Talk:Michael Sharpe

backup if removed in future https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20160123014124/http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/healthreport/comparison-of-treatments-for-chronic-fatigue/2993296

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnZd4-X3lEE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0_8eVl99zs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PuGKWIXWdQ

Bio?
I thought this page was a bio? If a separate bio page is needed can one be created? I can't see where it would belong.

I feel the quotes are relevant here in adding to the description of how he views the illness.

Some quotes could be added to the List of quotes page

Notjusttired notjusttired (talk) 11:24, 3 December 2018 (EST) - These quotes could be incorporated in bio instead of a separate section.

Quotations

 * 2015, "It’s sometimes quite hard to understand what motivates the very vocal minority that gets so upset about this apparently benign bit of moderately helpful treatment."
 * 2015, "These are not magic cures. This is just the only game in town really in terms of an evidence-based treatment if you have got this condition to get yourself improved."
 * 1999, "Purchasers and Health Care providers with hard pressed budgets are understandably reluctant to spend money on patients who are not going to die and for whom there is controversy about the 'reality' of their condition (and who) are in this sense undeserving of treatment...Those who cannot be fitted into a scheme of objective bodily illness yet refuse to be placed into and accept the stigma of mental illness remain the undeserving sick of our society and our health service"
 * MEActionUK Quotes from Mike Sharpe

=Large update of the page September 2019=

Added information on his research
Hi all! I'm planning to do a large update of the page and include more information about Sharpe's bio and his research. I'm currently adding this information on the page but without deleting the information that is already there. Perhaps it is best to reserve this section to discuss this added information and whether there are any mistakes in it that needs to be corrected. - Sisyphus.

Proposed changes to the controversy section
In the end, however, I would like to change some of the info that is already on the page. Mostly because it is already mentioned elsewhere in the new text with more detail (for example on the PACE trial or Oxford criteria). But there are also some sentences that are not entirely correct.

What I propose is to update the old information (which starts at the section Oxford criteria and ends before the section books) with the information below (references will follow later):

'''Controversy

Wessely school'''

Michael Sharpe is often referred to as a "member" of the Wessely school, a group led by British psychiatrist Simon Wessely that has been criticized for their dismissal of biomedical research into ME/CFS, promotion of the biopsychosocial model, and close ties with the UK welfare benefit system and the health insurance industry.

Disability benefits

Sharpe has undertaken work for the UK's Department for Work and Pensions and insurance companies, a conflict of interest disclosed in the publication of the PACE trial but not disclosed to participants in the trial.

In 2002 Sharpe wrote a controversial article in the UNUMProvident report on functional syndromes, which in his view includes ME/CFS. He criticized the “ME lobby” for objecting to rehabilitative treatments and emphasizing the validity and chronicity of the illness. According to Sharpe “a strong belief and preoccupation that one has a “medical disease” and a helpless and passive attitude to coping is associated with persistent disability.” In the article, he also claimed that the current system of state benefits, insurance payments, and litigation forms a potentially major obstacle to recovery. Sharpe argued that “benefits and medical services need to be more rehabilitation orientated.”

Malingering and illness deception meeting

Michael Sharpe presented at a Malingering and Illness Deception meeting funded by the UK's Department for Work and Pensions on the topic of distinguishing malingering from psychiatric disorders, a topic that later became a chapter of a book published in 2003 by the same name.[26] Sharpe's chapter gives an example of the case of a woman with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which is classified as a not a psychiatric disorder. Other contributors to the book include Simon Wessely, Peter White, Mansel Aylward, all of whom became members of the PACE Trial Steering Committee a few years later.[5][26]

The danger of believing in ME

According to Sharpe, “the insistence that 'ME' is an exclusively physical disease, untreatable except by rest, and with a poor prognosis, may in the long run have been unhelpful for sufferers.” He has also argued that extensive laboratory investigation “may be psychologically harmful to the patient by reinforcing their beliefs or concerns about serious physical disease.” Sharpe has criticized doctors for “colluding with the patient's belief that their symptoms are explained by an untreatable disease (such as myalgic encephalopathy…).”  In a book co-written with Simon Wessely and Matthew Hotopf, Sharpe warned that campaigning for more awareness of ME in adolescents might have increased the incidence of young people with such presentations.

Denigration of critics

Michael Sharpe has repeatedly criticized scientists and patients who highlighted flaws in his research or used Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to demand the release of unpublished data from his research, including the successful request for unpublished data from the PACE trial.

“Patients would surely be too ill to produce so many complaints”

In 2018, a tweet by Sharpe claimed that some Freedom of Information Act requests and scientific criticism could not have been made from patients since they would have been too ill to do so. He claimed that “many of the activists trying to have scientific papers they don’t like retracted are not patients. Patients would surely be too ill to produce so many complaints and FOI requests to journals, funders, and universities.” Sharpe's tweet led to over 100 Australians from the ME/CFS community requesting an apology, pointing out that Alem Matthees had been bedridden for 2 years since winning the FOIA tribunal that led to the release of the PACE trial data, a decision that Sharpe had opposed. Sharpe deleted the tweet as a result of the open letter, which had been signed by Alem Matthees's family.

Comparing critics to clime change deniers

Sharpe has described those who opposed his research as a "co-ordinated campaign" of persons who are "against science",  similar to climate change deniers. In a lecture Sharpe said that the use of “co-ordinated pressure group action against science was prominently seen in the field of climate change research but is now emerging in other areas. Chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME for short) is one of these.” Sharpe has argued that even “the well-intentioned campaigning for better recognition of CFS inadvertently reinforces the social and cultural conditions that made that recognition more difficult in the first place.”

