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<\/a>In taking to Twitter to challenge Professor Stephen Hawking\u2019s scientific appraisal skills, Jeremy Hunt accidentally ignited not only the incredulity of the scientific community, but also one of last weekend\u2019s biggest national news stories<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe media gleefully seized upon an act of mansplaining so audacious it surely deserves it own word: the health secretary\u2014a man with no scientific training whatsoever\u2014\u201cHuntsplaining\u201d to the world\u2019s greatest physicist that his grasp of scientific evidence was lacking.<\/p>\n
In his speech to the Royal Society of Medicine, Hawking argued that politicians\u2019 tendency<\/a> to cherry-pick evidence to suit their political ends\u2014citing some studies but suppressing others\u2014debases scientific culture. Hunt, Hawking claimed, was guilty of precisely this when he alleged that 11,000 patients a year died through understaffing of hospitals at weekends, conveniently ignoring the 13 peer-reviewed papers<\/a> that contradicted his “weekend effect<\/a>” claims.<\/p>\n In a series of rapid-fire tweets, Hunt shot back that Hawking, though brilliant, was \u201cwrong<\/a>\u201d on the lack of evidence for the “weekend effect.” Ironically, he cherry-picked a single study to do so: the 2015 Freemantle paper<\/a> whose very authors warned it would be<\/a> \u201crash and misleading\u201d to draw the simplistic conclusions Hunt desired. The media had a field day.<\/p>\n And so\u2014in a peculiar act of reputational self-harm\u2014the person who highlighted most starkly the use of bad science to push through political agendas was not the professor but the politician himself. A modern morality tale from this side of the political pond, perhaps, about the perils of intemperate tweeting.<\/p>\n If this seems like a silly season Twitter spat, it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s deadly serious. Evidence, its misuse, and NHS morale are all inextricably entwined. Perhaps the most demoralising example of political cherry-picking concerns the vital matter of NHS understaffing. As if the daily lived experience of overstretched rotas weren\u2019t bad enough for frontline staff, the final, soul-destroying kick in the proverbials is when a politician pops up to tell us that actually the NHS is positively awash with thousands of new nurses and doctors. This denial of frontline reality\u2014the gaps blighting so many nurse and doctor rotas, the hospital beds being closed in their scores\u2014feels like an act of deliberate silencing. It removes from ordinary staff our voice, our right to tell the truth and to be heard.<\/p>\n How can hope flourish among staff who feel silenced, and how can morale be rebuilt without hope? At a time of remarkable consensus that the NHS\u2019s greatest problem is its workforce crisis, political spin should be recognised as a part of the problem, a hope-sapping drain upon staff. In this context, last weekend\u2019s totemic spectacle of a health secretary seemingly so blinded by conviction that he attacked the scientific method of the Albert Einstein of our century made me, frankly, despair.<\/p>\n Happily, hope bloomed anew as\u2014along with several hundred other healthcare professionals\u2014I listened, enthralled, to Stephen Hawking on stage at the RSM describe decades of living with motor neurone disease. The hum and whir of his computerised wheelchair were audible: not one member of the audience made a sound. At 75, Hawking should be long dead. And indeed, as he told us: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be here today if it were not for the NHS.\u201d The very fact of his enduring existence made me swell with shared pride and awe at the potency of medicine\u2014and the ability of our health service to keep him alive. Politics receded as an auditorium united to celebrate an extraordinary life and the medical care that made it possible.<\/p>\n In an era of fake news and the denigration of experts, facts are really all we have. And sometimes, the simplest facts are the most potent. Thanks to the NHS, a man who should be dead has lived to unlock the secrets of the universe. This NHS doctor hasn\u2019t felt so uplifted for some time.<\/p>\n Rachel Clarke<\/strong>\u00a0is a specialty doctor in palliative medicine based in Oxford. Twitter\u00a0@doctor_oxford<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Competing interests<\/strong>: None declared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If this seems like a silly season Twitter spat, it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s deadly serious […]<\/p>\n