The Sidebar: cspi

Showing posts with label cspi. Show all posts

Monday, September 26, 2016

Author/journalist Nina Teicholz's critique of Retraction Watch's reporting about failed attempt by DC special interest group to retract her BMJ article

Via BMJ won’t retract controversial dietary guidelines article, says author by editor Alison McCook, Retraction Watch, September 23, 2016:

The BMJ is not going to retract a 2015 article criticizing the expert report underlying the U.S. dietary guidelines, despite heavy backlash from readers, according to the author of the article.

As Politico reported today, the publication told journalist Nina Teicholz it wouldn’t retract the article, first published one year ago today.

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.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Prominent Harvard prof/researcher Frank Hu solicited European colleagues to sign/circulate demand for BMJ to retract article by author/journalist Nina Teicholz -- she says her article criticized a fed gov review headed by Hu

This item is reported by me, journalist Dean Sterling Jones of Belfast, Northern Ireland who's cross-posting at his Shooting The Messenger blog, and New Zealander Kelsi White. Given the content of the story, our "hands across the water" effort seems fitting.

Frank Hu MD PhD MPH (source)

On Monday I reported how Barbara Millen PhD, chair of the 2015 US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), and USDA executive Angela Tagtow tag-teamed an effort that resulted in author/journalist Nina Teicholz being kicked off a panel at a national food policy conference held last month.

Teicholz is a high-profile critic of the DGAC's methodology and findings (which have been widely criticized by medical experts and organizations).

It's not the first time Millen tried to muzzle Teicholz.

Last November, Millen signed a public letter to the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal).

The letter demanded the retraction of a September 23 article by Teicholz which -- you guessed it -- criticized the methodology and findings of the DGAC.

Claiming Teicholz's article was "riddled with errors" -- a claim disputed in a recent Guardian article (see below) and elsewhere -- the letter was organized by the DC advocacy nonprofit, Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

E-mails obtained via a public records request (embedded below in reverse chronology) show that another DGAC member, Dr. Frank Hu, a prominent professor/researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, asked a colleague to sign and circulate the retraction demand which resulted in a chain letter exchanged by European medical professionals and university faculty.

source

It started with an October 31, 2015 "Dear Colleague" e-mail in which CSPI executive Bonnie Liebman asked dozens of nutrition science professionals to sign the letter.

The next day, Hu e-mailed this to Prof. Miguel Miguel A. Martinez-Gonzalez at the University of Navarra, Spain:

Hi Miguel,

Would you like to sign the attached letter to retract the BMJ article? if so, please email Bonnie Liebman.

I would greatly appreciate if you can ask your colleagues in Spain and other European countries to sign the letter. I think it is extremely important to retract the terrible BMJ article for the sake of science and public health.

Many thanks

frank

Miguel A. Martinez-Gonzalez (source)

Later that day in this e-mail (slightly re-formatted for ease comprehension), Martinez-Gonzalez copied Hu on an e-mail he sent to about 20 colleagues, stating "Yes, of course, Frank."

From: Miguel Ángel Martínez González <mamartinez@unav.es>
Date: 1 November 2015 at 11:36
Subject: Fwd: Letter to BMJ re Dietary Guidelines--Please respond by Nov. 3
To: Antonia Trichopoulou <atrichopoulou@hhf-greece.gr>, denis.lairon@univmed.fr, Katia Esposito <katherine.esposito@unina2.it>, giuseppe.grosso@studium.unict.it, Federico Jose Armando Perez Cueto Eulert <apce@plan.aau.dk>, "ligia.dominguez"<ligia.dominguez@unipa.it>, Matthias Schulze <mschulze@dife.de>, Iris Shai <irish@bgu.ac.il>, elliotb@ekmd.huji.ac.il, dario.giugliano@unina2.it, Angeliki Papadaki <Angeliki.Papadaki@bristol.ac.uk>, Arne Astrup <ast@nexs.ku.dk>, ricardo.uauy@lshtm.ac.uk, jose luchsinger <luchsin@hotmail.com>, Nikolaos Scarmeas <ns257@cumc.columbia.edu>, Christian Carpéné <Christian.Carpene@inserm.fr>, Olle Melander <olle.melander@med.lu.se>, boeing@dife.de, Marc Molendijk <m.l.molendijk@fsw.leidenuniv.nl>, Adriano Marçal Pimenta <adrianompimenta@yahoo.com.br>, Helfimed Study UniSA <Dorota.Zarnowiecki@unisa.edu.au>
Cc: Frank Hu <nhbfh@channing.harvard.edu>

Yes, of course, Frank.

