A short but holistic PhD
So Ben Goldacre reads Gillian McKeith’s PhD – all 49 stapled pages of it.
Inside is what I could only describe as Cargo Cult science: she’s going through the motions, but the content, only closer inspection, is like an eerie parody of an academic text. There are lots of grand statements about research, with nice superscript numbers relating to references in the back. But when you chase to the back of the book to see what these academic documents are, they include such august periodicals as Delicious, Creative Living, Healthy Eating, and my favourite: Spiritual Nutrition and the Rainbow Diet…She expands grandly and uncritically – with anecdote, but no data – about her many dramatic treatment successes, like a physician from the dark ages. She talks about her own “clinical research”, with huge claims for its findings, but wherever this clinical research is, all you can find here are her anecdotes…Since people like me started digging, the McKeith industry – worth millions – describes her as a holistic nutritionist. There is no such thing as “holistic nutrition”: if you make statements about food and are backed up by academic/scientific research, as McKeith does, repeatedly, in her books, her shows, her semi-academic work, and products … then that’s just nutrition. The word “holistic” is at best a piece of branding; but at worst, it’s a cloak for accepting inadequate standards of referencing and evidence.
Ah yes…Did we remember to include ‘holistic’ in the Dictionary? What a silly question.
Holistic
Everything good. Whole, pure, sincere, whole, integrated, spiritual, whole, centered.
And of course nutritionistic, and healthy, and natural, and (as an unexpected bonus) scholarly.
Fortunately I have a low tolerance for that sort of telly so have never been exposed to her, although Private Eye have had her over in the TV Eye column before, and her trash has been exposed by a funny Guardian TV writer called Charlie Brooker, who seems to exist solely to watch the scads of garbage tv so we don’t have to. One of the
annoying things about Channel 4 is its addiction to what they now call ‘factual programming’ such as McKeiths, rather than outmoded and dull old ‘documentary’. (They’ve just had to shelve a whole week of programmes about masturbation, ‘provocatively’ entitled ‘wank week’, as the poor taste threshold was exceded by so many of the programmes the execs had lined up.)
Ben Goldacre is a national treasure… shame the rest of the Grauniad falls so far below his standards!
Funny thing about Ms. [NOT Doctor. NEVER Doctor! :-)] McKeith – she has in the past talked about how she grew up in a wee cottage in rural Perthshire (deeply romantic childhood detail which undoubtedly appeals to sappy Americans). Which is interesting, since it doesn’t exactly fit with her attending a bog standard State school here in Dunfermline, Fife.
Ah well. Visiting her website is an amusing barrage of adverts for her supposedly “proven” products…
A+ for first-class self-promotion. E- for pathetic pseudo-science!
I think the reasons there are so many “alternative” nutritional theories being swallowed by so much of the public are: (1) the actual science of nutrition is very complex, with lots of technical terms which can be easily appropriated or imitated by quacks, and (because it is so complex, and there are so many unanswered questions in it) scientists seem to change their theories twice a week; (2) many people have medical problems which aren’t resolved by actual medical treatments, or are so vague that an actual physician can’t tell what to do about them, but which people are very insistant on getting solutions to; (3) most people can’t tell real scientific credentials from fake ones; and (4) popping a vitamin pill or herbal drug seems to be an easy remedy. In other words, even after generations of education supposedly making us more scientifically knowledgeable, snake oil salespersons are raking it in as profitably as ever.
Hell, if it says ‘Instant Detox’ on the label it’s going in my basket.
Don, do you mean in your shopping basket,
or in your waste basket?