A book on cholesterol lowering doesn’t mean it is bad science…. although I prefer the term cholesterol normalisation for the want of being ‘different’… although the rest of your post I completely agree with… and due to your comment re: Ms Collins and her ill guided beliefs about sugar… this book is probably terrible! My current profile picture is quite fitting for this…

It seems to me that the article assumes anyone coming into contact with the claims about the test is unlikely to be capable at looking at it objectively.

The article far from being an example of object thought seems to have already made its mind up regarding the tests potential for future benefit.

Just as galling is the assertion that anything that we do for ourselves without the help of a team of suitably qualified NHS practitioners is bound to be either invalid or too scary to contemplate.

To put my own comments into context.

I am not a fan of Mr Holford either, the complete opposite in fact.

When my mother had a fall when she was 78 The NHS hospital to which she was admitted were concerned about her cognitive ability and subjected her to a series of tests telling her they were concerned she had Alzheimer’s Disease. She found this extremely upsetting but hadn’t been given any choice in the matter. I received a call later in the week telling me my mother had been diagnosed as positive and that she had 3 to 4 years to live. I believed this to be arrant nonsense collected her and arranged for her to see someone privately. The outcome was completely negative. I complained and following an inquiry was told that the individuals concerned no longer worked at the hospital. No apology, explanation or promise to amend processes.

My own work is around organisational performance and I understand the NHS to be both one of the most wasteful organisations in the country both in terms of physical waste and quality of service. My own very personal experiences would show a success rate (in terms of right first time) of less than 10%. No not a scientific study but my own record over only a few hundred transactions. If this is in any way representitive is it any wonder that people are turning to alternative remedies and so called alternative healers?

I believe that so called men of science who denigrate everything that doesn’t show itself to be at the correct level of statistical significance or that hasn’t undergone extensive trials of a particular kind every bit as divisive as those on the opposite side of the argument and are equally as dismissive of everything scientific.

My limited understanding of such leads me to BELIEVE the following and I remain open minded to correction:- Articles often seem to imply that trials can make accurate predictions about how a drug will affect an individual rather than it true nature. They fail to mention that different scientists often interpret the same results very differently. They also fail to point out that a trial is not necessarily an accurate predictor of success in the field or that individuals are not the ‘mean’ and hence may react individually.

“I think it is rather unfair to blame the academics for not speaking out against it. Almost certainly they are just not aware of what’s going on. they entered into this in good faith and then forgot about it and went back to their real research – that’s what academics tend to do.”

I agree with that in general, but one has to say that David Smith (now Emeritus Prof of Pharmacology) has a very long-term association with Holford, and must have been told many times (including by David Colquhoun) just what Holford is about.

David Smith has had an interest in cognitive function, memory, and nutrition, dating back at least to the founding of OPTIMA in the late 1980s and probably before – so I imagine this interest predates Smith encountering Cher Patrique. But… I imagine they must have run across one another fairly early – amongst the people who worked on OPTIMA was Kim Jobst (who was there at the start, 1988, until 1996), and we all know where he ended up. Given Jobst’s interest in Alt.Med even as a junior doctor (which he has written about several times in editorials for J Alt Comp Med), I reckon it is quite conceivable Smith encountered Holford as much as twenty years ago, or even before that.

Anyway, one can imagine reasons why David Smith might have been minded to collaborate with Holford over the years (few mainstream people interested in nutrition, access to large number of potential subjects interested in taking vitamin formulae and hence data, promoting interest in OPTIMA and their research / ‘getting the word out’ etc etc). But Smith really cannot possibly have been unaware, at least this last decade or so, what a Faustian Bargain he was making dealing with Patrick.

I think I know what’s going on here.

Holford has a history of…let’s say…profiting from well-meaning academics.

Here’s how I think it works – he approaches them with an offer of a “collaboration” which will involve allowing him to use their name and/or their tasks.

Academics are always been asked this, and most people will agree with it almost reflexively because a) it’s usually in good faith and b) most of these promised “collaborations” never happen, so you need to agree to lots of them, if you want any to bear fruit. And the fruit is citations of your papers and a better profile.

Anyway, Holford wants to use their name (and their institution’s name) to sell something. It’s no coincidence that Oxford academics have been involved in this case but also in past cases e.g. Prof Phillip Cowen was in the firing line last time.

I think it is rather unfair to blame the academics for not speaking out against it. Almost certainly they are just not aware of what’s going on. they entered into this in good faith and then forgot about it and went back to their real research – that’s what academics tend to do.