Here at Holfordwatch, we’re delighted to see that so many blogs are giving Professor Patrick Holford plenty of attention: the new Holford Myths blog, Damian Thompson’s Telegraph blog and today’s Skeptic’s Circle. The excellent Holford Myths blog launched recently, offering a summary of some of Holford’s greatest hits. They have apparently also been contacted by Holford recently. As some of his complaint to them refers to Holfordwatch, we will quote this complaint (reproducing in full the – apparently slightly edited – version on Holford Myths) here:
To the owners of holfordwatch.net and holfordmyths.org, posted on 10th January,2008:
Who owns, and takes responsibility for these websites? Why are you not willing to disclose your identity, and take responsibility for this highly defamatory and malicious material?
Who funds these websites? I estimate that the equivalent of one full-time person is employed to scrutinise everything I say and have said, then compose these inaccurate and tired stories based on material going back to 1981!
Whom do I sue for defamation should I wish to? I am the owner of 100% Health Ltd, which publishes the website http://www.holfordmyths.com. This website answers all your significant defamatory allegations. If you don’t agree with these facts then provide the contrary evidence and I will respond.
At least declare who you are. My interests and beliefs are open for all to inspect on my website and even such opponents as Ben Goldacre and David Colquhoun, misguided as they might, be put their name to their attacks.
But again any claims in that publication that can be shown to be false will be corrected by the author and I promise to update my website accordingly.
All this openness contrasts very unfavourably with your own hiding behind a veil of anonymity. If you really are interested in the truth, or in scientific debate, or in protecting the public, you would come into the open and you would publish this letter unedited, as a blog on 10th January, 2008..
Your website states that your motive is to protect people from any (or all) of my work that may be “ultimately misleading, distracting, expensive, disempowering, and unhelpful.” I have been in the field of nutrition for 30 years. I am not aware of anyone being harmed by my advice and many thousands of people being helped and empowered. If you know of someone who has been misled, distracted, disempowered and harmed would you please let me know?
As it is your anonymous jibes seem more a form of cyber bullying than an attempted to engage in serious dialogue over what is best for people’s health.
Patrick Holford.
Holford Myths offers an excellent response to Holford’s comment – and most of his complaints are too trivial to be worth responding to here. We will contribute our responses to a couple of the points he raises, though.
Firstly, Holford complains about “cyber bullying”. I find this rather odd – most of the writing on this blog has consisted of critical analyses of his scientific research. These analyses may have been robust at times but that is in line with normal academic critique – and if Holford insists on continuing to churn out the bad science, I am not sure what else to do. When given this type of feedback, undergraduate students would generally reconsider their practices and improve their work – but, sadly, this does not seem to be the case with Professor Holford of Teesside University. However, if Holford does wish to build a constructive dialogue, we would be delighted – for example, we have asked him a number of scientific questions about the Food for the Brain 2007 Survey.
We do not take the matter of people’s health and well-being lightly. We think that people deserve to be given an accurate overview of the science on which some recommendations are made which is why we have made our robust and detailed criticisms of Holford’s science and claims.
Secondly, we have explained several times why we want to remain anonymous. We would like our criticisms to be responded to based on their validity, not our qualifications etc. Again, this is in line with normal academic debate – for example, journal articles are usually subjected to anonymous review. If Holford does not like this, I suspect he will struggle to engage with certain aspects of academic debate.
Finally, we would like to repeat a challenge laid down by Holford Myths:
we have made a full declaration of our competing interests in the pharma and supplement industries (none) and the total payments we receive from these industries (£0). We have asked Holford if he would be prepared to offer a similar disclosure.
Moving on, then, to some more interesting content: Damian Thompson goes over some of Holford’s work on his Telegraph blog: as Thompson puts it, Holford is “one of the stars of my book Counterknowledge, and I thought I’d carry a few pars from it to explain why”. Holford also features in today’s Skeptic’s Circle, on the shiny new Skeptical Surfer blog.
We hope that Holford is enjoying his online fame but it would be helpful if, even with all this new-found attention, he could find time to answer some of the significant scientific questions that we have raised about his research.
