Twitter activity of Professor Blanchflower

He is apparently friends with PDW. The common denominator with any supporters of PACE seems to be that they are in some way affiliated with the authors. I have yet to come across any independent researcher that would be willing to stand in defense of it.

 

Yeah. I'm personally aware and other people on #MEAction are, too. I feel the same about Chapman -- he seems to have been badly burned in some kind of advocacy snafu, but he omits details and it appears to have been before #MEAction's time.

We have all been through so much with this disease. I wish I were exaggerating when I say that we have all been abused and gaslighted. We have also been through suffering in our bodies that a healthy person would literally have a hard time imagining. And constant fatigue and pain can make us all feel more irritable.

But we don't all turn to victimizing one another. How are you to engage with someone whose response to feeling victimized is to victimize others?

And that seems to be the goal.

Monitoring social media is what Holly at #MEAction does for a living. So far as I know we have never reported people for Twitter violations, but she does keep a constant eye on people's nastiness. Frankly, I don't know how she does it. I begin losing faith in humanity if I pay too much attention to social media. I lose the will to fight where the fight actually matters.

100%.

 

The BPS crowd is definitively gearing up. We've seen maybe a 3x rise in pro-BPS articles and tweets over the past few weeks. I don't think that wave has crested, yet, but we'll see.

I've seen this a number of times: the more sure someone is that all of their thinking is correct, the more they begin to believe that any disagreement is a deliberate attempt to hinder progress in the 'right' direction. If one is 100% sure that their point of view is inviolate, this is almost always the result.

Personally, the more I have learned about ME research, politics, and clinical care, the more complex I felt it was, and the more I realized how much is out there that I, personally don't know -- and how much there is that no one knows.

TL;DR: certainty is either the mark of a narcissist or a raw beginner.

 

Wow, do I ever wish more people got this.

Expertise in a particular field also doesn't make one automatically correct, or we would be done with PACE here and now.

 

As an economist in my former life, I can confidently say that I'd never heard of Blanchflower before. Having had a quick look at some of his work, there seems to be very little evidence of original or clever thought. It'd be best just to ignore him.

 

yeah, I had a lot of exchanges with him but just didn't remember that particular criticism. I kept offering to discuss things in private conversations and he only wanted me to say things publicly. Then he blocked me. Then at some point I noticed that he'd unblocked me. I assume if an article is coming out discussing patients' "bad" behavior and my "bad" behavior, he will be in the mix.

 

Ah OK, sorry, my bad. I was reading it as if you thought it was Blanchflower criticising you, not Chapman.

 

Professor Blanchflower seems to make categorical and ill-conceived statements not only about ME/CFS, but also in his own area of expertise. If he is 100% wrong when he makes predictions in economics, I wonder how wrong his rants about ME/CFS are?

 

As an economist one has to assume that Blanchflower must have calculated the "opportunity cost" of the expenditure of time on writing these tweets, and concluded that this was the most productive form of employment. One presumes this must relate to his interest in the role of happiness. Prurience prevents consideration that it might revolve around his interest in sex.
www.nber.org/papers/w10499

It's rather sad.

Perhaps commiserations are in order.

 

I think of it this way. It all really depends on the person and who they are. If they are a person who is curious and open and wanting to explore possibilities then they are more likely to come to a correct conclusion.

Blanchflower is like other people we have the misfortune to be tangled with. And these people truly do not understand what they are doing wrong. But they start from a place of already knowing. They difference between and open or a closed mind. The sort more likely to get it wrong is closed minded which generally translates to an ideologue. There is no curiosity just certainty. They already know better.

I'm not sure what expertise has to do with it because in my view some people who have developed critical thinking skills and expertise can and do apply their skills to other domains and are open to finding correct answers to things outside their field. Although they will take their time in getting there and are often less certain. That is the ability to suspend closing the loop. Or at least that's how I frame it. The ideologue who has expertise cannot even come to correct conclusions in their own field. They arrive at conclusions fairly quickly which they mistake for their high intelligence but they have difficulty with uncertainty.

Ironically maybe, I equate this difficulty with uncertainty as a kind of anxiety (I think we all have this difficulty to one degree or another).

 

Guido Fawkes isn't known as the most impartial judge of the evidence either. Blanchflower criticising the premature introduction of the work programme doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

It looks like Blanchflower is just trying to work as a propogandist re PACE because he's old mates with Peter White. I'd avoid criticising his other work without having looked into the details carefully. Otherwise it's easy to end up acting like Blanchflower has been with PACE.

 

I am well aware that the blog post on Blanchflower’s predictions only reflects the opinion of the blogger, who may have an agenda of his own. Your point that we shouldn’t pass judgement on Blanchflower as an economist is taken, although my post was intended to be satirical rather than judgemental.

 

Yup I'd avoid criticizing his work or ANYTHING else about him beyond his comments re: PACE -- even here.

 

Wow, that makes it all the harder to understand why someone of that status would spend his time publicly insulting disabled people on Twitter. Mind = boggled.

 

Was this before or after the banking crash that led to the austerity measures we now see in place causing people to have to rely on food banks to survive?

I am always somewhat bemused when people think that economists have a proven track record in predicting anything in the economy yet less bemused that an economist should have the same logical thought processes as a psychiatrist and a self belief in their own crystal ball pronouncements.

 

Ah so he was one of the, "good economists."

 

I would like to add that I agree that no one should attack Professor Blanchflower—or anyone else—on a personal level. One should definitely not try to portray him as incompetent in his field. I think that few of us have the competence to evaluate his merits as an economist—at least I do not.

However, I do think that satire has its place, especially against people like Blanchflower. The “100% wrong” headline comes from an episode in 2009, when Blanchflower said that the unemployment would rise to 4 million, perhaps even 5 million, if his political opponents (Tory party) came to power and implemented their policies. It turned out to be 2.53 million and falling in 2012. Guido Fawkes, a right-wing blog, pointed out that he was nearly 100% off target. Hence 100% wrong. I think that such a polemical remark is justified in a political debate—no matter what your political preferences are.

I used the same theme to polemically question his statements about ME/CFS. Although I say that he makes “categorical and ill-conceives statements” in his own field, I think it is clear from the context that it is satire. I didn’t intend to question his academic credentials as an economist. Quite frankly I don’t see how my post can be interpreted that way, but I hope that I don’t trigger other people to make ad hominem attacks on Blanchflower or ridicule his political views—that was definitely not my intention.

Link to article about Blanchflower’s prediction in 2009:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/po...uts-could-push-unemployment-to-5-million.html

Guido Fawkes's blog post in 2012 about Blanchflower’s prediction in 2009:
https://order-order.com/2012/10/18/david-blanchflowers-terrible-tips/#:UqvUbFEszwRXBA