"The mild and the
long-suffering may suffer forever in this world.
As long as the patient will suffer,
the cruel will kick."
-- Sidney Smith |
I continue being not well, and today I had planned to write some more
on
the DSM-5TM which I may still do if I can find the energy,
after writing yesterday about psychiatry and
the NIH, but I first want to insert the text of a fine essay by
Margaret Williams
that I was sent yesterday, with permission to repost, which I accordingly
do, and then also will want to quote and discuss a little Feynman from his
Cargo Cult Science, which is Wessely-style science.
Sections
1. Williams vs White: "So near yet so far – from Mission Accomplished?"
2. Feynman vs Wessely
1. Williams vs White: "So near yet so far – from Mission Accomplished?"
In fact, I was not sent the essay by Margaret Williams herself and I
also never e-mailed with her and indeed know little about her, except two
quite outstanding things, indeed:
First, she knows a lot more about ME/CFS than I do, and than most people
do, and has written a great amount of fine essays about the subject, by
herself alone, with professor Malcolm Hooper, and/or with associates of
professor Hooper, that you can find here:
Second, Margaret Williams really understands real science, and can think,
write and argue very well, all of which are, in my eyes, both rare and
important characteristic. I know, because I have rapidly read the larger part of the
articles in the above link between October and December 2009, after being
woken from my lethargy as regards ME (which I have it 32 years now) by
the WPI's findings concerning XMRV, published in Science,
almost a
year ago now.
And she has ME herself, quite seriously also, so she knows from her own
experience what she writes about so well, and indeed keeps writing on,
which I very much appreciate (knowing myself rather well what it is like
to grind out something intellectually demanding while one is totally
exhausted and in pain).
So here is Margaret Williams' take on the present situation in and around
ME, dated yesterday, with her own title, and the full text, that also can
be downloaded frim MEactionUK from the link in the title
So near yet so far – from Mission
Accomplished?
|
|
(by)
Margaret Williams
7th September 2010
|
The British Association of
CFS/ME (BACME, of which Dr Esther Crawley is Chair) supports the
current NICE Guideline CG53 and its recommendation of only
cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise in the
management of ME/CFS. BACME has taken on the role of training NHS
staff accordingly, even though it seems to be accountable only to
itself; it is to hold a meeting on 13th-14th
October 2010 at Milton Keynes and its provisional programme
affirms that Professor Peter White (Chief Investigator of the MRC
PACE Trial on ME/CFS) will speak about it in a talk entitled “PACE
trial: so near yet so far”. The BACME notice goes on to
say that if the PACE Trial outcome results are not published by
then, Professor White will present the design, progress and
baseline data from the trial.
From over 2,000 pages of
information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, much
is already known about the design and progress of the PACE Trial
(
http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/magical-medicine.htm ),
including the fact that its entry criteria were intentionally
broad (“We chose these broad criteria in order to enhance
generalisability and recruitment”; Trial Identifier 3.6).
Despite the use of such broad entry criteria, there were serious
recruitment difficulties, so the entry criteria were broadened
even further when on 14th July 2006 Peter White sought
approval from the West Midlands MREC to write to GPs imploring
them to send anyone with “chronic fatigue (or synonym)”
for entry into the PACE Trial, thereby opening the trial to
anyone who was merely chronically tired.
Given the customary
requirement for study cohorts to be as homogeneous as possibly,
this seems to defy logic: how can the Wessely School’s long-held
desire to “clarify the role that psychiatric disorders have in
fatiguing illness” (Ann Int Med 1994:121:12:953-959) and
their inclusion of persons with psychiatric disorders possibly
restore to health people with the neuroimmune disease ME/CFS who
are allegedly the subjects under study, any more than it would be
able to restore to health people with multiple sclerosis or motor
neurone disease?
The fundamental point is
that the PACE Trial interventions are not designed to offer
psychological support to those coping with life-shattering
disease, but to comprehensively disabuse them of their belief
that they suffer from a serious organic disease. If the aim of
the PACE Trial is merely to indulge the Wessely School
psychiatrists’ unproven beliefs (which Professor Michael Sharpe
has already admitted are “without theoretical foundation”
(
http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/The-MRC-secret-files-on-ME.htm
), on what grounds did it gain ethical approval?
