“Pill solves complex social problem”
Hhahahahhahahhahahaaa they can’t help themselves, they love it. Two features in the same day! Apparently there is a third to come. I haven’t been able to get out to the papers yet today, are these actually on different pages or are they part of the same feature? Please tell me they’re not two separate pieces. Hehehhahahaaaaa…
jdc325 said,
October 12, 2006 at 12:17 pm
As far as I can tell from the links you provided, one is a story about Middlesborough LEA and is featured in the G2 section; the other is a news article in the main section referring to a Wiltshire school featuring “nutritionist Dr Jackie Stordy” and states that NCH (the charity running the school) may extend the use of supplements to its other homes. BTW, Dr Stordy says that it was not a trial (no placebo group).
The ‘catch of the day’ article in the G2 section states that “most children are therefore officially deficient in Omega 3″. How official is this? Which official body has made a statement to this effect?
Ben Goldacre said,
October 12, 2006 at 12:22 pm
“Most children are therefore officially deficient in omega-3.”
hhahahahahahahaaaa they’re OFFICIALLY DEFICIENT! Go Lucy Atkins!
Jonno said,
October 12, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Erm, 2 things, 1 I had to register and login to be able to read the comments, unless these were posted in the time it took me to register.
Second, these seemed like fairly balanced articles to me…yes some woo is present but also some debunkish comments.
Ben Goldacre said,
October 12, 2006 at 12:29 pm
jonno, i think what’s interesting is that this is considered to be such an important research and social issue that it warrants two separate features on the same day in the same newspaper neither of which are based on new research. it’s truly fascinating to me how these kinds of stories are so attractive for jounalists, and yes, it’s very sweet that they have managed to be marginally more critical than before whilst still writing about situations where pills are curing complex social problems.
Dorothy King said,
October 12, 2006 at 12:52 pm
It’s re-branded cod liver oil. And although it’s great fun to poke fun at all these pompous people who spout nonsense …. I’m not sure there is really anything wrong with giving children cod liver oil.
Jonno said,
October 12, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Ah, well then yes, looking at the pattern of what’s getting reported [sic] there is an interesting and perhaps worrying trend. I was just focusing on the individual articles and although they are slightly critical in small parts I daresay Eye-Q and the like are rubbing their hands in glee.
It’s about time that there was regulation around food supplements and the claims that can be made for them, but unfortunately our government is too busy running out of jails to do something worthwhile like this.
The anecdotal evidence from the second article is laughable if it weren’t for the very serious matter of giving unproven suplements to children. There is no mention of parental consent. Also this … “The school head, Andrew Thomas, said the fish oils were just one of a range of techniques used to help the children, including improving their diets. “Fish oil supplements seem to be making a genuine difference”… makes me roll me eyes. How can he know it’s the supplements and not the other measures that are making the difference. And this from supposed educators. I’m glad my kids will be out of school in a few years time.
jdc325 said,
October 12, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Technically, it is fish body oil not cod liver oil.
Main differences -
Fish body oil is higher in omega 3 fatty acids than cod liver oil.
Cod liver oil is high in vitamins A & D and therefore poses a theoretical risk of hypervitaminosis.
I don’t think there is anything wrong in giving a fish oil capsule as a FOOD SUPPLEMENT - but we should not attempt to replace balanced and varied diets with pills of any kind. Eat right, then think about whether or not you need supplements. I guess it is a question of priorities really.
jdc325 said,
October 12, 2006 at 1:17 pm
#6
Good news for you Jonno:
You don’t need to wait for our government to legislate food supplement claims - the EU have agreed to regulate “Nutrition and Health Claims”. The regulation just needs to be adopted and then food companies (including supplement manufacturers) will have to substantiate their claims with “GENERALLY ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE”.
Ben Goldacre said,
October 12, 2006 at 1:18 pm
meanwhile where are the important news stories on the published research showing that outcomes can be improved in mainstream children and those with diagnoses such as dyspraxia, adhd, conduct disorder, etc with parenting classes, occupational therapy interventions, class sizes, alterations in streaming, or any number of other sensible interventions. or how educational outcome is a clear function of social inequality. oh no. “pill solves complex social problem.”
these miracle food/pill stories are nothing to do with research, they are a reflection of the kind of finicky, decadent, gullible, food obsessed culture we live in, and CAM and nutritionism have become so prevalent because the kind of people who work in the media are exactly the kind of people who love that kind of thing.
pv said,
October 12, 2006 at 1:36 pm
I can’t help thinking this is all being driven, on one side, by the pathetic and divisive school league tables, and the need for schools to be at or near the top of them (to get funding). It’s got bugger all to do with education as far as I can see and precious little to do with the welfare, nutritional or otherwise, of the students. On the other side it is driven solely by MARKETING!
Even the brand name “Eye-Q” is manipulative and intended to be associated with intelligence. It doesn’t require an IQ of more than room temperature in centigrade to know that it is the product of a marketing exec who probably has a personal IQ of refrigerator temperature. It’s quite sick, and even sicker that people fall for this guff.
Dr Aust said,
October 12, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Hear hear re the interventions, Ben.
Trouble is all that stuff you mention is old lefty skilled labour-intensive (and hence pricey) nonsense and doesn’t engender biddable-journo magic bullet media coverage and / or private sector profits.
BTW, as someone pointed out above, the Lawrence story (brief one) is a small “filler” on the National News pages (p 11).
The Lucy Atkins one is a big 2-page spread in G2 under (of course) the “Health” banner.
Quite different bits of the paper so I can believe they both ran without anyone noticing they were in on the same day . Fish Oils! Hot topic!
Reading them, the Lawrence story is pretty feeble, same sort of limp press release minor re-write so familiar to reader of “science reporting” in the UK dailies.
The Atkins piece is more interesting as it seems to be al least TRYING to accentuate the “balancing voices”, by quoting various authoritative commentators from Univs, the RCPsych etc who all say “the evidence in fish oils isn’t there”.
So taking an “accentuate the positive” view, maybe all our carping (note fishy joke) is getting through. A little bit.
