Attacking the President & CEO

[PNUTTRO]

To be fair to txmarinemom she's not the only one who resorts to personal attacks and bullying. PNUTTRO, Karen Ocker and LindaRacine do the same thing. Pooka1 argues A LOT but I can't remember her throwing too many direct insults.

I was waiting for my name to get tossed in there.

Flattered that I got first billing.

[MissEmmyF]

Although you have a lot of knowledge to share, the manner in which you share it is the problem. I hope this does not overstep the bounds of what is allowed in this forum, but I feel that many (not all, maybe 40%) of your posts are aggressive, beligerent, and profoundly arrogant.

It is right to let people know when they have mispercieved a study or made inappropriate extrapolations, however when this is done in a manner that builds up your own sense of superiority and puts others down, that is not right. And post after post after post of repetition....endless fighting is so fruitless. People do have busy lives outside of cyber self-defense.

If your goal is to get people to come over to your way of thinking, you need to change your style of communication to better meet that goal. Rhetoric is an art. The best medical professionals are also great communicators, very important when your job is to serve people.

I fear your respsonse to this will be something along the lines of - Betty14, you are not intellectually honest, you just don't want the truth, you are a shill for some method or other .... don't bother to say those things. I've read them so many times before.

I'd like to ask that all members who have been hesitant to post on this section start posting again, and simply do not repond to your posts, unless the tone of said post is civil and adds something helpful to a discussion. That should cut down on the repetition and fruitless arguing. I intend to follow my new rule starting now.

Goodbye for now, Pooka1. Ah, the sense of calm that I feel in saying that!

Writer: I apologize if I have hijacked your thread. I won't do it again. Cheers. B.

Well said, I totally agree. If there is going to be such a minimal amount of censorship on the non surgical forum, I'm just going to start ignoring posts that are bothersome or quarrelsome. After all, a response and then a debate is exactly what is wanted. So, if we don't give in to that, those certain people won't be able to get their "kicks." Not to mention, I also don't have time to constantly be checking the forum 24/7 in order to defend myself. Personally, I have better things to do with my time.

[Dingo]

here is a gem

Here is a gem from PNUTTRO.

#111 from this thread

I think that you want scoliosis to NOT be genetic because that gets you off the hook. If its genetic, then maybe your genes are what caused your son's problem. (Which is also some F***ed up reasoning--and untrue.)

Check out what set PNUTTRO off in the first place. I posted a simple chart on Polio. How does this atmosphere help parents or children with Scoliosis?

This board is not well moderated.

[MissEmmyF]

Here is a gem from PNUTTRO.

#111 from this thread



Check out what set PNUTTRO off in the first place. I posted a simple chart on Polio. How does this atmosphere help parents or children with Scoliosis?

This board is not well moderated.

WOW, I did not see that post before! That's awful. Not only is that totally inappropriate and demeaning for the sole purpose of being demeaning, but like you said, that's extremely poor moderation also! I'm glad this thread has been started to shed some light - thanks Writer.

[Pooka1]

1. (Again) the Non-surgical forum should be renamed "Emotional Support/Other" and posts containing evidence for or against or anything resembling a fact should be deleted ASAP. This is where prayers for others should be posted also.

2. I will never understand why folks want someone else to control what they read. Why can't you do it yourself? Is anyone here truly being forced against their will to read certain posts? I don't understand the problem other than being too lazy to think for yourself.

3. The multiple complaints about form (tone, etc.) are really complaints about substance that dare not speak their name (because it would be obviously silly). So folks hide behind "form" complaints when really, the comments are just too factual and can't be worded in any way acceptable to certain readers. That is, there is NO way to word things that these reader simply finds too factual for their taste. That way, they never have to face facts.

4. Geish's post in this thread blows every other post completely out of the water. I congratulate her on the post and for her victory over the local school administration.

[Qikdraw]

I agree with Linda.

This whole thread is nothing more than an attempt to get rid of posters Writer does not like and trying to get others to rally behind him. Writer himself is guilty of 'Goodwin's Law' in this post, where he complains of 'ideological brownshirt tactics' on people who disagree with him. This is also the post where he tries to get rid of Linda as well.

From all my readings no one has ever stated no one should try alternative treatments, and there is active support for doing so, by pretty much everyone. What some have said is you have to research it and not get taken in by wild claims, which some treatments have done. Some who makes these wild claims get brought up short by some people, as they should. Just like people should be wary of surgeons who want to rush into surgery.

Scoliosis has a lot of emotional baggage and people are seaching for answers, we should be working together and finding common ground, of which there really is a lot of, and helping people, rather than arguing all the time.

