So, it’s farewell to the Visiting Professorship (please click that link to demonstrate the fabulousness that is JKN) for Former Visiting Professor Patrick Holford but still Head of Science and Education at Biocare.
Holford and Teesside had a relationship that saw him enjoying the fruits of his professorship for far short of a 1000 days. But it was probably enough for both parties to have had a lasting impact on each other and to have parted with mutual regret.
No flowers by request. Champagne donations probably gratefully received by the noted scholars and researchers who were being linked to him by association.
One does wonder what will happen to the PhD student who was meant to be splitting her studies between Food for the Brain and the University of Teesside. And, just where are they going to find an MSc student to lumber with the wretched (some would say impossible) task of validating the lamentable questionnaire that they used in last year’s FFTB 2007 Survey of Schoolchildren?
h/t to jdc for the introduction to the JKN gizmo. Sign up for JKN, it is excellent: unlike Furl, you can share it, and, as you can see, make handy annotations. Web 2.0, the party continues.
25 responses so far ↓
superburger // June 25, 2008 at 7:15 pm
i wonder how the decision to end the association was made?
i guess that’s the type of thing the FOI act was made for…….
dvnutrix // June 25, 2008 at 7:52 pm
As Teesside has been the recipient of several such requests, I wonder if they have moved to having such discussions by phone. Possibly, there was a conversation between the Vice Chancellor and his Visiting Professor. It is possible that the resignation agreement is protected by a confidentiality clause. Who knows?
(If somebody does, we should be agog to know more.)
draust // June 25, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Seeing the ex-Prof’s beaming countenance reminds us once again how important his age-defyingly youthful mien is to the sales pitch:
“Buy the books and you too can stay young!”
If you will allow me a moment of feeble parody:
- with apologies to the ghost of Christopher Marlowe
dvnutrix // June 25, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Marlowe’s Faustus is one of my favourite pieces of literature, Dr Aust.
Surely, however, you meant to write, “test our…” rather than “don’t take the…” given Holford’s penchant for recommending tests?
What with the dowsing and everything, certain scenes from Macbeth come to mind. McKeith, Holford and Briffa - all round a bubbling cauldron, throwing in ingredients and muttering incantations.
draust // June 25, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Yes, Faustus is tremendous stuff. Like all dilettante types I like the grandstand speech when Mephistopheles is about to come and claim.
I had meant to stick closer to Marlowe’s second line ending cadence by writing:
“Was this the face that flogged a million pills
And shifted countless bowels with psyllium?”
..but sadly I have not come across Patrick recommending fibre supplements… though perhaps you know better?
PS Re-reading the big speech I am oddly reminded of one of my favourite pieces of music, Nina Simone’s much sampled “Sinnerman”.
Lente, lente currite noctis equi
I think the most Faustian figures in AltMed are not so much people like Patrick who are entirely Alt.Reality, but those who start from conventional medical scientific backgrounds and gradually lose the plot. The late Jacques Benveniste was a classic example, but people like Dr John Briffa and “Professor” Kim Jobst also come to mind.
dvnutrix // June 25, 2008 at 10:50 pm
I gather that at the Allergy Show, he was heavily promoting Enteroguard but advocating psyllium for those who can’t tolerate Enteroguard plus the glutamine and the non-dairy probiotics.
However, poetic license, psyllium fits so brilliantly.
I’ve just seen the repeat of Dara O’Briain commenting on TAPL in Room 101 on BBC2 just now. Splendid stuff. DO’B has done stuff with Ben Goldacre - it would be classic to see the 2 of them comment on a rich array of other characters who exist in Alt.Reality (tm respected) or are busily engaging in faustian pacts.
draust // June 25, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Gosh… Patrick’s Enteroguard is an “Intestinal Conditioner”, I see. This strikes me as a term unknown in medicine, though of course IANAN (I am not a nutritionist).
Re. the Faustian parodies… how about the modifed version:
dvnutrix // June 25, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Your politeness is admirable but we need to delete ‘please’ - the scansion police demand it and their ruthlessness puts grammar Nazis in the shade.
Was this the face that flogged a million pills
And shifted countless bowels with psyllium?
Sweet Patrick, make us immortal - test our piss.
His test confirm my fears - ‘Unclean’ it cries.
Oh, Patrick, come, sell me my health again.
Supplement well, for wellness is in these pills,
And all is dross that is not Biocare.
Of course, neither we nor Marlowe hold a candle to the Poet of Putney.
draust // June 25, 2008 at 11:27 pm
I certainly wouldn’t want to fall afoul of the scansion police.
BTW, I think I have a better disclaimer:
“I am not a licensed nutritionist”
or I-ANAL-N.
I will be using that one again, especially given the enthusiasm of many nutritionists for bowels.
dvnutrix // June 25, 2008 at 11:28 pm
I-ANAL-N. Another tm - you are racking them up, Dr Aust.
draust // June 25, 2008 at 11:29 pm
PS Love the extended version, by the way.
draust // June 25, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Cheers, dvn. I saw someone describe John Stone of JABS as “drearily ubiquitous” over on jdc’s blog, which gave me a little moment of pride.
Dr John Crippen // June 25, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Now there is a vacancy, I propose that Dr John Briffa should step in. He is, after all, a doctor
John
dvnutrix // June 25, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Dr Aust, I’ve just seen your comments over at the Briffa Piñata aka NHSBD. Good grief.
