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I put in stuff about Wessely and cited his own writing and it got wiped and my comment on sciencewatchers page got wiped. I registered an account also but the schmuck didn't post on my page. Wessely wrote articles for UNUM- cited, He thinks soldier's shot at dawn shouldn't be pardoned- cited. Geez what is it with these people. Now the page is locked by some guy who thinks he's a wolf. Reads like some soviet style mantra to me at the moment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Catherine Sanderson ( talk • contribs) 21:07, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
So, what exactly is the point in having a opposition and criticism section without detailing what the (well documented) criticisms actually are? This article looks like it is being censored by Wessely supporters to me. G-13114 ( talk) 00:08, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
( ←) If a secondary source of similar quality to the Guardian article could be found, of course we would be duty bound to include it. JFW | T@lk 22:40, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Based on the 2010 Guardian article, the only things one can say about Wessely are:
An excellent source, but it should be added to the article rather than replace the Burne article. They are complimentary. JFW | T@lk 08:24, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
I would argue that the criticism section is also currently in violation of WP:WEASEL. With phrases like "critics say" (who?). Currently all we have is a vague assertion that Wessely has been criticised (by whom, about what?) Should it not be made clear who exactly the critics of Wessely are? This is also what I was trying to do before my additions were reverted. G-13114 ( talk) 07:12, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
This is the value of secondary sources such as the Guardian articles. I personally think the 2010 article is entirely appropriate and quite informative, as long as we stick to the five things that I listed above. As concerning the possible WP:WEASEL problems, it is very easy to lift the name of actual critics such as Hooper from the article. Opinions collectively held by anonymous bodies are slightly less helpful unless they have made official statements that are then reproduced in secondary sources. JFW | T@lk 13:20, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
We would need an airtight reference for Margaret Mar, especially after Turnberg of Cheadle stated that her statement in the Lords amounted to slander if not said inside the House. JFW | T@lk 14:19, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
This has gone far enough. I had to remove the entire correspondence with the IOP again. I think Catherine has sufficienty exposed herself as being a One Click sock- or meatpuppet, and I have applied a suitable block. We have been over this so many times that it becomes tiresome. We always get the same lame character assassination, muckracking and dredging from an anonymous angry mob. Wikipedia has clear policies that prohibit all these things, because it is an encyclopedia and not a blog, messageboard, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or whereever there is acrimony against a scientist trying to do his job. This talkpage will also be protected against non-autoconfirmed edits in view of previous disruption. JFW | T@lk 22:00, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
The editor AK has previously edited here under her own name before being banned. I don't think they would therefore qualify as outing. If either Sciencewatcher or Catherine wants these posts scrubbed, they are free to make that request. JFW | T@lk 22:31, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
- "while their have been threats against his life" doesn't make grammatical sense, and the previous version seems to be more npov and more closely matches the source. We should use 'extremists' because it isn't the average CFS patient who is doing this.
- putting a tag inside a direct quote doesn't seem correct.
- putting a tag inside the title of an article doesn't seem correct.
- tagging the entire opposition section seems to be pov.
The fact is that all this stuff is very well sourced. The fact that some patients don't believe Wessely has had threats against his life is irrelevant to wikipedia. If he says there have been threats against his life, then we put it in the article - it doesn't matter that he hasn't said exactly who those threats are from.
The only problem I noticed was the Hooper reference for 'activists'. Perhaps we need a better source for that, or maybe just more sources. -- sciencewatcher ( talk) 16:22, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Added more references and details YellowFratello ( talk) 19:09, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I came to this page from WP:TIGER with no idea who Wessely was, and only a cursory knowledge of CFS. As a reader coming to this subject for the first time, the section on CFS is very hard to follow. I know that this article is heavily debated, so rather than attempt any changes (especially since I have little knowledge of the subject) I would like to present some areas I think need improvement.
In addition to the issues with the content above, the prose itself is quite convoluted and could use work. Most of the sentences are overly long, and quite a few suddenly change topic in the middle. I am happy to contribute on that front, but I need to understand what certain parts actually mean first. Bungeh ( talk) 14:03, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
All of them? Some are confirmed and in the article already! Occasional and superficial misinterpretations of Wessely's writing style (ambiguous guilt by association) does not change the fact that he is a controversial figure who is opposed by a sigificant proportion of the patient community, nor does the harsh tone of their criticism change the fact that opposition is occuring. Wikipedia isn't supposed to be into censorship, is it? Ironically it isn't about the truth either, so what if Sardar's article can be interpreted as "hostile and tendentious"? I wouldn't exactly call Wessely's speculations about the characteristics of CFS patients or his critics the hallmark of neutrality either.
Fortunately, some of the accusations made by Wessely's detractors are specifically and demonstrably confirmed in a more general sense by himself and his research papers (eg http://www.simonwessely.com/cfspubs.html), some are already in the article, such as the now infamous BMJ quote straight from the horse's (or zebra's?) mouth, if he found a virus he wouldn't do anything about it because he is in the business of rehabilitation, another example being "viral attribution is somatization par excellence" (even when a virus triggered the symptoms), these are viewed as classic Wesselyisms amongst the patient community.
