United Kingdom: Science Media Centre (including Fiona Fox)

Science Media Centre director Fiona Fox has now published the book: Beyond the Hype - The Inside Story of Media's Biggest Controversies (published 7 April 2022).

She is going to be talking about it at this year's Hay Festival in a couple of weeks (5 June).

The chapter on ME/CFS is entitled: "First they came for the communists..." :eyeroll:

I have downloaded it, and I will go through it more throughly over the next few days. From a quick skim read, much of what she says is very familiar - but entirely unreferenced. It gives the veneer of balance but is very one-sided. People on here are referred to but not named. For example, @dave30th is quoted ("PACE trial is a piece of cr*p").

Mostly it's the same old, 'small, vocal group of activists who are unrepresentative of the majority of those with ME/CFS are causing all the trouble, and it's a shame because they are ruining it for all those poor genuine sufferers out there.' [paraphrase]

:(
 
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Lucibee said:
Science Media Centre director Fiona Fox has now published the book: Beyond the Hype - The Inside Story of Media's Biggest Controversies (published 7 April 2022).

She is going to be talking about it at this year's Hay Festival in a couple of weeks (5 June).

The chapter on ME/CFS is entitled: "First they came for the communists..." :eyeroll:

I have downloaded it, and I will go through it more throughly over the next few days. From a quick skim read, much of what she says is very familiar - but entirely unreferenced. It gives the veneer of balance but is very one-sided. People on here are referred to but not named. For example, @dave30th is quoted ("PACE trial is a piece of cr*p").

Mostly it's the same old, 'small, vocal group of activists who are unrepresentative of the majority of those with ME/CFS are causing all the trouble, and it's a shame because they are ruining it for all those poor genuine sufferers out there.' [paraphrase]

:(
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I'd love a copy of that if it could be pm'd somehow.
 
This is the actual title? Because if so this is grounds for lawsuits, she is literally calling us Nazis. And not just regular Nazis who were just following orders, it comes from a poem published in 1946, after the war, after all the horrors of the Nazi regime were exposed to the world, after the Final solution. Those who "came for the communists" were the Nazi regime's death machine.

And in all irony, completely misrepresenting it, although probably on purpose. They are the authorities, and "coming for the communists" was about disappearances, about people being kidnapped by secret police and the military, sent to camps. We are the ones being disappeared, by the authorities.

The people involved in those lies, herself, Wessely, Sharpe, White, etc. they are still authorities. None of them lost their jobs, let alone disappeared from public view.

So this is DARVO: deny, attack, reverse victim and offender, the tool of bullies. Nazis calling their own victims the real enemy. Which they did, it's how they justified what they did.

The absolute moral bankruptcy of these people, living in an alternate reality where they are victims of disappearance, even as they ruined millions of lives, lives who actually disappeared. I thought I could not be more disgusted by them, but I doubt Fox wrote and published that without getting input from the rest.

Sue their ass. I'm sorry, this is the UK, so: sue their arse. Into bankruptcy.
 
One section that stood out to me in that chapter was this - and I think it indicates just how much the wool has been pulled over their eyes:
I have had many moments of despair on this issue over the years, but one I particularly remember was when we learnt that a scientist who had authored an update on PACE had asked the Lancet media team not to publicise the findings because of the potential backlash. Not wanting to do media interviews is one thing. Actively suggesting that new research findings are not put into the public domain because of fear is another.
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I'd put money on that being Sharpe and the 2-year follow up paper.
I wonder why they didn't want it publicised...
Not fear, certainly. Embarrassment maybe?
 
chrisb said:
Do we really believe in their naivety?
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Well, yes. Her job is to believe the scientists and help them convey their message.

When I lost the ability to do that, I lost my career.

Here's another quote:
The scientific method and the journalistic principle of impartiality are both mechanisms aimed at rising above bias and politics to reveal facts and truths that can be conveyed to the public. Such an idealised version of science and the media will be seen as horribly naive by readers who see both disciplines failing to live up to these standards on a daily basis. Others actively want science to embrace politics and disagree with me that this can undermine public trust. But I am sticking to my view that the aspiration, embodied in both science and journalism, of seeking objective and impartial information is needed more than ever in our polarised post-truth world.
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However, science *is* a political endeavour. To believe that science (as done by most scientists) is a truly objective and impartial activity is horribly naive.
 
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Lucibee said:
People on here are referred to but not named. For example, @dave30th is quoted ("PACE trial is a piece of cr*p").
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I am wondering if she has picked up on any of my militant remarks?

I have been thinking about doing a Division of Medicine Grand Round at UCL on the state of play with charlatanism in clinical trials and what not. This would be a good thing to build it around I think. 'First they came for the communists...' would be a nice title to get a big audience. If I am misrepresented all the better.

Esther12 said:
I can't give her money!
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But for me to get a copy would surely purely be in the cause of good science?

I will throw in a screenshot of that rant email from someone to Gill Leng. All good clean entertainment for an august medical body.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
I will write a review right now.
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Another quote:
...in the run-up to the announcement [of the publication of the updated NICE guidance], the media reported that three members of the committee had resigned because they had felt unable to sign up to the final guideline.
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I thought they resigned *after* they had signed it off?

Presumably there are other issues with this account that need addressing by someone who was actually there...
 



Fiona Fox is definitely not naive, she is a spin master. Her framing ME sufferers as "militant extremists" was a master spin stroke and reversal of reality/Darvo - because the only actual real life, real world, militant extremist in the whole sorry PACE affair is Fox herself, in her past active political life.

https://powerbase.info/index.php/Fiona_Fox
 
chrisb said:
The " First they came for the communists..." quote.

Could it by any chance be a reference to the Revolutionary Communist Party?
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Fiona Fox said:
People who dislike what the SMC does love to point out that I joined a far-left revolutionary group in my college days, and imply that I have brought some kind of political agenda into the world of science. ... Far from bringing any political views into science, I have become ever more convinced that science should try hard to maintain a clear separation from politics. Many will say that this is also naive...
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Lucibee said:
One section that stood out to me in that chapter was this - and I think it indicates just how much the wool has been pulled over their eyes:


I'd put money on that being Sharpe and the 2-year follow up paper.
I wonder why they didn't want it publicised...
Not fear, certainly. Embarrassment maybe?
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That story sounds like complete BS. They continued publishing papers after that and always relish any publicity that puts them in the limelight, still do. They keep demanding to do more research and obviously publicize it every time.

This is beyond naïve, no one in such a high level position is that dumb. Fox is playing propagandist here, at the very least it is easy to know this is completely false. If she chooses not to, well, that's basically the whole point of the book, isn't it?
 
Fiona Fox said:
People who dislike what the SMC does love to point out that I joined a far-left revolutionary group in my college days, and imply that I have brought some kind of political agenda into the world of science. ... Far from bringing any political views into science, I have become ever more convinced that science should try hard to maintain a clear separation from politics. Many will say that this is also naive...




Oh the old 'we were all idiots at university and held all sorts of vews/got involved in all sorts of silly things/ we no longer believe in or associate with' guff ....


Fiona Fox would have left university circa 1986 - are we to believe her Revolutionary Communist Party/Living Marxism/Spiked ideology, tactics, methods, was left behind in the Junior Common Room in the mid 80's? Fiona Foster was Fox's pen name for her RCP/LM/IFM activities and articles, a sample from 1990 - 1999 ....

The Science Media Centre opened in 2001, Fiona Fox was Director from the beginning:



1995-1999
 
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