Why The NHS Cancelled My Talk

As both a “climate denier” and an “anti-vaxxer” he was akin to an emissary from the Devil

Written by Norman Fenton

In June 2023 I reported about how a talk I was due to give at the NHS Health and Care Analytics Conference 2023 was cancelled not because of its content (it was about Bayesian network applications) but because of my ‘controversial views’ about the covid vaccines

In July 2023 I reported on the heavily redacted response from Birmingham University (who were hosting the conference) to my subject access request.

In August 2023 I reported on the astonishing response from the NHS to an FOI request that somebody, who I did not know, had made about the cancellation.

After that I finally got a response from the NHS to my own subject access request about the cancellation.

For legal reasons I never reported on that or what happened thereafter because The Free Speech Union lawyers submitted a formal request for an apology on my behalf and a small payment to a charity.

Because there has as yet been no resolution there are still limits to what I can say publicly. But I can reveal some snippets of what the NHS and their lawyers said.

The NHS response to the subject access request contained a covering letter and 17 different heavily redacted documents, each of which contained a thread of one or more emails about me.

Four of the documents were simply email threads in which I had participated before and after the cancellation – so nothing new there. Nine of the documents were correspondence from, presumably, members of the public who had made formal complaints to the NHS about my cancellation.

It was nice to know that people had complained on my behalf, but the most interesting aspect of the exchange was that the documents contained no responses from the NHS and no information as to whether the NHS ever did reply to these complaints.

The remaining four documents were internal communications announcing, and later confirming, that my talk was cancelled, instructing people to remove my name, close down the associated Eventbrite announcement, etc.

Hence, there was little new in the subject access request response to shed light on the real reasons and process that led up to their decision to cancel my appearance. And, to this day, the Conference Chair Ben Goldacre has refused to respond to any of the multiple requests for information about this.

However, following the Free Speech Union letter the NHS lawyers sent a lengthy response that contained many remarkable and offensive statements about me. First, they explicitly referred to tweets I had made AFTER the cancellation announcement on 20 June 2023.

More here:

https://principia-scientific.com/why-the-nhs-cancelled-my-talk/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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