Thank you for posting a link to that very odd piece in the Times Errol.
I find it to be a very strange article, full of incredible claims.
The author, Gillian Bowditch, was the first person to report the alleged spiking by injections in the MSM. This might explain why she has written such a bizarre followup piece.
Does anyone have a share token for her previous, original article? Here it is behind a paywall
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-girls-night-out-should-not-need-an-escape-plan-q7pvsnn80
In the followup article Errol linked in her above post to Bowditch states,
"When I wrote about the reported spiking by injection of three young women in Edinburgh nightclubs for last Sunday’s newspaper, hardly anything had been reported. My information came from the social media pages of my daughters’ friends and acquaintances as they warned each other to be vigilant. ”
I appreciate that Bowditch is not an investigative journalist but surely even a columnist should be aware of urban myths and the fact that social media reports are not the same as actual factual reporting?
Surely any professional journalist should conduct due diligence and consult with experts prior to starting a media frenzy about highly improbable violations that have long been debunked as urban myths?
If her daughters’ friends were claiming that someone they knew’s little boy had been mutilated in a toilet she would at least google or check Snopes to get some insight into whether these reports were part of a long history of myths and hoaxes prior to penning a column in the Times about it?
It would appear, from Bowditch’s latest piece that not only is she reluctant to conduct due diligence even in the wake of multiple debunking by experts, she has battened down the hatches and is now making further highly dubious claims.
She says,
“ Despite the raw honesty of the women’s stories, there was an understandable degree of uncertainty among my peers. It’s not particularly easy to inject somebody with toxins. (It’s not particularly difficult either.) ”
The fact is that it is extremely difficult to inject someone with toxins covertly as various experts have opined.
It is so difficult that it is the kind of attack that is conducted by state actors against their enemies.
I do not understand how or why Bowditch is making assertions contrary to those of experts in the field without backing up her argument with assertions from her own, alternative experts. Is this not how it is usually done?
Describing the complainants as possessing “raw honesty” is I think disingenuous. Nobody is questioning the honesty of the complainants.
All the reporting I have seen that has been rational / skeptical about the alleged injection spikings have not made any accusations of dishonesty about any of the women concerned. All reports have validated concerns about spiking but been skeptical about the injection element of the accounts.
Further down in the article Bowditch says, "The National Police Chiefs’ Council revealed there had been 140 confirmed reports of drink spiking and 24 of spiking by injection during September and October. Most of the victims have been young women.”
This is a misrepresentation of the NPCC's statement which was, according to ITV, that
"there have been 198 confirmed reports of drink spiking in September and October, in addition to 24 reports of some form of injection. "
Bowditch's piece implies that both the drink spikings and the injections were confirmed, when this is not the case.
Then, further down in the article, there is this claim absolutely bizarre claim from Bowditch
Last week there was also a report that a woman in Manchester, who was injected, was passed a note that read “welcome to the HIV club”. No HIV cases have been reported. But the fear is real, and fear is the real weapon here.
I am immensely curious as to where Bowditch read about this so called “report”. Did she also harvest it from social media?
Of course had she conducted due diligence she would have discovered that she was reporting an urban myth almost as notorious and widespread as the mutilated boy myth.
evidential link
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_prick_attack
also see
www.snopes.com/fact-check/hiv-infected-needle-attacks/
Bowditch's twitter account includes the tag live without fear, with is ironic given her tendency for uncorroborated reporting.
twitter.com/gillianbowditch
Bowditch says in her article “ But the fear is real, and fear is the real weapon here. ”
I think that Bowditch may be correct about fear being a weapon. It seems to me that the questions we need to ask are;, "Who is weilding the weapon on this occasion?" and "why are they weilding it?'