A menace to science

Guardian Unlimited has an excellent article by the dependable Ben Goldacre (of Bad Science) about a recent Advertising Standards Authority case. “Dr” Gillian McKeith has “voluntarily” agreed not to call herself a doctor any more in advertisements. The reason? She isn’t a doctor and doesn’t have a PhD. Not, at least, in the usual sense. She bought her degree from a non-accredited US college, and doesn’t have any meaningful scientific qualifications. Indeed, as Goldacre points out, she barely has any meaningful scientific knowledge. And yet she portrays herself as a scientist, with scientifically verified health products. But spurious claims can be dangerous, and are certainly deceptive. She makes a lot of money out of her little “nutrition” empire. Shame it’s all hooey.

Goldacre writes:

to anyone who knows the slightest bit about science, this woman is a bad joke…McKeith is a menace to the public understanding of science. She seems to misunderstand not nuances, but the most basic aspects of biology – things that a 14-year-old could put her straight on… I don’t care what kind of squabbles McKeith wants to engage in over the technicalities of whether a non-accredited correspondence-course PhD from the US entitles you, by the strictest letter of the law, to call yourself “doctor”: to me, nobody can be said to have a meaningful qualification in any biology-related subject if they make the same kind of basic mistakes made by McKeith… She even does this in the book Miracle Superfood, which, we are told, is the published form of her PhD. “In laboratory experiments with anaemic animals, red-blood cell counts have returned to normal within four or five days when chlorophyll was given,” she says. Her reference for this experimental data is a magazine called Health Store News… McKeith’s pseudo-academic work is like the rituals of the cargo cult: the form is superficially right, the superscript numbers are there, the technical words are scattered about, she talks about research and trials and findings, but the substance is lacking… This is not about the medical hegemony neglecting to address the holistic needs of the people. In many cases, the research has been done, and we know that the more specific claims of nutritionists are actively wrong… And that’s exactly why you do scientific research, to check your assumptions. Otherwise it wouldn’t be called “science”, it would be called “assuming”, or “guessing”, or “making it up as you go along”.

(Thanks to Anne for the tip.)

pax et bonum

Article posted at 11:00am on 12 February 2007
Category: General, Links, Food, Science