United Kingdom: Science Media Centre (including Fiona Fox)

MSEsperanza said:
And there's also a youtube interview by
Skeptics in the Pub Online

Beyond the Hype: The Inside Story of Science’s Biggest Media Controversies - Fiona Fox - YouTube

Code: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQXru-H2kPA

(Haven't watched and probably won't.)
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Just scrolling through the transcript, this bit on debate seemed relevant:

57:37
yeah good now let's see follow-up question from igor
57:43
when fighting bad actors that are using bad rhetoric to peddle misinformation do you think we should be using their
57:50
tactics no do you think using their tactics is justified


57:55
for us i guess or for you or is it a question of they go low we go high
58:01
um i i'm gonna say they go low we go high i i like that
58:07
expression um and actually it goes back to what i was
58:12
just saying about these um these polarized discussions that we saw
58:18
in the pandemic you know we all know don't we that we're living in a much more kind of polarized society generally
58:25
but i i have to say that i i actually get upset when i see scientists
58:31
putting themselves into camps and shouting at people and you know and and rather than
58:37
acting in good faith and rather than you know one of the things um
58:43
i felt sometimes during the pandemic is the one group of people that could have shown um how how you disagree well
58:52
doesn't mean you're not passionate doesn't mean you're not absolutely in disagreement about whether face must work or not whether we should vaccinate
58:59
young children or not i'm not at all saying we should behave that these aren't very important scientific
59:05
differences but i do think the scientific community has got a long track record of having those debates and
59:13
in the end you how do you answer them you answer them with good science so you have your argument you put forward your
59:19
hypothesis and it's your favorite hypothesis but whether you're right or not is demonstrated by your data and by
59:24
your experiment and i felt that some scientists didn't they didn't show everyone else how to
59:31
have these debates instead they they said i'm in the pro face mask camp
59:37
and you're wrong and then and then they started even even certainly on social media which is you know it's like that
59:43
anyway but they started blocking each other and and talking about i mean that's another issue
59:48
there is real harassment but but when scientists describe
59:54
disagreement as you're harassing me you're bullying me i'm blocking you then they to me they sound like everyone else
1:00:00
on on social media and on twitter so so yes absolutely my answer to that is we go high and also to be honest the
1:00:07
science media center is we we don't take to i mean obviously we tweet all of our content but we don't get involved in
1:00:13
twitter debates
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Lou B Lou said:
There is only one customer review of FF's book on UK Amazon and no customer reviews of it on US Amazon. Is it that we are the only people buying it ? ..... :laugh:
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The Royal Institution are holding an event promoting it

Tue, 7 June 2022

19:00 – 20:30 BST

https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/beyond-hype-inside-story-sciences-biggest-media-controversies

and she's been interviewed a lot about it
eg podcast
We spend a lot of time at Shambles talking about science, so on today’s episode of Book Shambles we’re going to talk about how the media should and shouldn’t talk, and write, about science. Helen Czerski guest hosts once again and she chats with Fiona Fox from the Science Media Centre who has just released a fascinating book, Beyond the Hype: The Inside Story on Science’s Biggest Media Controversies. They chat COVID, vaccines, David Nutt, GM food and a whole lot more.
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https://cosmicshambles.com/bookshambles/fiona-fox

more reviews here
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60317725-beyond-the-hype

eta:
blog book review
If you're a scientist reading this, you may well think, as I used to, that running a Science Media Centre (SMC) would be a worthy but rather dull existence. Surely, it's just a case of getting scientists to explain things clearly in non-technical language to journalists. The fact that the SMC was created in part as a response to the damaging debacle of the MMR scandal might suggest that it would be a straightforward job of providing journalists with input from experts rather than mavericks, and helping them distinguish between the two.

I now know it's not like that, after being on the Science Media Centre's panel of experts for many years, and having also served on their advisory committee for a few of them. The reality is described in this book by SMC's Director, Fiona Fox, and it's riveting stuff.