Just my two cents...

Brad

[Ballet Mom]

Oh, and Dingo,

I'm sorry, but I can't possibly agree that PNUTTRO even comes close to the level of the others on this board. I know that she puts you through your paces at times, but you do fine, and she is quite knowledgeable and interesting to read.

[Pooka1]

I was waiting for my name to get tossed in there.

Flattered that I got first billing.

I luvs ya, P. I have had relatively little biology such that I rely on you obligately for that stuff.

You're my bio hero.

[Pooka1]

Pooka1 argues A LOT but I can't remember her throwing too many direct insults.

I try to always attack just the wacky idea, not the person. It's not fair to attack the person because they may have been drenched in dogma from day one though there is some obligation to acquaint oneself with the facts.

If I attacked someone rather than their belief I certainly apologize. I might have, I'm far from perfect.

[LindaRacine]

But sniping attacks on individuals have been happening regularly for a very long time with no apparent moderator intervention. You've not lifted a finger. Not even our president is safe from deprecatory comments, which is the whole reason for this thread. You will note that a significant majority of respondents so far agree that this is a serious problem.

And why should "attacks" on ideas be so blithely permitted? They quickly degenerate into ad hominem arguments here. It's not at all difficult to disagree with an idea, to query, probe, in a gentlemanly manner if one so chooses -- or is constrained to do so by a moderator.

I strongly support -- at the very least -- forbidding anyone who has acquired a reputation for anti-conservative-treatment contentiousness from posting in Non-Surgical threads, or wherever else that they have wrought havoc. The improvement in atmosphere would be immediate and dramatic. They really should have had one warning, then a stern warning, and then gotten the boot altogether. In many well-run forums they don't even get a warning, they're summarily banned after one offense.

I think even Geish might support the above -- since she is justifiably repulsed by the bickering in the non-surgical section. (Relax, G, no attack from me, LOL.) The same few people are causing it in most cases.

If you, Linda, cannot recognize and acknowledge that there is a very serious problem on this board, and take appropriate measures to correct it, then we either need a separate non-surgical section moderator or a new moderator altogether.

If you have examples of attacks on people vs attacks on ideas, I'm happy to address them.

I'll repeat what I said yesterday. If you want a forum where no one who has any problem with any alternative treatment, www.fixscoliosis.com is going to make you very happy.

--Linda

[LindaRacine]

This is the entire issue.

Some here do not believe ideas without evidence, in some cases over decades and decades as in the case of Schroth, should be challenged per se. I mean they seem to think that Schroth was a person, Weiss is a person, therefore challenging their ideas and asking for evidence constitutes "attacking" them on a personal level. That's not how science and medicine work.

It's also obvious that many here incorrectly perceive their idea being criticized as them being criticized or discouraged for the sake of discouraging or whatever.

Perhaps you can agree both those things are serious impediments to the spread of QUALITY, evidence-driven information.

This is a really important point. If a surgeon came here, and started posting things about some surgical procedure that had no proof of potential benefit, I'd have the same problem.

I've said this SO many times. If you post things that are proved, you won't have any problem with anyone. But, proof means publication in peer reviewed journals with some long-term followup.

--Linda

[Writer]

I will not undertake an extended argument with pooka about evidence and facts, because with her any discussion is futile. The reader of all these posts will note that she has prejudged the entire non-surgical section as "Emotional Support/Other," another attempt to disparage everything but the scalpel. With that prejudgment, she barges in and disrupts non-surgical area discussions, attempting to enforce her prejudgment. (But is not the entire forum here for emotional support, as well as information? Scoliosis can be very traumatic.)

Pooka pontificates about science as though she were Einstein. But she does not write with the precision of a top scientist. Compare with Betty14’s posts when she describes muscle or brace function. That is scientific authority, and I recognize it and suspect others do, as well. For instance: http://www.scoliosis.org/forum/showt...?t=9000&page=7

Nobody needs to lecture me about evidence and facts. Pook and tx keep asking who I am. I am a PhD from a top-five research university, have held postdocs, published widely, and edit an academic journal. I’ve read a massive amount of published literature in all kinds of fields including several in biomedicine. Defining fact is not so simplistic as pooka and Linda imply. For one, today’s body of facts is tomorrow’s outdated paradigm: see Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I think SOSORT knows about tomorrow, though anybody would concede the need for surgery in some cases.

Interestingly, though, in this discussion we are accumulating evidence and facts. Here’s a tentative tally of indisputable facts:

-- Several people have testified that they feel intimidated here, don’t post for fear of being attacked. I know other examples. This is a result absolutely contrary to the express wishes of the NSF president.

