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.

Yes but 2015 has 12 months. We are trying to establish if the order of events is the same but just shifted forward two years or if the order of events was also messed with.

I agree - and I also think it’s very unfair on the pubs/cafes/campsites involved, as it gives them a bad reputation. Presumably the people who visit them often won’t be bothered about the fallout from TSP, but it’s clear from the article that the campsite/pub owners thought the portrayal of their establishment would have a negative impact on business.

If you are not already Genealogy Correspondent consider yourself added to the team!

I think the issue I have is that even if PRH have a legal leg to stand on regarding the disclaimer, they cannot expect everyone to read the small print. The argument is "well, we did say, so it's your fault as the reader for not reading it." OK fine.

But surely they have a duty not to mislead the reader with a fabricated story. It's all well and good having a medical disclaimer, but it's a completely different thing to publish and heavily promote a story that lacks so much credibility as to mislead the reader. The disclaimer really only works if the story checks out, otherwise they might as well publish any old rubbish as non-fiction and simply slap a disclaimer on the front. Yes, they perhaps didn't know it was untrue but in my mind they should have done the appropriate checks given the medical element. But yet they are still defending it in light of all that has come out, which says something.

Yes, I know that.

I was responding to the comment that said she could potentially have died in December 2014 as a death registered in January could include a December death.

She also gets the facts wrong in one of the questions (as one of the posters posted on here previously).

There’s a question about when the Berlin Wall fell, and it goes on to say it fell in 1990 rather than 1989.

Not the hugest deal, I know, but if she made up the pub quiz (as everything points out that’s the case), then she was obviously scrambling about for possible ideas for questions, and then got the content of the question wrong.

So, they lose house in 2013 & as chickens home to roost over Hemmings etc decide to walk a bit for a while & soul search & think about what they’ve done so Ray sees anger & hostility. Then some sofa surfing in winter at times & retro fit it all to 2015 diagnosis homelessness zeitgeist etc ? …Perhaps.

On it! Though, looking at what is now emerging, it seems that I might need recordings of all memorable Test matches in the previous 2-3 years so that we can switch into different timelines at will. That might help to increase the weight.

And there it is!

Is that in the print version of today’s article? If so, please could you post a screenshot of it here when you have a minute? I don’t think it’s mentioned in the online article that went up today.

I mean, I don’t disagree about ethical responsibility, but the job of the legal team and the disclaimer is to prevent, as far as possible within the law, legal liability.

I’m 100% speculating here, but I can imagine the legal team, for instance, asking RW to insert the consultant saying ‘I believe you have CBD’, not ‘You have CBD’. And to have him say immediately afterwards that he can’t be sure because the only test is post-mortem. And to make it plain that the consultant thinks that Moth’s condition, if it is CBD, is atypically slow in its progression.

And that the improvement apparently caused by the walk (though from what I remember, no medical authority corroborates this improvement in TSP?) isn’t one other people could replicate unless they’re able to spend every day walking long distances carrying a heavy weight. During the winter between the two stints, RW lists all the things they did to try to replicate the path (gym, long walks, exercise bike), but says they didn’t work.

In fact, during the time at Polly’s, they also revisit the consultant who not only doesn’t register any improvement in Moth, but actually tells him he’s accelerated his own decline and that he’s ’in denial’ about having imagined he was improving.

So no medical authority in TSP actually makes a firm diagnosis, sees any improvement in Moth, or thinks he’s anything other than deluded about any improvement on the path. So we’re left with RW’s ‘subjection opinion’ as in the disclaimer.

(The claims about the brain scans in Landlines, on the other hand, sound far more problematic. I haven’t read that in detail, but I can’t imagine what the legal team was thinking…)

@Choux has kindly posted screenshots above.

If anyone knows SW mother’s full name, a search here would reveal her DOD, assuming probate was needed.

www.gov.uk/search-will-probate

You'd hope that a reputable publisher would at least be able to justify themselves. They are up against literally millions of self published books which can make the most outrageous claims for Miracle Health Cures, so it would be nice to think that anything traditionally published ought, at least, to have the weight of either research or fact checking behind it. I would guess that they assumed the disclaimer would cover them.

In one of the son's FB posts he mentioned going to a pub quiz back home (unsure if the old home or new one) one Christmas period...need to check the year. But maybe the idea came from that.

As an aside, it's worth seeing if your local library provides access to Borrowbox as that gives you free online access to digital newspapers (plus ebooks and audio books).

Yeah. But that's what I mean about a disclaimer. It's all well and good to legally cover yourself, but it's another to put one on a book that really should never have got through the publishing process with all the Moth-eaten holes in it.

Maybe the original manuscript didn't stop in the same place as TSP and carried on into 2015. But including her mother's death (as it is written in TWS) doesn't really tally with it being a book to remind TW of their walk.

Probate mustn't have been required, as she doesn't appear in the calendar.

Another poster found the DoD on FindMyPast, though. 🙂

I imagine that is exactly the kind of change they would have stipulated. And that the repeat visit has the same medic saying Moth has only accelerated his own decline and is ‘in denial’. So that the consultant can’t say his professional reputation was damaged by a misleading diagnosis or bad advice, but also so that the entire ‘improvement on the path’ narrative is made clear to be RW’s subjective interpretation of events. That there’s no official corroboration, no consultant jumping to his feet, shouting ‘It’s a miracle!’

One tantalising to me thought is that CH’s articles are still focused wholly on TSP. She hasn’t even started on TWS and its claim of brain scans suddenly being clear. I hope John Todd’s neurologist is being consulted on his opinion of that claim.

There are still two entire books for CH to pick apart.

Thanks @Choux ! Sorry - I’m a slow reader, so have just been catching up on the thread.

If the June/July 2013 visit to see the neurologist in Liverpool and subsequent CBD diagnosis has been discredited and the nature of their departure from Pen-y-Maes has also been called into question (by the farming neighbour who saw them leave at 2am before the bailiffs arrived at 9am the next morning), does this also call into question the 7 day period between the final court judgement and their departure from Pen-y-Maes and imply that pretty much the whole of chpt 1 (Dust of Life) and chpt 2 (Losing) is complete hogwash?

Exactly, any medical scientist who came across evidence of such a miraculous cure would want to study it.
Compare that to the BS that SW cooks up in Landlines (end of chaper 3) where supposedly all kinds of medical professionals have contacted them, not wanting to find out more about how it happened, but 'suggesting reasons' to them for why it did. 🤨
Apparently even their all-noodle diet is considered to be a possible miracle cure now! 🤪

Wow! She has some brass neck to say all of this in print 😄 which book is this from? I’ve only read TSP so far, but have ordered TWS and LL.