In part this is because no science story is simple. People will disagree about the quality of the science, the meaning of the results, and the practical implications. Topics such as climate change, chronic fatigue syndrome/ME and therapeutic cloning elicit highly charged responses from those who are affected by the science. More recently, we have found that when a pandemic descends upon the world, some of the bitterest disagreements are not between scientists and the media, but between well-respected, expert scientists. The idea that scientists can hand down tablets of stone inscribed with the truth to the media is a fiction that is clearly exposed in this book.

Essentially, the SMC might be seen as acting like a therapist in the midst of a seriously dysfunctional family where everyone misunderstands everyone else, and everyone wants different things out of life. On the one hand we have the scientists. They get frustrated because they feel they should be able to make exciting new discoveries, with the media then helping communicate these to the world. Instead, they complain that the media has two responses: either they're not interested in the science, or they want to sensationalise it.
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http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2022/04/book-review-fiona-fox-beyond-hype.html
 
I bought the book on kindle and have read the chapter on ME. It's as bad as I expected, indeed if anything worse, because by claiming great sympathy with pwME and at the same time supporting uncritically everything Wessely et al have told her, she make pwME seem terrible and undeserving of the dedicated work of these wonderful clinicians. I'm spitting mad about this stuff still being published in the name of supporting science and I'm seriously pissed off with people who should know better who have provided quotes in praise of the book.

I have written an Amazon review, and in case they decide not to post it, here's a copy:
The chapter on ME/CFS is a clear demonstration of the dangers of an organisation like the SMC and its leader with influence on the media taking sides on an issue when not in possession of all the facts, and the ongoing harm this can cause to sick people.

Ms Fox and the SMC have contributed to the demonising of thousands of very sick people, and the promotion of harmful treatments. Criticism of the PACE trial and similar research comes from hundreds of scientists, not just from patients. The NICE review of the evidence found PACE and similar research to be of such poor quality that exercise and psychologically based treatments could no longer be recommended. This work by NICE is grossly misrepresented in the book as unscientific giving in to pressure groups. This is far from reality.

As for the stuff about researchers being attacked. Of course no one thinks it's OK to threaten anyone, but the alleged actions of a few should be dealt with either by the police or by medical care as appropriate, not by making them the basis of public demonising of sick people, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with any threats. Instead Wessely and others decided, with the help and encouragement of the SMC to make this the story about ME/CFS patients being militant, and built the story largely by conflating alleged threats with justified criticisms of the research and FOI requests for information the researchers wanted to hide because once analysed the data told a different story to the one they wanted to promote.

By placing legitimate concerns about flawed research under the same umbrella and describing this all as harassment of researchers, the SMC has done a disservice to those scientists who sought to reanalyse the data and criticised the methodology, and contributed to the demonising of sick people. That is grossly unfair.

I recommend Ms Fox read Sean O'Neill's recent articles in the Times, and listen to his moving testimony on Women's Hour to his late daughter who died from ME/CFS last year with no proper care from the NHS. Appalling treatment of people with ME/CFS, gaslighting, harmful advice from clinicians to exercise, have caused harm for 30 years. Far from being the heros of the story, Wessely, Sharpe, Chalder and White, all named in the book, have caused immeasurable harm.

I recommend Ms Fox listen, and I mean really listen with an open mind, to the scientists and clinicians who have seen through their flawed research, and that the SMC do all it can to support the NICE guideline, and patients who have been harmed by being told to increase their activity.

Why would a patient group protest about a treatment if it worked? The whole argument is nonsense. The core feature of ME/CFS is post exertional malaise, a feature Fox misrepresents. It means attempting to increase activity makes sufferers sicker. for days, weeks, months or years. The PACE authors tried every trick in the book to try to make their data get the results they wanted, but the so called treatments did not lead to any objective or lasting improvement in patients' health, despite their claims to the contrary. That's why patients object - because the treatment doesn't work and makes many sicker.