Not only would going through all those papers be a colossal effort, but I'm fairly certain that doing so for purposes of Wikipedia would be met with accusations of "quote mining" and "trying to make Wessely look bad" regardless whether edits met WP:RULES, as this has been done before here. As primary sources direct from the ME/CFS community are rejected at Wikipedia, the default source tends to be news articles. Controversial issues are controversial for a reason, but unfortunately, Wessely and uninformed journalists rarely bother going further than the pathetic and somewhat insulting "naive Cartesian dualism" and "stigma of mental illness" strawmen and red herrings used against patients or advocates to distract away from their genuine scientific objections and concerns about their health. - Tekaphor ( TALK) 02:08, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
http://www.nature.com/news/john-maddox-prize-1.11750 -- sciencewatcher ( talk) 20:16, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
I've added this sentence sourced from the Independent: "Some scientists contend he should be stripped of the award for conducting "very poor science."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/me-bitterest-row-yet-in-a-long-saga-8348389.html?origin=internalSearch JustinReilly ( talk) 04:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
The Nature article on the Maddox prize [2] mentions that Wessely is the son of Holocaust survivors. Worth including? JFW | T@lk 22:35, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
I think this article could use a couple changes. Right now, the section on Military Health starts out as follows- "More recently, Wessely's work was the first to show that service in the 1991 Gulf War had had a significant effect on the health of UK servicemen and women. Other work suggested a link to particular vaccination schedules used to protect against biological warfare, and also a link with psychological stress. His group also confirmed that classic psychiatric injury, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), was not a sufficient explanation for the observed health problems. He and his colleagues in the medical school showed persisting evidence of immune activation, but failed to show that exposure to organophosphate or cholinesterase inhibitor agents had caused chronic neurological damage. The group also showed that many veterans who left the Armed Forces with persisting mental health problems have found it difficult to access National Health Service (NHS) services.[citation needed]
This work, Wessely's evidence to the Lloyd Inquiry,[34] and the work of other investigators was crucial in categorising Gulf War Syndrome as a verifiable consequence of service in the Gulf. As a result, affected Gulf War veterans were able to receive war pensions.[35]"
In my opinion, this section is incomplete and does not jibe with the references given. Reference #35- (New Scientist) states that "Wessely favours psychological explanations for Gulf war illnesses. The only thing that could have affected so many different people, he says, was stress, especially anxiety about chemical weapons, misinformation about Gulf war syndrome afterwards, and the many vaccinations Gulf troops received." Not only does Wessely 'favour psychological explanations for Gulf war illnesses', he doesn't even believe Gulf War Syndrome exists as a distinct entity to begin with but rather favors some sort of Gulf War 'health effect' and that the question of whether Gulf War Syndrome exists as a discrete entity at all is merely 'a statistical and technical question that's of minor interest.' See- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12195884
Regarding the part about Wessely being instrumental in Gulf War vets receiving war pensions, the New Scientist states that "But as British and US witnesses told the Lloyd inquiry, if there were recognised definitions for a service-induced syndrome, many Gulf veterans - some 60,000 in the US, and several thousand in the UK - would be able to claim pensions more easily". If pensions were given based on there being a distinct Gulf War Syndrome, as stated in the reference, how was Wessely instrumental in vets receiving pensions if he is on record as saying that "But they are just experiencing more ill health. There is no unique syndrome here"?
For a second change, would it work to have the section on 'Opposition and criticism' be it's own section following the CFS and Military Health sections and not just part of the CFS section? In his testimony to the Lloyd Gulf War Inquiry, Robert Haley specifically called out the work of Kings College (where Simon Wessely is director of King's Centre for Military Health Research) as being "The most important example of the unproductive use of a nonspecific case definition concocted after the fact", and that "this severe degree of bidirectional misclassification has caused all studies from the Kings College London group to reach spuriously negative conclusions". This is some pretty significant criticism and should be included in the article IMO, however should both the CFS and Gulf War sections be followed by their own Opposition and criticism section or should all of the opposition and criticism be in its own section?
