In a recent burst of autobiographical disclosure and outrage I posted The Economist: The End of a Childhood Illusion.
I can’t begin to describe my disappointment that The Economist somehow veered from its olympian standards and published a piece of such gob-smacking credulity that I was left waiting for the volte-face punchline that didn’t come. More extraordinary is the fact that The Economist links to Food for the Brain (FFTB) and lends its gravitas to that organisation by carrying this article about its recent conference (you may recall the awfulness of the lamentable Food for the Brain Child Survey 2007, details in further reading).
Treatment on a plate displays shoddy scholarship that is a strong warning sign that there is either a substantial misunderstanding or an undisclosed conflict of interest: this is not typical of The Economist…which makes this article all the more dispiriting.
Thanks to an impeccable source, we have learned the identity of the writer.
Jerome Burne wrote Treatment on a plate for The Economist.
In the original post, I wrote:
That sounds uncannily like the basis for the latest book and book tour by
Visiting ProfessorPatrick Holford, Dr James Braly and David Miller; where the authors discuss sugar and heroin addiction as equivalent and promise to guide you on quitting both. Patrick Holford is the man of countless specialities (e.g., diabetes, autism, schizophrenia, infertility, allergy, depression) who has recently re-branded himself as an addiction expert. The authors provide recipes of supplements that are tailored to particular addictions: take a capsule of this, an IV of that, and watch your cravings leave your body. How to Quit Without Feeling S**t is long on conjecture and thick with anecdotes about 85% recovery rates from addiction but strangely short on trials and even basic quality evidence such as case-studies that have been submitted to peer-review and reputable journals.
Jerome Burne who co-wrote Food Is Better Medicine Than Drugs with Patrick Holford. Patrick Holford who is the CEO of Food for the Brain (FFTB): FFTB held the conference that Jerome Burne wrote up for The Economist. FFTB has incorporated the Brain Bio Centre: a body that promotes its nutritional approach to dealing with mental health disorders and addiction and is included as one of the Nutrition Based Treatment Centres recommended in Patrick Holford’s How to QUIT without feeling s**t website.
How 2 QUIT not only offers advice for individuals but also has a section that touts for more business: CALLING ALL TREATMENT CENTRES. They make a request of people who are not interested in an evidence base (OK, we inserted that last part but it is implicit):
If you work in an addiction treatment centre and would like to find out how to bring the latest nutritional approaches into your treatment centre send your details to us.
Because that is just what the NHS and private addiction centres need, more wibble and less analysis/implementation of what does work for people with addictions.
Jerome Burne’s co-author Patrick Holford is Head of the Brain Bio Centre. He is also Head of Science and Education at Biocare which is part of Elder Pharmaceuticals. Holford has his own range of supplements with Biocare despite his lack of relevant qualifications and despite Biocare’s boast about the credentials of its staff.[a] Biocare was one of the sponsors of the FFTB conference that Jerome Burne reported in The Economist. Holford stands to benefit financially (and with little apparent financial risk to himself) from any take-up of his Supplements and Diet Against Addiction recommendations.
To quote again from the earlier post about (what we now know to be) Jerome Burne’s Treatment on a plate:
Shoddy scholarship, credulous coverage of a conference that is sponsored by supplement manufacturers and companies that offer commercial addiction services, the shadow of Patrick Holford and a regrettable conspiracy-theory-by-the-numbers from Professor Smith, who should have known so much better. What were the writer and the editor of this piece thinking?
It might be possible to guess what the writer was thinking but if the editor was aware of Burne’s potential conflict of interest then it is all the more astonishing that The Economist published this piece. However, if the editor/commissioner in question did not know that Burne had co-authored a book with Holford and that Holford had recently released a book about ‘nutritional approaches to treating addiction’ and is head of a centre that offers such approaches, then we strongly suggest that he or she should ask the nearest 9-year old about Google.
From earlier this year, you may remember how very sensitive Patrick Holford is to the appearance of a conflict of interest. Who can forget the righteous indignation that throbs through Holford’s account of why he did not participate in Ben Goldacre’s Radio 4 programme, The Rise of the Lifestyle Nutritionists:
The approach from Radio 4 was quite aggressive and suggested a preconceived agenda to trash nutritional therapy with a highly-biased presenter, who has won numerous awards funded by the big pharmaceuticals.
Patrick Holford and Jerome Burne, co-authors of Food Is Better Medicine Than Drugs, should really have a chat. You see, one of those Science Writer awards, one of the ones that is “funded by the big pharmaceuticals”, it turns out that Burne wanted one. In 2005 (oddly, at the time when Burne was collaborating with Holford) both Burne and Goldacre were shortlisted for the award and Goldacre won.[b]
Is there a conflict of interest? We couldn’t possibly comment and our sensitivities in such matters seem to be less hair-trigger than those of Patrick Holford. Jerome Burne (Iboga name, Onion Messenger and indeed, his credulity does make one weep) has previous form for writing enthusiastically about one-step cures for addiction. However, as for The Economist,
Notes
[a] This senior appointment might give the wary some food for thought if they should decide that they need an evidence-based supplement or lifestyle advice and are wondering whether Biocare is an adequate source for either/both. Biocare claims have a team of “qualified nutritionists and scientists” (my emphasis) working for them yet they don’t seem to have noticed Holford’s lack of relevant credentials. This rather makes a nonsense of their undertaking to provide science-based information:
We recognize the importance of education in order for the customer, whether a healthcare professional or a member of the public, to make informed choices about what natural substances may be of benefit to them or their patients as part of a healthy lifestyle. BioCare will be launching www.biocarescience.co.uk to provide in-depth scientific information on the natural ingredients that make up our unique formulations.
