Patrick Holford and His Conspiracy Theories in The Times

Professor Patrick Holford is certainly attracting publicity to the University of Teesside. On Saturday, Damian Thompson mentioned Holford as instrumental in (inadvertently) exposing the shoddy research at the heart of nutritionism and other CAM: The last rites for alternative medicine? And, today, Lois Rogers of The Times discusses: Do vitamin supplements do more harm than good?

Patrick Holford, one of Britain’s most high-profile nutritionists, who runs a nutritional supplement company called Biocare, points to diet surveys showing that the majority of people fail to consume anything like the recommended daily levels of essential nutrients. He believes the Cochrane review is part of a conspiracy by the medical establishment to undermine the advance of the nutritional route to better health.

Rogers over-credits Holford; he is merely Biocare’s Head of Education and Science. And, to be fair to Holford, he sees conspiracies everywhere, not just in the Cochrane Collaboration. Who can forget his sad and regretful declaration that he had to question the integrity of the authors of a systematic review of Omega 3 in the BMJ, and he had to question the integrity of the BMJ for publishing it?

It really makes me question the integrity of the authors and the journal. Let’s explore that for a minute with a ‘conspiracy theory’ hat on. Last week pharmaceutical drug sales topped $600 billion. The number one best seller was Lipitor, a stin [sic] drug for lowering cholesterol… [Don't be fooled by the Omega 3 scam]

Except, Holford was creating that conspiracy theory based on his interpretation of the findings reported in the systematic review. And, with his usual flair for numbers and interpreting research findings, he was wrong: Patrick Holford and His Own Reality: Part 1, the blobbogram.

Holford proudly points to his status as a high-profile nutritionist in the UK and boasts that he appears in the newspapers on a weekly basis and is a regular participant in TV and radio programmes. So, it’s not as if he can claim that mainstream media is refusing to carry his message. We would like to see more mainstream media attention to the actual quality of Holford’s self-styled expertise in science and research. Despite our previous pessimism about Holford’s pundit brand equity, we hope that this is the start of a more rigorous examination of nutritionism in general and that Holford’s conspiracy theories are given the prominence that they so richly deserve.