Trial By Error: Professor Sharpe’s Retraction Requests

Esther12 said:
I'd assumed 'eminence based harassment' was tongue in cheek, and wasn't really replying specifically to comments here, but this was just something I'd been thinking about when reading a few different threads where people expressed concerns about all this.

I'm wary of jumping to talking about their attempts at applying political pressure as 'intimidation' or 'harassment'.
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My comment was half serious, half tongue in cheek.

I do see where you are coming from @Esther12. No matter how we might feel, we of all people need to stay objective. On reflection I think that 'eminence based pressure' would be more valid, contrasting with what I consider we engage in, 'evidence based pressure'. It is of course about applying pressure, but there is a crucial difference: We strive to encourage all sides to engage in evidentially based due process, and examine the science for what it is, good or bad. The 'other side', to my mind do the opposite, and strive by virtue of their eminence to obstruct and bury evidentially based due process, knowing as they do that their science is way below par and does not stand up to scrutiny. For me the former is admirable, and the latter repulsive - just dropping into subjective mode for a moment.
 
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Barry said:
On reflection I think that 'eminence based pressure' would be more valid, contrasting with what I consider we engage in, 'evidence based pressure'.
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Slight aside: Last night I listened to a podcast and the scientist called science research 'finance based evidence', the first I'd heard that term. (I'd go further and say 'finance based evidence making'.)

Perhaps 'finance based pressure' is really what the BPS profiteers are practicing, while the ME community mostly engages in 'evidence based pressure'? (We're bringing a knife to a gun fight.)
 
ScottTriGuy said:
Slight aside: Last night I listened to a podcast and the scientist called science research 'finance based evidence', the first I'd heard that term. (I'd go further and say 'finance based evidence making'.)

Perhaps 'finance based pressure' is really what the BPS profiteers are practicing, while the ME community mostly engages in 'evidence based pressure'? (We're bringing a knife to a gun fight.)
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I like that term, Finance based evidence.
And its quite true in many contexts. The theory should be that money is spent finding the truth. But there is money to be made and ideologies to be faked. Corporations donate money to politicians to get influence to get what they want in order to make money. Drug companies spend money hoping research and drug trials will lead to profit. Helping patients is a means to an end, not the actual end.
Upton Sinclair once said
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
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But this is a new perversion, the PACErs religiously believe in a non scientific ideology so they use money to commit fraud and create fake "scientific" evidence. Then they use coercion to prevent dissent against their fraud.

Sean said:
The finest evidence money can buy. :woot:
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Indeed :emoji_face_palm:
 
Andy said:
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That's really creepy! Do you suppose they feel justified in their actions as they believe they are victims of persecution?

It's become tribal, but many of the principal actors of BPS affiliation display an arrogant sense of entitlement and lack of capacity for self-reflection, or any self awareness at all.

What are they fighting for? We're fighting for our health, for the truth, and for the respect and belief of our family and friends as reliable witnesses of our own condition. Them, for their intellectual investment in an ideology, their collective reputations and their careers.

They are wrong...
 
hinterland said:
Do you suppose they feel justified in their actions as they believe they are victims of persecution?
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Absolutely, its not as talked about but bullies often claim they are the real victims when they need to maintain their alpha status. This is a documented phenomenon in human behavioral research. Their own perpetrations are always "benevolent" but the slightest resistance to their actions is seen as an unfair challenge to their righteousness and authority.
This is also playing out in politics where perpetrators claim they are being victims and reverse bullying is the real threat in the world. They claim others are perpetrating what they actually are from threats to violence. I won't go into more detail because it would probably violate forum rules.

hinterland said:
What are they fighting for?
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They think they are saving us from ourselves. Also they are now fighting a threat to their belief system. To them the fact ME/CFS is psychosomatic is as immutable as viruses cause colds.

ScottTriGuy said:
Great sound byte @Alvin - as is the Sinclair quote.
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Thanks :)
 
hinterland said:
What are they fighting for?
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It's just self-preservation. They made mistakes, built their career on implementing their mistakes in the real world, with disastrous consequences. Now they're just trying to keep accountability at bay just long enough to retire peacefully and will continue implementing their mistakes because they're too committed already. There isn't much more than that. It happens all the time. Wakefield doesn't accept responsibility either, instead tries to cash in as best as he can.

Plenty of medical professionals and scientists worked to hide the danger of smoking. None of them thought what they were doing was evil or even wrong. They had kids and BBQs and vacations and carpooled their neighbors' kids. They were just doing their job. Maybe they actually believed in their work, though they probably didn't. Doesn't really matter, people can justify anything to themselves, no matter how horrifying the consequences are. Worst scenario they'd just think of themselves as an interchangeable cog in a large machine. If they didn't do it, someone else would have and they got a good life out of it.

Not only is this not unique, it's not even particularly exceptional, and neither is their flailing and wailing. But their whole career and reputation depends on this so they have no choice but to plow on, no matter how many millions more lives they destroy. They don't even see the outcome of the disaster they unleash so they can't face the consequences of their mistakes: they don't exist in their own personal world. The millions wasting away in dark rooms? Invisible, doesn't even enter their consciousness.

There are people today working to get leaded gasoline legal again. Hell, in the US asbestos is legal again. There are plenty of people with no moral compass or conscience out there, doing things that harm millions without a second thought, because what matters is that it's good for themselves, for their own family and their sense of accomplishment. The psychosocial crowd is way too committed to reconsider anything, it's full throttle ahead, no matter how many bodies they leave in their wake. Lives are destroyed over much less than that, it's just a sad part of the human experience.
 
Adrian said:
I don't believe that they were accepted standards. In a way they need to say no one is to blame otherwise there are some embarrassing questions for their organizations and how they failed.
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That's correct. The standards by which PACE was designed were not the accepted standards of the time by any stretch of the imagination. They were simply the accepted standards within MRC. Which of course is very embarrassing for the MRC.
 
Sly Saint said:
eta: could someone tell Coyne to use #PACEtrial... #PACE comes up as something quite different!
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I wondered if he was a forum member but apparently not. If anyone does talk to him can you ask him if he has a backup of the link from
https://www.coyneoftherealm.com/blo...ue-of-the-journal-of-health-psychology-foiled

large donner said:
Why do you have to highlight all my failings in so many details and keep responding when I try to cover them up, its just so annoying.
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Thats what he seems to consider harassment, threats and unscientific and vexatious behavior. Did i miss any?
 
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