Dr Aust said,
October 12, 2006 at 1:45 pm
Can I just say what spendid grist to the mill this all is WRT generating extended “case studies” for my projected new course unit in “How the media report scientific / medical stories”?
Fish Oil…. Herceptin…MMR…. spoilt for choice.
And am waiting to see if NICE’s refusal to license all the Big Pharma “cognitive (non) enhancers” that do bugger all for Alzheimer’s generates another “they’ve given him a death sentence” media-furore. Strangely quiet so far, but watch this space.
Perhaps the health journalists are all too busy writing fish oil stories.
Ben Goldacre said,
October 12, 2006 at 1:47 pm
jesus, 20 kids with no placebo and it was a news story. this is a piece of work on a par with an undergraduate dissertation.
coracle said,
October 12, 2006 at 1:56 pm
re #13
That’s a bit harsh on the undergrads isn’t it? By the third year I managed to grasp the importance of a negative control, I think.
raygirvan said,
October 12, 2006 at 2:14 pm
“A nutritionist, Jackie Stordy…”
Naughty, naughty. The Education Guardian piece just quotes her as “a nutritionist” who happened to be there to monitor the study. It fails to mention that Dr Stordy is actually the prime promoter of Efalex.
Leading nutritionist said,
October 12, 2006 at 2:19 pm
I feel slightly defensive on this has some colleagues activiely research the relationship between essential fatty acids and behavior (yes, it is published in peer review journals, yes, it did use a placebo group and no it didn’t find any improvement in outcome measures). However, there is still some way to go before there is a definitive answer and research is warented. The problem is expectations, if fish oils are going to have any benefit it is likely to be in children who consume a very poor diet. It is not going to have any effect on the intelligence of well nourished, middle class children. The children of such parents have the bigger obstacle to intelligence through their genetic link to stupid and gullible foold who believe that nutrition is the answer to all ills of society.
I wish there were more of these people who sit on grant funding bodies…
Ken Zetie said,
October 12, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Don’t worry, once the current generation of school students have studied the new GCSEs in science they’ll be equipped to discuss all these issues. They won’t know any of the science behind them, but they’ll be equipped to discuss them. apparently…
jdc325 said,
October 12, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Re. #15:
That’s handy to know.
Re. #16:
“Research is warranted” - agreed, but are the news stories warranted?
I really need to stop reading this site and do some work.
Leading nutritionist said,
October 12, 2006 at 2:36 pm
JDC325 - The news stories are a pain in the neck! Journalists should be banned from writing anything concerning food or nutrition. Draconian, but it will protect many peoples sanity.
Dr Aust said,
October 12, 2006 at 2:42 pm
Oops, I tell a lie, someone must have noticed “two fish for the price of one” (two stories, same day) as the lame Lawrence piece has a footline: “See G2 p 26″ (i.e. the Lucy Atikins story).
I surmise the following:
1. The Atkins “in-depth report” was going to run today in G2
2. The paper got a press release from Efamol, passed to National Newsdesk and to “Consumer Affairs” correspondent Felicity Lawrence
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/felicity_lawrence/profile.html
3. The Guardian decided to run the press release re-write as a filler on the National News page AND a quick “trail” for the G2 article.
(Nat’l News pages editor thinks: Filler + Topical + link to other part of paper + three-for-one special)
..anyone from The Guardian care to confirm / deny this sequence of events? Would help my case study…!
BTW, a minimal bit of Googling on the “nutritionist Jackie Stordy” mentioned in the news story, reveals:
“Dr Stordy is the author of ‘The LCP Solution: The remarkable nutrition treatment for ADHD, Dyslexia and Dyspraxia’.”
..sound familiar?
http://www.efamol.com/fset.asp?pid=1
- Stordy is described - in ANOTHER press release on the Efamol website - as an “independent nutrition consultant”, but she is hardly disinterested - as the book and Efamol’s press releases indicate, she is a true PUFA believer.
Stordy used to work for the Univ of Surrey, but judging by her last recognised publication on PubMed, which is from 2000:
Stordy BJ, Am J Clin Nutr. 2000 Jan;71(1 Suppl):323S-6S.
“Dark adaptation, motor skills, docosahexaenoic acid, and dyslexia”
(free full text via PubMed)
…she has been freelance since at least then.
SO….. presumably someone was paying her to analyse the “data” from the 20 kids. Efamol?
BTW, Efamol is the company originally set up by Cathra (Equazen) Kelliher’s dad David Horrobin (blogs and forums passim) in 1977 to sell/promote/research Evening Primrose Oil. It has been sold on at least a couple of times since then but still sells Evening Primrose Oil products.
All more than a bit fishy, I think you’d agree.
Dr Aust said,
October 12, 2006 at 2:44 pm
PS Sorry ray (girvan), took a while writing the above grumbling so didn’t spot your post 15 on the same lines
Dr Aust said,
October 12, 2006 at 2:51 pm
On today’s other fishy author, Lucy Atkins is a health journalist and author with an Oxford first in English:
http://www.capelland.com/clients/Lucy_Atkins.html
She mostly writes about pregnancy, birth and motherhood, e.g.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blooming-Birth-Get-Pregnancy-Want/dp/0007184018/ref=pd_sbs_b_2/026-0674375-0677224?ie=UTF8
jdc325 said,
October 12, 2006 at 2:55 pm
I got 418 results in Google for stordy +efamol. These results included studies paid for by efamol with results analysed by Dr Stordy.
Dr Aust said,
October 12, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Nice one, jdc. Seems pretty clear to me that Stordy must be a paid consultant to Efamol.
If that is so, then in quoting her in the “News Item” they were in effect quoting the company about how great its own products were, almost certainly from their own press release. Ho hum.
Once again: lazy, lazy, lazy, LAZY “journalism”.
As a “consumer correspondent”, I hope Felicity Lawrence is embarrassed.
