Wikipedia:Peer review/Gillian McKeith/archive1

Gillian McKeith

I just created my first wikipedia article, inspired by Ben Goldacre's [recent] "Bad Science" coloumn for The Guardian. I'm reasonably proud of the accomplishment, but am uncertain that I've attained the heady heights of NPOV. My POV, clearly, is that she is a fraudulent quack. Would it help to attribute the criticism to Goldacre rather than incorporate it into the factual exposition? --Si 22:24, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Good for you for getting involved. Being an Ohioan, I'm not familiar with this woman. Is she one of those perennial guests that plague the chat shows? (We have a number of them here as well.)
  As for her criticism of her as a quack, has anyone else besides Goldacre raised this issue? Because dieting is such a fiercely disputed issue, I'd attribute criticism to your columnist rather than stating it flat out. I also wonder if you had any solid biographical data, such as how old she is, where's she from, where's she's worked?
  Stylistically, you could combine some of your sentences, something like "She claims to have degrees from . . . when they were actually issued by so and so, unaccredited schools not recognized by the Education Department, etc." Makes it flow better.
  Certainly a worthy start. Glad to have you aboard. PedanticallySpeaking 16:49, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

Firstly, sorry for the delayed response. I've been in Edinburgh for the Festival, and forgot that the rest of my life (including Wikipedia) still existed. As regards her status as a quack, the fact that she works in the field of nutrition doesn't have a bearing on the outright fallacies brought out by Goldacre in his second column. For example:

"Several of you are fans of Ms McKeith, and wrote to express how upset you were that I had childishly attacked her reputation, and not her theories. Well. Let's pick a quote at random. Chlorophyll is "high in oxygen". And the darker leaves on plants are good for you, she explains, because they contain "chlorophyll - the 'blood' of the plant - which will really oxygenate your blood." Here we run into a classic Bad Science problem. It may be immediately obvious to you that this is pseudoscientific, made up nonsense (and from the TV personality the Radio Times described as "no nonsense", no less). If it's not obvious nonsense to you, then, OK, just this once: the real science. Chlorophyll is a small green molecule that uses the energy from light to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen. Plants then use this sugar energy to make everything else they need, like protein, and you breathe in the oxygen, and maybe you even eat the plants. You also breathe out carbon dioxide. It's all so beautiful, so gracefully simple, yet so rewardingly complex, so neatly connected, not to mention true, that I can't imagine why you'd want to invent nonsense to believe instead. But there you go. That's alternative therapists all over."

Outright scientific rubbish, when coupled with a fraudulent academic history and various papers prepared but enver submitted for peer review add up to make, in my opinion, a quack. However, I never alleged that she was a fraud in the article - I merely said that was my POV. In the article, I only reported the fraudulent history by a series of objective and verifiable facts. I didn't even mention the scientific controversies, though now that you've mentioned it I might.

On style, the rephrase which you suggest ("She claims to have degrees from . . . when they were actually issued by so and so, unaccredited schools not recognized by the Education Department, etc.") is actually rather misleading, since it suggests that what she got were not really degrees when, legally, I think they were. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course. That the Ed Dep doesn't recognize them shows that they're not educationally valid degrees, not that they're not degrees per se. However, I accept the stylistic note --in general-- =) thanks for the tip. There are certainly improvements to be made.

And yes, she is one of those "Media Medics" (wheeeeeee look mummy I coined an alliterative phrase!). Thanks for your support and welcome =) --Si 21:03, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)