Full quote from Haley re: Kings College Gulf War research- "Studies using nonspecific definitions of Gulf War neurological syndrome are biased toward finding negative results. Early in the history of Gulf War illness research, around 1993, a decision was made in the government to the effect that “there is no Gulf War syndrome,” and this led to pressure on researchers who wanted government funding not to use a case definition of the illness in their research. Without at least a provisional case definition, however, it is virtually impossible to design studies that will elucidate the nature of the illness, or illnesses, and connect them with causes. This unfortunate government decision is arguably the main reason for the delay in progress in this research field. Finally, when a few studies bucked the policy and used provisional case definitions successfully to make promising discoveries, research groups that had performed expensive population surveys without a case definition in mind attempted either to prove that no case definition was possible or to concoct case definitions after the fact from data collected earlier, even when the collected data were insufficient for defining a case definition. The most important example of the unproductive use of a nonspecific case definition concocted after the fact was the series of studies from the Kings College London group. In place of a case definition describing the disease that veterans were complaining of, they defined Gulf War illness as having a score of greater than 72.2 on the SF-36 questionnaire, which measures functional impairment regardless of the cause. This case definition essentially counted veterans as having Gulf War illness if they had any condition that caused them to feel bad. Consequently, many veterans with diseases other than Gulf War neurological syndrome that made them feel bad were mistakenly counted as cases, and conversely, many with typical symptoms of Gulf War neurological syndrome but who were not very ill with it were not counted as cases. This severe degree of bidirectional misclassification has caused all studies from the Kings College London group to reach spuriously negative conclusions."
Robert W. Haley, M.D
Testimony to the Gulf War Illnesses Public Inquiry (Lloyd Inquiry)
August 3, 2004
http://lloyd-gwii.com/admin/ManagedFiles/2/Haley%20testimony%20for%20UK%20Public%20Inquiry%208-3-2004.doc — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Beanier (
talk •
contribs)
18:46, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I understand there has been a lot of BLP vandalism on the article and talk page, but is it strictly necessary that both are under semi-protection? I resolved some useful feedback left on the article where the user had tried to edit the page in good faith, been presented with a "Submit an edit reuqest" link, and then was unable to edit the talk page because it is also semi-protected.
According to Wikipedia:Protection policy, "Talk pages are not usually protected, and are only semi-protected for a limited duration in the most severe cases of vandalism." The talk page has now been under semi-protection since May 2011. I'm going to unprotect the talk page and, if there is consensus, perhaps switch the article from semi-protection to pending changes. — Tom Morris ( talk) 16:18, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
This page should mention the Camelford water pollution incident in relation to Wessely in the criticism section. In 1995, Wessely wrote an editorial entitled "The Legend of Camelford: Medical Consequences of a Water Pollution Accident" in which he suggested that ongoing reports of symptoms were largely due to anxiety and heightened perception of normal somatic symptoms being misattributed to poisoning, and that further health monitoring of the population was unnecessary. Since then, several deaths and illnesses have been linked to the aluminum exposure, and dead villagers were found to have extremely high levels of aluminum in their brain.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7760298
http://theoneclickgroup.co.uk/documents/ME-CFS_docs/The%20Legend%20of%20Camelford.pdf
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1995-45677-001
Abstract:
Describes the medical consequences of a "legendary" environmental accident in the Cornish town of Camelford, the site of an accidental deposit of 20 tons of aluminum sulfate into a water supply in 1988. Events subsequent to the accident are recounted to explore why, despite lack of evidence of long-term health effects of brief aluminum contamination, some people suffered and complained for years afterward. It is argued that the most likely explanation of these complaints is that the perception of normal and benign somatic symptoms among residents and health professionals was heightened and attributed to an external, physical cause. Other influences, including perceived increases in anxiety-related symptoms, somatization disorders, and subsequent litigation are discussed. Future investigations of environmental incidents should recall that social and cultural factors are as important as medical ones in shaping public concern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelford_water_pollution_incident
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.33.253.229 ( talk) 20:38, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
Wessely has been the subject of numerous threats and personal attacks, and extremists have even made threats to his life.
This statement (in particular the use of the term 'extremist') while accurate and informative is a value-laden statement, can anyone imagine better wording? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ZephyrP ( talk • contribs) 22:03, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
I'm not proposing to make any changes to the article, but I want to make some points I hope future editors may bear in mind. (I should probably make clear that I am not a member of the ME/CFS patient community, but it falls close enough to my own disability for me to have followed the story over the past couple of decades).
As a disability rights activist it's disturbing to see major patient groups dismissed as 'fringe' and smeared together with 'extremists'. That's a problematic position for balance. The discussion on the talk page seems very much to hold to the old view of the doctor as the professional who must never be questioned when he descends from the ivory tower to deliver his prognosis to the forelock tugging peasants, while modern theory holds out for best practise as a partnership with the patient, particularly with 'expert patients' who are able to discuss and participate in their treatment on an informed basis, and who may well be better informed than most medical professionals for less common syndromes - such as ME/CFS.
Patient expert groups, many of which have their own medical experts, should be accorded a degree of respect, not dismissed as fringe, particularly not groups well respected enough to be called to give evidence before the UK Parliament's Select Committee on Health. Such a group's evidence, and the Select Committee's reporting of it, would seem to far surpass some of the secondary sources regularly considered to meet Wiki's standards for acceptable, even expert, sources.
The difficulties between Simon Wessely and the ME/CFS patient community fell far short of 'best practise' and partnership. Wessely has in fact admitted his own behaviour was problematic, the article quotes him as saying so. But the opposition is given no credit for that, even its evidence to Parliament is labelled 'a vendetta'. Even were every one of Wessely's theories on ME/CFS to be proven, Wessely's professional behaviour towards his patient group would be open to question.
