Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science

In yesterday’s Telegraph, Damian Thompson asks whether we’re seeing “The last rites for alternative medicine?” For Thomson

CAM’s [Complementary and Alternative Medicine's] real problem…is shortage of proof. The information technology brilliantly exploited by unorthodox therapies is now being harnessed to spread the inconvenient truth that most of them don’t work. Sceptics in the blogosphere have assembled a global daisy-chain of links exposing the falsehoods of alternative practitioners.

Interestingly, Thompson believes that media nutritionists such as Prof Patrick Holford of Teesside University (and - in particular - Holford’s unjustified support for Wakefield’s bad science) have played an important role in CAM’s problems:

When did the tide begin to turn? I reckon the consumers of CAM got the shock of their lives when the case against MMR - in which they had invested so heavily, not to say hysterically - collapsed.

Dr Andrew Wakefield’s theory that the injection triggered autism tied together a whole bundle of anxieties: about “Big Pharma”, synthetic drugs, a blinkered medical establishment, lying politicians and autism, one of the least understood but most widely misdiagnosed child disorders of our age. Plus, Dr Wakefield’s campaign made such a good story. His claims felt right.

But they were wrong, it turned out - completely unsupported by large-scale studies. They were, however, supported by the nutritionist high priests of CAM such as Patrick Holford, who carried on lobbying for Wakefield even after the latter had been accused of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council.

The media nutritionists have also contributed to the erosion of faith in CAM. For years, they had the lucrative field to themselves. No breakfast television sofa was complete without a “food doctor” making wild claims for berries and herbs through a rictus grin…

A website called Holfordwatch then started looking at the CV of Patrick Holford, who was recently made a professor…by Teesside University, despite the fact that his only academic qualification is a 30-year-old BSc in psychology.

Thompson concludes the article by noting a change in the intellectual climate:

Instead of requests to share their wisdom, alternative practitioners are being asked to produce double-blind randomised tests to support their claims. They try to shrug off the demands - but, if you look closely, you can see their ayurvedic auras vanishing into thin air.

It’s a well-argued article, and I hope that Thompson is right. However, I’m left wondering about the role of universities in this. What will happen to universities such as Westminster or Teesside who - while the general public are increasingly asking ‘alternative’ practitioners for proper evidence - are helping to legitimise these practitioners’ flimsy claims? Would you feel happy studying Physics at a university that teaches students on another course that “amethysts emit high yin energy” or Nutrition at a university that is sufficiently impressed by Holford’s nutritional science to make him a visiting professor?

Update 27 April: Holford Myths draws our attention to Patrick Holford and His Conspiracy Theories in The Times.