-- The problem originates with a very few people, chiefly txmarinemom and pooka, who exasperate, badger, intimidate a large contingent of vocal and silent members, even though they may sometimes be appreciated by others.

-- The result is a board that is partly dysfunctional, and has been so for over a year. Some of people, number unknown, have disappeared because of it.

-- The problem is serious enough that the very president of the NSF has been subjected to obnoxious challenges by the primary offenders. The moderator states that she is disinclined to intervene.

On the basis of these facts, any reasonable person would conclude that something needs to be done. More FACTS:

-- The only person aside from the president who can correct the problem is the moderator.

-- The moderator is doing nothing visible to correct the problem. In the post directly above she implies that the problem is only mine and that I should leave to solve it. It is not only my problem -- it affects dozens at least.

-- The moderator *has* intervened recently in cases where she regards Ballet Mom or mamamax – both of them pursuing conservative treatment -- as stepping over the line. This gives the impression of favoritism.

-- The moderator has publicly defined her job as she sees it:

I feel it's very important for people to have the whole truth about all scoliosis treatments. When people come here and try to convince others to try some unproved treatment . . . . . . it's my job to make certain that these forums don't get inundated with false information. --Linda

--This job definition is found nowhere in the NSF forum guidelines. http://www.scoliosis.org/forum.php The guidelines imply instead that the individual should use his/her own judgment to separate wheat from chaff. Nowhere do the guidelines declare that this forum will permit only proven facts to be stated in a post.

CONCLUSIONS
-- A focus on their concept of "proven facts" or "evidence" and strong support for surgeons and surgery appears to be an obsession with pooka and the moderator. They summarily dismiss any possibility that exercise therapy could work, which is the party line of the SRS, an organization primarily focused on surgery.

I'm guessing that's because surgeons are used to dealing with tangible results, and so far, there is no definitive research that shows that any specific exercises help or hurt. --Linda

-- I conclude that the moderator is either unconcerned about maintaining the atmosphere specifically defined by the NSF and its president, or she is passively or actively encouraging her allies to pester members in the non-surgical section because it advances an agenda of disparaging conservative treatments. If that seems unfair, please prove my conclusions untrue by doing something constructive about the underlying problem, not just shooing complainers away.

-- I finally conclude that probably nothing will improve until we have another moderator to supplement or replace the current moderator, because Linda’s concept of the job is not the same as the NSF guidelines’ concept of the job, evidenced by both performance history and her own public statements.

[LindaRacine]

Writer,

Cheers to you for your inception of this thread! Your introduction is very well stated, and I applaud you for bringing this to the forefront. I am particularly disturbed over the sarcastic insults flung at Joe O’Brien along with the threat of legal action. And Linda, while I appreciate your day-to-day involvement as moderator, I have to agree with Writer that you do show favoritism, at least toward Pooka1. Yesterday, I noticed that it wasn’t until Ballet Mom (whose posts I find very insightful) countered Pooka1 on some of her statements, that you said “OK, enough on religion.” I don’t know of anyone here who has brought up religion more often than Pooka1, slamming it at every opportunity. She has mocked my faith on numerous occasions, but instead of firing back, I quietly say a prayer for her, because what I really see in her posts is a good-hearted person with a restless soul that is searching. Nonetheless, you have never reprimanded her for keeping her thoughts to herself regarding religion. How many people who have religious beliefs may have been turned away from this forum on that alone?

Quite frankly, I’m really surprised why those who think they know it all have not started their own forum by now.

You might want to check all the threads. Pooka1 and I don't always agree, nor do Txmarinemom always agree. Quite the opposite much of the time. And, I will agree that there are some (including a few who are on the alternative side), who could do a much better job of choosing their words. I don't want this to become a site where everyone has to be politically correct in everything they say.

If you have a problem with specific things people are saying that are disrespectful, demeaning, or condescending, and I'll address those posts. But, I'm not going to ban anyone for their views.

--Linda

[LindaRacine]

Sharon, et. al...

Discussion of beliefs is now banned, and all posts that discuss the topic have been/will be removed if found.

--Linda

[Pooka1]

Nobody needs to lecture me about evidence and facts. Pook and tx keep asking who I am. I am a PhD from a top-five research university, have held postdocs, published widely, and edit an academic journal.

1. Which field are you in? Social science or humanities?

2. How many of the three pages of Weiss pubs constitute good evidence for Schroth permanently reducing curves or preventing progression?

3. How many of the pubs actually are studies designed to test the efficacy of Schroth exercises in doing the above?

4. Are you Weiss? I thought you might be a while back but when I realized Weiss was an orthopedic surgeon I thought probably not.