Dr Aust said,
October 12, 2006 at 3:09 pm
…there is also a website to flog Jackie Stordy’s book and assorted pills (including Efalex):
http://www.lcpsolution.com/
…and see also:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/LCP-Solution-Remarkable-Nutritional-Treatment/dp/0333906225
What I like about this is that it says:
“Customers who viewed this item also viewed:
“Developmental Dyspraxia: Identification and Intervention: A Manual for Parents and Professionals” by Madeleine Portwood”
…now there’s a familiar name.
All together now:
Hold hands (if you’re a fish oil pseudo-science booster) and sing:
“Pseudo pseudo pseudo pseudo pseudo pseudo PSEUDO-science!”
Dr Aust said,
October 12, 2006 at 3:15 pm
What gets me is that the clear indication that Stordy is a paid Fish-Oiler is NOT hard to find. But The Guardian can’t be bothered.
We aren’t talking subtle “competing interests” here. It took RayGirvan and jdc and I about three Google Searches to find tons of stuff indicating that Jackie Stordy ’s primary aim is to promote fish oils, that she has written a book promoting them, and that she probably works as a paid consultant for the company whose products were mentioned in the story.
- so why does the story run, written by a “Consumer Correspondent” no less, without any fact / B/G checking…?
- is this typical of the standards we can expect from national newspapers?
I leave the answer to you.
Dr Aust said,
October 12, 2006 at 3:17 pm
PS Sorry. I’ll shut up now. Blame the caffeine… (which may actually BE a cognitive enhancer).
Ben Goldacre said,
October 12, 2006 at 5:51 pm
14 April 2005 Publication: Daily Mirror
Clinical trials show that essential fatty acids help learning ability and concentration.
Low levels of these acids lead to slower development, behavioural disorders and low IQ. Nutritionist Dr Jackie Stordy says: “Children need 600-1000mg of Omega-3 oils a day, the equivalent of two to three servings of oily fish such as salmon or mackerel a week.â€
Alternatively, try a good fish-oil supplement such as Efalex by Efamol (£6.99 for 60 capsules).
etc
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=+site:www.efalex.co.uk+stordy
i have run into a few industry spokespeople in my time as a doctor - there are people called “drug reps” in medicine for example- and i have always regarded them very clearly as drug reps. i think it;’s incredibly interesting and testament to some brilliant branding that people like stordy, holford, et al are not seen as industry spokespeople. i dont think it’s derogatory to describe them as industry spokespeople, and i dont think it completely invalidates their views, but i would be cautious about what they say as i would be cautious about what i heard from a drug rep (actually i tend not to speak to them much because i’m in a hurry and i’d rather talk to my friends, also the urge to tease is too much and it’s usually not appropriate).
doctormonkey said,
October 12, 2006 at 8:01 pm
a couple of points
1) does the Grauniad know it quoted effectively a corporate spokesperson/spokesman without qualification - should we tell them?
on a related note, a friend was employed by a part of the governement and described his job as essentially “googling” people coming to see important personages to ensure they had no hidden secrets
2) ref #28 and drug reps, there seems (as an active dr) that there is a new pill for all ills - statins and cholesterol lowering. yet i have heard anecdotes from other drs about all of the side effects and problems they create which we fail to attribute to them… yet there do seem to be the good RCTs to show that they are good, or at least the drug reps tell me they are good studies while they give me pens and buy me food…
(i haven’t really seen a drug rep in ages, i really am running low on pens!)
doctormonkey said,
October 12, 2006 at 8:01 pm
ps i do tease drug reps
ayupmeduck said,
October 12, 2006 at 8:26 pm
Hmm, Jackie Stordy does look to be VERY close to Efamol. However, I’ve searched myself and found no smoking gun yet. Nevertheless, Felicity Lawrence still looks very lazy.
Universal Antidote said,
October 12, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Nice how Lawrence gives school head Andrew Thomas the last word to crow about how the supplements “appear to be making a genuine difference.”
Nice how Lucy Atkins says, basically,that there’s no evidence for all this, but just in case you choose to believe all the hype, here (again, the last word) are a few meals you can offer the kiddies. It’s the type of qualifier used in so many health stories, “Ask your doctor;” in other words, “But what do I know?”
And where in hell are the editors?
Tite Barnacle Esq said,
October 12, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Here at the Circumlocution Office It’s more or less automatic to Google people who come to meet Ministers, write in trying to sell something or whatever. It’s always helpful to know what their interests are and where they might be coming from on any particular topic. (It also helps us to avoid shameful ignorance of roles or achievements that they might assume we were aware of!)
I hope that most journalists would do this as well.
Dr Aust said,
October 12, 2006 at 10:04 pm
BTW, Guardian consumer journalist Felicity Lawrence displayed a rather more appropriately sceptical attitude to the claims of assorted “functional food” peddlers in the extended article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1704888,00.html
…either she has had a Road-to-Damascus type experience since then or she was sleepwalking through the FishOil story in today’s Grauniad.
nix said,
October 12, 2006 at 10:39 pm
I’ve read a number of books by Portwood and while I disagree with quite a lot she’s got to say, she’s never pushed fish oil in any of them that I can remember.
I’m not sure she’s a member of the Vast Fish-Oil Conspiracy (unlike, say, Stordy, who screams it).
… or, at least, once upon a time she wasn’t (those books are all 90s and before). Looking at google does seem to indicate a sudden upsurge in fish-oil-pushing from her direction, starting some time back.
Perhaps she was turned…
raygirvan said,
October 12, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Hmm, Jackie Stordy does look to be VERY close to Efamol
Indeed. A skim of NewsBank is enlightening. There have been newspaper stories since 1994 about her fish oil studies and recommendations, all as “a nutritionist” or in her University of Surrey capacity. The unstated relationship prior to late 1998 was revealed in The Times, Oct 15 1998:
Scotia hopes for quick approval -
Scotia Holdings
Author: Paul Durman
“Efamol, Scotia’s nutritional business, increased sales by 11 per cent to Pounds 7 million. Scotia recently laid off Jacqueline Stordy, a former senior lecturer at Surrey University, because of concerns that her status as a company employee was not clear to parents of children with learning difficulties, to whom she was recommending Efalex. Scotia has moderated the claims it makes for Efalex in the treatment of dyslexia“.
