Chronic fatigue syndrome researchers face death threats from militants
7th September 2011
The full extent of the campaign of intimidation, attacks and death threats made against scientists by activists who claim researchers are suppressing the real cause of chronic fatigue syndrome is revealed today by the Observer. According to the police, the militants are now considered to be as dangerous and uncompromising as animal rights extremists.
And you can’t get more dangerous and uncompromising than people who can’t see any significant difference between people and animals. (Of course, in their case, they’re probably right.)
September 7th, 2011 at 15:56
Back in Patton’s day, he’d have slapped ’em all and sent ’em to the front lines.
September 8th, 2011 at 07:55
The Observer didn’t reveal much of anything. There were no numbers as to arrests or convictions. They didn’t interview any of the hundreds of researchers who don’t even get a birthday card much less an obnoxious email. None of the nearly 17 million patients who don’t send emails much less issue threats were interviewed either. Just three middle aged colleagues who work together and their publicist from the Science Media Centre. Full extent? What a joke. Do you believe everything you read?
As for the police they are simply repeating what Dr. Wessely has been claiming since May (and of course you have been following the story all along so of course you know this). This despite the fact that these are housebound and bedbound patients who send obnoxious emails with only a few rare threats that have never been carried out and most likely would not have been – not bombings by healthy people. Dr. Wessely probably doesn’t want to compare ME patients to AIDS patients advocating for research into a severe disease in the 1980s because that might get them sympathy.
You all really need to learn to be skeptical.
September 8th, 2011 at 08:55
How many people does it take getting death threats for it to be a problem? As the comedian Gallagher said when told by the IRS that he couldn’t deduct $25,000 a year for watermelon as a business expense, “Well, then, what’s the limit?”
Skepticism is all well and good in the abstract, but the reason this story is at all credible is that we’re accustomed to ‘activists’ doing things like sending death threats, harassing and intimidating people and their families, etc., in pursuit of a political agenda — and everything’s a political agenda these days.
If you have some contrary evidence to show, please feel free to post it. Rolling your eyes and saying, “Oh, puhleezz!” is not an argument.
September 8th, 2011 at 09:34
I’m not condoning death threats no matter how rare or unlikely to be carried out, but sensationalism is problematic – it over exaggerates the importance of rare incidents. FOIAs are a fundamental right in a democratic society and there is no law that patients have to agree with researchers hypothesis that does not represent either their experience or the biomedical research – check PubMed there are about 5,000 papers in the peer reviewed literature.
And I gave the journalistic failings of the Observer article and explained why it was not credible. Not theoretically, but the actual reasons. The whole point is that they failed to give contrary evidence, full factual information or more than the agenda of a tiny group of psychiatrists. You are right that everyone has an agenda including the tiny group of scientists interviewed.
So why would you agree only knowing one side of the agenda. That’s as if a newspaper only wrote stories representing the Democratic party point of view and did not give any information regarding other parties – only the agenda of one party.
How are you or I supposed to “know” based on such limited information? The pitfalls of comparing apples to oranges and calling them all militants after hearing only one side of an agenda is obvious.
Science writer Carl Zimmer made many of the same points as I have in his Discover column.
He said in part: “…I should say I take this article with a grain of salt. McKie writes that “according to the police, the militants are now considered to be as dangerous and uncompromising as animal rights extremists.” But the catalog of harassment he presents made up mainly of obnoxious emails. No one’s bombed a lab. And even if there are some people who are sending XMRV-related death threats, they could well just be a handful of people, rather than any sort of broad movement.”
Think. How likely is it that a bedbound person is going to carry out a threat vs. a healthy person?
There is a difference between perceived risk and absolute risk.
And I am always skeptical when only one side or aspect of any story is told regardless of the subject. It’s called critical thinking.