United Kingdom: Science Media Centre (including Fiona Fox)

Best line
Do you feel you have a responsibility to follow up when studies you have promoted turn out to violate basic scientific principles, such as the need to disclose that outcome measures were swapped based on data provided by more than half the participants in a trial?
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Esther12 said:
Anyone know what was changed on this page between publication on March 22nd and...:

"This review was edited on 23rd April 2018."

http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/reanalysis-of-the-pace-trial/
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was this there before?
"The authors have made little attempt to uncover the reasons for protocol deviations in the PACE trial or the point at which they were made; trialists could have been invited to comment."

also the SMC fact sheet appears to be the same:
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/w...dia-Centre-Factsheet-CFS-ME-Final-Version.pdf
 
adambeyoncelowe said:
It looks substantially different. It's not anywhere near as biased or outwardly hostile as it was the first time around. Presumably, they realised that they came across as corrupt and with vested interests?
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This is a different piece to their 'CFS - the controversy' piece, that was always more biased and hostile: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/cfsme-the-illness-and-the-controversy/

Sly Saint said:
was this there before?
"The authors have made little attempt to uncover the reasons for protocol deviations in the PACE trial or the point at which they were made; trialists could have been invited to comment."
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure that, or something very similar, was there when it was first published.
 
Esther12 said:
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that, or something very similar, was there when it was first published.
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Sly Saint said:
"The authors have made little attempt to uncover the reasons for protocol deviations in the PACE trial or the point at which they were made; trialists could have been invited to comment."
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whoever wrote this has no idea.............blood/stone (fois, repeatedly asked to give answers etc etc etc)
 
Dolphin said:
This makes me think that one or more of the PACE Trial team were involved in it or how would they know this?
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Wouldn't amaze me if it was just an assumption stemming from a disinterest in the truth. The PACE researchers would know that it was not true!
 
Chezboo said:
This from 2017. It is a thorough investigation into the SMC, it's background and operation with a focus on examples of its bias. Includes some interesting quotes and links to other pieces.


"Does Science Media Centre Promote Corporate Views of Science?"
By Stacy Malkan in US RTK

https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/science-media-centre/
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"Tactics
The SMC in the UK says it has a database with 2700 experts and more than 1200 press officers, and mailing lists with more than 300 journalists representing every major UK news outlet.

SMC uses three main tactics to influence science coverage, according to its promotional video:

  1. Rapid response to breaking news with opinion quotes from experts: When a science story breaks, “within minutes there are SMC emails in inboxes of every single national reporter offering experts,” said Fox.
  2. Getting to reporters first with new research. SMC “has privileged access to about 10-15 scientific journals in advance of the embargo lifting” so they can prepare advance comments from third-party experts signaling whether new studies merit attention and how they should be framed.
  3. Organizing about 100 press briefings a year that “proactively set the agenda by bringing new science or evidence to journalists” on a wide range of controversial topics such as nuclear waste, biotechnology and emerging diseases."
 
This week I had the honour of being made an honorary fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. A number of the press officers and scientists in the room encouraged me to post my short acceptance speech on my blog…so here you go.

“First I’d like to thank Mark for his lovely words.

20 years ago many of the scientists we saw in the media tended to be great communicators who enjoyed the limelight. Back then our top scientists often dismissed these popularizers as ‘media tarts’. But that attitude has completely changed in the 16 years I have been in science. I credit scientists like Mark Walport and many others in this room for this cultural revolution. Engaging the public and the media is now widely seen as what great scientists do. That change has been central to the Science Media Centre’s success. We are not just getting more scientists into the media…we are ensuring the media has access to the very best scientists and the highest quality evidence.
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http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/dont-be-complacent-about-the-gains-we-have-made/

Also includes at the end
Finally, critics of the Academy recently mocked you as representing ‘Eminence Based’ medicine. Well I for one am delighted to join this ‘eminent’ club. Thanks for letting me in.
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Thank God they never offered me fellowship.

The irony of the final quote says it all.

The rest is drivel. Maybe this club should ask themselves why advances in medical science have largely ground to a halt in the last twenty years - as pointed out by James LeFanu in the Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine.
 
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