A PR Newswire release in for Efamol in 1997, Global Leader in Nutritional Research Offers Parents Natural Supplement to Help Children Maintain Focus (still in Google cache) described her as “Dr. Jacqueline Stordy, a prominent investigator in the field of essential fatty acid research and a consultant for Efamol Nutraceuticals”.
Of interest, Efamol Neutraceuticals got a ticking off from the FTC in 2000: Marketers of Various Dietary Supplements Settle FTC Charges That
They Made Unsubstantiated Claims That Their Products Could Cure ADHD. Maybe that’s why they’re pushing the stuff in the UK, where you can get away with such claims for health benefits.
Mork said,
October 13, 2006 at 9:34 am
Quote “When it comes to children, a “portion” means a child-sized amount, according to appetite.”
What? The size of your child! That’s gonna take some eating. Not bad science as such but bad editing.
Dr Aust said,
October 13, 2006 at 10:19 am
Nice digging, Ray.
Incidentally, running Dr Stordy on PubMed does not reveal her to be that much of an expert, at least in terms of published work. Searching “Stordy BJ” turns up only 11 publications, and only one in the last 10 yrs - the Am J Clin Nutrition one from 2000 mentioned above (post 20), which turns out to be a no-placebo group study using (surprise surprise) Efalex. Incidentally, this paper, her last Univ-based one, does not say whether Efamol funded the study or whether the Efalex was free or paid-for, although one might wonder.
The Am J Clin Nutrition paper is also Stordy’s ONLY published PAPER mentioning PUFAs.
There is a brief letter in the Lancet in 1995:
Lancet. 1995 Aug 5;346(8971):385. Benefit of docosahexaenoic acid supplements to dark adaptation in dyslexics.Stordy BJ
.which mentions some data, but is mainly a comment on someone else’s paper.
Apart from that there are two papers from 1995 which are questionnnaire studies about mothers’ knowledge/attitudes on nutrition:
Acta Paediatr. 1995 Jul;84(7):733-41. Healthy eating for infants–mothers’ actions.Stordy BJ, Redfern AM, Morgan JB.
Acta Paediatr. 1995 May;84(5):512-5. Healthy eating for infants–mothers’ attitudes.Morgan JB, Kimber AC, Redfern AM, Stordy BJ.
..and the ones before that are pre-1989. mostly dealing with food allergy.
I wouldn’t say 11 career papers, almost nothing published in the last decade, and only one and a bit career papers on Fish Oils necessarily makes what I would call an first-rank expert.
For a contrast, if you run
“Richardson AJ AND omega-3″
you get more than a dozen papers from the last 8 yrs.
stever said,
October 13, 2006 at 11:12 am
great stuff all.
more valuable light shining on our fishy friends.
Dr Aust said,
October 13, 2006 at 11:15 am
“…20 kids with no placebo and it was a news story. this is a piece of work on a par with an undergraduate dissertation. ..”
Incidentally, Stordy’s main PubMed-listed journal paper on fish oils, the 2000 one in Am J Clin Nutrition, reports…
…an unblinded study, with no control group, on FIFTEEN dyspraxic children.
fish_eyed_sam said,
October 13, 2006 at 11:23 am
I’m confused - surely it would be better to simply give your children more sea-food products in their diet rather than relying on “wonder” pills?
To be fair, the first article isn’t too bad. Discussing inconclusive evidence (”But published, peer-reviewed trials on normally developing children have yet to materialise”) and (from Dr Bamforth: “Behavioural problems in children are multifactorial,” she says. “To rely on diet alone as a strategy for managing difficult behaviour would be a mistake. The evidence base just isn’t there for fish oils. Omega-3 is not a miracle cure. There is no miracle cure.”) seem to indicate that the matter just isn’t settled.
The final conclusion is usually the most telling in newspaper articles. This ones says, “Fish oils may well have behavioural benefits for some kids. But could our mass purchase of omega-3 supplements be jumping the gun just a bit? As Rogers puts it: “It is very seductive to buy into a quick and easy parenting solution. But this is not the magic bullet.”
This sounds fair to me, although quoting someone from a company that is making a mint out of the Omega-3 hype may not be entirely authoritative.
Ben Goldacre said,
October 13, 2006 at 12:27 pm
unbelievably great digging as ever here. i think it’s pretty poor that stordy isnt being clearly identified as an industry spokesperson, and it’s interesting that Efamol US got done by the FTC for dramatically over claiming in their ads in the US in 2000 (”Long-term Side Effects May Include: Hugging Your Mom.”). i’ve contacted Efamol but not heard back yet.
thats quite apart from the fact that 19 subjects and no control is simply not a story worth writing about, in any sense at all, its an undergraduate dissy, and this is even more heinous as you will see in the light of what the media have ignored this month (see tomorrows col).
Ben Goldacre said,
October 13, 2006 at 1:16 pm
my god, i’ve no time to chase this up today, but i’ve just had an answerphone message from Efamol saying that this research is not avaipable yet as they have an exclusive deal with a guardian journalist and there is a big piece on it for tomorrow. of course this may well be a balanced critical appraisal of the published research data, i’ve no idea. a couple of days ago, when a friend of mine at the paper said there was some fish oil stuff in the offing, i laughed, and said i welcome that kind of nonsense. i had no idea she mean that there were going to be THREE promo pieces in ONE week on this incredibly important story of how pills can solve complex social problems. lordy. buy shares in the companies. as many as you can afford.
jdc325 said,
October 13, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Re #8:
Sorry to be repetitive, but I’ve just found out that the Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation was actually adopted yesterday by the EU council of ministers and should enter into force in January 2007 and become applicable in July 2007. I know this doesn’t resolve the issues Ben raised in #9, but it is still good news for anyone who wishes that companies making health claims were regulated.
raygirvan said,
October 13, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Ben: lordy. buy shares in the companies. as many as you can afford
It’s all very Corporate. The company trail for this stuff is bewildering. The latest turn, as far as I can find, is that Efamol was bought in August by Wassen International, whose supplements are ubiquitous.
raygirvan said,
October 13, 2006 at 7:34 pm
BTW, The Money Programme this evening did quite a nice hatchet job on the omega-3 bandwagon.
