United Kingdom: Science Media Centre (including Fiona Fox)

[Sean]

'First they came for the communists...'

First they came for the disabled children, actually.

–––––––

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

@adambeyoncelowe, @Keela Too

 

[Hoopoe]

Oh, so Fiona Fox herself, her sister, and her "old friend Carol" all suffer/suffered from ME. I would have thought she would want more than rotten old useless CBT/GET for her nearest and dearest.

The story changes every time it's told. Sounds like she is making things up.

Pretend to be one of them and destroy them from the inside is how this group of people operates, isn't it? Because they see themselves as sort of moral police and ME as group that promotes immoral thoughts and behaviours.

 

[chrisb]

The story changes every time it's told. Sounds like she is making things up.

Perhaps it is sometimes hard to remember whether it was Fiona Fox or Fiona Foster whose experiences are recounted.

 

[Hoopoe]

Didn't her adopted sister also have ME at some point? Maybe I'm misremembering.

Anyway. Does the chapter on ME/CFS explain why she has such an intense dislike for patients with this illness?

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I can't find an e-edition on the amazon page. Is Fiona's book only in hardcover?

try this?

Amazon product ASIN B09RGRGTVH

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Sounds like she is making things up.

She certainly makes a lot of things up in selling the ME/PACE story.

 

[bobbler]

The SMC didn't cover the controversy of CFS, it was a significant player in the media strategy to deny its existence, the actual controversy. It did not report the story, it was a key player in it. Which is supposed to be the exact opposite of its mission. Like a journalist fabricating a controversy, then "reporting" about it and milking the limelight.

It's full of hype, alright.

You are correct that they obviously sought out the controversial individuals and then pushed it for all it was worth. That's not reporting on a controversy it is creating and stoking it, by getting those who wouldn't ever be listened to and running PR, it isn't far off a political campaign (I'm thinking Farage stylee). To pretend as a front that you are 'science' and so you get funded and access is quite extraordinary, but I suspect there is a precedent of where similar things have been done in the past (in some country at least).

I suspect her 'heritage' and this fact is where her favourite distraction accusation of 'activist' comes from. One thing I have noticed about BPS stuff is every single slight they push is normally exactly what they are actually doing (like calling someone a cheater in monopoly so noone looks at yours), it's a repetitive tactic, which you could call a 'tell' about what they really are up to.

 

[bobbler]

Whereas this link contains some gems of truth and is very useful reference!
https://www.margaretwilliams.me/
Science Media Centre - see Media

Media, Press, Science Media Centre, SMC | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |

Side note: I've seen docs from this source before and am curious what the background is on the author and where this came from/how it started (given the level of detail I assume there has ahd to be a lot of collating info from horses mouth etc as has to be done by some today too, so am curious of the back-story at the time)?

 

[bobbler]

Disappointing to see this in today’s Observer:

“Scientists must be free to communicate without politicians’ spin” by Fiona Fox:
https://www.theguardian.com/science...-free-to-communicate-without-politicians-spin

It is particularly incongruous in the same edition of the same paper as these 2 very good articles:

1. “The grim toll at Shrewsbury is a symptom of a public sector that doesn’t listen to its users”
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-of-public-sector-that-doesnt-listen-to-users

2. “I have long Covid and despair that the UK government ignores its blight”
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...id-despair-that-government-ignores-its-blight

"Twenty years ago, when I set up the Science Media Centre, researchers were notably absent from the nation’s airwaves. Frenzies about Frankenstein foods, designer babies and MMR may have gripped the media but most scientists put their heads down and tried to avoid controversy. The price was the British public’s rejection of GM technologies and levels of MMR vaccinations that dropped to a dangerous low."

That is just plainly untrue. She is obviously relying on false memory planting there. She has changed nothing - other than stoking these idiots - regarding scientists being in he media, it seems the same amount of time devoted and the same issues with who chooses/is chosen for too many of these 'opportunities'. GM food and climate change were both being significantly reported, by scientists, 20 years ago - I was watching it and reading it. It's all very God complex of her.

 

[Hoopoe]

Yes the SMC created a fake controversy ("death threats & dangerous militants attacking science because of bigotry") to distract from the real one. The real controversy being that PACE showed CBT/GET did not work, and PACE was meant to be the definitive test for a specific medical-political approach to ME/CFS. Which meant that a lot of money had been put into an approach that was promised to work but actually had no effect, that the denialism of ME/CFS is wrong, patients had been right all along and had been mistreated by the medical establishment, government agencies and the insurance industry.

With the new NICE guideline it seems that the PACE trial group have lost, maybe definitely. If the UK's health minister is competent in changing things, it will be definitive. Long covid is helping people accept that ME/CFS is real and making it a lot harder to be persuaded into believing the denialism.

 

[Keela Too]

@Sean
All my spoons are currently absorbed. (I’m laying low after a good event )

And, I haven’t followed this closely enough to comment right now. Hopefully I’ll have a clearer head in a few days.

 

[bobbler]

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:


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.

Yeah, but more importantly from reading comments sections in newspapers most readers actually think the issue is that the media don't look at the methodology of any science so are hoodwinked into being editorials for those who write PR in their impact sections.

