Showing posts with label retraction watch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label retraction watch. Show all posts
Monday, September 26, 2016
Saturday, November 28, 2015
What Katz hears: After being busted for sock puppetry, prominent Yale prof/author claims to be the victim of "cabal" that has "been bullying me relentlessly"
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Via Scandalous Huffington Post Columns Retracted, So Eat More Cheese! by David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM, LinkedIn, November 23, 2015:
Two of my columns for the Huffington Post have been retracted, and believe it or not, that has something to do with a well-orchestrated effort to scuttle national nutrition policy, and get you to eat more meat, butter, and cheese.
...(Backed) by billionaires with ties to such enterprises as Enron, and the beef industry...their intentions are clear enough: they would like to scuttle the translation of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Report into actual Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and thus- sabotage national nutrition policy so [sic] suit their personal inclinations.
...And that’s where the dots finally all connect. I first voiced my grave concerns about these egregious misrepresentations of current nutrition science, to say nothing of the indelible ties between dietary patterns and the fate of the planet, back in May of 2014. I have done so repeatedly since, because it is my job. And, I have apparently done so with enough people listening - thanks to you, my on-line following is well over half a million - that I am of particular concern to the cabal in question.
So, as I have noted before, they have been bullying me relentlessly for months. Most of this has been indictment by innuendo in cyberspace, with every derisive suggestion - he has done industry-funded research, his opinions are for sale - retweeted ad infinitum by other members of the same club. One of the great liabilities of social media and the blogosphere is that any given small group - including a band of wingnuts living in their mothers’ basements - can create enough echoes to seem like a movement.
In the current case, it is now clear that the aspersions directed at me were of the “keep throwing dirt until something sticks” variety. My opinions are not for sale, and I was raised by good and loving parents to be an honest and honorable person, so not much stuck. Until the group stumbled on those posts about reVision, which apparently hadn’t bothered a soul.Dr. Katz's article includes no evidence to back up any of his allegations, therefore it's unclear how he arrived at such conclusions.
In any event, here are the facts with a timeline.
September 30, 2015: That morning, a source directed me to this tweet posted the previous day...
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...and to this (now-deleted) gushing five-star book review Dr. Katz posted February 16, 2014 on Amazon.com for the novel reVision without identifying himself as the author:
That afternoon, I reported Katz out of the bag: Did prominent Yale doc/prof/columnist shill review a book he wrote under a pseudonym? I've asked Amazon to take a look.
October 2, 2015: For a follow-up item, I e-mailed some questions to Dr. Katz.
October 17, 2015: Yale Daily News staff reporter David Yaffe-Bellany sent me this on the record e-mail he received from Dr. Katz which I'm publishing with Yaffe-Bellany's permission; click here for more information about the US Dietary Guidelines and the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC):
reVision, however, is not at all the relevant story here.
The real story is this: a group attempting to scuttle the Dietary Guidelines in the US, funded by billionaires with ties to the beef industry and Enron, is unhappy that I have defended the dietary guidelines (that IS my day job), and that I have been among the many prominent voices pointing out their ulterior motives, and erroneous statements. In return, they have gone looking for any basis to discredit me, and the best they could find was... this. My closet is unusually pristine.
Write about reVision if you want (I recommend you read it first)- it will be the best exposure that book has had! But you are certainly being duped, and covering the wrong story- and you will be working at the behest of the likes of Enron, and the beef industry. My hope is you have more laudatory aspirations than that.Here's my on the record response to Yaffe-Bellany:
Let me know what you think.
David
I can assure Dr. Katz that I'm not part of any cabal, conspiracy, or smear campaign against him. I'm an unpaid, independent blogger who has tagged dozens of shill book reviews on Amazon. That's what led me to his review of reVision and his two Huffington Post columns in which he lavishly praised the novel without informing readers that he wrote it. Instead of trying to change the subject, he should man up and explain what happened.October 25, 2015: Via Dr. Katz's response to my October 2 e-mail:
Peter- apologies if I overlooked your prior missive; my inbox is a busy place.November 4, 2015: Via Yaffe-Bellany's Yale Daily News article, Katz faces criticism for book review:
This matter recently came to my attention, and when I looked into it myself, I saw it originated in social media with those intention discrediting the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Report. I have long been defending that report (that's my day job), and have incurred varying harassment for months for my pains, as have all others who have done likewise. I have addressed this myself in my most recent column: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/national-nutrition-policy-imperiled-bullies-david-l-katz-md-mph?trk=mp-reader-card
In February 2014, David Katz MPH ’93, the director of the Yale School of Medicine’s Prevention Research Center, wrote two glowing online reviews of a science-fiction novel called reVision.
