Patrick Holford Frames His Comments on the Cochrane Review of Antioxidant Supplements

The nation recently had many opportunities to listen to Professor Patrick Holford of the University of Teesside and Head of Science and Education at Biocare. Holford was engaged in a manufactroversy about the Cochrane Antioxidant supplements for prevention of mortality in healthy participants and patients with various diseases (review). In several of the interviews he framed himself as a scientist and presented himself as a equivalent scientist to those who had conducted the review.

The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively–because, without this humble appliance, you can’t know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a ‘box’ around it because otherwise, what is that…on the wall?

If John Cage, for instance, says “I’m putting a contact microphone on my throat, and I’m going to drink carrot juice, and that’s my composition, ” then his gurgling qualifies as his composition because he put a frame around it and said so.” Take it or leave it, I now will this to be music.“ After that it’s a matter of taste. Without the frame-as-announced, it’s a guy swallowing carrot juice.

So, if music is the best, what is music? Anything can be music, but it doesn’t become music until someone wills it to be music, and the audience listening to it decides to perceive it as music. Most people can’t deal with that abstraction–or don’t want to. They say: “Gimme the tune. Do I like this tune? Does it sound like another tune that I like? The more familiar it is, the better I like it. Hear those three notes there? Those are the three notes I can sing along with. I like those notes very, very much. Give me a beat. Not a fancy one. Give me a GOOD BEAT–something I can dance to. It has to go boom-bap, boom-boom BAP. If it doesn’t, I will hate it very, very much. Also I want it right away–and then, write me some more songs like that–over and over and over again, because I’m really into music.

The Real Frank Zappa Book, Touchstone – Simon and Shuster

Holford regularly frames himself as a researcher and scientist. His self-publicity, along with some useful alliances, was enough to secure him a visiting professorship at the University of Teesside. Self-evidently, there is an audience that is willing to accept his self-declared status as an informed commentator, and his right to style himself as a nutritionist. And, judging by the comments of the people who object to any exploration or assessment of whether Holford’s work is scientifically sound or grounded in good research, his regular audience is willing to accept more of the same and reject any criticisms. They have been told that Holford is producing soundly research ideas and they believe it and want more of the same.

However, it doesn’t feel as if repetition of a frame or the existence of a complaisant audience for nutritionism should be sufficient to define science, particularly when issues of accuracy and appropriateness are involved.

Related Reading

We are more interested in Holford’s self-framing as an expert who has a useful perspective: it was interesting to read the number of journalists who, for once, mentioned that Holford has an industry and financial conflict of interest in his criticisms of the Cochrane review. However, the invaluable Holfordwatch has dealt with some of the content of Holford’s more puzzling ‘criticisms’ in these posts:
Patrick Holford and His Own Reality: Part 2, estimating risk bias in Cochrane reviews
Catherine Collins: “Patrick has [given] an absolutely perfect example of why one should be wary of nutritional therapists.”
Patrick Holford and Contriving a Controversy: the Cochrane review of antioxidant supplements