Thread by @tylerblack32

RE: #UrgencyOfNormal (sorry for drama, have to get this off my brain & move on)

@drscottbalsitis and I had an excellent chat, & I meant every word I said in my tweet about him. I'm glad he edited some slides, but it's still woefully one-sided. The grade went from F to INC

/1

Genuinely, I liked him and we got along. This fellow is, like me, ultimately a geek about science. You'll note I occasionally tweet, advocate, and even make fancy slides/graphs about areas outside of my expertise too!

I've sent him good data and trust he will process.

/2

But there is a turn, and my issue is less with him. And trust me, it may sound this way but this isn't an insult to his abilities.

He's not uni-affiliated or an appointed academic.

I hold the academics to a different standard. I don't care to mention their names anymore.
/3

I won’t give them clout any longer, and clout is the only thing I believe some of them value. You and I know who they are. They know who they are. Loud, certain, way outside their expertise in most of their most certain yet incorrect statements. But they ARE academics.

/4

They ghoulishly and brutally manhandled science in a way that, to this expert in childrens’ mental health, can most charitably be described as infuriating. In every essence, their document is a perversion of science when it comes to the current science of kids&MH&C19.

/5

It's academic misconduct to cite a source & then to misrepresent it. If they tried that in a publication/thesis & it was discovered, there would be consequences. Their sig is on it.

Entire waivers signed when academics publish attesting that every word has been scrutinized.

/6

It is dishonest to summarize science in a lop-sided fashion, picking and choosing the results of studies you like, and ignoring other findings. Reading, citing and describing articles and studies must be done accurately. This is reinforced throughout academic training.

/7

There's a reason academics around the world (& colleagues of theirs) reach out to me publicly & privately to thank me for challenging m/disinformation. There's a reason reporters are asking me "why are they so wrong, & so sure?" or (fairly or not) "Are they being paid?"

/8

There's a reason my 29-tweet thread (long even for me!) went viral and devastated the impact of their thud of a press release, and resonated so loudly with readers.

There’s a reason reporters are asking me "wow, why doesn't anyone know this?"

/9

That reason? I presented data honestly, transparently, fully, expertly & critically. Dishonest/unexpert science can soothe or deceptively tell us what we want to hear.

GOOD SCIENCE —nuanced, detailed, informative, & explanatory —resonates deeply, even when counterintuitive.
/10

The authors (some MDs, some PhDs, some both!) would have been failed, criticized, or told to do it again but better if they ever tried to present science like they did in the " advocacy toolkit" in any formal setting in class, in dissertation, in publication, or in academia.
/11

I won’t guess the motivation. Didn’t read closely? Outside of expertise? Outside influence? Ulterior motives? Motivated reasoning? Moral panic? Insufficient training? Rushed? Stressed? Misled? ??

Why put Ivy League edu in bio if won't adhere to academic rigour enforced there?/12

I do know that, for some of them, their record of being wrong about everything very publicly in previous waves as they have RARELY materially changed stances on ANY measure to control COVID, calls into question their science cred. Science teaches you; you don’t lead it.
/13

It seems to me some of them care more about BEING in the news, than being RIGHT in the news. Some of them have been absolutely ghoulish (images for examples) about my area of expertise (child suicide). google NAME+"suicide," I see awful, inexpert stuff. Insulting & inhuman.

/14

All of them signed their PROFESSIONAL, CREDENTIALED NAME to a document that claimed "more kids died of suicide [~2177 in '20] than covid". It is hard for me to think of a more disgusting thing to say with any knowledge of PREPANDEMIC suicide (highly fluctuant, ~2156 in '19).

/15

Its repugnant to me, as someone who helps very sick children. Good doctors, good humans, don't care about less or more about child deaths because others died more frequently of other causes. On it’s own, that’s bad.

But worse: it was straight wrong. Miscited & misrepresented./16

It's a faux "risk/benefit" wielding of children dying (monstrous) that pretends that the choice is "suicide or COVID"; “suicide or school”. I will say it clearly: they know NOTHING about the complexities of suicide. They are amateurs playing shrink, and stoking parental fears./17

They didn't detect the misrepresentation, the mis-citation, the ghoulish logic—nor did their 1000s of non-critical followers. Heck, most every other child psychiatrist in the world didn't. Some of them complicit in this whole moral panic about kids, school, covid, and MH.

/18

How did I? fancy knowledge? pulling out an obscure textbook? NO! By clicking the citation & reading. At 10am on my day off, w/ my silly highlight tool, & discovering they straight got it wrong.

Any 1 of them, or their followers, or other MH professionals could have, too.

/19

I then took out Excel and whipped up graphs going back to 1999 to show why they were so wrong and how very wrong they were, even conceptually. Using CDC WONDER, a public database that THEY didn't know how to use. (non-experts on mortality & epidemiology don't)

/20

Science is hard work. But it starts with good foundations in how to read and interpret data, to detect and watch for bias, and to challenge your beliefs, not find evidence to support them or carefully select the evidence that does.
/21

I shared this privately and I will say publicly. Well-intentioned people are being misled by ideologues, clout chasers, political and bad faith actors, and straight up bad scientists. And that genuinely makes me sad.

/22

If you ever think this is about me, or my ego, or whatever, let me say that I value ONE concept: knowing true things & rejecting false things. No matter how certain I am, I will always read & consider new evidence and ask, "Am I wrong?" Bad scientists: "I'm right! Look!!!!!!"

/23

Until my conversation, none of the signatories to that toolkit have demo’ed to me any care, interest, or recognition of the complexity of topics like suicide. They have all ROUTINELY acted like one graph or one number proves COVID measures kill kids.

/24

Until my conversation, none of the high-ranking, public, media-seeking people I've criticized (accurately, expertly, and with principle) has ever demonstrated an ability to ask themselves if they're wrong.

Except one.

/25

Thank you @drscottbalstis for reaching out, having one of the most courageous moments I've personally witnessed: to reach out to someone who criticized you. You didn't say during our phone call "if you cared about kids, you'd be on our side" (as your colleague did)

/26

So do the job. Stop misrepresenting the state of the science re: MH. Some of you should not only know better, but are violating the principles of the degrees, institutions, and titles you are so very, very proud of./27

And it still bothers me that they simply removed any mention of suicides. It was so important to their document it was on a summary slide when they incorrectly had an increase. No increase? No mention of suicide. How could an increase be important but no increase not be?
/Fin

As a side note, taking the time to WRITE this has been done after and during break moments of the job (of >13 years) that I love taking care of the most severe pediatric mental health emergencies in my province.

Coda 1/3

Accusations of me not caring about kids or being blind to child distress or that I want kids to die? It actually really really hurts me, because it's my life's mission to be a child's best advocate and physician.

Coda 2/3

If you wonder if your nasty words hurt me, they sometimes can and do. So all you awful fans of incompetent science reporters/communicators, there's your weak spot.

To everyone else, if you made it here, thank you for reading all of this. Please keep everything professional. 3/3