Former Visiting Professor Patrick Holford is still Head of Science and Education at Biocare so presumably they must believe that he enhances their reputation and scientific credibility. TriHealth Consultants Ltd must think likewise as the Birmingham Mail has announced that Holford has just joined the company as a partner.
A PSYCHOLOGIST who is a world expert in the treatment of mental health through nutrition has joined a leading clinic in Birmingham.Prof Patrick Holford, who appears regularly on radio and television as a nutrition expert, has become a partner in Northfield- based Tri Health.
As regular readers know, Holford is a psychologist on the basis of a 2:2 in Psychology from the University of York; he holds no postgraduate or other recognised accreditations in the subject (nor in nutrition). And, as far as we know, Holford is a former Visiting Professor who did not perform any teaching or other duties at all at the University of Teesside so it is potentially confusing that he is referred to with that title.
Stelios Kiosses, founder Trihealth Consultants Ltd, is reported to have said:
“We are privileged to have the services of a practitioner with Prof Holford’s reputation. He has successfully treated thousands of patients and carried out original research on schizophrenia and learning difficulties.
“It proved that vitamin supplements could increase IQ in scores of children.”
It would be profoundly useful if Kiosses were to cite Holford’s peer-reviewed publications that must have been the logical outcome of his “original research on schizophrenia and learning difficulties”: we have a reasonable knowledge of Holford’s corpus and as far as we know, there aren’t any.
It is also very disconcerting that Kiosses repeats the canards about vitamin supplements and children’s IQ. There is no peer-reviewed clinical research published in a respectable journal that supports the claim that “vitamin supplements could increase IQ in scores of children”. We have been through this several times: there is evidence of improvement in non-verbal scores rather than more generally and the scale of the improvement tends to favour those children who were nutritionally deficient rather than augmenting the performance of those who are already well-nourished. Researchers repeatedly make the caveats that Benton[1] described so well.
Many parents will readily believe that diet can both cause and solve complex and worrying problems. In most cases this is an unreasonable expectation. There is no reason to expect a supplement to produce dramatic change in a child’s functioning, even if they have a low intake of micro-nutrients…Assuming that your child would in fact benefit from supplementation all that you can expect to improve is intellectual potential…Improved nutritional status of itself will bring no intellectual gain unless it takes place in a stimulating, emotionally secure environment. Even then the changes will take place gradually over a long period.
Eysenck and Schoenthaler[2] concluded, “with a certain degree of confidence”, that “inadequate levels of vitamins and minerals in the blood reduce a child’s IQ” and “supplementation by vitamin and mineral pills can raise the child’s non-verbal IQ significantly”, although it “has no effect on children with an adequate level of vitamins and mineral”. The only non-controversial aspect of this summary is the final part. Nobody has suggested that those with an adequate vitamin status will respond to supplementation, it is not a way of achieving a level of supra-normal functioning. [Emphasis added.]
Looking at TriHealth Consultants Ltd‘s portfolio of services it is possible that Holford perceives this to be another opportunity to set up a northern outpost of the Institute of Optimum Nutrition (ION) or Brain Bio Centre which is what had been intended to happen at Teesside.
In a final flame-out of inaccuracy, the journalist responsible for this flock of canards finishes:
Prof Holford is the author of Optimum Nutrition for the Mind and founded the Institute for Optimum Nutrition in 1974.
For the use of the title of Professor, see above: if there is a press release that refers to him with this title this is quite striking chutzpah, if it wasn’t in a press release then the journalist should have checked the status of this honour before conferring it on Holford. Yes, Holford did write ONM however just to damp the possibility of any chain of true statements Holford founded the ION in 1984 not 1974.
How very inaccurate, disappointing and misleading. So few words, so many errors: the readers of the Birmingham Mail deserve better journalism.
References
[1] Benton D, Micro-nutrient supplementation and the intelligence of children. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2001 Jun;25(4):297-309.
[2] Eysenck HJ and Schoenthaler SJ. Raising IQ level by vitamin and mineral supplementation. In: Sternberg RJ and Grigorenko EL, (Eds), Intelligence heredity and environment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1997), pp. 363–392.
If Patrick Holford is a world expert in the treatment of mental health through nutrition, then I must be a world expert in all kinds of things. Football management (well, I stood on the terraces in the late 80s/early 90s), journalism (I read the Guardian on a Saturday) and music (I own a CD player) – to name but three. I never realised before quite how expert I was. How very gratifying to finally realise this. [/sarcasm]
I can sort-of understand them wanting to work with someone with a public profile as high as Patrick’s, but I really can’t understand how anyone can consider Mr Holford to be a world expert in nutrition. Particularly when he makes mistakes such as claiming bias in a meta analysis of RCTs because two association trials were excluded. About 18 minutes into the second part of Rise of the Lifestyle Nutritionists there is some very interesting discussion of this point between Ben Goldacre and Tom Sanders [genuinely an expert in nutrition - and a Professor at King's College London]. “This gives me the impression that he [Holford] really doesn’t understand the nature between what is a randomised controlled trial and an association study” is a particularly choice quote from Prof Sanders. A bit disappointing to see such a lack of understanding of scientific studies from a world expert in nutrition, one would have thought. And that’s just one single example of the lack of understanding of this world expert – obviously there are many, many more examples catalogued on this blog (and others).
Admin edit: Listen again: Rise of the Lifestyle Nutritionists Part 2. These programmes are scheduled for a repeat but it has been postponed because Ben Goldacre currently has a series on placebo on R4 and it might otherwise look as if he is dominating the airwaves.
