Dr Goldacre has read my comments on the blog and responded accordingly - please see below.
Dr Goldacre's comments stirred emotions among practitioners in complementary medicine and I was no exception.
I have written my comments on the spur-of-the moment, and regretfully, used words that may not have been appropriate. I apologies unreservedly to anybody who may have found them offensive. I work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week and have very little time to watch TV or listen to the radio, as in this instance.
I wish to thank Dr Goldacre for his response (and criticism). I appreciate his comments. I also wish to assure him that our industry does ‘engage in thoughtful critical appraisal of its own practice’ and if I left wrong impression, I apologies again.
Principal & Founder BCNH
Please see Dr Goldacre’s cooments below:
I think it’s pretty astonishing that the BCNH should make these kinds of comments and simultaneously admit not listening to the programme.
"on his website he is slagging off Sue McGinty from BANT who courageously stood up to him and defended nutritional therapy."
sue mcginty was excellent, i think it's a real tragedy that you're not able to engage in a sensible discussion as well as she was. i have not "slagged her off" (how old is the person writing this…) in fact far from it, we had a very engaging discussion, we got on very well, i certainly liked her a lot, and i have said as much on my site.
in fact these are all my comments about sue from the page where you say I “slag her off”:
"i actually thought sue mcginty from BANT was very nice, and although our discussion was very revealing about the culture within the profession, i wouldn’t want anyone to be mean about her as an individual. don’t mean to be sanctimonious, but i guess it’s just rare to find anyone from this kind of world who is at least willing to engage in a sensible discussion. and she was actually nice, and we did have a really interesting longer chat about all kinds of stuff in the field of nutritionism."
"yeah it’s interesting, i think the sensible stuff is the obvious lifestyle advice, and then there’s a layer of pills and odd diets and tests all justified with pseudoscience. i think it’s fascinating that this industry has completely changed our perception of our bodies, diets, and ranking of the importance of lifestyle risk factors for ill health. it’s brilliant and inspiring, really, that they’ve achieved such prominence. it’s also funny how intolerant they can be when presented with a mere 27 minutes of some academics questioning their ideas. (i wouldnt include sue mcginty in that)."
For the BCNH, an educational institution, to describe this as “slagged her off” really only suggests how difficult you find it to engage in a sensible discussion.
every other healthcare profession from nursing through medicine to physiotherapy engages in thoughtful critical appraisal of its own practise. it seems to me that your industry is so open to criticism because you do not, and so ludicrous ideas go unchallenged.
sue mcginty was robust, charming, and ready to try and engage sensibly on the issues. you do her a great disservice, and since you speak on behalf of an educational institution this can only raise concerns that the lack of critical self reflection in your industry will continue. as i have repeatedly said, diet and lifestyle are important factors in ill health, and it is possible to do a great deal of good here without resorting to dubious health claims.
after our discussion sue and i discussed organising a meeting where i could talk to some nutritionists, perhaps through BANT/NTC, to explain why people have concerns about many aspects of the industry's practices. i felt rather optimistic about that. it seems that not all of you are as capable of engaging in a sensible discussion as she is.
Ben Goldacre
www.badscience.net
10 comments:
sure no problem, it's very much what everyone has come to expect from the CAM industry when its ideas are challenged. there is a strong sense that you are unable to tolerate even listening to concerns.
as i said, any time that you want to invite me to come and speak to an audience of nutritionists and explain why people have concerns about many aspects of your practice, that would be great, i'll try and make time (and unlike your "gurus" i don't charge!).
ben goldacre
www.badscience.net
I cannot speak for others, but at BCNH we do listen and, in fact, we do agree with most of the issues that you have raised.
I, personally, am not a fan of any "gurus". As far as I am concerned, they are doing the profession more damage than good.
I hope we do meet one day and have an interesting discussion.
Breda Gajsek
Principal BCNH
you know where to find me whenever you want me to lecture, or even teach on your course. i teach medical students and doctors and am especially keen on critical appraisal of resarch evidence, which is largely the art of spotting corporate bullshit, and challenging superficially seductive assumptions.
ben goldacre
www.badscience.net
Delighted to hear this. I feel that something positive and constructive may come out of this, which would be great.
Once the timetable is set for the next academic year (currently we are stretched to the limits), I would like to invite you to give a talk to BCNH students and have an intellectually stimulating and informative debate.
I will be in touch soon.
Breda Gajsek
Principal BCNH
great, look forward to it, although i'd say practitioners probably as important as students. sue suggested she would look into organising something through BANT. although i have some extremely serious reservations about the wisdom of some of their output i think it would be useful.
CAM industry has been under lots of fire recently and we have become defensive and over-sensitive to criticism, some of which is frankly, well justified.
However, I am pleased to report that there are MDs who do recognize the value of complementary medicine and work with CAM practitioners.
I would like to invite some of our graduates and lecturers as well, to make the debate more interesting. We may not agree on every issue, but starting a sensible dialog cannot be a bad thing. I hope you agree that there are bad scientists also; not only bad complementary practitioners.
Nutritional therapists (most of us, anyway) do recognize that we need to be regulated, hence the NTC accreditation. This will hopefully protect the public from charlatans and practitioners with dodgy qualifications.
My dream is, and always has been, to see nutritional therapy in close relationship with orthodox medicine, hence I am such a strong advocate of evidence based practice.
thanks. as i understand it from talking with Sue McGinty the NTC will not regulate whether people are making claims beyond the evidence, and although the FIH have not been clear about their remit i think it will be largely professional propriety, eg not having sex with patients, not doing anything criminally dangerous, etc.
i'm pleased to find at least one nutritionist who seems to understand that questioning your ideas is not the same as "attacking" you, and looking forward to whatever event you wish to organise. a "debate" is a very different thing to what i suggested, implying you disagree, and with a hint of vaudeville, but i'm perfectly happy with that too. what i imagined was that you might be uniquely up for listening to someone simply explaining their concerns.
Ben
I am more than happy for you to put your concerns across AND to have a debate afterwards. I think we need to know how orthodox medicine perceives us and we need to take that on board.
Equally, I hope you are willing to hear things from our perspective as well.
Breda
hi there, in April 2008 you said you would get back to me about doing a talk to your organisation / students.
can you let me know when this will be? i'm very keen, as you know i think that the ideas promoted in your field have only become so distorted because you have shielded yourselves from the kind of critical appraisal which would be commonplace in any other academic/medical area.
i'm on ben@badscience.net , and we should organise something for the next few months? let me know.
b
I was a BCNH student and quit my diploma course in the run. As a fully qualified teacher myself I felt that their teaching was poor and wondered how nutritional therapists from BCNH do work with people. Also, BCNH is not a recognised institution and therefore their diploma are not academically and officially recognized.
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