Turning back to the patient groups such as the ME Association, the reporting of their positions falls far short of adequate or balanced. The controversy wasn't solely around the physical or psychological nature of ME/CFS as the article currently implies. Wessely and his research group convinced the NHS to support _only_ CBT/GET as a treatment for ME/CFS. Meanwhile the position of many within the patient community, including the ME Association, was that there was considerable evidence that GET was not just ineffective, but actively dangerous. Patients were genuinely scared of the treatment Wessely was not just pushing, but had caused to be the only treatment available. The article completely fails to give that context. Threats to Wessely are indefensible, but the article also needs to make it clear that any threats that emerged from within the patient community (and there has never been clear evidence that they did), would have come from people who themselves felt that Wessely was a clear danger to their health. We need to be very carefully about labelling someone who was potentially both seriously ill and frightened for their life as 'an extremist' without presenting any of the nuance of the situation. Yet that's what the article does right now.
The article does note that Wessely has said that he is uninterested in physical causes, but fails to recognise the implications that follow through from this. Wessely's dominance of the NHS position on ME/CFS hasn't just constrained treatment, but also research. I'm aware of several cases, at least one published in a peer-reviewed medical journal http://hic.sagepub.com/content/3/3/2324709615607908.full where patients with longstanding ME/CFS diagnoses have subsequently been reclassified as having mitochondrial disease. A purely psychiatric approach to ME/CFS is very unlikely to spot the misdiagnosis, and the deprecation of research into physical causes makes it more difficult to pursue research to determine whether a significant part of the patient population may have been misdiagnosed. (That's too close to Own Research to stand in an article, I'm purely using it to point out there's a complexity of consequences the article doesn't capture)
Note that I'm not dismissing all value of Wessely's position, I've had CBT treatment myself, and there is applicability for it in the management of physical conditions, but not as the sole treatment, and not when denying the physical cause. In fact watching other people have the sa,e treatment emphasised how very careful the medics have to be to acknowledge the physical cause in order for the patient to believe they were being taken seriously.
Finally, the article fails to report that the primary evidence for Wessely's CBT/GET protocol as a treatment, the PACE trial of GET, has now been convincingly called into question, with calls for it to be withdrawn published in the Lancet under the signature of multiple experts. This followed an investigation which showed multiple flaws in both the medical and statistical design of the (non-blind) PACE trial, including changes to the success criteria mid-trial, to the point that a patient could worsen and still be considered to have been successfully treated. In fact the design was such that the patients in the trial may not even have had ME/CFS in the first place. http://www.stats.org/pace-research-sparked-patient-rebellion-challenged-medicine/ http://www.virology.ws/2016/02/10/open-letter-lancet-again/
Which of course would mean that the patient groups were actually clinically correct in their opposition to the CBT/GET protocol, utterly destroying the criticism of them as 'fringe'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.24.122.84 ( talk) 22:02, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
If I may jump in here. I just looked through the National Archives link, and it states on Page 6:
It then goes on to state on page 10 in the section of the talk given by Wessely:
So it appears that the claim made in the Independent article is correct and verifiable. As this has been covered in a reliable secondary source, I would suggest that the objections being raised against this by User Talk:JzG are looking somewhat threadbare. And I'm not particularly happy at the lack of good faith being shown here. G-13114 ( talk) 15:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
JzG is correct that your source is unreliable. In general, anything that comes from 'Millions Missing' can't be used as objective. They are known to frequently mispresent facts for dramatic effect. So while this particular statement may be factual, you need a different source. As for the question whether to include it at all, consider if this is, or was, a core aspect of Wessely's attitude towards CFS (this must be evident from your new source). And please note that Wessely and colleagues distuingish between CFS, i.e. unexplained symptoms, and ME, a neurological disorder. They have only researched CFS, never ME, and applied the BPS model only to CFS, never ME. Saint Jut ( talk) 23:14, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
SW's dob was missing from the page. He posted to his Twitter account on 23rd Dec that today he had turned 60 ( https://twitter.com/wesselys/status/812246585438519296) so I have added 23rd to his dob in the article body text. I have not updated the info box as it looks like a different template is needed and I do not know how. Kicsinyul ( talk) 11:45, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
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Update Reference #39 - Dead Link. New link can be found here: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6609-us-in-u-turn-over-gulf-war-syndrome/ 82.29.120.187 ( talk) 06:29, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
The ME/CFS section is really confusingly written, and the reference to Wessley’s “discoveries” does not mention other and newer work which contradicts them.
Additionally the “criticisms” section does not dive in to the extensive scientific criticisms of his work and the model he proposes. Nor does it touch on the alleged patient harms resulting from it. It really does not feel like it fits the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view guidelines.