How can the results of a
trial that was deliberately designed to conflate people with
behavioural disorders, idiopathic fatigue, fibromyalgia and
people with ME/CFS (characterised by immunological, neurological,
metabolic, cardiovascular, respiratory and musculo-skeletal
dysfunction, the cardinal symptom being post-exertional
exhaustion accompanied by malaise) be equally applicable to and
effective for such diverse disorders?
If the role of psychiatric
morbidity in “fatiguing illness” is being studied, then
why was the trial designed to exclude people with multiple
sclerosis who definitely experience profound and disabling
fatigue?
The answer, of course, is
that the PACE Trial limits the study to those people suffering
from disorders that the Wessely School deem to be “mental”
disorders.
Notably, in an exchange of
correspondence (Conversing with Professor Simon Wessely: (http://livingwithchronicfatiguesyndrome.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/conversing-with-professor-simon-wessely-part2/),
Wessely states: “…it is essential in any
study to make it clear exactly where your subjects come from –
without that it is impossible to generalise from any
report/paper/treatment. This not a new observation – you will
see that we pointed that out in 1996, and have continued in all
papers to make that distinction abundantly clear”.
Many would challenge
Wessely’s assertion that his study cohorts have always been
strictly defined; moreover, is it not curious, given that he is
in charge of the Clinical Trials Unit for the PACE Trial, that
Wessely apparently saw no need to exercise such care in the PACE
cohort? Does this not mean that, on Wessely’s own admission, if
a cohort is heterogeneous (which the PACE Trial undoubtedly is),
then the conclusions cannot be generalised and so will have no
clinical relevance and thus be a waste of tax-payers’ money?
It has already been shown
that the PACE Trial Investigators apparently did not adhere to
good research practice on numerous other counts also, including
their apparent failure to observe either the AGREE Instrument or
the Declaration of Helsinki, and there are consequential concerns
about how meticulously they will adhere to the CONSORT
Statement. CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials)
was developed by a group of scientists and editors in 1996; it
was updated in 2001 and again in 2010 and it consists of a
checklist that authors are recommended to use for reporting a
randomised controlled trial (RCT). It is based on the premise
that “The whole of medicine depends on the transparent
reporting of clinical trials” and its authors note that
trials with inadequate methods are associated with bias,
especially exaggerated treatment effects, and that reporting is
not only often incomplete but also sometimes inaccurate. They
point out that: “Biased results from poorly designed and
reported trials can mislead decision making in health care at all
levels, from treatment decisions for a patient to formulation of
national public health policies….Bias jeopardises even RCTs,
however, if investigators carry out such trials improperly…The
methods used should be complete and transparent so that readers
can readily differentiate trials with unbiased results from those
with questionable results….We encourage peer reviewers and
editors to use the CONSORT checklist to assess whether authors
have reported on these items” (D Moher / D. Altman et al; BMJ
2010:340:c869). One of the items on the CONSORT checklist
relates to trial design, with particular emphasis on important
changes to eligibility criteria that are made after trial
commencement (as occurred in the PACE Trial) – and the reasons
for them.
Furthermore, as an
experienced member of a Research Ethics Committee who is familiar
with the PACE Trial documentation has pointed out, the PACE Trial
is a classic example of over-measurement of variables (ie. it
measures too many variables so it is almost inevitable that the
data will show spurious “positive” results which in fact have no
clinical meaning).
These are very serious
matters that, as Chief Investigator, Professor White will need to
address with total transparency sooner rather than later.
In response to a previous
formal complaint about the PACE Trial made in 2004 by a former
MRC grant-holder, Elizabeth Mitchell, MRC External Communications
Manager, wrote on 15th November 2004 about the PACE
and FINE Trials: “The design of these
trials have been judged by international and UK peer review to be
appropriate for delivering the trial objectives, including use of
the broad inclusion criteria”.
This is undoubtedly so,
because if a proposal is sent for peer review to those who hold
similar views to the Investigators, those reviewers will
obviously support it. The real question is – what exactly were
the “trial objectives”? It was already known that the
interventions used in the trial are at best of little help and at
worst are damaging to those with ME/CFS (ie. the alleged target
group) and that the interventions being studied do not reduce
either fatigue or disability in such patients. Was this in
reality an elaborate exercise for the benefit of the DWP and the
medical/permanent health insurance industry?
