatist also lurking in me was not a competitor but colleague ), and I always favour the most effective option, even if it seems less ideal.

 

I think the point of the article is not that you have to accept any of those assumptions. That's just how he is pitching his questions, or framing his argument.

His article is about the silence of others, it's not another rehash article of everything, that is why he is setting everything else to the side.

By doing that, it shines the spotlight brighter on those who are remaining silent.