Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science

After Wednesday’s ASA ruling, it’s great to see Dore starting to get some critical publicity. The Sun’s Jane Symons reports that

Professor Maggie Snowling, a literacy expert based at York University, has analysed the trial most often used by promoters of the programme. She said: “There were no significant improvements on the key tasks of reading and writing. The improvements were in things like threading beads.”

Shirley Cramer of the charity Dyslexia Action welcomed the ruling. “The ASA have looked carefully at the evidence, which is what we have done. Scientists have said you cannot make claims on the basis of this flimsy evidence.”

She said that parents found paid-for internet links particularly confusing as many did not realise they were in effect advertisements.

“A lot of parents use the internet to research these problems, but one of the worrying things with this sort of commercial stuff is that parents often find it difficult to tell what is legitimate and what’s not.”

In the past she says the charity has been “innundated” with calls from people who felt let down after spending thousands on the controversial courses.

She added that personalised exercises can help some people with dyspraxia – but these are available on the NHS.

The Mirror reports that

the Advertising Standards Authority has asked Dynevor to stand up its claims.

The firm sent two studies but the ASA ruled both flawed and said the online plugs were misleading.

On the blogs, Brainduck notes that

The Dore website dore.co.uk has been redesigned recently. In the process they seem to have ‘lost’ all mention of the ‘Balsall Common’ study (Reynolds, Nicholson, Hambly, 2003; Reynolds & Nicholson, 2006), which though heavily criticised was the only research on Dore published in a peer-reviewed journal. They also seem to have dropped the various bits of ‘research’ which were either unpublished or press-released through such august journals as the Leamington Courier.

Read the rest of the post for the full story, and some interesting thoughts on UK libel law.

Finally, there’s two excellent precis of what’s going on by podblack.

It’s good to see so many people writing good stuff about Dore. There are lots of other interesting aspects of this to cover, too – just as soon as I’ve time and energy to do so.