It is notable that Dr
Cathie Sudlow, an Edinburgh neurologist who collaborates with
Professor Michael Sharpe, wrote in the BMJ (BMJ 2010:340:c1260)
about the discovery of the retrovirus XMRV in relation to ME/CFS
in the Lombardi/Mikovits et al paper that was published in
Science on 9th October 2009: “The role of reviewers
here is crucial…their contribution should be publicly recognised
and valued by journals and by the scientific community as part of
the scientific record. This can surely only happen if
reviewers are always openly identified and their comments
published” (emphasis added). Indeed, but will
this apply to the PACE Trial? Would it expose bias if so?
Given the recent findings
of the “dramatic association” of a family of retroviruses
with ME/CFS that have been published in both Science and PNAS (
http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/Memo-to-NICE.htm ), on what
logic or evidence do the PACE Trial Principal Investigators
Professors Peter White, Michael Sharpe and Trudie Chalder
continue to rely to support their belief that the Trial will
confirm that “behavioural restructuring” can cure such
seriously sick patients (this is what the Trial manuals claim:
http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/magical-medicine.htm )? If the
PIs do not hold such views, then why have they received £5
million to test those beliefs?
“So near yet so far”:
is it the case that the Wessely School were so near to achieving
their goal of showing that ME/CFS is a somatisation disorder,
using the PACE Trial data, only to be thwarted by the publication
of papers in Science and PNAS showing a strong association of a
retrovirus with ME/CFS, making their goal scientifically
untenable?
Notwithstanding, the way
seems to be being paved by the Wessely School for further
disparaging attacks on those scientists who have found retroviral
involvement in some ME/CFS patients and for yet more dismissal of
the significance of those findings.
Whilst the ground-breaking
retroviral link published in PNAS on 23rd August 2010
was announced in over 150 outlets world-wide, including Russia
and Latvia, and whilst it was deemed to be of such importance
that it featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal,
the UK media remained deafeningly silent and there was
effectively a news black-out. It was not until after 31st
August 2010 that the Science Media Centre (through which all UK
media announcements about medical/scientific issues must now
seemingly pass, and where Professor Simon Wessely is a member of
the Scientific Advisory Panel) published a statement (apparently
back-dated to 23rd August 2010) that downplayed the
significance of the retroviral association with ME/CFS.
Entitled “Expert
reaction to PNAS study on viral sequences found in blood of
chronic fatigue patients” and quoting two UK virologists
(Professors Robin Weiss and Myra McClure), the SMC press release
was dismissive: Professor Weiss stated: “It is based on small
numbers….Let’s hope it is not another claim like MMR…which didn’t
hold up (untrue: the UK High Court recently ruled that the
MMR vaccine is not safe, which the UK Government has been forced
to concede: Sunday Times, 29th August 2010), but I
am sceptical of the claim…One should also bear in mind that no
less than 4 negative reports on this topic (failing to find a
retrovirus link) have been published this year from reputable
groups in the UK, the Netherlands and at the Centre for
Communicable Diseases & Prevention in Atlanta, USA” and
Professor McClure stated: “…it is important to realise that
this group have not detected the virus (XMRV) that claimed media
attention after the publication of Lombardi’s paper in Science
last year. They describe murine leukaemia virus (MLV)-related
sequences that are genetically distinct from XMRV….Several other
groups (including Professor McClure’s own group)…have
employed the same experimental protocol, yet have consistently
failed to detect any retrovirus in CFS patients”.
The SMC has an established
track record of down-playing any association of retroviruses with
ME/CFS (for example,
http://bit.ly/90PAXp and
http://bit.ly/aj27AK ). Given the disparaging tone of the
latest SMC press release, it is little wonder that the UK media
did not bother, even belatedly, to publish anything about it. It
is possible that the SMC’s intention was to ignore the
game-changing discovery entirely, but after it was publicly asked
by a contributor to an internet group
why this important breaking news had not been mentioned
except for a low-key article in the Daily Mail, the SMC perhaps
felt obliged to note it, but did so as dismissively as possible.