For reference on what could be used to add to this, is a recent Guardian article by George Monbiot which offers various criticisms of Wessley’s work and actions:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/12/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-me-treatments-social-services?CMP=share_btn_url YannLK ( talk) 19:10, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
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I put in stuff about Wessely and cited his own writing and it got wiped and my comment on sciencewatchers page got wiped. I registered an account also but the schmuck didn't post on my page. Wessely wrote articles for UNUM- cited, He thinks soldier's shot at dawn shouldn't be pardoned- cited. Geez what is it with these people. Now the page is locked by some guy who thinks he's a wolf. Reads like some soviet style mantra to me at the moment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Catherine Sanderson ( talk • contribs) 21:07, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
So, what exactly is the point in having a opposition and criticism section without detailing what the (well documented) criticisms actually are? This article looks like it is being censored by Wessely supporters to me. G-13114 ( talk) 00:08, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
( ←) If a secondary source of similar quality to the Guardian article could be found, of course we would be duty bound to include it. JFW | T@lk 22:40, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Based on the 2010 Guardian article, the only things one can say about Wessely are:
An excellent source, but it should be added to the article rather than replace the Burne article. They are complimentary. JFW | T@lk 08:24, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
I would argue that the criticism section is also currently in violation of WP:WEASEL. With phrases like "critics say" (who?). Currently all we have is a vague assertion that Wessely has been criticised (by whom, about what?) Should it not be made clear who exactly the critics of Wessely are? This is also what I was trying to do before my additions were reverted. G-13114 ( talk) 07:12, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
This is the value of secondary sources such as the Guardian articles. I personally think the 2010 article is entirely appropriate and quite informative, as long as we stick to the five things that I listed above. As concerning the possible WP:WEASEL problems, it is very easy to lift the name of actual critics such as Hooper from the article. Opinions collectively held by anonymous bodies are slightly less helpful unless they have made official statements that are then reproduced in secondary sources. JFW | T@lk 13:20, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
We would need an airtight reference for Margaret Mar, especially after Turnberg of Cheadle stated that her statement in the Lords amounted to slander if not said inside the House. JFW | T@lk 14:19, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
This has gone far enough. I had to remove the entire correspondence with the IOP again. I think Catherine has sufficienty exposed herself as being a One Click sock- or meatpuppet, and I have applied a suitable block. We have been over this so many times that it becomes tiresome. We always get the same lame character assassination, muckracking and dredging from an anonymous angry mob. Wikipedia has clear policies that prohibit all these things, because it is an encyclopedia and not a blog, messageboard, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or whereever there is acrimony against a scientist trying to do his job. This talkpage will also be protected against non-autoconfirmed edits in view of previous disruption. JFW | T@lk 22:00, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
The editor AK has previously edited here under her own name before being banned. I don't think they would therefore qualify as outing. If either Sciencewatcher or Catherine wants these posts scrubbed, they are free to make that request. JFW | T@lk 22:31, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
- "while their have been threats against his life" doesn't make grammatical sense, and the previous version seems to be more npov and more closely matches the source. We should use 'extremists' because it isn't the average CFS patient who is doing this.
- putting a tag inside a direct quote doesn't seem correct.
- putting a tag inside the title of an article doesn't seem correct.
- tagging the entire opposition section seems to be pov.
The fact is that all this stuff is very well sourced. The fact that some patients don't believe Wessely has had threats against his life is irrelevant to wikipedia. If he says there have been threats against his life, then we put it in the article - it doesn't matter that he hasn't said exactly who those threats are from.
The only problem I noticed was the Hooper reference for 'activists'. Perhaps we need a better source for that, or maybe just more sources. -- sciencewatcher ( talk) 16:22, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Added more references and details YellowFratello ( talk) 19:09, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I came to this page from WP:TIGER with no idea who Wessely was, and only a cursory knowledge of CFS. As a reader coming to this subject for the first time, the section on CFS is very hard to follow. I know that this article is heavily debated, so rather than attempt any changes (especially since I have little knowledge of the subject) I would like to present some areas I think need improvement.
In addition to the issues with the content above, the prose itself is quite convoluted and could use work. Most of the sentences are overly long, and quite a few suddenly change topic in the middle. I am happy to contribute on that front, but I need to understand what certain parts actually mean first. Bungeh ( talk) 14:03, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
All of them? Some are confirmed and in the article already! Occasional and superficial misinterpretations of Wessely's writing style (ambiguous guilt by association) does not change the fact that he is a controversial figure who is opposed by a sigificant proportion of the patient community, nor does the harsh tone of their criticism change the fact that opposition is occuring. Wikipedia isn't supposed to be into censorship, is it? Ironically it isn't about the truth either, so what if Sardar's article can be interpreted as "hostile and tendentious"? I wouldn't exactly call Wessely's speculations about the characteristics of CFS patients or his critics the hallmark of neutrality either.
Fortunately, some of the accusations made by Wessely's detractors are specifically and demonstrably confirmed in a more general sense by himself and his research papers (eg http://www.simonwessely.com/cfspubs.html), some are already in the article, such as the now infamous BMJ quote straight from the horse's (or zebra's?) mouth, if he found a virus he wouldn't do anything about it because he is in the business of rehabilitation, another example being "viral attribution is somatization par excellence" (even when a virus triggered the symptoms), these are viewed as classic Wesselyisms amongst the patient community.