In his biweekly column in The Huffington Post, Katz lauded the book’s “lyrically beautiful writing,” comparing it to the work of a veritable “who’s who” of great writers, including Plato, John Milton and Charles Dickens. “I finished with a sense of illumination from a great source,” he concluded. “The most opportune comparison may be to a fine wine.” Katz had used similar language two days earlier in a five-star product review he posted on the book’s page on Amazon.
But Katz omitted a crucial detail from both reviews: the subject of his praise was his own self-published passion project, released two months earlier under the pseudonym Samhu Iyyam.
...Fred Brown, a spokesman for the Society of Professional Journalists, told the News the Huffington Post column was blatantly unethical, and the blogger, Peter Heimlich, who wrote about the Amazon review in late September and ontacted the News shortly after, said he is not involved in the debate over the guidelines.
Correction: I never complained to Amazon or asked that the review be taken down. For a follow-up item I was reporting, via Amazon's Public Relations department I inquired whether Dr. Katz's review was in compliance with Amazon guidelines. The complete correspondence is posted on my Scribd account....“Instead of trying to change the subject, [Katz] should man up and explain what happened,” Heimlich said. Heimlich added that he has sent a formal complaint to Amazon asking that Katz’s product review be taken down.
November 14, 2015: I blogged And he scores! Amazon scrubs "sock puppet" five-star book review by prominent Yale professor, author, columnist.
November 18, 2015: I blogged Huffington Post deletes two columns by prominent Yale professor/author David L. Katz MD; "undisclosed conflict of interest."
My correspondence with Huffington Post editors (which includes the e-mails I exchanged with Dr. Katz) is posted on my Scribd account.
November 20, 2015: Via Yale doc loses 2 HuffPo blog posts after secretly promoting his novel by staff writer Shannon Palus, Retraction Watch:
The Huffington Post has retracted two blog posts by prominent Yale nutritionist David Katz after learning he had posted incredibly favorable reviews of a new novel - and not revealed that he had written the novel himself, under a pseudonym.
There’s no doubt Katz is a prolific writer - in addition to a couple hundred scientific articles and textbook chapters, Katz regularly blogs for the Huffington Post. He’s also the author of a novel, reVision, under the pen name Samhu Iyyam. Last year, Katz wrote a pair of incredibly favorable reviews of reVision on The Huffington Post that implied he had discovered the novel as a reader. The Huffington Post has taken them down, as blogger Peter Heimlich — yes, related to the maneuver - reported earlier this week. According to Heimlich, a 5-star Amazon review of “Iyyam’s” book, written by Katz, has also been removed.
In the reviews, there’s no hint that Katz is the author.Per our correspondence, I explained to Dr. Katz that after I finished reporting about reVision, I wanted to learn more about his allegations about being the target of "a cabal." I'll ask him for details and report the results.
Finally, to my knowledge, Dr. Katz has yet to address why he wrote the Amazon review without disclosing that he was the author.
This item has been slightly updated.
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That day I posted a couple of comments on Ms. McCook's item (here and here) and this morning Ms. Teicholz posted the following comment which my Belfast blogging buddy Dean Sterling Jones and I are co-publishing with her permission.
This piece, like the ones previously on this topic by Retraction Watch, have lacked balance: the preponderance of quotes and all the links embedded in the piece are critical of me or echo the CSPI playbook, which is to cast innuendo on my work, calling it “error laden” and somehow related to the meat industry. Neither of these allegations is based on any evidence, and neither is true. Moreover, Retraction Watch’s coverage has leaned heavily on reporting by The Verge, which has been the most defensive of the government’s Dietary Guidelines and uniquely critical of me (and is a difficult choice for RW to defend, given that The Verge is an obscure outlet, and that the reporter covering this issue has no experience in covering nutrition science or policy–a highly complex field). Meanwhile, RW has ignored a great deal more mainstream, balanced coverage of the issue, some of which I list below.
Consider what a more balanced piece on this issue might look like (It’s impossible to embed links in the Comment section, so I’ve only included a few).
