Sunday Express: 'New laws could see scientists face CRIMINAL charges for research fraud'

Finally! I've never understood why people putting out misleading medical research shouldn't go to jail.

Click through, give them the traffic, read the rest, comment: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/8...nal-charges-fraudulent-medical-drugs-research

 

What a surprise that, with all the talk of death threats, this story is not being seriously pursued by the SMC. Sounds right up their street.

 

Hopefully this will eventually lead to some prosecutions.

 

Hopefully the guideline or whatever can be written into all university ethical standards of conduct and disciplinary procedures for all academic staff. Probably will need some sort of oversight to enforce...can't have these professors regulating themselves.

 

We need courageous insiders to speak up en masse so we can watch the dominos fall, Weinstein-style.
(somehow typing this gave me the unwelcome mental image of Harvey doing the Gangnam dance )

 

Unfortunately I suspect this won't apply to the BPS crowd. They do badly designed research and draw unjustified conclusions from it, but as far as I know they don't invent the data or get their sums wrong. They even say blatantly that they have moved the goal posts (recovery criteria), so can't be accused of hiding this.

 

I agree it's unlikely to immediately apply but I think it's a step in the right direction.

 

Less drugs and more CBT?

 

That's what I was thinking.

 

That's what I was fearing.

 

This is a good idea, but the execution is the thing, done badly it could be worse then our present situation and thats terrifying

 

I'm all in favour of badly done execution, when called for, just as long as it's ultimately effective.

 

You realize this could mean people doing real science could be jailed for going against the "established" narrative. Sending Fluge/Mella and Dr Davis to jail because Ester was making claims years before they got involved in ME/CFS research for example would be insane. The law can be used for evil.

 

It frequently is, and always has been, people generally misunderstand the purpose of the law.

People have always been penalised, sometimes with loss of reputation, sometimes with loss of liberty, sometimes with loss of livelihood and sometimes with loss of life, for going against authority and their "views". Whilst here, in more recent times, things have not been so harsh, haven't needed to be when people can be silenced by simply cutting their funding, things may be changing again.

It's not good, I don't agree with it, it's just the way things operate, for those without sufficient power or influence.

This is the world, this is what people do.

 

And thats my point, making bad laws that liars and reality deniers can use against legitimate scientists is counter productive. You can't improve things by making them worse

 

Also a lot of the rules apply to drug trials only so trials of other interventions such as CBT are not as heavily regulated.

 

And if forcing ever-increasing exercise onto patients who have exertion intolerance as their main defining symptom isn't regulated (which I'm guessing isn't regulated at all, never mind heavily), it jolly well should be!

 

Ahh, but exercise intolerance doesn't exist in psychiatry, ergo it must not exist at all :

Obviously there are many doctors and other practitioners (at least in the ME/CFS sphere) who aren't aware of mitochondrial or other muscular diseases where increases in activity, especially at the wrong time, can do a great deal of damage. A couple examples are muscle fibers being destroyed and causing kidney failure, or generating excessive lactic acid which accumulates in the CNS and causes seizures and brain damage. And then there's even more obvious problems, such as exercising with diabetes when ketones are elevated due to high blood sugar, or exercising when blood pressure is badly elevated, or even exercising when you have the damned flu

There's really no excuse for quacks to be claiming that even mild exercise is always beneficial.

 

Yay, hurray! Good news. This was overdue. Now please come up with a clear definition of research fraud that includes things like the PACE trial. There must be at least the realistic possibility of serious consequences for researchers that promote their brand of therapy by falsely describing severely disabled people as having gotten "back to normal".