Not only would going through all those papers be a colossal effort, but I'm fairly certain that doing so for purposes of Wikipedia would be met with accusations of "quote mining" and "trying to make Wessely look bad" regardless whether edits met WP:RULES, as this has been done before here. As primary sources direct from the ME/CFS community are rejected at Wikipedia, the default source tends to be news articles. Controversial issues are controversial for a reason, but unfortunately, Wessely and uninformed journalists rarely bother going further than the pathetic and somewhat insulting "naive Cartesian dualism" and "stigma of mental illness" strawmen and red herrings used against patients or advocates to distract away from their genuine scientific objections and concerns about their health. - Tekaphor ( TALK) 02:08, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
http://www.nature.com/news/john-maddox-prize-1.11750 -- sciencewatcher ( talk) 20:16, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
I've added this sentence sourced from the Independent: "Some scientists contend he should be stripped of the award for conducting "very poor science."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/me-bitterest-row-yet-in-a-long-saga-8348389.html?origin=internalSearch JustinReilly ( talk) 04:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
The Nature article on the Maddox prize [2] mentions that Wessely is the son of Holocaust survivors. Worth including? JFW | T@lk 22:35, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
I think this article could use a couple changes. Right now, the section on Military Health starts out as follows- "More recently, Wessely's work was the first to show that service in the 1991 Gulf War had had a significant effect on the health of UK servicemen and women. Other work suggested a link to particular vaccination schedules used to protect against biological warfare, and also a link with psychological stress. His group also confirmed that classic psychiatric injury, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), was not a sufficient explanation for the observed health problems. He and his colleagues in the medical school showed persisting evidence of immune activation, but failed to show that exposure to organophosphate or cholinesterase inhibitor agents had caused chronic neurological damage. The group also showed that many veterans who left the Armed Forces with persisting mental health problems have found it difficult to access National Health Service (NHS) services.[citation needed]
This work, Wessely's evidence to the Lloyd Inquiry,[34] and the work of other investigators was crucial in categorising Gulf War Syndrome as a verifiable consequence of service in the Gulf. As a result, affected Gulf War veterans were able to receive war pensions.[35]"
In my opinion, this section is incomplete and does not jibe with the references given. Reference #35- (New Scientist) states that "Wessely favours psychological explanations for Gulf war illnesses. The only thing that could have affected so many different people, he says, was stress, especially anxiety about chemical weapons, misinformation about Gulf war syndrome afterwards, and the many vaccinations Gulf troops received." Not only does Wessely 'favour psychological explanations for Gulf war illnesses', he doesn't even believe Gulf War Syndrome exists as a distinct entity to begin with but rather favors some sort of Gulf War 'health effect' and that the question of whether Gulf War Syndrome exists as a discrete entity at all is merely 'a statistical and technical question that's of minor interest.' See- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12195884
Regarding the part about Wessely being instrumental in Gulf War vets receiving war pensions, the New Scientist states that "But as British and US witnesses told the Lloyd inquiry, if there were recognised definitions for a service-induced syndrome, many Gulf veterans - some 60,000 in the US, and several thousand in the UK - would be able to claim pensions more easily". If pensions were given based on there being a distinct Gulf War Syndrome, as stated in the reference, how was Wessely instrumental in vets receiving pensions if he is on record as saying that "But they are just experiencing more ill health. There is no unique syndrome here"?
For a second change, would it work to have the section on 'Opposition and criticism' be it's own section following the CFS and Military Health sections and not just part of the CFS section? In his testimony to the Lloyd Gulf War Inquiry, Robert Haley specifically called out the work of Kings College (where Simon Wessely is director of King's Centre for Military Health Research) as being "The most important example of the unproductive use of a nonspecific case definition concocted after the fact", and that "this severe degree of bidirectional misclassification has caused all studies from the Kings College London group to reach spuriously negative conclusions". This is some pretty significant criticism and should be included in the article IMO, however should both the CFS and Gulf War sections be followed by their own Opposition and criticism section or should all of the opposition and criticism be in its own section?
Full quote from Haley re: Kings College Gulf War research- "Studies using nonspecific definitions of Gulf War neurological syndrome are biased toward finding negative results. Early in the history of Gulf War illness research, around 1993, a decision was made in the government to the effect that “there is no Gulf War syndrome,” and this led to pressure on researchers who wanted government funding not to use a case definition of the illness in their research. Without at least a provisional case definition, however, it is virtually impossible to design studies that will elucidate the nature of the illness, or illnesses, and connect them with causes. This unfortunate government decision is arguably the main reason for the delay in progress in this research field. Finally, when a few studies bucked the policy and used provisional case definitions successfully to make promising discoveries, research groups that had performed expensive population surveys without a case definition in mind attempted either to prove that no case definition was possible or to concoct case definitions after the fact from data collected earlier, even when the collected data were insufficient for defining a case definition. The most important example of the unproductive use of a nonspecific case definition concocted after the fact was the series of studies from the Kings College London group. In place of a case definition describing the disease that veterans were complaining of, they defined Gulf War illness as having a score of greater than 72.2 on the SF-36 questionnaire, which measures functional impairment regardless of the cause. This case definition essentially counted veterans as having Gulf War illness if they had any condition that caused them to feel bad. Consequently, many veterans with diseases other than Gulf War neurological syndrome that made them feel bad were mistakenly counted as cases, and conversely, many with typical symptoms of Gulf War neurological syndrome but who were not very ill with it were not counted as cases. This severe degree of bidirectional misclassification has caused all studies from the Kings College London group to reach spuriously negative conclusions."
