James Coyne: PLOS One lawyers “squaring off” against PACE authors

Professor James Coyne has provided an update on his request to PLOS One that they enforce their data-sharing policy upon the authors of the PACE trial, who published one of their papers in the journal.
Professor Coyne had requested the data from Professor Paul McCrone under PLOS One’s policy. However, Professor McCrone’s administrative institution, King’s College London, treated the request according to the Freedom of Information Act, waited the maximum 20 days to respond, and then dismissed the request as “vexatious”, and having “a lack of value or serious purpose” and an “improper motive”.
This was, Professor Coyne said, “a nasty, unprofessional, personal response”. Now, he says, “PLOS One is squaring off with its lawyers against the PACE investigators and their lawyers”.
He added, “It’s also no secret that Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, has put pressure on the PLOS management to quiet me down both at their blog site and in social media…. Horton demanded that PLOS clamp down [on] not only what I upload to their blog, but what I say on Twitter and Facebook.” Professor Coyne described Horton as “laughable”.
Coyne’s statements appeared in his most recent blogpost, where he explained to patients how he curates his Facebook page in a way that will maximise the benefits to the ME/CFS community. He noted that in order to involve the broadest possible audience, he could not always accept others’ material.
He said, “I don’t think it’ll come to this, but my Facebook wall certainly could be a place where a general strike of the over 4000 PLOS academic editors could be organized – if PLOS dropped the ball and weakened their data sharing policy.”
He also noted, “I strongly promote PLOS… because I am committed to the values that it represents. I’m quite critical of PLOS when I feel its journals depart from those values. Ultimately, I am more loyal to those values than to PLOS.”

Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp
Email

Latest News

A laptop sitting on a desk. In the background, you can see a cup and saucer, some post-it notes and a folder. On the screen is the Scottish Government's website, with a large title that says 'Scottish Good Practice Statement on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME-CFS).' A red banner is at the bottom of the photo with white writing which says, '#MEAction Scotland responds to the updated Scottish Good Practice Statement on ME.’ The ME Action Scotland logo is in the top left corner.

#MEAction Scotland responds to the updated Scottish Good Practice Statement

The Scottish Government published the updated Scottish Good Practice Statement (SGPS) on ME-CFS on 28th February 2023.  The decision to update the Scottish Good Practice Statement, originally published in 2010, was a result of the Scottish stakeholder review of the 2021 NICE guideline on ME/CFS, and its recommendations for implementing the guideline in Scotland. The

Read More »

Help keep our work going

We rely on donations from people like you to keep fighting for equality for people with ME.

Donate

Get actions alerts and news direct to your inbox

You can choose what you want to be kept up to date on.

Subscribe
Scroll to Top