United Kingdom: Science Media Centre (including Fiona Fox)

Building Trust in Science Communication: The Role of Journals & Journalists, Pre-& Post-Publication

Panelists: Ivan Oransky, Retraction Watch Fiona Fox, Science Media Center, UK Renee Hoch, PLOS Publication Ethics Team



I've only watched bits of this, and it was only of interest because so much of what Fiona Fox says she believes is in opposition with what we've seen of her behaviour.

Also Oransky was there... if only Tuller could have come up with a briefing to convince him to get stuck in!
 
Typical to form, the SMC seems to be willfully participating in the blaming of lockdowns-that-were-very-limited-and-in-no-way-actual-lockdowns leading to reduced infections. It repeats the lie that those pathogens were not seen in the last 3 years, which is actually a big tell about medicine's blind spot: it happened to people, they just weren't ill enough to go see doctors for it so far as they are concerned this means no one was infected and now they have "immunity debt", which at least they refrained from naming but are still fueling it.

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-uk-strep-a-outbreaks/

This seems to be a critical blind spot: everything happening outside of healthcare facilities is not happening. For RSV many places saw higher prevalence last year. The cases were higher, but hospitalizations were lower, somehow = cases were lower. Or something like that. Making everything about healthcare from the perspective of ICUs has become a major flaw to the conduct of basic public health, adding to that the definition of mild illness.

The whole pretending that lockdowns were basically the end of all things, people locked in cages unable to move, is getting sillier and sillier. I don't see how medicine doesn't come out of this with zero credibility if this goes on.
 
Article in the Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist (CPBML)
Behind the science headlines

Issues around science are often high up in the news agendas, but many players can be involved in bringing a story to the public…

Beyond the Hype – The Inside Story of Science’s Biggest Media Controversies, by Fiona Fox, hardback, 256 pages, ISBN 978-1783966172, Elliot & Thompson, 2022, £16.99 or less. Kindle and eBook editions available; paperback edition due February 2023.

This book is worth reading for anyone who is interested in the way that science and scientific ideas are used, and abused. Fiona Fox takes examples from her 20 years’ experience to illustrate the way that science stories appear in the mass media.

Significant misrepresentations of science and medicine happened well before the coronavirus pandemic brought science communication to wider attention. Such health scares and other unscientific myths can be misleading, and often damaging.
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Chronic fatigue
One chapter tells a sorry tale about research into myalgic encephalomyelitis, otherwise known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). By the early 2000s Simon Wessely, a researcher who helped develop the first therapies and NHS clinics in treating ME/CFS, was routinely receiving death threats and threatening calls.

The SMC has had little success to date in rolling back attacks on scientists involved on research into ME/CFS – who are reluctant to raise their heads above the parapet and, for many, are unwilling to continue research in the field.

Fox writes, “Thankfully the situation with ME/CFS is extraordinary and rare. But the principles involved are not. My real worry is that the collective failure of the medical research establishment to step into this row to publicly support the scientists, defend a body of evidence, and argue that we need all kinds of research to tackle this devastating illness will pave the way for the same thing to happen in other areas of science.”
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https://cpbml.org.uk/news/behind-science-headlines
 
A helpful reminder, to any journalists too young to remember when the Spiked weirdos were Living Marxism and prior to that the Revolutionary Communist Party, what a bizarre milieu Fox comes from, and why they shouldn’t trust the SMC an inch.

To the post above - no, the Maoists in the CPB have never been as good as the Trots at selling newspapers, so posting this review here has probably doubled its exposure.
 
Without wanting to delve into politics — moderators, please remove this post if it breaks rule 12 — it seems strange that a marxist-leninist party fails to see that the Waddell-Aylward biopsychosocial model is quintessentially capitalistic, in that it focuses on reducing healthcare costs and getting people back to work rather than providing them with the care (and medical research) they need, as described in Shakespeare 2016. Waddell and Aylward, after all, worked for healthcare insurance companies and served as government advisors.

Yet another instance of trusting what a prominent figure says because of whatever close ties they have with an organization rather than unbiasedly digging into the matter or, more simply, asking members of the party who live with ME/CFS.
 
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cassava7 said:
Without wanting to delve into politics — moderators, please remove this post if it breaks rule 12 — it seems strange that a marxist-leninist party fails to see that the Waddell-Aylward biopsychosocial model is quintessentially capitalistic, in that it focuses on reducing healthcare costs and getting people back to work rather than providing them with the care (and medical research) they need, as described in Shakespeare 2016. Waddell and Aylward, after all, worked for healthcare insurance companies and served as government advisors.
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Aylward worked in the UNUM centre. UNUM is/was a disability insurer: they pay money if you can’t work rather than a health/healthcare insurer who pay medical bills. My guess is Waddell is similar.

I think it’s important to make the distinction: I remember someone on our side dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory that health insurers would be that bothered by trying to psychologise individual cases of ME/CFS (ETA: or say they were treatable with CBT/GET) as it wouldn’t save much per individual. However disability insurance claims will usually be worth six figures in Euros/pounds Sterling/US dollars (sometimes seven figures) over the course of a policy.
 
