By David Tuller, DrPH
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English actress Jennie Jacques is known for her roles in the BBC’s Desperate Romantics, a 2009 series about the Pre-Raphaelites, a police procedural called WPC 56, which ran from 2013 to 2014, and Vikings, a History Channel offering from 2015 to 2019. In 2021, she discussed having developed ME/CFS in a profile that appeared in The Times, in which she reported being “a shadow of my former self physically.” (The author of the article, Sean O’Neill, is the father of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, whose death of complications from ME/CFS has been widely covered in the British media.)
Although Jacques’ acting career has since been on hold, she has dedicated herself to ME/CFS advocacy. In particular, she has posted a series of interviews on her youtube channel. Last week, she hosted Guardian columnist George Monbiot and me to discuss the incredible mess created by the CBT/GET ideological brigades with their decades of disastrous and sometimes fraudulent research. (As I have repeatedly explained, I am not accusing anyone of “fraud” in the legal sense. I’m not a lawyer and so I have no public opinion to share on such matters. As a writer, however, I am using “fraudulent” in its meaning of “deceptive” or “misleading”–the research equivalent of a Potemkin village.)
I was really pleased to be asked to participate in this conversation. We covered a lot of territory. And yes, I did manage to point out that this cabal of investigators has engaged for decades in one big “circle jerk.” (For those unfamiliar with the figurative meaning of this term, it is, according to this slang dictionary, a “group of people who are ‘getting themselves off’ in the echo chamber of their own opinions or activities.)
Here’s the interview.
The main thing that struck me in this video was what George flagged up (from around the 5 to 6 minutes mark) about the problem with the media being that journalists don’t have the time to dig deep into the stories to research them properly and so can be easily steered or misled. The exact same thing can be said about doctors who, with such hectic work schedules, have little or no choice but to take on trust what they’re told by their medical journals (where peer review unfortunately often fails to protect them from being misled), textbooks, CPD sessions etc.
I think that both the medical and journalism professions need to wake up to and admit this problem (as George did) and take steps to address it. Surrendering the task of scrutiny to an overriding authority/body, and trusting that what’s being disseminated or taught is true, leaves both professions open to being grossly misled with potentially disastrous consequences.