Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science

My first degree was a BA - and, by the end of it, I’d got a bit fed up with all the ‘what do you say to an arts graduate? Coke and large fries with that’ jokes from science students. So, it’s good to see (pseudo)science degrees coming in for some criticism too.

UCL chemistry prof. David Colquhoun has recently been making the news with his criticisms of BSc degrees in homeopathy - arguing, not unreasonably, that a BSc in pseudoscience will be unscientific. Colquhoun’s also written a bit about the Institute for Optimum Nutrition’s (ION) links to Bedfordshire University - with all the publicity for degrees in homeopathic pseudoscience, I think now would be a good time to look again at this ‘degree’.

The ION offers a DipION, which Bedfordshire accredits as a foundation science degree. This foundation degree also lets students get a BSc in Nutritional Sciences with only 1 year of additional work. As you might expect, I’ve got a few problems with this.

The ION looks rather strange for an academic institution. Holford - its founder and director - has really struggled to engage in and with scientific debate. I’ve listed a few examples of this on the blog - with lots more to come…limited more by the time available to write about the than by limited amounts of material - but I think Holford’s response to the JAMA meta-analysis of anti-oxidant vitamins will make a good case study. As I’ve shown, Holford gets almost every aspect of his response wrong - this is not the type of response the one would expect from someone with a good understanding of the science around nutrition, or even an intelligent layperson. Chairs/directors of university departments are generally well-respected academics, with an excellent knowledge of their subject; Holford’s difficulties in reading a (pretty straightforward) JAMA article might lead one to question how well he can lead the ION’s academic programmes.

There are also issues around the accountability of ION staff. Academics (and even poor students like me, who do part-time work helping out with university teaching) are bound by university disciplinary procedures, equal opportunities policies etc. Some of Holford’s behaviour - not declaring his competing interests in his BMJ Rapid Response, implying that his BMJ Rapid Response is a proper publication, incorrectly associating dyslexia and dyspraxia with low intelligence, among other things - would be problematic for those working in an accredited university. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a complaints/disciplinary procedure, equal opportunities policy, etc. for the ION - and I certainly can’t find anything like the type of open and accountable procedures that you’d expect from an accredited university.

Of course, the concern isn’t just with ION’s management. For a science degree, the entry requirements are, um, interesting - for example, those with no knowledge of chemistry can get around this requirement by taking a course which covers 3 weekends, and is followed by a 2hr exam. Now, I’m sure these are 3 very challenging weekends, but it doesn’t really compare to the requirements for a ‘normal’ science degree (I should know - I was considering physics at university, but the fact I only had Physics and Computing at A-level, and not Maths, pretty much ruled that out).

Of course, quality research comes from some odd places - so it’s worth a look at how the ION stacks up as a research institution. Well, academics who’ve struggled to stop undergrad students from referencing wikipedia in their coursework will be delighted to see that this is now acceptable in high quality academic publications such as the ION journal.

As well as this type of trend-setting, ION hosts the Brain Bio Institute clinic which offers a diagnostic questionnaire - analysed here - which does not demonstrate even a (good) undergraduate-level understanding of the issues. Aside from typos and questions that don’t make sense, this questionnaire will also diagnose you with a whole range of likely health problems for no apparent reason, and give potentially dangerous false negatives (e.g. diagnosing a 0% chance that allergy is causing you problems based on an online survey!) As an undergraduate project, this could get students into real trouble - both due to the poor quality of the questionnaire, and the ethical issues around the potentially harmful advice the questionnaire gives out.

Anyway, I haven’t got time to go through more of the ION’s publicity materials, research etc. here - I’ve got to get on with some research of my own. I’ll get back to this another day - but, given what we now know about the high quality (pseudo)science degrees available in homeopathy and ION-style nutrition, I’d like to end with a joke for all the science students who’ve taken the piss out of those of us who are studying arts and social sciences:

what do you say to a science graduate? large big mac and fries, please.