Robert W. Haley, M.D
Testimony to the Gulf War Illnesses Public Inquiry (Lloyd Inquiry)
August 3, 2004
http://lloyd-gwii.com/admin/ManagedFiles/2/Haley%20testimony%20for%20UK%20Public%20Inquiry%208-3-2004.doc — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Beanier (
talk •
contribs)
18:46, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I understand there has been a lot of BLP vandalism on the article and talk page, but is it strictly necessary that both are under semi-protection? I resolved some useful feedback left on the article where the user had tried to edit the page in good faith, been presented with a "Submit an edit reuqest" link, and then was unable to edit the talk page because it is also semi-protected.
According to Wikipedia:Protection policy, "Talk pages are not usually protected, and are only semi-protected for a limited duration in the most severe cases of vandalism." The talk page has now been under semi-protection since May 2011. I'm going to unprotect the talk page and, if there is consensus, perhaps switch the article from semi-protection to pending changes. — Tom Morris ( talk) 16:18, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
This page should mention the Camelford water pollution incident in relation to Wessely in the criticism section. In 1995, Wessely wrote an editorial entitled "The Legend of Camelford: Medical Consequences of a Water Pollution Accident" in which he suggested that ongoing reports of symptoms were largely due to anxiety and heightened perception of normal somatic symptoms being misattributed to poisoning, and that further health monitoring of the population was unnecessary. Since then, several deaths and illnesses have been linked to the aluminum exposure, and dead villagers were found to have extremely high levels of aluminum in their brain.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7760298
http://theoneclickgroup.co.uk/documents/ME-CFS_docs/The%20Legend%20of%20Camelford.pdf
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1995-45677-001
Abstract:
Describes the medical consequences of a "legendary" environmental accident in the Cornish town of Camelford, the site of an accidental deposit of 20 tons of aluminum sulfate into a water supply in 1988. Events subsequent to the accident are recounted to explore why, despite lack of evidence of long-term health effects of brief aluminum contamination, some people suffered and complained for years afterward. It is argued that the most likely explanation of these complaints is that the perception of normal and benign somatic symptoms among residents and health professionals was heightened and attributed to an external, physical cause. Other influences, including perceived increases in anxiety-related symptoms, somatization disorders, and subsequent litigation are discussed. Future investigations of environmental incidents should recall that social and cultural factors are as important as medical ones in shaping public concern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelford_water_pollution_incident
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.33.253.229 ( talk) 20:38, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
Wessely has been the subject of numerous threats and personal attacks, and extremists have even made threats to his life.
This statement (in particular the use of the term 'extremist') while accurate and informative is a value-laden statement, can anyone imagine better wording? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ZephyrP ( talk • contribs) 22:03, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
I'm not proposing to make any changes to the article, but I want to make some points I hope future editors may bear in mind. (I should probably make clear that I am not a member of the ME/CFS patient community, but it falls close enough to my own disability for me to have followed the story over the past couple of decades).
As a disability rights activist it's disturbing to see major patient groups dismissed as 'fringe' and smeared together with 'extremists'. That's a problematic position for balance. The discussion on the talk page seems very much to hold to the old view of the doctor as the professional who must never be questioned when he descends from the ivory tower to deliver his prognosis to the forelock tugging peasants, while modern theory holds out for best practise as a partnership with the patient, particularly with 'expert patients' who are able to discuss and participate in their treatment on an informed basis, and who may well be better informed than most medical professionals for less common syndromes - such as ME/CFS.
Patient expert groups, many of which have their own medical experts, should be accorded a degree of respect, not dismissed as fringe, particularly not groups well respected enough to be called to give evidence before the UK Parliament's Select Committee on Health. Such a group's evidence, and the Select Committee's reporting of it, would seem to far surpass some of the secondary sources regularly considered to meet Wiki's standards for acceptable, even expert, sources.
The difficulties between Simon Wessely and the ME/CFS patient community fell far short of 'best practise' and partnership. Wessely has in fact admitted his own behaviour was problematic, the article quotes him as saying so. But the opposition is given no credit for that, even its evidence to Parliament is labelled 'a vendetta'. Even were every one of Wessely's theories on ME/CFS to be proven, Wessely's professional behaviour towards his patient group would be open to question.