Nina Teicholz, science journalist and author of the bestselling The Big Fat Surprise, has challenged some of the fundamental thinking on nutrition science and disease. Her piece in The BMJ questioned the science underlying the Dietary Guidelines, including whether it was systematically reviewed. When the piece came out, a year ago, it was criticized heavily by many scientists, including all the members of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and CSPI, who called it “error-laden.” But its allegations were supported by others, including prominent nutrition scientist Arne Astrup, who was quoted in Cardiobrief as saying, “The (DGA) committee seems to be completely dissociated from the top level scientific community, and unaware of the most updated evidence.” And others have echoed the criticisms, including a 2016 piece in The Annals of Internal Medicine by prominent cardiologist Steven E. Nissen, entitled, “US Dietary Guidelines, an Evidence Free Zone,” and an op-ed by former DGA committee member Cheryl Achterberg, questioning both the science and the process of the Guidelines. (see below for a list of many other critiques of the DGAs).
In fact, concern about the DGAs and their inability to combat the crippling epidemics of obesity and diabetes, has grown recently, such that last year, the US Congress held a hearing on October 7, at which both the Secretaries of HHS and USDA, who jointly produce the Guidelines, were called to testify. [Statements of concern about the DGAs by members of Congress can be found at http://www.nutrition-coalition.org/congress-is-concerned/, in which many of the issues raised were similar to those in The BMJ article]. Indeed, the level of Congressional concern was so high that Congress subsequently mandated that the National Academy of Medicine conduct the first-ever major peer review of the DGAs. Moreover, Congress appropriated $1 million to ensure that the review be conducted. (Congress also required that all 2015 DGA committee members recuse themselves from the process.) The major goal of the review is understand how the DGAs “can better prevent chronic diseases.” Given that 2/3 of the nation are overweight or obese, and more than half pre-diabetic or diabetic, these public health issues are of urgent importance.
CSPI, a staunch defender of the Dietary Guidelines, has called critics of the Guidelines “full of baloney” and portrayed their views as being motivated by industry funding.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/257353-coalition-is-full-of-baloney-on-nutrition-guidelines
CSPI in particular opposes new thinking on saturated fat, presumably because the group has campaigned against these fats for decades and indeed, is uniquely responsible for driving them out of the food supply. Yet these fats have undergone considerable reconsideration over the past five years [There are many articles on this, in mainstream publications]. In her BMJ piece, Teicholz argued that this recent science had not been systematically reviewed by the 2015 DGA committee.
CSPI wrote the letter of retraction submitted to The BMJ and collected signatures from 180+ scientists, including all members of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory committee. This is virtually an unprecedented number of scientists (?) calling for retraction of an article [and is therefore arguably a subject that RW ought to address]. The original number of signers was actually higher, but 18 dropped out. Harvard professor Frank Hu made a particular effort to round up signatures. He is the DGA committee member who chaired the 2015 DGA review of saturated fats that Teicholz criticized. [Links to these topics can be found in Heimlich’s post, above]
It’s not clear whether the 180+ scientists understood the alleged errors that formed the foundation of the BMJ retraction request, as reporter Ian Leslie reported in The Guardian: “When I asked them to name just one of the supposed errors in it [the BMJ article], not one of them was able to. One admitted he had not read it.”
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin
Many scientists believe that the DGAs do not reflect the most current and most rigorous science. Teicholz’s BMJ article could be part of the effort to shed light on these issues. And possibly, this retraction effort by CSPI and the DGA committee members is an attempt to shut down debate on their long-held positions rather than an earnest alarm about alleged errors. The fact that CSPI has also worked to maneuver Teicholz’s dis-invitation from a conference panel adds to the impression that they are trying to silence debate.
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-agriculture/2016/03/teicholz-disinvited-from-food-policy-panel-stabenow-grassley-let-usda-fda-review-syngenta-merger-fda-to-release-food-safety-tests-on-cucumbers-213410
http://www.the-sidebar.com/2016/03/craven-cave-in-how-journalistauthor.html
OTHER EXPERTS WHO HAVE BEEN CRITICAL OF THE DIETARY GUIDELINES
“The expert committee report repeatedly makes recommendations based on observational studies and surrogate end points, failing to distinguish between recommendations based on expert consensus rather than high-quality RCTs. Unfortunately, the current and past U.S. dietary guidelines represent a nearly evidence-free zone.”
— Steven Nissen, Department Chair, Cardiovascular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic, The Annals of Internal Medicine, January 19 2016
“Despite being controversial recommendations based on weak scientific evidence, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) created in 1980 a food pyramid and placed carbohydrates at its base. This national nutritional experiment contributed, as we know now, to the increased prevalence of obesity.”