Could this be because
nothing is to be allowed to detract from the PACE Trial findings
that cognitive restructuring – including graded aerobic exercise
-- are likely to be claimed to be restorative for patients with
ME/CFS?
It is interesting that,
over the years, Professor Wessely has repeatedly asserted that he
is no longer involved with the politics of CFS research, most
recently at the beginning of August 2010
http://livingwithchronicfatiguesyndrome.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/conversing-with-professor-simon-wessely-part2/
), yet at the first sign of a significant threat to his model
from the Whittemore Peterson Institute, he rushed out a paper
co-authored by Professor Myra McClure that claimed effectively to
negate the WPI findings.
In the same series of
correspondence, Wessely states on the record: “At the time of
writing I can say with my hand on my heart that I believe that
the treatments that we recommend and use in our clinic are
currently the best there is – and nothing i have seen, or read
about, suggests otherwise”. Retroviral involvement in ME/CFS
notwithstanding, might this be taken to indicate what the PACE
Trial results will conclude?
This firm statement from
Professor Wessely (ie. that nothing he has seen or read suggests
other than that his favoured behavioural interventions are the
best treatment for ME/CFS) seems to indicate that, as noted by
the person from Australia who posted the very revealing exchange
of correspondence, Wessely’s comments are a classic case of the
Semmelweis reflex, defined as “the tendency to reject new
evidence that contradicts an established paradigm”, and s/he
commented about Wessely’s stance: “Science works by new
evidence replacing existing paradigms. When this new evidence is
presented, it is a fallacy to reject it with the argument that it
interferes with an existing paradigm…if all scientists used
Wessely’s logic …then there would be no new scientific
discoveries”. Wessely maintains that the XMRV research fails
to model the role that childhood abuse, psychological factors and
other infections may play in the illness, whilst also confirming
that for the last 21 years he has promoted his own theory that
the “cognitive behavioural model” is a better explanatory model
for chronic ME/CFS than the chronic viral paradigm that dominated
at that time (and which many believe he was instrumental
in suppressing).
That patients with ME/CFS
have been left with no alternative but to suffer from on-going
viral illness for the last 21 years and have been deprived of
essential financial support because of the dominant influence of
certain psychiatrists is deplorable and may be recorded in future
annals of medicine with abhorrence and disbelief.
A recent internet post by
“XMRV Global Action” announcing that Francis Collins, Director of
the US National Institutes of Health (who oversees an annual
budget of more than $31 billion) is to open the First
International XMRV/MLV Conference on 7th September
2010 noted that this means the NIH are taking XMRV/MLV very
seriously indeed, and that there is an element of potential
scandal, given that people with ME/CFS have been complaining of
profound viral symptoms for decades (and dropping dead from viral
cardiomyopathies and rare lymphomas) while being derided as
hypochondriacs (
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/XMRV-Global-Action/216740433250?ref=ts
).
Yet more evidence has
emerged in the UK that the Wessely School’s various attempts to
neutralise what they may consider to be inconvenient findings
simply do not withstand logical analysis and their contemptuous
dismissal of the biomedical research will no longer carry any
weight, because their “cognitive behavioural model” has been
dealt what may be a fatal blow.
Whilst there are no
children involved in the PACE Trial, paediatrician Dr Esther
Crawley is about to start a study looking at the effect of the
Lightning Process on children aged from 8 to 18 to see if
sufferers can be trained to think differently about how ill they
feel and so increase their exercise levels, but an article in the
current issue of the American Medical Associations’ journal
“Archives of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine”
2010:164(9):817-823 (Biochemical and Vascular Aspects of
Paediatric Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis; G.
Kennedy et al:) shows how unsuitable such a study may be.
There are thought to be
about 15,000 children in the UK with ME/CFS and a team from
Dundee that was funded by ME Research UK (MERUK) and The Young ME
Sufferers (TYMES) Trust has found abnormalities in the blood of
all the children with ME/CFS tested but not in controls, the
results being similar to those previously found in adults with
ME/CFS and consistent with an activated inflammatory process.
Professor Jill Belch from
the Vascular and Inflammatory Diseases Research Unit, Ninewells
Hospital and Medical School, Dundee, explained this new research
on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on 7th September
2010, saying that they have demonstrated two important findings,
the first being an abnormal level of an inflammatory chemical in
the blood and that this is matched by abnormal white blood cell
behaviour; she explained that this is important because
“finding an abnormality is halfway to finding a treatment”.