Ben Goldacre said,
October 13, 2006 at 9:05 pm
the trouble is that there is so little scientific fluency on these programs, and such hopelessly poor background research, that they still managed to cock this up, even when they were trying to be critical about the evidence for these products.
For example, they introduce their sceptical take on omega-3 and intelligence with: “The scientific evidence that eating Omega 3 is beneficial for heart health is well established. But… ” (The Money Programme).
This is patent nonsense. The Cochrane review reprinted in the BMJ (below) is very clear: there is not evidence for omega 3 fats having an effect on total mortality, combined cardiovascular events, or cancer. This was even reported in the popular press at the time. If you’re a journalist, and you don’t know enough about the background, if you don’t even know enough to check Cochrane, then it’s meaningless for you to be writing on the subject. Go and write about Blair or Britney instead. You’re not informing anyone.
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/332/7544/752
raygirvan said,
October 13, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Ah, I only caught the end. Not so good a hatchet job then. Still, they did refer to the new EU directives. I bet that’s causing a bit of frantic reassessment: for instance, why companies like Wassen are gearing up for the overseas market.
Ben Goldacre said,
October 13, 2006 at 9:22 pm
yeah, i ought to find out what the story is with those. the campaign against them was quite popular among rightwing eurosceptic MPs, they had john redwood talk at one of their woo rallies. i would imagine the general slightly confused spirit of the JHCI will still stand though.
Ben Goldacre said,
October 13, 2006 at 9:23 pm
there is incidentally a fascinating history of the hard right aligning itself with woo, disussed by frankfurt school neomarxist philosopher adorno in his excellent essay “stars”.
Dr Aust said,
October 13, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Ben wrote:
“For example, they introduce their sceptical take on omega-3 and intelligence with: “The scientific evidence that eating Omega 3 is beneficial for heart health is well established. But… †(The Money Programme).
This is patent nonsense. The Cochrane review reprinted in the BMJ (below) is very clear: there is not evidence for omega 3 fats having an effect on total mortality, combined cardiovascular events, or cancer. This was even reported in the popular press at the time. If you’re a journalist, and you don’t know enough about the background, if you don’t even know enough to check Cochrane, then it’s meaningless for you to be writing on the subject. Go and write about Blair or Britney instead. You’re not informing anyone.
bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/332/7544/752
…………”
Tricky… it is a little less clear-cut than that, I think. The rapid responses to the Hooper et al BMJ review are worth scanning through, and make an interesting intro to the difficultues of doing meta-analyses!! There is a lot of debate about which trials the authors included (or not) and how they weighted them, and how this “loads” the conclusions. The response by the authors (about 60% of the way down) is particularly interesting.
The general thrust of what they are saying is that omega-3s are probably good to have in your diet (e.g. from eating fish), but that the evidence for supplements to boost omega-3 levels doing anything for you is weak.
So the Money Programme’s statement is probably too strong, but the articles that appeared at the time claiming the Cochrane review totally blew away omega-3s were also over-statements.
The real summary of the trial and the authors’ follow up might be re-phrased as:
“Lots of suggestive evidence omega-3s are good things to have in your diet, but evidence from RCTs w supplements not as conclusive as earlier studies had suggested, indeed marginal, but there are some problems with this too. More bigger RCTs with all relevant safeguards and measurements are needed, and in the meantime it would be sensible to keep eating fish.”
Dr Aust said,
October 13, 2006 at 9:56 pm
The right has always been keen on “mysticism” in the wider sense. Did anyone say “blood and honour”? True even in the 20th century when they were also into portraying themselves as powered by leading-edge technology.
Being a bit fanciful, one can still see this in GeorgeW, where the American belief in super-high-tech solutions (including bombs) as the key to solving problems is married to a belief in the power of prayer to fix things.
Of course, it may also be about being all things to all men, a tendency not confined to the right - see our current Dear Leader and his Tory doppelganger DaveyCam.
Ben Goldacre said,
October 13, 2006 at 10:23 pm
yeah, adorno’s take on this is that it’s all about fascists craving order (from eg astrology and tarot) where there is chaos and diversity. to me it’s also about individualism: woo is rarely about community, it’s about how a pill can solve a complex social problem, or an individual can have special healing powers. social inequality is the primary determinant of ill health, but the whole nutritionism project revolves around the notion that complex systems for interpreting individuals’ diets are the key.
perfectly happy with your formulation of the cochrane review but the money progs statement was foolish.
Dr Aust said,
October 13, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Well, hardly needs stating that insurance-based (esp. US-style) healthcare vs. universal trad. old-NHS healthcare is another paradigm of the individual vs. community and right vs left thing.
In the freeat-point-of-access universal system, SOME sort of rationing will always occur since “community” needs (e.g. effective early detection of cancer, perhaps via screening) will have to be prioritized over “individual” ones (£ 35K / yr monoclonal Ab drugs to extend survival times in metastatic colon cancer).
In the “individual” system you pay upfront to be absolute no. 1 priority, cost no object - Thatcherite look after you own-ism in microcosm.
The fact that the second system, esp. as practised in the US, systematically excludes the poor and disadvantaged and makes rapacious private corporations rich is just an unfortunate side-effect… or maybe Darwin in action, as I suspect many on the right see it after a few G&Ts.
Incidentally, when you look at it that way , in the “individualist” paradigm it is your (PAID) right to insist on being sent for homeopathy if that’s what you want (you’ve PAID!), regardless of the waste of scarce resources. In contrast, in the NHS resource-limited model there is necessarily something better to spend the cash on
Barnacle Bill said,
October 14, 2006 at 11:02 am
Just wondering if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were arts graduate journalists. Headline, “Man walks on water”, “Man feeds 5,000 with leftovers”.