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CRG said:
The UNUM centre was: UnumProvident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University - it was effectively created by Mansel Aylward after he stepped down as Chief Medical adviser at the Department for Work and Pensions. Aylward's position at Cardiff being "Director of the Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University". The UNUM sponsorship was for 5 years, with I think a five year extension and I don't think it continued after 2014 https://www.covermagazine.co.uk/news/2151231/unumprovident-teams-cardiff-university

Gordon Wadell was an Orthopaedic surgeon who became interested firstly in back pain and from that Occupational Medicine, and from there the BPS model https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00586-017-5133-4

UNUM was certainly very interested in the BPS approach, https://issuu.com/maxhead/docs/unum_cardiff_newsletter_issue_2 an interest which was clearly motivated by commercial demands, how much Aylward, Wadell or any other BPS proponent specifically assisted commercial exploitation of a BPS approach by UNUM is an open question, there are a multitude of influences on a commercial operation and teasing out a single aspect in how a company operates is impossible without insider analysis.

I really don't see any basis for conspiracy. Aylward offered an attractive perspective to Government while in his DWP role, that perspective was of interest to commerce, commerce and Government developed a common interest, commerce sought PR and continued apeal to academic authority by sponsoring academia, and academia in turn has association appeal for Government. This a very standard web of interests - it of course requires close watching to make it understandable but there's no conspiracy in the sense of things being deliberately hidden, it's just business as usual. Of course it may not be a healthy way of doing business but that's a political question.
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see this thread
https://www.s4me.info/threads/government-and-insurance-companies-establishing-the-bps-model.2319/
 
Post moved from the thread discussing the media coverage of a quack threrapy here



Bear with me.

But it seems the Science Media Centre have had a briefing for something to do with Long Covid (results of a trial called 'REGAIN' )

briefings | Science Media Centre

Does anyone have insight they could provide on how far ahead someone would know when something like this would 'report' ie how far ahead they know they are 'booking in' a briefing?

Because sure as anything I know that beyond that a comms plan for the time period leading up to it would then have been put in place..

and yes I'm saying part of that perhaps might include building on things that antagonise the patient community in the weeks leading up to it and have opportunities for articles to keep spouting the NHS stuff on it and so on
 
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bobbler said:
Bear with me.

But it seems the Science Media Centre have had a briefing for something to do with Long Covid (results of a dodgy trial called 'REGAIN' )

briefings | Science Media Centre

Does anyone have insight they could provide on how far ahead someone would know when something like this would 'report' ie how far ahead they know they are 'booking in' a briefing?

Because sure as anything I know that beyond that a comms plan for the time period leading up to it would then have been put in place..

and yes I'm saying part of that would/could certainly include an attempt to antagonise the patient community in the weeks leading up to it and have opportunities for articles to keep spouting the NHS stuff on it and so on
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Bobbler, you might want to ask the mods to move your post to a Long Covid research thread.

There is "Expert reaction" here:

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...-with-long-covid-after-covid-hospitalisation/


to the BMJ paper:

‘Clinical effectiveness of an online supervised group physical and mental health rehabilitation programme for adults with post-covid-19 condition (REGAIN study): multicentre randomised controlled trial’ by Gordon McGregor et al. published in the BMJ at 23:30 UK time on Wednesday 7 February 2024.

DOI: 10.1136/bmj‑2023‑076506

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...-with-long-covid-after-covid-hospitalisation/

Copied to the thread about the research.
 
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bobbler said:
...Does anyone have insight they could provide on how far ahead someone would know when something like this would 'report' ie how far ahead they know they are 'booking in' a briefing?

Because sure as anything I know that beyond that a comms plan for the time period leading up to it would then have been put in place..

and yes I'm saying part of that would/could certainly include an attempt to antagonise the patient community in the weeks leading up to it and have opportunities for articles to keep spouting the NHS stuff on it and so on
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BMJ send out press releases to a huge mailing list several days ahead of an article being published - it may be longer for a research paper.
 
Dx Revision Watch said:
Bobbler, you might want to ask the mods to move your post to a Long Covid research thread.

There is "Expert reaction" here:

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...-with-long-covid-after-covid-hospitalisation/


to the BMJ paper:

‘Clinical effectiveness of an online supervised group physical and mental health rehabilitation programme for adults with post-covid-19 condition (REGAIN study): multicentre randomised controlled trial’ by Gordon McGregor et al. published in the BMJ at 23:30 UK time on Wednesday 7 February 2024.

DOI: 10.1136/bmj‑2023‑076506

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...-with-long-covid-after-covid-hospitalisation/
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Thanks @Dx Revision Watch - this particular post was in the context of this ongoing thread. Because I've been wondering on the DD and timings of other things.

I don't know how far ahead a researcher knows when their report will be finished and published / begins lining up the conference so to speak?

I've no problem if there is a worth in a copy of this going on that thread for the trial,

and it's useful to link across to it.
 
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