United Kingdom: Science Media Centre (including Fiona Fox)

Adam pwme said:
Fox wrote "There have even been debates in parliament about the PACE trial, with at least one MP using parliamentary privilege to allege that the trial was fraudulent."

Does anyone know who she is referring to?

I checked the 4x transcripts and there was no record of the word "fraud" or "fraudulent".

Sharpe has tweeted about "implied research misconduct" though.
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Where did Fiona Fox write that @Adam pwme ?

Fiona Fox appears to have written a universal get-out clause for anything she wrote in her book. On page 13 of 'Beyond the Hype' Fox writes:

"This book is not intended to be an objective record of science in the media during the 21st century: it is my account of my time in it. Or to put it another way - this is my book, and all the things in it are what I remember"

In the Acknowledgements section Fox says she had help with fact checking, and writes
"If the book is wrong in places that is my failing"
 
Lou B Lou said:
Where did Fiona Fox write that @Adam pwme ?

Fiona Fox appears to have written a universal get-out clause for anything she wrote in her book. On page 13 of 'Beyond the Hype' Fox writes:

"This book is not intended to be an objective record of science in the media during the 21st century: it is my account of my time in it. Or to put it another way - this is my book, and all the things in it are what I remember"

In the Acknowledgements section Fox says she had help with fact checking, and writes
"If the book is wrong in places that is my failing"
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The quote was at the top of page 78.

Thanks I'd not seen that. Wow, quite the disclaimer...
 
Adam pwme said:
Fox wrote "There have even been debates in parliament about the PACE trial, with at least one MP using parliamentary privilege to allege that the trial was fraudulent."

Does anyone know who she is referring to?

I checked the 4x transcripts and there was no record of the word "fraud" or "fraudulent".

Sharpe has tweeted about "implied research misconduct" though.
Click to expand...
Not sure if this is related or not ...

https://me-pedia.org/wiki/PACE_trial

PACE Trial in UK Parliament
The PACE Trial has been the subject of a number of parliamentary enquiries by parliamentarians mainly the Countess of Mar. The Countess of Mar asked questions of the government via a short debate in the House of Lords on the assessment of the PACE trial on 6 February 2013. A video and transcript is available on YouTube and Hansard.[149][150] Comments and analysis on the PACE trial and its establishment defenders has also been made by advocates.[151]

During the court case below in 2015 by Matthees and the Information Commissioners Office v QMUL it was stated by Peter White that he regarded parliamentary debates as harassment and had to brief those taking part in the debate.

In November 2016 Kelvin Hopkins MP asked seven written questions relating to the PACE Trial including "request that the Medical Research Council conducts an inquiry into the management of the PACE trial to ascertain whether any fraudulent activity has occurred." and "prevent the PACE trial researchers from being given further public research funding until an inquiry into possible fraudulent activity into the PACE trial has been conducted."

The Countess of Mar has also asked in February 2017 the Committee of Public Accounts to investigate the use of public funds on the PACE Trial and the PACE authors use of public funds to resist requests to release anonymised clinical trial data. Her letter included a report which stated the trial was "professional misconduct and/or fraud" and "Professor White obtained ethical approval for the study under false pretences".[152]
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[my italic]
 
Adam pwme said:
Thanks Barry that's really helpful. It looks like Fox is probably referring to the Countess of Mar but got the details wrong saying it was an MP during a parliamentary debate.
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Good heavens - she got a point of detail wrong ... I find that so very hard to believe! :rolleyes::p:D

Probably confusing with Carol Monaghan, who described PACE as possibly the greatest medical scandal ...
 
Can someone post on social media re the claim about "fraud" - Hansard is the official record but I'm not sure if you can e.g. check for "PACE" & "fraud" - used together.
Or simply ask her when this occurred? Might be interesting if it turned out they were self identifying!
 
Trial by Error by David Tuller Science Media Centre Chief Compares Patient Advocates to Nazis

quote:
In a widely hyped new book–“Beyond the Hype: The Inside Story of Science’s Biggest Media Controversies”–Fox recounts her escapades as the head of this purportedly neutral science communications agency. As anyone who has followed events in the ME/CFS world knows, the SMC, founded two decades ago, has played an influential and unfortunately negative role in shaping how the British press has regarded and covered the ME/CFS saga. Chapter 3 of Fox’s book involves what the subhead calls “the bitter row over ME/CFS research.”