Leading nutritionist said,
October 14, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Ref #51/52
While I am in total agreement with you that it is unwise to conclude that fish oil intake does not reduce CHD risk (several, but not all, large scale studies have shown significant effects plus meta analysis is not a foolproof method for determining an effect) there are difficulties with showing a benefit of nutrient supplementation using a RCT. In a drug trial, you would randomize your participants to a treatment and placebo group and look for differences in the outcome measure. Crucially, you can be pretty confident that your placebo group is not going to be consuming any of the treatment drug. Unfortunately, using the same paradigm in a nutritional study, you cannot be sure that your placebo group is not already consuming adequate amounts of your treatment substance (individual requirements can differ widely and tools to determine habitual food intake are nothing short of woeful). Indeed, it is likely that once you reach a threshold of intake for most nutrients additional intake is not going to have much of an effect (thus the null hypothesis is unlikely to be rejected). This is certainly not an attack on RCTs, clearly they are currently the gold standard. It is just nutrition studies have a certain amount of problems associated with them that need to be addressed.
With regards to supplementation, I think the there is potential for its use among targeted groups of the population but it is unlikely to have significant population effects. Of course, getting these nutrients from the diet is perhaps optimal, but getting people to eat a ‘balanced diet’ is very difficult.
Dr Aust said,
October 14, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Re post 56:
This problem with “comparability” between groups in nutrition trials is one of the things hashed over in the rapid responses to the Hooper et al. BMJ meta-analysis.
One extension of this, again argued on the BMJ responses, is that what is needed in the trials is a clear and standard “index” for total dietary omega-3 intake / levels in the body so that people either taking (or not) “nutritional advice” can be “graded” according to real levels, rather than just divided into nominal sub-groupings.
Like anything else, one thing that research gradually reveals is ways to do the research better, e.g. in avoiding / controlling for confounding factors. See also Ben’s column today about the controls (or lack of them) in the “hunting measles virus mRNA in gut specimens” studies.
doctormonkey said,
October 14, 2006 at 2:07 pm
ref #56
i think this exactly and precisely WRONG and is the same argument made by CAM about why RCTs don’t work for them.
the whole point is that everyone in a randomised placebo controlled trial is that everyone thinks they are taking the supplement and you correct so that this is the only intervention seperating the two groups.
participants in the RCT won’t have a pill or not, they all have an identical pill, and then researchers find out what happens to them (not knowing which they have taken) and only then another researcher, seperated from any direct contact with the people taking the pills, looks at how people have done and whether they took a real pill or a fake/placebo one.
Leading nutritionist said,
October 14, 2006 at 3:06 pm
# 57
Yes, I am aware of how an RCT works and, as I said, I think it is the gold standard. However, if I select two groups at random from the population and give them drug x, I can be pretty sure that the only difference (if they are selected completely at random) is that one group is consuming drug x and the other isn’t. The difference in outcome measure can then be attributed to drug x. For nutrition studies, this is, perhaps, not possible. If I select two random groups from the population and give one supplement x (say fish oil to be topical) and the other the placebo, how can I be sure the placebo group is not consuming an amount of the active ingredient contained in supplement x that is sufficient for health benefits? I can suggest ways, but I don’t think they would be acceptable to any ethics boards. If it was for a specific food, you could proscribe use of that food, clearly there are problems with that in terms of blinding etc. But with specific nutrients that are widespread in foods it becomes more difficult.
Clearly, this a weakness in nutritional studies that needs to be acknowledged, addressed or accepted. My personal view is that it should be addressed. My comment was on an issue that faces nutrition research (serious nutrition research), not a defence of indiscrimanate supplement use. For many people, supplements are not going to have any effect at all, but there could be sub-groups who benefit.
doctormonkey said,
October 14, 2006 at 4:47 pm
#58
surely the lack of difference between intervention and placebo groups is as significant as any difference as it might show that supplementation is not needed as the “normal” diet (whatever that is) contains plenty of what is being supplemented OR that it will not effect what is observed, even if it does have good effects on something else
this is the problem with the publishing bias against good negative studies
sorry if the above felt like a personal attack, it wasn’t meant to be, i just get frustrated by the complaints about problems with RCTs that seem to me to be poor study designs rather than a flaw in the whole system of RCTs
the other point i was making was that in a good study the placebo group should not be taking other supplements and should be told not to, explaining it might spoil the study, and should anyway think they are taking the supplement (possibly) and so people taking the supplement studied are at as great a risk of such doubling due to the over-the-counter nature of the products studied
Leading nutritionist said,
October 14, 2006 at 6:14 pm
# 59
No apology needed! With your first point I agree. Supplementation is probably not needed in the general population. Obviously there are caveats, but if an experiment is designed well, no effect would suggest no need for widespread supplementation (or even fortification). But, care also needs to be exercised to conclude that the intervention might not be useful for some sub-groups.
I wasn’t complaining about RCTs per se and I genuinely believe it is the gold standard for intervention studies. Sometimes it is not possible to use such a system. For instance, I have recently completed studies that fall short of the RCT ideal. Funding limited the sample size so a cross-over design weas used. As the intervention was an actual food, it was difficult to blind anyone or use a placebo. Is the evidence provided by such a trial as strong as an RCT, definitely not. But it is evidence nonetheless. It requires a more cautious interpretation. This is completely lost on the press and I have been misquoted and selectively quoted by journalists…egged on by our industry funders PR company. It makes you look a twat when a solid study, with limitations, is reported as the final word.
I agree with your sentiment. But the problem comes is if the supplement is available in the diet. If I wanted to look at the effect of vitamin C supplementation on disease risk (because of good theoritical or epidemiological evidence) I could give the treatment group Vitamin C tablets and the placebo group, well a placebo. But the problem is, the placebo group are likely to consume a significant amount of Vitamin C each day from the diet. Short of making them deficient, it is impossible to get around this (if we randomaly select from the population). As this study would now appear to favour the null hypothesis, the conclusion may be reached (or reported in the press) that vitamin C is not important to health. If we selected a group that was deficient in Vitamin C and then split them into treatment/placebo, the effects may be more notable. That is just a hunch mind!