The politics distraction she's now obsessed with (I assume that is her personal endgame for all this having now read the Guardian bit and noting her background long back and watched her behaviour) is a sideshow for this issue - because if one were keeping the other 'true' it would be blinking obvious when politics does the opposite.

 

[bobbler]

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.



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.

Just make sure you throw in a few of her most boring, yawn, iterative, heard it before quotes, claims and accusations (maybe a table of how many times she says x, y, z) - to give a feel of what she is about and to summarise her 'gist' so they don't waste their dosh or precious time reading the book to satisfy themselves of curiosity.

That of course has led me to the idea of catchphrase Bingo.. I'm sure you could simmer her tactics down to a few choice concepts. Could be adapted to include BPS and the tenets of their research methodology: no refutable hypothesis, broad definitions of illness, post-hoc grouping, no data tables etc. ? Nice way of drilling in how to smell a rat (should be on the internet) when reading an article

 

[bobbler]

The " First they came for the communists..." quote.

Could it by any chance be a reference to the Revolutionary Communist Party?

Just wikipedia'd her: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Fox

There are about an equal number of suggestions along the following lines as there are claims of her being a science saviour:
"Fiona Bernadette Fox OBE (born 12 November 1964) is a British writer. She is the director of the Science Media Centre[2] and a former leading member of the Revolutionary Communist Party"

"She was accused of genocide denial by Chris McGreal in relation to a report she wrote in 1995 for the magazine Living Marxism on the violence in Rwanda,[9] which she wrote under the pseudonym Fiona Foster."

Didn't realise she is the sister of Claire Fox (Revolutionary Communist Party, Living Marxism Brexit Party and now 'Academy of Ideas' with quite a bit in between according to WIkipedia)

How accurate is this wikipedia stuff?

 

[bobbler]

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

Anyone know why they had a 'party name' or pseudonym of Fiona Foster when she was writing for certain things rather than just using Fiona Fox?

 

[CRG]

In terms of the 'my sister has it' - this may be true and I'd counsel caution about dissing a possible PwME who's not sought a public role in any of this. There are 3 Fox sisters, two in the public sphere and one whose only public association is with a smallish voluntary sector org operating in north Wales, I don't think there's any reason to question that this private individual may have a health disability, which may be ME/CFS.

 

[CRG]

Anyone know why they had a 'party name' or pseudonym of Fiona Foster when she was writing for certain things rather than just using Fiona Fox?

If you want to go down the RCP rabbit hole - there's this: https://rcpwatch.wordpress.com/ - though I'd suggest it's best avoided. These are people who have actively written themselves into their very own conspiracy theory, actors playing actors etc. The only way to deal with them is to stand well back and only if absolutely necessary make a swift intervention and then step away - all else is the route to their madness.

 

[bobbler]

I was thinking maybe asking her isf she knew she had fulfilled Godwin's law but that despite being a chum of Wessely's Mike Godwin thinks that PACE is...










A piece of crap.

I'm loving the truth being spouted but starting to wonder whether this is a 'I am Spartacus' moment too?

Would work beautifully as a twitter strategy (if enough good scientists are in) on that quote..

 

[bobbler]

I thought it was her "old friend Carol" who had ME

Fiona Foster/Fox RCP article 'Our Tasks and Methods', circa 1996, with references to ME

fiona_fox_ME_RCP_with_links.pdf (dropbox.com)

Yes this is really quite warped stuff.

But what did she mean by the following phrase?

"(This weekend there are 100s of thousands of women in a state of anxiety about whether their chosen pill will kill them. The women on these pills in the Party will be more likely to think "that's a good angle to sell someone Get a Life tickets!)"

 

[bobbler]

She's defo describing her own experience. She says she had some kind of post-infection fatigue after a trip to Zaire in her thirties. Spent weeks in bed; going downstairs too exhausting; kept being asked whether she was depressed - adamant that she was not; emotional lability etc. Eventually started to get some energy back "after numerous frustrating and inconclusive visits to different doctors." Took about a year to get back to normal.

She says that the experience gave her "a tiny insight into just how miserable and isolating ME/CFS can be." Which is why, when she started at SMC, she says she "was interested to meet the scientists working in the field and talk to them about any exciting advances being made..." "What I found was a nightmare: a small and beleaguered group of scientists who, despite years of working in their field, were all to various degrees contemplating leaving because of harassment by a group of vocal activists."

I wouldn't believe a word that came out of her mouth or even a memory she has put in her own head to be true reading some of the things she has written over the years. It is filled with utter constructivism, and this woman would certainly concoct or pinch someone's story in order to try and sell believability/throw a distraction as to why she really got into an area.

The dropbox article makes me sadly think what she is 'after' with this is about 'people's reality and thoughts' it's quite the manifesto - so teaming with psychiatrists pushing treatments about altering beliefs, changing 'perceived norms' etc sounds like one attraction to someone that way inclined. I'll be honest I'm a bit shaken up by what I've just read but at least it squares the circle on the madness we all have been thrust into.