[b] We hear that if one were to judge by Jerome Burne’s performance at the end of Ben Goldacre’s talk at Big Chill, this may still rankle.
Further Reading
Food for the Brain Child Survey 2007: The Promotion
Holford Watch looks at the literature review:
Food for the Brain Child Survey 2007: Review Part 1
Food for the Brain Child Survey 2007: Review Part 2
Food for the Brain Child Survey 2007: Review Part 3
Food for the Brain Child Survey 2007: Review Part 4
Food for the Brain Child Survey 2007: Review Part 5
Holford Watch appeals for help to Professor Holford and two members of the Scientific Advisory Board who approved this report and then looks at the data and analyses:
Food for the Brain Child Survey 2007: Review Part 7
Food for the Brain Child Survey 2007: Review Part 8
Why Don’t Food for the Brain Report Their Survey Results on Supplement Pills Survey: Review Part 9
Food for the Brain Child Survey 2007: Review Part 10
Yes.. …where does one draw the line? To take another example, University student prizes in biochemistry, pharmacology, molecular biology, etc. and prizes for “best report by a student that did an industrial placement” ,and “best final year research project”, and so on and so on, in the UK Univs are routinely funded by the biotech and Pharma firms. If they didn’t fund them, there would be no prizes.
Does accepting this money (usually in the amount of a couple of hundred quid per prize per year) make my Faculty and medical school “institutionally conflicted”, and me likewise? I have certainly had at least one of the resident JABS-loonies accusing me of being a “Pharma Shill” on that very basis.
Basically, it is a question of degrees, and one has to apply a bit of common sense. Not a quantity much in abundance in the Alt.Reality sphere.
I would personally say that a prize/award won in a competition was a completely different kettle of fish from “financial support from”. But perhaps that’s just me.
This has been exercising me, Dr Aust. Yes, for a number of subjects, student prizes in universities tend to be funded by interested industries. As you say, there would be no prizes if they were not funding them. And by and large, it’s the kudos of the prize, not so much the £50-£200, or the medal (that is never actually cast and given to you because the specified metal would cost too much), that is why people want them.
Schwartz et al criticise the training of medical journalists from one particular course.
There are other examples in the article. I don’t know whether to applaud their moral probity or ask them to come up with some workable solutions to the issue of prizes.
None of which should detract from the essential point that they are correct about journalism and the declaration of competing interests. However, this is more widely about the ethics of journalism than a particular branch of reporting.
OT, your Pharma Shill status hasn’t taken a knocking with the revelation of the death of the Aust-mobile and the implicit difficulties in replacing it? (Obviously, you are displaying a complete lack of a personal shopper who specialises in automobiles.)
Even further OT, my all-time favourite Spaff parody is Boating with Odysseus.
Yes, you would think that being a deep-cover black-ops agent and tool of Evil Big Pharma would carry some financial reward, wouldn’t you? Although the Aust-mobile may yet be replaced…We are just pondering whether it is worth the money running two cars, even if one of them is an ageing rust-heap.
Talking of Pharma Shill-ing… as I once wrote, the only concrete thing I have ever had from Big Pharma in 20+ years in the biz is one free lunch at AstraZeneca Alderley. It was a nice lunch, and the restaurant had a pleasant view over their ornamental lake, but I wouldn’t call it a conflict of interest. I’ve never had grant money, or money to go to a conference, or even a seminar fee, from a PharmaCo. Which probably makes me a bit unusual these days. I do have one ex-co-worker who now runs a Biotech Start-up, but he says they are too poor to pay consultancy fees, so I do them occasional favours for free.
But then, I was always taught that the point of answering scientific questions from whomever, or appeals for help with stuff, was that that was what science was about and how science and scientists operated.
*Sigh*
Call me a starry-eyed idealist…
There is definitely a discussion to be had about under precisely what circumstances funding constitutes a dangerous conflict of interest, and also about why it is unrealistic to say that scientists (and doctors, and perhaps even journalists) should be “wholly free of even the appearance of conflict of interest”…
The Nature Network blog was talking about this a while back., and there is an editorial in Nature Biotechnology here.
Finally got round to reading it… a definite tour-de-force of rhyming.
Isn’t it though? And it sings remarkably well should you be stuck for some family Aust entertainment over the upcoming holidays.
I enjoyed the Nature discussions. I’m still no nearer an adequate response or proposal for solutions for the matter of prizes and awards v. conflicts of interest for journalists.
Schwitzer has produced quite a large chunk of the BMJ piece for anyone who doesn’t have access.
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I ssume you’ve seen this apology to its readers The Economist has now seen fit to print.
An article in the issue dated October 18th (“Treatment on a plate”) described a nutritional approach to the treatment of drug addiction. Part of the article was reported from a conference, one of whose organisers is a nutritionist with a commercial interest in the relationship between diet and brain function. It has been drawn to our attention that the author of the article is also the co-author of a book with this organiser. Had we known this at the time, we would not have commissioned the piece from him. It has also been suggested that some of the studies alluded to were too small to support the conclusions drawn from them. The article made clear that these studies (which had been published independently of the conference) were preliminary and that further investigation would be needed to substantiate this approach. However, it may not have been clear that the experiments were conducted using nutrients found in the foodstuffs mentioned, rather than using the foods themselves.
Ooops, link here
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12675959
Thank you, Gimpy. Better late than never! I imagine the Economist science editorial staff will in future be more careful about potential conflict of interest regarding the people from whom they commission material.
Thanks Gimpy. We had thought that something might appear but were not sure when: we shall continue to have some differences of opinion with The Economist concerning this matter but are very pleased to see this clarification.
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