Clearly, there are issues with some clinical nutrition research which means you have to be careful in interpreting it and making recommendations based upon it.
I apologize if I sound overly defensive. Nutrition research really seems to polarize people and there is a balanced view!
doctormonkey said,
October 14, 2006 at 8:01 pm
i think you have defended nutrition research and the difficulties well
there is a problem that RCTs are a medical research tool and nutrition crosses the boundary between medicine and “life” which is far harder to fix in place as one can medical research.
the problem comes when nutritional research is abused to provide medical-type claims (such as the fish oil pills) without the medical-type back up to the claims (such as the fish oil pills)
this is why there is legislation to protect the role of doctor (among others) from people claiming to be one without the training etc but there is not the same thin (rigorously enough) for treatments. you could argue that a lot of CAM practitioners fly rather close to the wind against the legislation protecting health professionals’ status
Dr Aust said,
October 14, 2006 at 9:09 pm
All the above is why something you can actually MEASURE on people which effectively tells you something about their background / baseline intake is needed. For the Vitamin C example in #61 one would at least want to MEASURE blood and perhaps tissue Vit C levels, and maybe Antioxidant indices, periodically, so that one would have a fighting chance of seeing if (for example) supplements were really only benefitting people who effectively STARTED with deficient levels, or if people in the “non intervention arm” actually supplemented themselves on the sly.
A paradigm for how one does science - a lot of the time the research ends up not getting you closer to “the answer”, in the sense of “do we now have a better idea whether X helps or not”…. EXCEPT that the attempts end up telling you how better to ASK the question next time/
…Another thing that journalists who write about science mostly do not understand.
Ben Goldacre said,
October 14, 2006 at 9:55 pm
mmm i think there’s a much simpler issue here that some of you are kind of missing. in appraising any study, you have to ask the question: “is the population in the study the same as the population i want to apply its findings to?”
if a trial shows that a population of average normal everyday fairly well nourished western people do not benefit from a supplement, then there is no sense in recommending that supplement to that population. when i see someone recommending a supplement to the general population, i go to trials performed on that population, if they are negative, then i say the advice is nonsense.
you can talk about people who are undernourished to your hearts content, if you want to see if they benefit, then decide on a way to select them, and do a trial on them (or find a trial where someone else already has). perfectly simple, not a limitation of the RCT design at all, it’s just a question of which population the trial is in, and then which population you want to apply the findings to.
Robert Carnegie said,
October 15, 2006 at 3:15 am
Re perils of castor oil. On tonight’s “QI” panel game Stephen Fry brought up the subject of aeroplane “dogfights”, mentioned an affection for Biggles and sketched the learning curve described by Biggles’ author in how planes in the Great War began to fight other planes by dropping heavy weights on one another. Mr Fry also claimed that pilots in that war had extraordinarily loose bowels because the engine bearings were lubricated with castor oil. Presumably the pilots breathed it in, but I don’t recall Biggles mentioning it much.
You also don’t hear a lot about astronaut toilet arrangements. On the way up they can’t really stop and get out, so as far as I recall they fly in nappies. I suppose acceleration isn’t kind either.
doctormonkey said,
October 15, 2006 at 10:51 am
sorry to not respond to #65 (i missed the programme)
#64 etc
i think Ben makes a very valid point that renders much “good” research unusable, the use of experimental groups too different from the populations we would look to apply them to. there are various reasons for this and it is not a case of “blame” but the problems of doing a study in the real world.
it was a frequent topic of debate at most journal clubs (geeks getting around and picking apart a paper) - not only is it a good paper but can we say we see the same thing in sufficiently similar people. often the answer was no.
examples include a big German study showing St John’s Wort works for mild to moderate depression as well as conventional antidepressants, a good study BUT none of the drank alcohol (certainly not to excess) and there are also the problems with the interactions of St John’s Wort with almost everything else (due to cytochrome P450 upregulation, if i remember correctly) - we decided we might well not be able to use it on most of our patients as many self-treat low mood/depression with alcohol before seeing a doctor about it.
therefore, Leading nutritionist, i think it is just that you are more concious about these confounders to your nutrition studies and honest about them!
raygirvan said,
October 15, 2006 at 11:59 am
lubricated with castor oil
Yes, specifically rotary engines like the Gnome. (Google confirms). I remember reading this way way back in an Analog SF story, with the added detail that pilots drank blackberry brandy, believed to be an antidote.
Leading Nutritionist said,
October 15, 2006 at 12:41 pm
# 62
There is an issue with journalists taking results from a study and extrapolating them unreasonably. Medical claims on products are a different and I believe are protected by law. I think every ones beef here is about poor reporting of scientific results by the press.
# 63
Certainly, and this frequently happens. Two issues there, if you are selecting people on baseline characteristics you no longer have a random sample. There are also issues with post hoc subgroup analysis. Recruiting a huge sample so that you can look at coorelations between baseline characteristics and effect may be prohibitively expensive. The other, some people may have very plasma levels of a nutrient but is more than sufficient for them. It is not exactly known what a deficient level is! In addition, antioxidant status…we could use ORAC or TEAC to measure that, but there is substantial debate about what the results actually mean. Modern nutrition science is reasonably young science and it may be some time before we can really determine its role in health and disease.
Ben
The point I was trying to make (badly) is that rather than be enthralled with p values and confidence intervals and the type of study done (although these are all important), it is still the interpretation of the data that has precedence. That will require some knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the study type and whether there are any confounding factors. My point merely was that baseline intakes could confound RCTs of nutritients and is something to bear in mind.
If a supplement is given to a population and it has no effect I think we can conclude that advice for everyone to use this supplement is unwarranted. But to conclude that that supplement has no use, or even worse, that nutrient is unimportant to health is wrong. Newspaper reports go one of two ways (in general) - something is the greatest or it is useless. I get the impression it is this hyperbole that upsets most people on this site.