I'm forwarding to my friends and colleagues this invitation to sign the attached letter:

I have read the full version of the attached letter and I agree to include my sign on it.
I endorse its full content and the request to the BMJ to retract the journalist's article.

Dear colleagues,
if you agree, you can send an email to Bonnie Liebman <bliebman@cspinet.org> with a similar content to what I have written above in blue font.

I would thank you all very much if you are so kind as to ask also to your friends from different European countries to sign the attached letter for the sake of science and public health.

Best regards,
miguel
--
Miguel A. Martinez-Gonzalez
University of Navarra-CIBEROBN
www.unav.es/preventiva
www.proyectosun.es
www.predimed.es
www.predimedplus.com
www.ciberobn.es
Research Gate

Here's one of the recipients of Martinez-Gonzalez's pass-along...

...who obligingly added another link in the chain letter which she states was "instigated by Frank Hu."

From: Angeliki Papadaki [mailto:Angeliki.Papadaki@bristol.ac.uk]
Sent: 01 November 2015 12:48
To: Arne Astrup; Saris, Wim; Inge Huybrechts; manios@hua.gr; Inga Þórsdóttir; Andy Ness; susan.jebb@phc.ox.ac.uk; Agneta Yngve; Sibylle Kranz; lmoreno@unizar.es;
clare.collins@newcastle.edu.au; Antonis Kafatos; Jayne Woodside; Janet Cade; Dianne Ward
Subject: Fwd: Letter to BMJ re Dietary Guidelines--Please respond by Nov. 3

Dear colleagues,

Please see attached a suggestion for a BMJ retraction letter, instigated by Frank Hu at Harvard. We were asked to circulate the letter for signatures.

If you agree, please send an email to Bonnie Liebman (bliebman@cspinet.org) with a similar content to the below, in blue font, and circulate to your colleagues.

I have read the full version of the attached letter and I agree to include my sign on it.
I endorse its full content and the request to the BMJ to retract the journalist's article.

Kind regards,

Angeliki

Why did Hu encourage colleagues to demand a retraction of what he called "the terrible BMJ article for the sake of science and public health"?

We don't know because he hasn’t responded to multiple inquiries.

source

But here’s what Nina Teicholz e-mailed me today:

My BMJ article was a critique of the science used in formulating the 2015 DGA expert report. Frank Hu chaired the review on saturated fats, which I critiqued in a number of ways: it did not consult the "Nutrition Evidence Library" per standard USDA practice, and although the studies covered in the review had conflicting and contradictory conclusions regarding whether saturated fats do in fact cause death from heart disease, the review nevertheless concluded that the evidence on this point was "strong." (Neither of these facts is disputed as part of the retraction request.) The question of whether sat fats cause heart disease has, over the past 5 years, undergone tremendous re-analysis and challenge, yet the Hu review did not reflect that ambivalence. In effect, it did not comprehensively review the most current science on this subject.

So was Dr. Hu making a good faith effort to address “an article riddled with errors” or was he attempting to censor a high-profile critic?

If he made himself available, along with that question, I'd ask him for a reaction comment to this section from Ian Leslie's lively and informative April 7 Guardian article about the nutrition science wars:

In September last year [Teicholz] wrote an article for the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), which makes the case for the inadequacy of the scientific advice that underpins the Dietary Guidelines. The response of the nutrition establishment was ferocious: 173 scientists – some of whom were on the advisory panel, and many of whose work had been critiqued in Teicholz’s book – signed a letter to the BMJ, demanding it retract the piece.

Publishing a rejoinder to an article is one thing; requesting its erasure is another, conventionally reserved for cases involving fraudulent data. As a consultant oncologist for the NHS, Santhanam Sundar, pointed out in a response to the letter on the BMJ website: “Scientific discussion helps to advance science. Calls for retraction, particularly from those in eminent positions, are unscientific and frankly disturbing.”

The letter lists “11 errors”, which on close reading turn out to range from the trivial to the entirely specious. I spoke to several of the scientists who signed the letter. They were happy to condemn the article in general terms, but when I asked them to name just one of the supposed errors in it, not one of them was able to. One admitted he had not read it. Another told me she had signed the letter because the BMJ should not have published an article that was not peer reviewed (it was peer reviewed). Meir Stampfer, a Harvard epidemiologist, asserted that Teicholz’s work is “riddled with errors”, while declining to discuss them with me.

This item has been slightly revised with an updated, but near-identical quote paragraph from Nina Teicholz.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Craven cave-in: How journalist/author Nina Teicholz was "disinvited" from the National Food Policy Conference (v2)

Nina Teicholz

Via Teicholz disinvited from food policy panel by Catherine Boudreau, Politico, March 25, 2016

...Nina Teicholz, an author who has publicly criticized the science behind the government's low-fat dietary advice, was recently bumped from a nutrition science panel after being confirmed by the National Food Policy Conference. The panel instead will include Maureen Storey, president and CEO of the Alliance for Potato Research and Education.