I’m with you on your right to claim entire areas of expertise by being roughly in proximity or having read an article or listened to some talk or other. It’s not so long ago that Holford was referring to himself and “other diabetes experts”.
How can he be joining them as a partner when Tri Health are a private limited company rather than a partnership? Presumably they mean he is joining them as a consultant. (I always remember the Dilbert definition of a consultant as some one who cons and insults people.)
Mr Holford has a new book out soon called “How to Quite without feeling S**t”. I am wondering whether there will be a tie in as some of the Tri Health team seem to specialize in addictions – http://www.tri-health-consultants.ltd.uk/team.php
That is a good point, Lee. I wondered something similar when I read Jerome Burne’s latest piece : How doctors are turning millions of us INTO addicts. It seems a remarkable coincidence that Burne wrote that piece what must be about 2 weeks before someone with whom he joint-authored a book is about to publish a book on how to beat addictions. But, we can be absolutely sure that there are no conflicts of interest because Holford and Burne are so hypersensitive in detecting and reporting those. They’d know if they had one. Yes?
Incidentally, that link to the Bad Science piece “My Right to be Called a Nutritionist” reminded me of the myths page on Mr Holford’s website. One myth he ‘debunks’ is that anyone can call themselves a nutritional therapist. From looking at LeeT’s blog it appears this myth is, er, not a myth at all but is actually true. I’ve only had a quick google but I’m fairly sure LeeT is right about this. Holford doesn’t actually make the claim that NT is a protected term, but he claims that the title is ‘regulated’ by BANT. This ‘regulation’ is presumably informal, given that there is no legal definition of or protection for the term. Holford’s responses to the Radio 4 show that was linked above in the comments and his ‘debunking’ of myths [that turn out not to be myths] I find absolutely fascinating. He seems to have that uncanny ability of answering a different question from the one that was asked. It’s an interesting way of debating.
Couple of earlier posts on the topic of BANT:
British Association for Nutritional Therapy – when an organisation looks like a regulator, quacks like a regulator, but isn’t a regulator.
Why it is easy to get the incorrect impression that BANT is a regulator.
In the section on its website about complaining – http://www.nutritionaltherapycouncil.org.uk/complaint.htm – the NTC refers people back to the practitioners’ professional body. I am not sure how the NTC can protect patients when it is not currently dealing with complaints. As there is no statutory regulation anyone can call themselves a nutritional therapist
Mr Holford tell us: “The term ‘nutritional therapist’ is regulated by the voluntary professional organisation the British Association of Nutritional Therapy (BANT)” I thought they were the professional body. They can’t be a regulator as well. I wonder how many people have been “struck off” by BANT?
Jon did try asking last year but didn’t get very far although they did report this (outer parts of quotation are from Jon).
I would imagine (based on nothing but that is not entirely the fault of people to whom BANT won’t release information) that the answer to how many have been “struck off” is none. Perhaps they are just encouraged not to renew their membership…
Judging by the evidence provided by the NTC and BANT I think we can safely say very little regulating is going on.
I’ve just come across this website after doing a little research on vitamins for my hip complaint.
I’m all for raising concern over those that seek to mislead us, but I find this site rather scary.
Such vitriolic comments.
Mr Holford, it appears to me, has devoted his life to the study of nutrition. He might be wrong on some points (apparantly) and he might have only got a 2:2 but it does create debate, interest, and an alternative.
I don’t really need to be told what to do by this website. People are grown up and have the right to choose what to buy or who to read. You seem to wish to take that away.
I do hold a Phd (Arts I’m afraid) but find the snobbery from some comments disgusting.
Seriously, haven’t you got better things to do?
Admin edit: Hamish, one might imagine that you are so readily and easily disgusted that it is implausible that you have survived in this world.
You do understand that Holford is criticised because he promotes wrong information? We frequently argue that adults are autonomous and are free to spend their money as they wish. It is a different matter when they are mislead into spending that money by false information or when regimes based on flawed studies and bad information are foisted onto children whose parents can not have given fully informed consent because they were not presented with an appropriate overview of the evidence.
You have obviously not read any of the content of the website or you would not have formed the impressions that you espouse. Unfortunately, such lacuna in critical thinking such as failing to read that which you criticise does tend to pander to the worst interpretation of some areas of study which is unfortunate as we don’t agree with such stereotypes.
We refer commenters such as yourself to standard responses to your standard and cliched criticisms.
As for your last comment, “Mirror, mirror”, eh?
“I don’t really need to be told what to do by this website. People are grown up and have the right to choose what to buy or who to read. You seem to wish to take that away”
Not sure the HW does give much in the way of advice.
People *are* grown up and *do* have the right to choose what to buy and who to read.
I imagine that that HW authors will argue that you came to this site by your own choice and made an adult decision to read its material.
That you don’t like it is a pity, as you’ve obviously invested some time in reading its contents.
“Such vitriolic comments.”
*Bing*
Seriously – is there some kind of script available that suggests certain words that commenters might like to use on this blog? If there is, then the word ‘vitritolic’ is definitely on there. Otherwise? It’s a staggering coincidence that so many individuals should choose exactly the same word to [inaccurately] describe the comments on this blog.
Admin edit: we strongly suspect it’s a drinking game somewhere. People are obliged to comment and accuse us of vitriol. Maybe it’s a wheatgrass drinking game, in which case, they have some sympathy. But, yes, it’s almost as if there is a chain email somewhere – you know, the sort that people send out to be re-written and sent to MPs as spontaneous expressions of concern.