Turning back to the patient groups such as the ME Association, the reporting of their positions falls far short of adequate or balanced. The controversy wasn't solely around the physical or psychological nature of ME/CFS as the article currently implies. Wessely and his research group convinced the NHS to support _only_ CBT/GET as a treatment for ME/CFS. Meanwhile the position of many within the patient community, including the ME Association, was that there was considerable evidence that GET was not just ineffective, but actively dangerous. Patients were genuinely scared of the treatment Wessely was not just pushing, but had caused to be the only treatment available. The article completely fails to give that context. Threats to Wessely are indefensible, but the article also needs to make it clear that any threats that emerged from within the patient community (and there has never been clear evidence that they did), would have come from people who themselves felt that Wessely was a clear danger to their health. We need to be very carefully about labelling someone who was potentially both seriously ill and frightened for their life as 'an extremist' without presenting any of the nuance of the situation. Yet that's what the article does right now.
The article does note that Wessely has said that he is uninterested in physical causes, but fails to recognise the implications that follow through from this. Wessely's dominance of the NHS position on ME/CFS hasn't just constrained treatment, but also research. I'm aware of several cases, at least one published in a peer-reviewed medical journal http://hic.sagepub.com/content/3/3/2324709615607908.full where patients with longstanding ME/CFS diagnoses have subsequently been reclassified as having mitochondrial disease. A purely psychiatric approach to ME/CFS is very unlikely to spot the misdiagnosis, and the deprecation of research into physical causes makes it more difficult to pursue research to determine whether a significant part of the patient population may have been misdiagnosed. (That's too close to Own Research to stand in an article, I'm purely using it to point out there's a complexity of consequences the article doesn't capture)
Note that I'm not dismissing all value of Wessely's position, I've had CBT treatment myself, and there is applicability for it in the management of physical conditions, but not as the sole treatment, and not when denying the physical cause. In fact watching other people have the sa,e treatment emphasised how very careful the medics have to be to acknowledge the physical cause in order for the patient to believe they were being taken seriously.
Finally, the article fails to report that the primary evidence for Wessely's CBT/GET protocol as a treatment, the PACE trial of GET, has now been convincingly called into question, with calls for it to be withdrawn published in the Lancet under the signature of multiple experts. This followed an investigation which showed multiple flaws in both the medical and statistical design of the (non-blind) PACE trial, including changes to the success criteria mid-trial, to the point that a patient could worsen and still be considered to have been successfully treated. In fact the design was such that the patients in the trial may not even have had ME/CFS in the first place. http://www.stats.org/pace-research-sparked-patient-rebellion-challenged-medicine/ http://www.virology.ws/2016/02/10/open-letter-lancet-again/
Which of course would mean that the patient groups were actually clinically correct in their opposition to the CBT/GET protocol, utterly destroying the criticism of them as 'fringe'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.24.122.84 ( talk) 22:02, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
If I may jump in here. I just looked through the National Archives link, and it states on Page 6:
It then goes on to state on page 10 in the section of the talk given by Wessely:
So it appears that the claim made in the Independent article is correct and verifiable. As this has been covered in a reliable secondary source, I would suggest that the objections being raised against this by User Talk:JzG are looking somewhat threadbare. And I'm not particularly happy at the lack of good faith being shown here. G-13114 ( talk) 15:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
JzG is correct that your source is unreliable. In general, anything that comes from 'Millions Missing' can't be used as objective. They are known to frequently mispresent facts for dramatic effect. So while this particular statement may be factual, you need a different source. As for the question whether to include it at all, consider if this is, or was, a core aspect of Wessely's attitude towards CFS (this must be evident from your new source). And please note that Wessely and colleagues distuingish between CFS, i.e. unexplained symptoms, and ME, a neurological disorder. They have only researched CFS, never ME, and applied the BPS model only to CFS, never ME. Saint Jut ( talk) 23:14, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
SW's dob was missing from the page. He posted to his Twitter account on 23rd Dec that today he had turned 60 ( https://twitter.com/wesselys/status/812246585438519296) so I have added 23rd to his dob in the article body text. I have not updated the info box as it looks like a different template is needed and I do not know how. Kicsinyul ( talk) 11:45, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
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Update Reference #39 - Dead Link. New link can be found here: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6609-us-in-u-turn-over-gulf-war-syndrome/ 82.29.120.187 ( talk) 06:29, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
The ME/CFS section is really confusingly written, and the reference to Wessley’s “discoveries” does not mention other and newer work which contradicts them.
Additionally the “criticisms” section does not dive in to the extensive scientific criticisms of his work and the model he proposes. Nor does it touch on the alleged patient harms resulting from it. It really does not feel like it fits the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view guidelines.
For reference on what could be used to add to this, is a recent Guardian article by George Monbiot which offers various criticisms of Wessley’s work and actions:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/12/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-me-treatments-social-services?CMP=share_btn_url YannLK ( talk) 19:10, 4 May 2024 (UTC)