Thread 12: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...
2nd Observer https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found
3rd Observer https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video
4th Observer ‘I felt I was being gaslit’ – the landlord who helped Ray...
Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn
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New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the four Observer items above before posting. There are currently 10 items on The Observer website The real Salt Path | The Observer
To all - Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Please do not engage with visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. We have done amazingly well together for eleven very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in a healthy and civil fashion is very welcome.
No saltiness. Keep to the path.
Will our life-size cardboard cut-out Simon Armitage keep his head?
NB Timeline coming in the first posts of this thread for reference.

Ah yes, and Moth is quite broad & muscular. No obvious muscle wastage.

So we’re likely looking at a lot of retrofitting. Could Moth’s ‘three months to live’ comment be to support what they took to be a terminal diagnosis? ‘Be careful on the stairs’ etc?

I think this is the right angle too

Much as SW and TW are clearly deeply unpleasant people, the publishers.have culpability here too. Particularly in relation to claims about the curative properties of walking /smoothies /etc.

They can't keep churning this stuff out without getting any kind of due diligence. It's immensely harmful

And same when it comes to describing an easily identifiable person or establishment

In data protection law it doesn't matter if you don't name someone specifically, the question is whether the person is identifiable. the campsite manager, the pub and cafe owners, it's actually grotesque if they were presented as unpleasant but it was all a lie

James Gratwicke (John Todd’s neurologist) who has overseen 30 people with CBD and had a dozen articles published says that if he met a patient who claimed to have slowed its’ progression he would initially think they had been misdiagnosed. And if he was convinced they did have CBD he would be jumping to publish it in a medical journal.

And yet Moth’s neurologist publishes….a book review. (Allegedly)

Hmm. So the disclaimer was always there in that form, from the first edition. Interesting. I suppose that suggests that the real concern of the PRH legal team was whether the book was making actionable claims about walking being a miracle cure for an identifiable illness.

I don’t blame the editor for wanting RW to take her mother’s death out of TSP. I think that was a good decision, because it would have drawn too much attention away from the walk and towards the ‘now’ of the writing. Other people are better on the timelines than I am — is her mother’s death now placed roughly ‘correctly’ in time, during Moth’s first year of studies?

Can you kindly blow these up a bit like last. Thanks.

Perfectly readable, thank you.
And also extremely depressing, in that Penguin likely knew the medical aspect was problematic but primarily thought about covering their asses, and that this affair will likely not change anything in publishing because even with the occasional scandal, the whole thing is still a commercial success story.
Reminds me again of the Penguin CEO's first sentence on his 'About' page saying that he's a gambler and publishing is all about taking risks.

Our medical correspondent kindly reminded me yesterday of the year RW's mothers death...2015. Do we have an exact date or even month? If it was 6 months before the 2015, late June letter (which ties in with the LSB manuscript) then I think that's fairly conclusive that the walk was never done with them having any knowledge of Moth having CBD or even dying.

Yes please, particularly the one referencing the manuscript. 🙏

It was registered in the first quarter of 2015, so she died sometime in January, February, or March.

Source: GRO

I know.... I think the medical profession should be (and probably are) looking quite closely at the neurologist who posted such a glowing review.

But whatever you think about their ethical responsibility, the publisher doesn’t have legal responsibility. TSP doesn’t claim that Tim was firmly diagnosed with an identifiable disease (the consultant says he ‘believes’ Tim has CBD, but that there’s no diagnostic test, and says his illness is progressing unusually slowly), doesn’t advocate walking as a magic cure, makes it clear that the improvements in Tim are temporary, and are reversed as soon as he’s less active. This is exactly the kind of thing the legal read is for — to check no general medical claims are being made that might mislead other people, or cause them to put themselves as risk by failing to follow medical advice, and take action against PRH.

What would be very interesting would be to see the legal team’s response to the MS they saw, and what alterations they advocated.

The disclaimer hammers home that the medical stuff is the subjective experience of the author and shouldn’t be regarded as professional medical advice.

Or potentially very late December and the death wasn’t registered until early Jan.

I'm not sure that's going to wash it's face. It's a bit like silly small print disclaimers in contracts etc. I don't think that's enough to counter the narrative pushed throughout the books.

Why did Penguin not run this past a single neurologist??

And maybe we do need the law changing, so that publisher's of books making medical claims are subject to quite clear legal responsibilities.

The law should always follow the ethics and where it doesn't it should be changed.

If publishers are making profits from medical claims in books then they can't just shrug off all responsibility for them with a poxy little disclaimer.

Exactly- names of people are usually changed to solve it, but place names are generally not meaning in some circumstances, like here, businesses (and people who work in them) can be identified and potentially harm their reputation. RW may as well have written the same story as a fiction oh wait she did that took place in an entirely imagined world.

I already did. At 9.17

And there we have it...almost!

Sorry @Choux, I missed that! Thank you 😊

I hope noone minds a bit of a digression from the path, but people have been talking about SA's poetry and I remembered this recent one, written for the 80th anniversary of VE Day.

In Retrospect

The world asks a great deal of the poppies,
insists they carry the wounds of war
and shoulder the weight of remembrance.
Such flimsy, wavering plants;
we painted their flowers the colour of blood
and punched dark holes in their heads
as if bullets had passed through,
then trimmed them with green sprigs of hope.
And from deep in the seeds we concocted
the essence of sleep and dreams and resting-in-peace.
Almost weightless even in full bloom
we made them souls, the poppies, souls
of those who we lost, and – let it be said –
those who we killed.

Poppies – nursed in darkness, nourished by dirt.
But for all their spindly roots, frail stalks
and papery petals – as easily smudged
as a butterfly wing –
they joggle into existence
again and again, unearthing themselves
in fallow fields and railway sidings,
on roundabouts, verges and no man’s land,
from the brickwork of old chimneys and bridges
and cracks in the pavement.
They nod and they nag,
reminding us not to forget, flagging a red alert
as their crumpled petals unfold.
So, rightly, the poppies ask a great deal of the world.

Simon Armitage

Yes it looks to be 3-6 months before the June 2015 letter. Bingo!

Yes, but don't we already know she died in 2015? Or is that just from Walker we've heard that.

It would be interesting to see if all the medical related writings are entirely unchanged between the original MS and the published version. For example If words like the neuro ‘believes’ were added then linguistically it’s a tiny change. But what it does in terms of covering Penguin’s ass re the diagnosis and their culpability in promoting harmful theories about self cures is massive.

Source: findmypast - gives 22nd January 2015 for Sally Winn's mother

And , thinking of Mullion, reputational damage can presumably include the detrimental effect it might have on staff recruitment - which is a serious issue in Cornwall in seasonal hospitality