Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science

On July 5, the Observer published two terrible MMR stories that Kevin Leitch summarised nicely: The Observer “had decided to play the role of media dumbass. Obviously the mail and Private Eye are having an off day.”  The Observer have not properly apologised for these stories, or retracted them: Mike Stanton summarises much of the blog and media coverage on this.

I’ve been in touch with Stephen Pritchard - Readers’ Editor of The Observer - about two errors in particular.  As I noted last week, The Observer states that:

Critics point out that the US [Autism Omnibus] court case is not about the MMR vaccine itself but centres on the use of a preservative called thimerosal, which contains 50 per cent mercury and until a few years ago was added to routine vaccinations given to children in the US under one. Crucially, it has never been an element of the MMR vaccine here.

This statement is simply wrong.  MMR never contained thimerosal, anywhere, ever: it’s a live vaccine, so adding such a preservative would render it ineffective. Also, the Autism Omnibus has discussed MMR at length.

Stephen Pritchard did, eventually, get back in touch with me.  However, his response was somewhat strange and totally unsatisfactory.

Firstly, Pritchard appears to believe that, because MMR is not given to children under 1yo, it was correct for The Observer to claim that “the US [Autism Omnibus] court case is not about the MMR vaccine itself but centres on the use of a preservative called thimerosal”.  I could understand Pritchard arguing this point if there were some scope for confusion here, but there is not: the Autism Omnibus discussed MMR at length (in testimony freely available online) and I personally e-mailed Pritchard a link to Chadwick’s testimony discussing Wakefield.  So to imply that the Autism Omnibus claim is not about MMR is simply, obviously, embarrassingly wrong - and should be corrected ASAP.

Secondly, Pritchard argues that the sentence “Crucially, [thimerosal] has never been an element of the MMR vaccine here” was not meant to imply the MMR contained thimerosal in the US.  Instead, it was meant to reassure UK readers that MMR in the UK never contained thimerosal.  However, if that was the intention, then the article is hideously badly and confusingly written (as noted below, it even confused The Observer’s sister paper, The Guardian).  In particular, the ‘here’ at the end of the sentence should have been replaced with a more suitable word (e.g. ‘anywhere’).  Again, either this was wrong or misleading - and a correction and/or clarification should be published ASAP.

To make things more entertaining, The Observer’s sister paper, The Guardian, appear to have interpreted The Observer’s MMR claims in much the same way that I did.  David Batty included the aforementioned claims in a Guardian website article; they have now been removed and replaced with the text

A paragraph regarding concern about MMR overseas, extracted from a piece in the Observer now deleted from the website due to concerns about its accuracy, has been removed from this article until the information can be verified

In other words, The Guardian made the understandable but unwise mistake of believing that The Observer’s MMR coverage was accurate; they have now removed this information from their website.  I have also been forward an e-mail from the office of the Guardian Readers’ Editor: they are contacting Pritchard and Denis Campbell at the Observer to remind them that MMR never contained thimerosal.  You gotta laugh.

I’ll call both Readers’ Editors next week, to see how this interaction is going: will The Observer respond to the corrections it is being sent by The Guardian?  Will the poor quality of The Observer’s MMR coverage move their sister paper to fratricide?  Or will The Observer be allowed to wait until its credibility is entirely blown, and the readers (or, more to the point, lack of readers) kill the paper with a thousand cuts?

Then again, maybe I’m being too harsh.  After all, the type of quality journalism found in the Daily Mail can, no doubt, allow a pretty decent number of newspaper sales.

Update August 8: The Observer does it again, they actually let Campbell loose on a special report for perceived medical controversies. ??!?
Confused by ‘Muddled Medical Research’? Scoop Campbell to the Rescue and The Observer - Confused by Health Advice
Le Canard Noir is sufficiently irritated that he has added an Observer-MMR Non-Apology Counter to his front page. Maybe we ought to consider some of those for our outstanding enquiries to Patrick Holford on a number of issues and points of correction.