I agree with you about targetting interventions to groups. However, there are some caveats. If I took a group that was deficient in a nutrient, that strong epidemiological data, animal studies and maybe short-term intervention studies on disease risk markers show positive effects of that nutrient, and we randomized people to treatment and placebo there may be ethical problems. Certainly if you were to look at disease progression or mortality. While I think good science is important, if you found that the placebo group exhibited a higher prevalence of disease or had higher mortality than the treatment group this would be tantamount to negligence. this doesn’t always apply of course.
My comment wasn’t really sugesting a limitation of the RCT per se (although it does have limitations), like any experiment you have to be aware of confounders. If there are confounding factors, you have to interpret the data more carefully.
# 66
Thank you, confounders of experiments cause many sleepless nights!
ceec said,
October 16, 2006 at 12:13 pm
NB as a footnote to the “problems with RCTs for nutritional supplements” discussion, another problem might be that during the informed consent etc. procedures, lots of info about fish being natural source of omega-3 etc. might encourage both groups to increase intake of those foods “just in case” they are in the placebo group. If the benefit comes from removing nutritional deficiency rather than increasing intake per se, any benefits would be masked.
Then again, if telling people they need fish in their diet made them eat fish, McDonalds might not be doing such a roaring trade.
orangejo said,
October 18, 2006 at 9:56 am
I’ve just noticed Netmums are promoting Equazen’s products….
http://www.netmums.com/lc/fishoils.php#offer
Loads of mums use this site and they even have a little box saying, here’s the science bit.. and hey presto.. it takes you to a load of publicity from Equazen’s site. And that’s weird, it tells you that it’s a really good idea to buy a load of their stuff and give it to your kids because science says you should….
So, not only have they got the press on their side, they’ve also got a website used by many mums who are often too busy to read a newspaper, to be converted into their way of thinking.
I think we can’t underestimate the power of mums’ websites and forums. The whole MMR scepticism was allowed to grow because people ranted and raved about it on mums’ forums and allowed it to get into the national psyche and become institutionalised paranoia.
The damage may well have been done already with the Omega3 stuff - mums will never UNbelieve it now.
Also - is it possible nowadays to buy anything from marks and spencers that doesn’t say Contains Omega3 ? Do I want fish in my cheese?!? Oh, but it’s good fish that a man in a lab coat told me was good for my children. oh, that’s ok then (!)
kim said,
October 19, 2006 at 9:08 am
Here’s what Felicity Lawrence has to say:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/felicity_lawrence/2006/10/omega3_junk_food_and_violence.html
At the end she says she’s planning a response here, so should be interesting.
Dr Aust said,
October 19, 2006 at 11:13 am
Re post 71: On the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” page Felicity Lawrence writes:
“In the paper version of yesterday’s Guardian we reproduced a graph showing the correlation between the rise in murder rates in the UK and the increase in consumption of omega-6s from vegetable oils mainly in processed foods….
..Someone wrote to our letters page to say our use of this graph was “sensationalist”.
Fame at last — that person was me.
I eagerly await Felicity Lawrence’s response. In the meantiime, here is what I actually wrote to the Guardian:
“Dear Editor
Felicity Lawrence’s extended spread on omega-3s (“Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eatâ€, October 17th) alludes slightly coyly to the “backlash…from scientistsâ€â€“ including Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column and its readers - over “the hype surrounding omega-3â€.
She blames the “eagerness of… supplement companies to suggest that fish oils work might wonders even on children who have no behavioural problems†but does not mention the other thing that annoys the scientists - the over-promotion of these claims in the media and the credulousness of much of the reporting.
Lawrence’s story uses as a “Case Study†the progress made by nineteen Wiltshire special school children given a fish oil supplement. At least this time Lawrence identifies Dr Jackie Stordy, quoted here and in a News story on the same topic last week (“Severely troubled boys “soothed by fish oils†October 12th), as a former paid consultant to fish oil supplement companies. However, there is still no mention that Stordy is a long-time advocate of fish oil supplements and author of a book plugging them (“The LCP solution: The remarkable nutrition treatment for ADHD, Dyslexia and Dyspraxiaâ€).
Having given all the caveats - “not a trial… tiny numbers… no placebo or control [group]†– Dr Stordy then gives us the punchline – “[giving fish oil supplements] obviously had an impactâ€. Paraphrased: even though this was done in a way that ensures it could provide no reliable indication of anything, giving fish oil “obviously workedâ€. No wonder scientists are grinding their teeth.
Finally, Lawrence’s article showed a graph of the UK murder rate plotted against the omega-6 fatty acid content of the diet. Although this diagram came from a scientific review, its use here seems deliberately sensationalist. I could probably have plotted the UK murder rate in the same way against the mean number of video recorders per household, or even the weekly salary of footballers at top clubs, and got a similar graph. But none of these correlations would prove anything about causation.”
Dr Aust said,
October 19, 2006 at 12:02 pm
While we’re here, something curious about ferlicity Lawrence’s latest FishOil double-pager.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1924089,00.html
It quotes prisoners and experimenters in what it says is a “Double blind trial” of fish oils in a US prison.
But…. it quotes the nurse hading out the pills as saying he has seen major changes IN THE TREATEMENT GROUP.
…..??????!
If he knows who is getting the pills and who is getting the placebo, it’s not a double blind trial.
..and if he knows, almost certainly the subjects do to, as the experimenters cannot really help tipping them off, intentionally or otherwise.
[There are also quotes from the prisoners about how much better they are doing, again suggesting no blinding of the study]
All this strongly suggests that this trial, which occupies about a third of Felicity Lawrence’s article, is not what she says it is. If it is not properly double-blinded, its scientific value is marginal at best.
This just serves to re-emphasise what Ben and the rest of us Obsessives have been saying here: if non-science literate journalists write “features” about scientific subjects, you get problems because they do not understand the nature of scientific evidence.
(Thank to erasmus from the forums and others for pointing out the mistakes in L