The second finding, said Professor Belch, is that ME/CFS is
a physical abnormality, and this is important because “there
has been some question in some peoples’ mind whether this disease
might actually be a disease of the mind, and I think finding an
abnormality reassures us that this is a genuine physical
illness”. The interviewer (Sarah Montague) responded by
asking “Because so many have questioned whether ME even
exists?”, to which Professor Belch replied: “That’s
absolutely right”. Professor Belch went on to say: “These
children have a terribly damaged lifestyle, and if you add
disbelief on to that, the parents don’t know whether to believe
the child, (and) the doctors don’t know”. Sarah
Montague summarised the findings, saying: “What you’ve found
is what happens to a body that’s reacting to a virus?”, to
which Professor Belch replied: “That’s correct”, adding: “There
is no doubt that once you have an abnormality to target,
treatments can follow” (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8975000/8975412.stm
).
Commenting on the Dundee
research, Dr Neil Abbot, Director of Operations at MERUK, said: “The
study undoubtedly adds greater scientific weight to the existence
of a condition which, sadly, many still fail to acknowledge in
spite of its severity” (
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-11204884
).
The importance of this
study cannot be over-emphasised because of the potential
long-term consequences for cardiovascular disease and because, as
Dr Abbot points out, the white blood cells are releasing an
excessive amount of highly reactive free radicals, possibly from
exercising muscle (which would contra-indicate incremental
aerobic exercise) and the white blood cells provide evidence of
“a persistent or reactivating viral
infection triggering apoptosis of white blood cells”.
Many people around the
world believe that the Wessely School’s “cognitive behavioural
model” of ME/CFS (which includes the use of incremental aerobic
exercise) has been built on sand, not science. Wessely’s own
recent comments, together with the now irrefutable evidence of
viral involvement in ME/CFS, can only have assisted the cognitive
behavioural model’s (long overdue) disappearance from the
discipline of medicine.
It may be coincidence, but
a video is currently circulating on the internet featuring
Francis Collins, Director of the NIH, singing “The Times They Are
A-Changin’ “ on Capitol Hill (Rock Stars of Science:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SNHDlKYSt0&forumid=331851 ).
The times are indeed
changing for those with ME/CFS because the stranglehold of the
Wessely School has finally been severed but they will, naturally,
go down fighting because their professional careers in relation
to ME/CFS have been shown to be scientifically invalid, a record
of which no-one could be proud.
|
This seems to me to be a very good sum-up of where
things presently stand with and around ME/CFS, and indeed these are
hopeful times for people with ME/CFS, as it seems the scientific tide is turning
favourable to them,
and both research-funding and real bio-medical scientists are coming
together to try to resolve ME/CFS and indeed quite a few other diseases,
inspired by the original Lombardi/Mikovits paper, then supported and
extended by the Lo/Alter paper.
But Margaret Williams is also right about the Wessely school
proponents:
They
will continue to try to have their pseudoscientific ways succeed - and mind that their ways are
NOT scientific, rational or reasonable ways, but are in fact
pseudoscience, and indeed not just pseudoscience but a quite
well-organized politico-bureaucratic movement among psychiatrists, in
England, in the US and elsewhere, supported by quite a few prominent
journalists, media-personalities, politicians and politicized academics
from soft sciences/cargo cult sciences, that are bent on power and
influence in the worldwide health-industries, and do so by publishing
pseudoscience as if it were real science, by abusing their academic
titles as if these are sufficient proofs of their scientific competence
(phony) and personal integrity (corrupt), and by organizing themselves
politico-bureaucratically in academic institutions, in NGOs and
quangos, and as prominent writers in the media on health and science
matters, subjects that are there treated again in terms of what is in
fact pseudoscientific propaganda, but is pretended to be solid if
popularly expounded science. [1]
2. Feynman vs Wessely
So let me inquire a bit into the question what
Richard Feynman would
have thought about
Simon Wessely
(links to the Wikipedia, so that you can compare the two).
