Food for the Brain - A Sell Out and we couldn't agree more
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.
We also welcome Food for the Brain’s highly appropriate rebus concerning their recent conference that was the topic of Jerome Burne’s error of judgment. Burne is hypersensitive to the appearance of a conflict of interest when it concerns other people and their reporting so it is unfortunate that he failed to check with someone else as to whether his ethical barometer was giving him a true reading on this occasion.
This is a graceful note from The Economist. We shall continue to disagree about the appropriateness of basing the enthusiasm and optimism of that article on such small studies, particularly where the enthusiastic interpretation out-runs the explicit cautions of the author of one of those papers, but this is a very dignified close to the matter by The Economist.
It would have been even more gracious (IMO) if they could have name-checked Holfordwatch and given a link to your fine posts on this matter.
Excellent response (apart from the caveat that Claire points out!) from a straight-thinking organisation – this is exactly the sort of transparency and honesty sorely lacking from the majority of media outlets.
btw well done Holfordwatch team, a really impressive result!
It looks like few people in mainstream media are prepared to namecheck bloggers.
A while ago, one of you commented elsewhere:
Do you think that he still is “well-regarded”?
I don’t wish to seem ungrateful but does The Economist really think that anybody who read the original piece would have picked up on the fact that the studies were in tiny groups of people who were mostly already ‘clean’ and trying this stuff under tightly controlled conditions?
Good work, anyway.
I’ve left a comment .
I thought you’d been a bit harsh on Jerome Burne for a single lapse of judgement. Once I realised that he is the same guy who not only attended a Matthias Rath rally but allegedly applauded him I realised that you haven’t been harsh enough.
Understand a little less, condemn a little more.
Well done to all those who made this happen.
Well done for your persistence. It would have been nicer for The Economist to have run more of a ‘background check’ before printing, and it’s a shame that generally people read the original, and not the retraction, but their clarification definitely shows some style and good judgement, unlike certain other papers. I’m still waiting for that Observer ‘MMR causes autism’ retraction…
Well done. Glad to see the Economist were willing to provide a clarification.
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