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The Freedom of Information 1st Tier Judges, on the supposed "attacks" on certain ME/CFS researchers, found no evidence of harassment or "attacks"
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. The orchestrator of the numerous wildly lurid newspaper reports on supposed 'harassment' of ME/CFS researchers (Fiona Fox of the Science Media Centre) was found out ...... admitting in emails obtained from the Medical research Council, that the so called 'harassment' was merely lawful Freedom of Information requests, lawful House of Lords debates, and lawful GMC complaints.
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'Major breakthrough on PACE trial'
'..Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) appears to have attempted to use the prejudices which surround ME/CFS and patients' concerns about some researchers' work to justify their refusal to release data from the PACE trial.[1]
If the PACE trial's critics could be portrayed as unreasonable, obsessive and dangerous, then there would be greater concern about releasing information to them, and even just their requests for information could be considered vexatious. However, neither the Information Commissioner nor the Tribunal were persuaded.
A summary of the Information Commissioner's submission argued that: "Professor Anderson's 'wild speculations' about the possibility of 'young men, borderline sociopathic or psychopathic' attaching themselves to the PACE trial criticism 'do him no credit'. Nor do his extrapolations from benign Twitter requests for information to an 'organised campaign' from an 'adversarial group' show that he has maintained the necessary objectivity and accuracy that he is required to maintain."[1]
The Tribunal's majority verdict went on to conclude that: "It was clear that [Anderson's] assessment of activist behaviour was, in our view, grossly exaggerated and the only actual evidence was that an individual at a seminar had heckled Professor Chalder." Of Chalder's testimony, the Information Commissioner reported that "she accepts that unpleasant things have been said to and about PACE researchers only, but that no threats have been made either to researchers or participants.'
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'Partly as a result of a prolonged media campaign, those ME/CFS patients who are concerned about the behaviour and quality of work of some of those researching their condition have faced a routinely stigmatising portrayal within the UK media.[2,10,13-26]
Minutes from a 2013 meeting held at the Science Media Centre, an organisation that played an important role in promoting misleading claims about the PACE trial to the UK media, show these CFS researchers deciding that "harassment is most damaging in the form of vexatious FOIs [Freedom of Information requests]".[13,16, 27-31]
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The other two examples of harassment provided were "complaints" and "House of Lords debates".[13] It is questionable whether such acts should be considered forms of harassment. One of the agreed action points from this meeting was to "collect evidence about the impact of harassment e.g. dealing with requests eats into research time. Feed into debate about misuse of the FOI Act".
The government recently declined to exempt university researchers from the Freedom of Information Act in the way that PACE trial researchers had campaigned for, and it seems that the evidence of harassment collected was not sufficient for the Tribunal either.'
www.centreforwelfarereform.org/news/major-breaktn-pace-trial/00296.html
informationrights.decisions.tribunals.gov.ukDBFiles/Decision/i1854/Queen%20Mary%20University%20of%20London%20EA-2015-0269%20(12-8-16).PDF
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