As it happens - and I have read far more of Feynman than of Wessely, I
should add, in the course of the last 40 years - although Feynman died
the previous century, it is quite clear what he would have thought of
Wessely: A scientific fraud and a quack, heavily involved in
pseudoscience having little to with real science other than its external form
or mode of presentation, and
in fact working for the financial and political interests of psychiatrists and politicized
governmental and university bureacracies, out for power over the
politics, decisions and the institutions involved in medicine and health.
And as emerges from
On the DSM-5TM
Wessely, White, Gerada (Mrs. Wessely), Sharpe, Calder, Crawley c.s. stand not alone in
psychiatry, for it seems that their brand of pseudoscientific psychiatry
has succeeded in taking over the American Psychiatric Association (APA),
that in turn seems bend on redefining all of medicine in their plans for
the
the DSM-5, namely in such
ways as
(i) make it far more easy for psychiatrist to find patients whose
insurances provide the psychiatric incomes, namely by psychologizing and
psychiatrizing all disease and indeed almost everyone's lives (see my
Brit. Jn. Psychiatry: 78% of the British are not
sane for some evidence and consequences);
(ii) make it far more
easy for health-insurers and governments and NGOs to save money on doing
real medicine on really ill people: Turn the patients' diseases into a
mostly mental abberations that do not need research or medication, apart
from psychotherapy; and
(iii) empower the pseudoscientists by
systematically furthering their getting leading positions in both the
academic institutions and the media.
And the pseudos succeeded the last three decades or so in realizing a
large part of their agenda as sketched, as can be seen from
On the DSM-5TM
and as should be clear to anyone who knows about the declines of
education and the universities in the same period:
Political types, from my own quasi-revolutionary generation of
student-activists, all bend for power, none really interested in real
science (for which few had or have the capacities), have succeeded in
taking over most of the universities outside those studies which really
take talent and/or hard work, and at least in Holland, Germany and it
would appear in England, have taken over most of the institutional powers
in the universities in these countries (nominating since decades almost
only political types to positions of power in academia, wherever - as in
the majority of the soft sciences, that form by far the greatest
departments with the most students in almost any university - this can be
done without the nominees having more than a mock interest in real
science).
So let me turn to the question what kind of science pseudo-scientists
engage in. There are several kinds, in fact, but the main one is indeed
what Feynman described as
Cargo Cult Science, which he describes as follows:
So we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and
science that isn't science.
I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are
examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the
South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw
airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same
thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like
runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a
wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head
like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's
the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're
doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the
way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So
I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the
apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but
they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.
The science that isn't science proceeds by means of so called
'evidence-based science', which is in the Wesselye and APA Newspeak
precisely not what its label says it should be seen as: It consists of
papers full of baloney, but with statistics of which - thanks to
computers - the columns and rows add, and that will deceive most who did
not get a thorough course in methodology + statistics, or do not have a
clear mind themselves to start with, all of which is the case with large
parts of students and academic staff in the soft sciences.
Note also that, completely unlike the South Seas cargo culters,
this pseudoscience is very successful and works, namely as
pseudoscience:
It does take people in (most medical doctors also don't really know
statistics and methodology well or at all); it does get published in what
are nominally scientific journals; it does get high ranking in
citation-indexes, for pseudoscientists these days have many
pseudoscientific friends in academia, and they all praise, quote or at
least cite each others' 'scientific' papers; it does give
pseudoscientists status and credit, and power and influence in academia
as if they were real scientists; and most importantly, it totally
deceives and befuddles the media and politicians, of whom hardly anyone
is scientifically qualified (in a real science), and it does give pseudoscientists politically
important posts, or at least the ears and help from political and
bureaucratical powerful persons, who indeed may
sincerely believe they are helping
science and patients by helping what are in fact
pseudoscientists, failed
scientists, but very able and highly organized politico-bureaucratic
conmen.
And now my readers no doubt want more Feynman, who saw the same
forces at work in his own day as I see in mine, and who indeed strongly
sympathized with the physicist
John
Archibald Wheeler, who at one point started a program 'Drive
The Pseudos Out Of The Workshop Of Science', a program that much
deserves resurrecting.
Well... here is what makes a Wesselyan pseudoscientist, in principle
and in the beginning, that is without him or her necessarily being
political, politicized, or specially dishonest, as yet, with my bolding:
Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing.
But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea
Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some
wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling
them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one
feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science.
