BBC investigates life-threatening teachings of nutritionist

The woo just goes on and on...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXaS_5AXJ0g


This is a clip from last Wednesday's Inside Out England TV programme* on BBC1; the segment is about Barbara Wren, who teaches courses on nutrition at her College of Natural Nutrition (the domain name for which is abbreviated with total lack of irony to "natnut.co.uk"). The BBC's investigation indicates that her teachings are not only unscientific but also life-threatening.

The clip is also available on the programme's web page, and the whole 30-minute programme is available for a limited time on the BBC iPlayer.

(*It turns out that this programme was a repeat, and was blogged by Professor David Colquhoun at DC’s Improbable Science.)

When I started writing this blog-post I considered making a point about how this kind of non-science might be about to fade away under the persistent scrutiny of investigations like this BBC TV programme. But after spending only a few minutes on Google I found that the amount of seriously misguided belief in such nonsense - as well as this nonsense in particular - remains large and widespread. It needs attention.

Defying Darwin

From the Guardian, about ten days ago:

"Defying Darwin - The fundamental ideas behind the theory of evolution have been scientific gospel for decades - and yet creationists refuse to go the way of the dinosaurs. Who exactly are they? And just what do they believe? Stephen Moss reports"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/17/evolution-versus-creationism-science

"They do it differently in the US. The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky (motto: "Prepare to believe!") measures 70,000 sq ft, cost $27m to build, was designed by someone from Universal Studios, and promises "murals and realistic scenery, computer-generated visual effects, over 50 exotic animals, life-sized people and dinosaur animatronics, and a special-effects theater complete with misty sea breezes and rumbling seats". The museum, opened in 2006 by creationist group Answers in Genesis to promote "true history", looks Edenic on its website. By contrast, Britain's creation museum, Genesis Expo, is housed in a former bank next to the bus station on the harbour front in Portsmouth. It does not appear to have any connection with Hollywood, and is an animatronic-free zone. The sign stretching across the front of the building is peeling, an elderly volunteer from a local church is manning the front desk, and the museum is only slowly converting its stock of creationist videos to DVD. The upside is that Genesis Expo is free to enter."

(I live in Portsmouth - I think I should pay a visit to "Genesis Expo".*)

*UPDATE 2009-02-28:

I did - click here for a taster.

You've read the Bad Science blog, now buy the book

For some years I've been suspicious of mainstream media. Almost everyone I know who has had even the tiniest bit of media coverage has told of some distortion, misrepresentation or downright lies (um ... I mean, things reported as facts when they're not). Reading articles about matters on which I do have some expertise, I've been struck by the preponderance of inaccuracies. So the idea that the media don't tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth isn't new to me, as it probably isn't new to anyone. And though I've been reading Ben Goldacre's blog for over a year now, and on that basis was looking forward to reading his book, I wasn't prepared for the sheer scale of misrepresentation he so clearly and entertainingly documents in Bad Science (Fourth Estate, 2008).

He has a chapter (7) entitled "Dr Gillian McKeith PhD" in which he deconstructs the scientific pronouncements of a media nutritionist who is, apparently, a "prime-time TV celebrity", with a Channel 4 show entitled You Are What You Eat. Her name wasn't familiar to me, though I recognised the title of the show even if I'd never seen it. (I don't watch 'make-over' or similar shows - I find them embarassing and voyeuristic, especially with the modern trend of treating participants like recalcitrant schoolchildren.)

Goldacre's indictments of McKeith are damning and comprehensive, and given that (as I understand it) his book is a compendium of his Guardian columns and his blog posts, I imagined that McKeith would by now have been consigned to the media scrap-heap. But just to check, I did a little internet research, which yielded so many results that I found myself skimming the latest edition of Radio Times, to discover that You Are What You Eat was currently showing daily in an early morning slot on More4. As it happened I was due to leave the country for a few days, so I set my DVR to record a week's worth of these half-hour programmes in my absence.

I watched them back-to-back on my return (though I did fast-forward parts of the fourth and fifth, as the repetitious format had by then become seriously grating). What Goldacre says in his book is true - McKeith appeared to be obsessed with faeces and colonic irrigation, and repeatedly came out with scientific-sounding stuff for which there is no proper evidence. The programmes were strictly formatted to the point of tedium, and I was frankly amazed that they were still on TV.

Bad Science covers a lot of specifics, from the absurdities of Brain Gym to the scandal of the MMR vaccine scare - and nearly all of them are initiated, compounded and perpetuated by ill-informed and inexpert media. On the way through this quagmire of dumbing-down headlines Goldacre gives us primers on statistics, probablility, evidence-based medicine and ethical journalism. Anyone who reads the badscience.net blog will be aware of Goldacre's journalistic light touch, and will therefore be clamouring for a copy of this book.

For my own part, not since reading Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World have I found a book so enlightening.