Top Oxford researcher trying to bust the mystery of chronic fatigue syndrome says he QUIT and turned his focus to new research because trolls are 'too hostile'

Scientists' work may be published in journals mostly read by their peers - but that doesn't protect them from the attacks of trolls on social media and beyond. Dr Michael Sharpe, an Oxford University professor of psychological medicine, has told Reuters that he was so thoroughly inundated with hateful comments, emails and tweets that he has decided to quit his research focus area altogether.

Dr Sharpe is one of the few scientists who has focused his research on chronic fatigue syndrome - also known as ME/CFS - and published research that suggested the poorly-understood condition might improve with talk therapy and exercise. But many some who suffer from the disease, as well as some who study it, have objected to his research, particularly the PACE trial, one of the largest projects on ME/CFS to date, which suggested that exercise and talk therapy may help treat it.

Critics saw the exercise component as flying in the face of the diagnostic criteria of their disease, and the therapy portion as dismissing ME/CFS as a mental health issue.

Many went beyond questioning the research, however, calling Dr Sharpe and his colleagues 'charlatans' and worse.

And that's not to mention the countless vitriolic emails that inundated Dr Sharpe's inbox.

Some activists are calling for review and replication of Dr Sharpe's research - a valuable way of settling scientific disputes.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6810393/Top-chronic-fatigue-researcher-QUITS-online-trolls-hostile.html


It seems we have entered a new age of religious idiocy. This religion has no deity, but is like many other religions backed by unscientifc idiots. That will go out of their way to ensure any scientific understanding we have of conditions is stopped.