The hubris, the flawed protagonists, it’s all heading towards a Jacobean Tragedy.
Slight derail. James Bainbridge has posted several poems and reflections on advertising by Tessimond and Orwell. They are worth reading but this seemed particularly germane:
dvnutrix // June 26, 2008 at 12:07 am
How odd that you should suggest that, Dr Crippen. Both Patrick Holford and Dr Briffa are named lecturers for the upcoming MSc in Nutrition offered by the Northern College of Acupuncture.
And, we have discussed the de/merits of this interesting choice of teaching personnel on an earlier occasion.
clare // June 26, 2008 at 7:41 am
Enteroguard is an excellent product
brainduck // June 26, 2008 at 8:49 am
Dr Aust: ‘I think the most Faustian figures in AltMed are not so much people like Patrick who are entirely Alt.Reality, but those who start from conventional medical scientific backgrounds and gradually lose the plot.’
Oi! Holford did start off doing a sensible degree too, you know - I am fervently praying that tomorrow will have shown me to get slightly better marks than him at it.
Dr Aust // June 26, 2008 at 10:10 am
Yes - sorry Brainduck. I wasn’t trying to imply that Psychology was not a proper degree. More that everything Patrick had done since was essentially free of inconvenient scientific reality.
For what it’s worth, though, here’s my tuppence worth on Psychology departments. A divide is often noticeable (at least at the academic staff level) between two groups; the people who are “experimental” psychologists (tests, “instruments”, data, scientific rigour etc etc)… And a second (hopefully smaller) group who largely dispense with science, and are into grand (sometimes social) theorising about “the psychological basis of ABC” or “the social history of XYZ”. This lot don’t do data that much but are into hand-waving.
Now I freely admit that is a sweeping generalisation, based on seminars over the years and the odd examiners’ meeting. So feel free to shoot me down.
And good luck with the degree result.
brainduck // June 26, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Dr Aust, agreed, which is why York describes what it does as ‘Experimental Psychology’: http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/psych/www/about/exppsych.shtml
Holford did have a decent chance to learn about how to read & interpret evidence (or at least now he would, & I’ve been taught by at least one of the same people), it’s not something medical training gives you a monopoly on. If he had done English Lit I’d have had more sympathy for his confused-ness.
Thanks!
Claire // June 26, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Regarding the use of “Faustian” to describe people such as Dr John Briffa, I’m afraid I feel a fit of ueber-nitpicking coming on. First off, I’m more familiar with Goethe’s version than the Marlowe, and there are pertinent themes of hubris, but I think in both the bargain is a conscious decision to ‘go over to the dark side’ in order to access power, fame, knowledge etc. Perhaps I’m being too charitable, but I don’t think people like Dr B. have made such a bargain, i.e. consciously promoting pseudoscience in return for media fame and fortune. Though perhaps it’s more unsettling to contemplate that they’re acting out of deeply felt conviction.
draust // June 26, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Hi Claire
I take your point, and I agree that at least when conventionally-trained people start down the “Alt Therapy” road they are largely sincere.
But… the longer they continue down in that direction, and the more successful they are, the more they lose their sense of the divide between reality and Alternate Reality. The phrase “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions” springs to mind.
Perhaps it is less of a strictly Faustian bargain, and more of a Darth Vader scenario (starts with desire to do something, grows frustrated with restrictions and rules and gradually gets more and more capricious and bonkers, until eventually….).
Contributing to this, I would say, is the fact that mainstream people who DO embrace Alternative (Reality) “Medicine” end up hanging out professionally with more and more other Alternative Reality folk (like, for instance, the mixed bag of loons and apologists at the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health). Under these circumstances, the temptation to increasingly lose touch with evidence-based reality, and embrace Alternative Reality in all its wackier forms, is clear. I think you can see this trajectory in some of the conventional folk who have “gone to the Darkside”.
But I’m just as happy with Darth Vader as an analogy!
Or perhaps I should call it “retrospectively Faustian”. I do wonder whether people like Dr Briffa ever think about this, when and if they reflect on the kind of mental contortions and doublethink they have to engage in to explain why things like “
AlternativeApplied Kinesiology” are not bollocks (which they self-evidently are).Anyway, perhaps that is more the sense in which I view it as “Faustian” - a sort of more retrospective “crikey - was it worth it?”
—-
Admin edit as per following comment
draust // June 26, 2008 at 2:54 pm
PS Oops - I meant “applied kinesiology” of course.
Mulneton // June 26, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Sorry on no issue but have found anagrams for Richard Dawkins=Dishrack Darwin and Le Canard Noir of Quackometer fame =Cranial Drone. Just for fun!
Claire // June 26, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Darth Vader is, I think, the more satisfying analogy. Faust is, as a doctor of theology, aware from the outset of the nature of the bargain he has made. He knowingly risks his immortal soul in exchange for power etc; and the impetus for this seems to be a hubristic sense that he deserves better than humdrum reality. Whereas DV is more a sad case of ‘when good extra-terrestrials go bad’ having started out with the noblest of intentions but perhaps without the critical self-awareness needed to stay anchored in evidence-based reality.
Claire // June 26, 2008 at 5:47 pm
http://punditkitchen.com/2008/06/26/political-pictures-darth-vader-catholics-power-throne/
…couldn’t resist!
Leave a Comment