Bad science by Ben Goldacre

Author:Ben Goldacre
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: SCIENCE, Essays, Errors, Scientific, General
ISBN: 9780007284870
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2009-04-02T07:00:00+00:00

Professor?

A couple of interesting things arise from this realisation. Firstly, and importantly, since I am always keen to engage with people’s ideas: how might you conduct a discussion with someone like Patrick Holford? He is constantly accusing others of ‘not keeping up’ with the literature. Anyone who doubts the value of his pills is a ‘flat-earther’, or a pawn of the pharmaceutical industry. He would pull out research claims and references. What would you do, given that you can’t possibly read them on the spot? Being scrupulously polite, and yet firm, the only sensible answer, surely, would be to say: ‘I’m not entirely sure I can accept your precis or your interpretation of that data without checking it myself.’ This may not go down too well.

But the second point is more important. Holford has been appointed—as I might have mentioned briefly—a professor at Teesside. He brandishes this fact proudly in his press releases, as you would expect. And according to Teesside documents—there’s a large set, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, available online—the clear plan at his appointment was for Professor Holford to supervise research, and to teach university courses.

It is not a surprise to me that there are entrepreneurs and gurus—individuals—selling their pills and their ideas on the open market. In some strange sense I respect and admire their tenacity. But it strikes me that universities have a very different set of responsibilities, and in the field of nutrition there is a particular danger. Homeopathy degrees, at least, are transparent. The universities where it is taught are secretive and sheepish about their courses (perhaps because when the exam papers leak, it turns out that they’re asking questions about ‘miasma’—in 2008) but at least these degrees in alternative therapies are what they say on the tin.

The nutritionists’ project is more interesting: this work takes the form of science—the language, the pills and the referenci-ness—making claims that superficially mirror the assertions made by academics in the field of nutrition, where there is much real science to be done. Occasionally there may be some good evidence for their assertions (although I can’t imagine the point of taking health advice from someone who is only occasionally correct). But in reality the work of ‘nutritionists’ is often, as we have seen, rooted in New Age alternative therapy, and while reiki quantum energy healing is fairly clear about where it’s coming from, nutritionists have adopted the cloak of scientific authority so plausibly, with a smattering of common-sense lifestyle advice and a few references, that most people have barely spotted the discipline for what it is. On very close questioning, some nutritionists will acknowledge that theirs is a ‘complementary or alternative therapy’, but the House of Lords inquiry into alternative medicines, for example, didn’t even list it as one.

This proximity to real academic scientific work summons up sufficient paradoxes that it is reasonable to wonder what might happen in Teesside when Professor Holford begins to help shape young minds. In one room, we can only

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