That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying
science in school--we never explicitly say what this is, but just
hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific
investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now
and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity,
a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of
utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if
you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you
think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about
it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and
things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other
experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can
tell they have been eliminated.
As any reader of the prose of Wesselytes, Reevesians, Bleijenbergians
etc. can know, these pseudoscientist do NEVER indicate anything about any
scientific research, such as real bio-medical research, that does not
square with what they present as 'scientific findings'.
As close
readers of Wesselyte prose can know, Wessely is a master saying the thing
that is not while seeming to speak truly. Indeed, the whole concept of
'evidence based science', as it is practised by Wesselytes and by the APA
since the DSM-IV (1996), is a lie from top to bottom, usually made up
from unfounded claims, insinuations, redefinitions of terms, and outright
lies and an enormous amount of very immoral evasions and ommissions, such
as for over two decades refusing to admit, discuss or give vent to the
fact that the World Health Organization completely disagrees with
Wesselytes' stance on the causes and indeed content and context of ME/CFS,
and never give any clue that this is so, while also never naming or
citing any real evidence from real scientists that refutes or contradicts
his pseudoscience.
Here is how Feynman put it, with my boldings added:
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be
given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know
anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you
make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then
you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well
as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem.
When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate
theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that
those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea
for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else
come out right, in addition.
This is what Wesselytes do not do, do not want to do, indeed cannot do
without being quickly found out even by laymen. Instead, they write
propaganda disguised as 'evidence based science' - which requires no
talent at all other than a firm desire to deceive, delude, lie and
pretend.
Indeed, Feynman was on to many things professor Wessely used for
decades, and indeed may have stolen from him, for Wessely is not a great
mind in any way or sense, or by any stretch of imagination, whereas
Feynman was a genius, highly gifted in diverse ways also:
The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for
example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil
doesn't soak through food. Well, that's true. It's not dishonest;
but the thing I'm talking about is not just a matter of not being
dishonest, it's a matter of scientific integrity, which is another
level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement
is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain
temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will--
including Wesson oil. So it's the implication which has been
conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what
we have to deal with.
That is precisely one of the favourite techniques of Wesselytes:
Innuendo, selection, misdirection, suggestion - all the arts of
propaganda that can be seen in and learned from
advertising, and even
without the need for the little bit of art that give ads such allure as
they have, for nearly all published science in journals is not
well-written, nor does it need to be, as long as it reports the facts
straight and does make no faults of commission or omission.
[2]
Here are two final bits by Feynman, in which he makes his meaning
about what science is and ought to be clear. The last paragraph is the
end of his essay:
I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is
not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong,
that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our
responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I
think to laymen.
(...)
So I have just one wish for you--the good luck to be somewhere
where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have
described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain
your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on,
to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
This is a freedom that urgently needs to be restored to large parts
of the Western universities. I have written about that e.g. in Real science & real psychology
= joy,
Mandarins with an IQ of 115,
Yahooism & democracy,
"I want to be read"
but it is not my theme here and now, which was to show Margaret
Williams' excellent take on the present situation around ME/CFS, and
Richard Feynman's excellent exposition about
Cargo Cult Science applied to Wessely and company.
I end with John Archibald Wheeler's call:
'Drive
The Pseudos Out Of The Workshop Of Science'
and with my sincere hope this may be
starting to happen in the US.
P.S. This may need some corrections of typos, that will have to
be made later. Indeed, this remark was also made at the end of
yesterday's piece, in which I have made some corrections of typos (I hate
spelling-correctors) and one addition at the end of the last note, that
should have been there, for which reason I repeat it here too:
See again: my
Real science & real psychology = joy,
Mandarins with an IQ of 115,
Yahooism & democracy,
"I want to be read", and the main
reason to remove me, briefly before my MA in philosophy, from the study
of philosophy:
(As I
remarked before, questions and evens as just related make my position
with ME in Amsterdam
rather different, also legally speaking, than the position of other persons
with ME.)
-- Sep 9, 2010: Repaired some typos and added some links and boldings
(otherwise unaltered).
P.P.S. It may be I have to stop Nederlog
for a while. The reason is that I am physically not well at all. I
don't know yet, but if there is no Nederlog, now you know the reason.
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