The title of this chapter–“First They Came for the Communists”—leaves little doubt about Fox’s perspective.
 
Trish said:
Thank you @dave30th. And thanks also to those adding reviews on Amazon, including an excellent one by @Caroline Struthers. It's interesting that there are so far no positive reviews of the book, just a few 5 star ratings without reviews.
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Probably for the same reason why brand new movies, often before their actual release have a rating of 9/10 on IMDB, then once widely released in cinemas, the rating drops to 6.3. Mysteries, mysteries everywhere. :angelic:
 
The book has an Amazon rating of 2.6 out of 5 at the moment.

I'm not sure how someone who did any research at all could believe that opposition to CBT/GET is a fringe movement among patients when researching this for 10 minutes should make it very clear that major patient organizations in the US, UK, Netherlands, France, Australia, Spain, Germany, Austria, Norway, Canada are strongly against CBT/GET. The only answer is that she never researched this at all, naively believing everything she was told by the PACE authors. For a journalist who claims to be working against misinformation this is an embarassing failure.

Or perhaps she sees her role more as supporting the perceived authorities against those with different opinions than anything to do with finding out what is true and what is false.
 
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Adam pwme said:
Fox wrote "There have even been debates in parliament about the PACE trial, with at least one MP using parliamentary privilege to allege that the trial was fraudulent."

Does anyone know who she is referring to?

I checked the 4x transcripts and there was no record of the word "fraud" or "fraudulent".

Sharpe has tweeted about "implied research misconduct" though.
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Sharpe mentions "false allegations about the trial", including of fraud, in the briefing document he sent ahead of the Westminster Hall debate on 21 June 2018.

He also emailed Carol Monaghan to tell her that her behaviour was "unbecoming of an MP" before the WH debate, but I can't remember what this was in relation to. It might have been something she had said in the HoC previously (in the run up to the debate), but I can't track down exactly what.

[eta] She did say, in the earlier February 2018 WH debate that, "From the very start the PACE trial was flawed."

[eta2] Or maybe it was this article in Politics Home on 18 June 2018 - "flawed and unreliable"
 
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Lucibee said:
Sharpe mentions "false allegations about the trial", including of fraud, in the briefing document he sent ahead of the Westminster Hall debate on 21 June 2018.

He also emailed Carol Monahan to tell her that her behaviour was "unbecoming of an MP" before the WH debate, but I can't remember what this was in relation to. It might have been something she had said in the HoC previously (in the run up to the debate), but I can't track down exactly what.

[eta] She did say, in the earlier February 2018 WH debate that, "From the very start the PACE trial was flawed."
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Thanks Lucy.
 
Fox wrote "There have even been debates in parliament about the PACE trial, with at least one MP using parliamentary privilege to allege that the trial was fraudulent."
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Thinking more about this, and trying to recall the order of events at the time (tricky). Things have got somewhat conflated here.

What I think we know (maybe):

Sharpe emailed Monaghan about the upcoming debate, presumably to include his briefing doc.

Monaghan mentions the email, and that Sharpe said her conduct was unbecoming etc. (or maybe he warned her not to say anything that might be unbecoming? I'm trying to be charitable)

Sharpe then takes to Twitter to say that what he said was misrepresented, and that she used "parliamentary privilege" to do so.



and...
sharpe_monaghan_21jun18.png

I don't think anyone actually mentioned that the trial was fraudulent - that was all in the briefing doc (that he provided), and not in the debate.
MPs tend to be careful about that sort of thing.
 
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Lucibee said:
Thinking more about this, and trying to recall the order of events at the time (tricky). Things have got somewhat conflated here.

What I think we know (maybe):

Sharpe emailed Monaghan about the upcoming debate, presumably to include his briefing doc.

Monaghan mentions the email, and that Sharpe said her conduct was unbecoming etc. (or maybe he warned her not to say anything that might be unbecoming? I'm trying to be charitable)

Sharpe then takes to Twitter to say that what he said was misrepresented, and that she used "parliamentary privilege" to do so.



and...
View attachment 17340

I don't think anyone actually mentioned that the trial was fraudulent - that was all in the briefing doc (that he provided), and not in the debate. MPs tend to be careful about that sort of thing.
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I think you're right. The only mention of fraud appears to be from the Countess of Mar mentioned earlier in the thread.
 
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