To those who have written glowing reviews of this travesty of objectivity, listen and learn, think it possible you are wrong, and don't take Ms Fox's writing as the last word on the subject. This book does a disservice to sick people everywhere.
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Does anybody think that a formal complaint should be made to the board of the SMC about that headline for the ME chapter. It seems unprofessional and liable to bring the organisation into disrepute? There is no way that the SMC could now pretend to be holding a proper impartial line. I know that she has been subject to provocations. That is no excuse. The organisation cannot now be taken seriously.
 
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The trustees of SMC seem to be a rather faceless group of communicator people. I am not sure that they would know what to do in response to a complaint other than find some way to support Fox.

On the other hand the group of advisers, apart from a load of journalists, includes two notable biomedical scientists.

Prof Eleanor Riley was part of the London School of Hygiene NIH CureME group until she moved to Edinburgh in about 2016 (which of course includes both Luis Nacul and Caroline Kingdon, who were on the NICE committee). She was in charge of the 'search' process looking for advice on high quality research for MRC to fund that contributed to DecodeME being funded. She has a high reputation in immunology and is I think a member of Council at MRC.

Prof Russell Viner is an eminent paediatrician based at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, who has been President of RCPCH. He may be particularly likely to be offended by references to Nazism.

If people thought this was a good idea then maybe we should send a formal message to the advisory committee.
 
When it comes to ideas marketing is agnostic toward the truth. It doesn't enter into it.

And it's easy to include the underdog view of ME into the climate change/vaccine/covid denier camp.

But a realistic parsing of the ME situation is more akin to big tobacco denying cancer and emphysema are related to smoking. Or the protracted resistance from science to the idea that medics hand-washing saves lives.

With regards to BPS and ME it is the appeal to authority and not science that has won out most often.
 
The advisory committee consists of:

Ian Brunskill
Associate Editor, The Times and The Sunday Times

Prof Eleanor Riley
Professor of Immunology and Infectious Disease, The University of Edinburgh

Shaun Lintern
Health Editor, The Sunday Times

Rebecca Morelle
Science Editor, BBC News

Christine McGourty
Chief Executive, Water UK, and former BBC Science Correspondent

Mark Sudbury
Head, World 100 Reputation Network, and former Director of Communications at UCL

Prof Russell Viner
Professor of Adolescent Health, UCL Great Ormond St. Institute of Child Health

Dr Jennie Evans
Director of External Affairs, British Society for Immunology

Will Moy
Chief Executive Officer, Full Fact

Jane Kirby
Health and Science Editor, PA Media

Dr Ruth McKernan
Venture Partner, SV Health Managers LLP
 
Let them know that was Fox is saying is inaccurate. The "harassment" turned out to be freedom of information requests, and the death threats seem very likely grossly exaggerated or entirely made up (I suspect most of them are made up), and even if they happened, they are being used to attack sick people via guilt by association. It's grossly unethical.

The "patients vs scientists" was really a conflict between two different groups, one which had access to the media and used this to attack the other because they could not win in a scientific debate. And the NIH, IOM, NICE, UK health secretary, Dutch Health Council all have taken the biomedical side now (the CRMC too but not sure if they have any standing?). It really is absurd to present this as misguided patients vs caring scientists.

Another absurdity is this fantasy of a silent majority that loves CBT/GET. Where is the evidence? I've never seen anything but extremely marginal support for CBT/GET among patients. The NICE guideline that BANNED CBT/GET received 25000 signatures (I think) in support. There were no signals of support from the patient community.

Fox is creating some sort of alternative reality contradicted by the facts. Whether she is doing this intentionally or is a victim of disinformation handed to her I don't know.
 
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It's pretty staggering that the Trustees and Advisory Committee seem to be there only to give credibility to the loose cannon dissembler FF, who appears to have them all on a string.

Who is actually in charge of the SMC?

There is no accountability there.

It's a one woman show.
 
Another interesting aspect of this is what we now know about bias at SMC.

In the past we have seen what appear to be biased choices of experts commenting on ME/CFS matters. Nonetheless, proving that there was bias was always tricky.

Now we know there was bias. The lady in charge has made it clear that she is evangelically biased in favour of the BPS researchers. So biased that she has to let off steam in a book and even compare the other side to Nazis.
 
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