— Osama Hamdy, Medical Director, Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School, Nutrition Revolution: The End of the High Carbohydrates Era for Diabetes Prevention and Management, January 11, 2015.
“These guidelines are hugely influential, affecting diets and health around the world. The least we would expect is that they be based on the best available science. Instead the committee has abandoned standard methodology, leaving us with the same dietary advice as before – low fat, high carbs. Growing evidence suggests that this advice is driving rather than solving the current epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes. The committee’s conflicts of interest are also a concern. We urgently need an independent review of the evidence and new thinking about diet and its role in public health.”
— Dr Fiona Godlee, Editor in Chief, The BMJ The BMJ, September 24, 2015.
“Important aspects of these recommendations remain unproven, yet a dietary shift in this direction has already taken place even as overweight/obesity and diabetes have increased. Although appealing to an evidence-based methodology, the DGAC Report demonstrates several critical weaknesses, including use of an incomplete body of relevant science; inaccurately representing, interpreting, or summarizing the literature; and drawing conclusions and/or making recommendations that do not reflect the limitations or controversies in the science.”
— Hite et al, Nutrition 2010.
“It seems reasonable to consider…whether the guidelines can be trusted and whether they have done more harm than good.”
— David A. McCarron, University of California, Davis Wall Street Journal, op-ed, Nov. 27, 2015
“Dietary Guidelines: Are We on the Right Path?” The DGAs are only weakly associated to better health outcomes and reduced risk of chronic disease.
— Joanne Slavin, University of Minnesota, former member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, Nutrition and Policy (2012)
“At the end of this year, the federal government will issue a new set of dietary guidelines, but what’s clear to many in the scientific community is that the dietary guidelines report is not ready for primetime. The process under which they were developed clearly needs enhancing to ensure that Americans are being provided the strongest, most accurate recommendations based on the most rigorous science available.”
— Cheryl Achterberg, The Ohio State University, former member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, “Rigorous Science Must Decide Dietary Guidelines to Combat Health Epidemics”, Roll Call (2015)
“… these guidelines might actually have had a negative impact on health, including our current obesity epidemic. [There’s a] possibility that these dietary guidelines might actually be endangering health is at the core of our concern about the way guidelines are currently developed and issued.”
— Paul Marantz, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, American Journal of Preventative Medicine (2008)
“Government dietary fat recommendations were untested in any trial prior to being introduced.”
— British OpenHeart Journal (2015)
”Despite our evidence-based review lens where we say that food policies are ‘science based,’ in reality we often let our personal biases override the scientific evidence… it may be time for a new approach to dietary guidance in the United States.”
— Joanne Slavin, University of Minnesota, former member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, Nutrition and Policy (2015)
“The guidelines changed how Americans eat… In place of fat, we were told to eat more carbohydrates… Americans, and food companies and restaurants, listened — our consumption of fat went down and carbs, way up. But nutrition, like any scientific field, has advanced quickly, and by 2000, the benefits of very-low-fat diets had come into question… Yet, this major change went largely unnoticed by federal food policy makers.”
— Dariush Mozaffarian, Tufts University and David Ludwig, Harvard Medical School, “Why is the Federal Government Afraid of Fat?”, New York Times (2015)
“I and a team of researchers have studied the data that these guidelines are based on and have come to the conclusion that the data are scientifically flawed. That’s because most of the data on which dietary guidelines are based were gathered by asking people to recall what they had consumed in the recent past—something people are notoriously bad at remembering.”
— Ed Archer, University of Alabama, “The Dietary Guidelines Hoax”
“The U.S. government has been providing nutrition guidance to the public since 1980. Yet 35 years later their influence on eating habits has been negligible…If policy makers expect to influence Americans’ eating habits… things must change.”
— Cheryl Achterberg, The Ohio State University, former member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, “Government Food Cops are Out to Lunch”, Wall Street Journal (2015)
“The low-fat–high-carbohydrate diet, promulgated vigorously by…National Institutes of Health, and American Heart Association…and by the U.S. Department of Agriculture food pyramid, may well have played an unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity, lipid abnormalities, type II diabetes, and metabolic syndromes. This diet can no longer be defended by appeal to the authority of prestigious medical organizations or by rejecting clinical experience and a growing medical literature suggesting that the much-maligned low-carbohydrate–high-protein diet may have a salutary effect on the epidemics in question.”