Unbecoming of an MP and retraction requests

In 2018 member of parliament (MP) Carol Monaghan raised the issue of the PACE trial in the British parliament. Afterward, she received an email from Michael Sharpe saying her actions were ‘unbecoming of an MP’. Monaghan responded in parliament by stating: “if listening to my constituents, investigating their concerns and taking action as a result is ‘unbecoming’, I stand guilty.”

When in 2019 the Health Research Authority’s report on the PACE trial indicated no regulatory concerns, Sharpe sent e-mails to at least two US publications requesting a retraction or major correction of articles critical of the PACE-trial. Sharpe’s e-mails accused the writers of the articles of suggesting that PACE was “fraudulent.”

In 2018 Amy Maxman wrote an article for Nature about ME/CFS which included recent criticism of the efficacy of psychosocial interventions. Sharpe and colleagues responded with a letter in which they argued that “there is no place for stigmatizing any avenue of research or therapy that might help us to improve the lives of people with this long-term debilitating illness.”

Regarding the revision of the Cochrane review on graded exercise therapy, Sharpe has claimed that the Cochrane editor “wilted badly… under direct pressure” from activists”, despite email correspondence indicating this to be untrue. The Cochrane editor in question, David Tovey, had explicitly stated that “this not about patient pressure.”

Retirement from CFS research

In March 2019 Reuters journalist Kate Kelland published an interview with Professor Michael Sharpe in which he claimed to have given up research in ME/CFS due to abuse and harassment from ME activists.

Difference between old and proposed text
These are the main differences between the old text (that's still on the main page) and the proposed text, regarding the controversy section.

Oxford and Fukuda criteria rewritten

I have rewritten the section on the Oxford and Fukuda criteria. The old information is still on the page but I think it can be merged/deleted into the new one I’ve written. Here are the changes I propose:

Because the text on the Sharpe page is now much longer I think it’s better to merge the information on the two case definitions into one heading. The suggestion that the Oxford criteria do not exclude patients with symptoms that could be caused by psychiatric disorders is not entirely correct (it’s less stringent in this regard but some psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, manic depressive illness are explicitly excluded). The criticism that it excludes patients with a neurological disorder doesn’t make much sense because the same is true for all CFS case definitions. So I prefer to delete these and focus on direct quotes of criticism of the AHRQ and NIH working group (see text update). I do not think the Deale et al. (1997) study (in which Sharpe is not an author) and York review are not relevant here and should also be deleted. I find the sentence that the Fukuda criteria was adopted by the CDC confusing because this always was the CDC criteria; Fukuda was commissioned by the CDC to come up with an update the Holmes criteria, if I understand correctly. The CDC took the initiative for this case definition.

Controversy section rewritten

I’ve also reformatted to controversy section to make it more readable. It now consists of two themes : (1) Wessely school, and (2) denigration of critics. I think the title ‘smearing critics’ is too emotive an impartial. I write denigration of critics instead of patients because his weird tweet about FOI request that couldn’t possible be made by patients is ambiguous. That section has been renamed to a quote “Patients would surely be too ill to produce so many complaints” to keep the section about this particular episode. Alternative title suggestions are welcome.

Smearing critics’ I’ve changed the phrasing of the sentence under ‘smearing critics’. His statements on critics are condemnable but they are not ad hominem attacks, he doesn’t refer to anyone personally or by name. I’ve included a direct quote of Sharpe’s lecture abstract and included another example and quote.

Denial of illness or disability benefits In the section “Denial of illness or disability benefits” I would like to delete/rephrase the following sentence: “He has also been paid by a number of health insurance companies seeking to deny or minimize disability insurance claims or ill health retirement pensions, including Unum and has repeated claimed that ME/CFS patients are motivated to stay ill in order to continue receiving disability benefits.” The statement that these health insurance companies seek to deny disability insurance claims isn’t a neutral claim and not referenced. IMHO All insurance companies would like to make money by paying out as little as possible, but if they are too aggressive they might lose customers. Additionally, I haven’t found publication where Sharpe says patients are motivated to stay ill in order to continue receiving disability benefits, only that this is a perpetuating factor. I’ve read the 1998 Editorial by Sharpe but do not see where he would have stated that patients are motivated to stay ill (he wrote that patients object to psychiatric classification because that could mean no insurance). The other reference is about a lecture that seems no longer retrievable. I’m fairly certain that the “undeserving sick” quote is taken out of context because Sharpe has consistently decried this situation in his work (see the section bodily symptoms on the MEpedia page and his most recent publication).

Retirement from ME/CFS Research In the section ‘Retirement from ME/CFS Research’ I’ve deleted the statement: “however, the article was published less than a week after the publication of Sharpe et al's response to the PACE trial re-analysis by Wilshire et al.” I don’t think this makes sense. If you look at the dates, the Wilshere et al. reanalysis was published on 22/03/2018. Sharpe et al. submitted their response on 31/07/2018. It was mostly the journal that stalled the publication until March 2019. Also: it’s not unusual for a research to defend his publication against criticism or publish opinion pieces on a topic to which has devoted most of his career. That is not in contrast with the claim that he has left the research (which means he no longer does RCT, studies with patient selection etc.). I would also like to delete the sentence: “The same article was criticized for repeating the claim that Sir Simon Wessely has previously given up research into ME/CFS, despite his continued research publications indicating otherwise.” I think this is about Wessely and the Kelland article, but not relevant to Michael Sharpe.

Pace trial I think the PACE trial section can be removed under Controversy because this information is explained in more detail elsewhere on the page.

Wessely school I’ve deleted the sentence “Some of the Wessely school have been knowing to make unpleasant comments about patients.” because no reference is given for this and it is a subjective statement.

I think all the other info was maintained (perhaps changed a word here and there for readability). And I’ve added some sections to it. Feel free to point out mistakes or sections you disagree with.