A report from the Reuters Foundation details the war to destroy the careers of scientists who don’t see chronic fatigue syndrome quite the way activists do:
Tuller refers to researchers who explore and test treatments for CFS/ME that feature a psychological element as “insane” and a “cabal” suffering from “mass delusion.” They are bent on pursuing “bogus and really terrible research,” he told Reuters. Sharpe no longer conducts research into CFS/ME treatments, focusing instead on helping severely ill cancer patients. “It’s just too toxic,” he explained. Of more than 20 leading research groups who were publishing treatment studies in high-quality journals 10 years ago, Sharpe said, only one or two continue to do so.
The world’s largest trials registry, clinicaltrials.gov, indicates that over the past decade there has been a decline in the number of new CFS/ME treatment trials being launched. From 2010 to 2014, 33 such trials started. From 2015 until the present, the figure dropped to around 20. This decline comes at a time when research into ways to help patients should be growing, not falling, because the condition is more widely recognised, scientists interviewed by Reuters said. Kate Kelland, “SPECIAL REPORT-Online activists are silencing us, scientists say” at Reuters
The fact that people behave this way toward the researchers would seem to establish a psychological element beyond reasonable doubt. What’s mystifying is why sufferers would think that acknowledging a psychological element is a putdown. There is a psychological element to cancer too. But people don’t fly into a rage if one suggests that it plays a role in the patient’s lived experiences.
But, say what you want about the brand new world of the raging Woke, lots of scientists are going to find out what the Dissent from Darwinism crowd know: People will say mean and crazy things about you if you go where the evidence you have personally seen leads. That’s the price of being honest these days.
Here’s a harrumph via Reuters (established 1851) about social media as a “battleground.” For example,
A United Nations panel of climate scientists says it is at least 95 percent certain that human activity is the dominant cause of climate change since the mid-20th century. Climate sceptics challenge that consensus daily on social media, arguing that fluctuations in global temperatures have occurred in previous era and are natural events. Kate Kelland, “Social media as battleground” at Reuters
Good thing social media is at least a battleground. As the Norwegian playwright Ibsen said, “The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right” He meant that a majority can be padded by people who just want to stay out of trouble with the raging Woke or some less unhinged source of violence—and beyond that, their reasoning doesn’t count for much. And the minority may be the raging Woke. So the numbers are not a fair assessment of anything anyway. We really do have to think for ourselves.
Follow UD News at Twitter!
See also: Maybe dissent from Darwin can’t kill a career any more. Not if it doesn’t want to die.
and
The Dissent from Darwin list now tops 1000 scientists.