— Sylvan Lee Weinberg, MD, “The Diet-Heart Hypothesis: A Critique. Journal of the American College of Cardiology (2004)
“Very Disappointing,” Walter Willett, Harvard Chan School of Public Health
“These Guidelines are effectively useless,” and “The Guidelines are a national embarrassment…It is a sad day for public health. It is a day of shame.” David L. Katz, Yale-Griffin Prevention Program
“The Food Cops and Their Ever-Changing Menu of Taboos”
Wall Street Journal (2015)
David A. McCarron, M.D., F.A.C.P., Visiting Professor with the Department of Nutrition, University of California-Davis.
“Government Food Cops are Out to Lunch”
Wall Street Journal (2015)
Cheryl Achterberg, PhD, Dean of the College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University, former member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (2010).
“Keep Dietary Guidance Evidence Based”
Star Tribune (2015)
Joanne Slavin, PhD, Professor, University of Minnesota, former member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (2010).
“Why is the Federal Government Afraid of Fat?”
New York Times (2015)
Dariush Mozaffarian, PhD, Dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, and David Ludwig, PhD, MD, Harvard Medical School.
“Make Science and Public Health the Focus of the Dietary Guidelines”
The Hill (2015)
Jeff Volek, PhD, Department of Kinesiology, the University of Connecticut and Stephen Phinney, PhD, MIT.
“Dietary Guidelines for Americans: Playing Politics with Our Health”
Roll Call (2015)
Jeff Volek, PhD, Department of Kinesiology, the University of Connecticut.
“Why Do Dietary Guidelines Keep Failing? Weak Evidence Invalidated by Rigorous Research”
San Diego Union Tribune (2015)
Bradley Fikes, biotechnology reporter.
“The Government’s Bad Diet Advice”
New York Times (2015)
Nina Teicholz, author and science journalist.
“Food Guidelines Are Broken. Why Aren’t They Being Fixed?”
Newsweek (2015)
Jeff Volek, PhD, Department of Kinesiology, the University of Connecticut.
“Dietary Guidelines for Americans Science or …?”
Protein Power blog (2015)
Michael R. Eades, M.D.
“Advisory Committee’s Violations of Federal Low Threaten Credibility of 2015 Dietary Guidelines”
Forbes (2015)
Glenn G. Lammi, contributor.
“Next Time Government Gives You Dietary Advice, Consider Doing the Opposite”
Reason,com (2015)
David Harsanyi, columnist, senior editor.
“The Red Meat, Eggs, Far, and Salt”
Reason.com (2015)
Ronald Bailey, science correspondent, columnist, and author.
MAINSTREAM REPORTING ON THE BMJ ARTICLE
“What the Government’s Dietary Guidelines May Get Wrong”
The New Yorker (2015)
Sam Apple, journalist and writer.
“Report Says Proposed U.S. Dietary Guidelines Aren’t Backed Up by Relevant Science”
Newsweek (2015)
Jessica Firger, journalist.
“Here’s What’s Wrong With the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, Report Says”
Time (2015)
Alexandra Sifferlin, journalist.
“How Scientific Are the US Dietary Guidelines?”
Mother Jones (2015)
Samantha Michaels, journalist.
“How Strong Is the Science Behind the U.S. Dietary Guidelines?”
CNN (2015)
Carina Storrs, science and health writer.
“Expecting Scientifically Sound Nutritional Guidance from the Feds? Fat Chance”
Reason.com (2015)
“Are Fats Unhealthy? The Battle Over Dietary Guidelines”
The New York Times (2015)
Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS is a Professor of Pediatrics, Associate Dean for Research Mentoring at Indiana University School of Medicine.
“BMJ Paper Criticizes Proposed US Dietary Guidelines”
CARDIOBRIEF (2015)
Larry Huston
“BMJ Lambasts U.S. Dietary Group for Shoddy Research”
MEDPAGE TODAY (2015)
Parker Brown, staff writer.
“New Report Asserts Major Issues with the 2015 U.S. Dietary Guidelines”
Yahoo Health (2015)
Jenna Birch, contributing writer
“Experts Day US Dietary Guidelines May Be A Danger to Millions of Americans’ Health”
Medical Daily (2015)
Samantha Olson, MS, Stony Brook University.
“Science Used in Proposed U.S. Dietary Guidelines is Questioned”
Chicago Sun-Times (2015)
Sue Ontiveros, contributing blogger and scientist.