...Teicholz said she was disinvited after other panelists said they wouldn’t participate with her. Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, which is organizing the conference, confirmed he’d hoped to have Teicholz on the panel “but it didn't work out...”

...Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, will speak on the panel, along with Barbara Millen, the former chairwoman of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, and Angie Tagtow, executive director of the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. Wootan said that “concerns were raised about Teicholz's credibility, given the significant inaccuracies in her work.” Wootan pointed to a list of 180 scientists who urged the British Medical Journal to retract a feature article by Teicholz last year.

Thomas Gremillion (source)

What caused Gremillion to rudely and unceremoniously kick a prominent journalist/author off the panel?

According to Teicholz, she received a March 9, 2016 e-mail from Gremillion inviting her to be a member of the “Turning Nutrition Science into Policy,” scheduled for April 6.

An hour later Teicholz accepted and everything was in place for a lively debate.

And isn't that a cornerstone of the scientific method?

A couple hours later, that prospect headed south.

Margo Wooten (source) Barbara Millen PhD (source) Angela Tagtow (source)

From: Thomas Gremillion <tgremillion@consumerfed.org>
Date: Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 12:20 PM
Subject: RE: Panelist info for Natl Food Policy Conference
To: mwootan@cspinet.org, bmillen@bu.edu, Angela.Tagtow@cnpp.usda.gov
Cc: teicholz@gmail.com

Hi again Margo, Barbara, and Angie,

I apologize for inundating your inboxes this week but I wanted to let you know that we have confirmed Nina Teicholz (cc’ed) as our fourth panelist. Nina is an investigative journalist and author of The Big, Fat Surprise.

You should hear soon from your moderator Sue Pitman. In the meantime, do not hesitate to contact me with questions.

Thanks,

Thomas

It's unclear how "Thomas, Margo, Barbara, and Angie" passed the rest of that afternoon, but the next morning Gremillion gave Teicholz the axe.

On March 28 I e-mailed these questions to Gremillion and copied reporter Catherine Boudreau at Politico:

After you sent the March 9 e-mail, were you contacted by Ms. Wootan, Dr. Millen, Ms. Tagtow, or anyone else who expressed displeasure with Ms. Teicholz's presence on the panel?

How did you choose Dr. Storey to replace Ms. Teicholz and on what date did you invite her?

When you invited Dr. Storey, was she aware that she was replacing Ms. Teicholz?

Here's his prompt albeit skimpy reply:

From: Thomas Gremillion <tgremillion@consumerfed.org>
To: "Peter M. Heimlich" <peter.heimlich@gmail.com>
CC: "cboudreau@politico.com" <cboudreau@politico.com>
Subject: RE: blogger inquiry
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 21:54:26 +0000

Hi Peter,

I don’t have any further comment on Nina Teicholz. I am very pleased with the program that we have put together for the National Food Policy Conference this year and I think our audience will be too.

Best,

Thomas

In this e-mail she sent me (including the links), Teicholz was less taciturn:

It's startling to me that well-respected DC organizations like CSPI would take the stand that they simply can't tolerate debate and discussion. This behavior truly begs the question: what is it they have to fear? If the science that CSPI has been promoting for four decades can hold up to scrutiny, then they should welcome the chance to make that case. The reality is that in recent decades, there's been a tremendous re-evaluation of what causes nutrition-related diseases: if not dietary fat, as we've thought for so long, then what? But the political-industrial alliances in DC don't want this science to be heard.

It's not just me, I know, because after I was disinvited, I proposed a Harvard MD and a former Dietary Guidelines Committee member to take my place, but they weren't invited, either. Also, some 4150 people signed a petition in just a week to get me reinstated. They know that the thinking has changed and that the science needs a full, open debate (read their comments--they are passionately in favor of science and debate).

CSPI has clearly been trying to shut down that discussion, not only by having me disinvited, but also by organizing a letter to retract a piece I wrote in The BMJ that was critical of the science behind the Dietary Guidelines. That piece has not been retracted. My work stands, and I believe it's beneath basic standards of intelligent debate to disinvite someone because their views pose uncomfortable challenges to established views.

April 6, 2016: This is a revised, expanded version of an item I posted on March 30, 2016 and took down a few hours later due to an unexpected editorial snafu. The substantive information is identical plus the updated version includes the quotes from Teicholz.

Monday, December 28, 2015

Disappearing Act: 18 co-signers of BMJ retraction request letter are now MIA

I co-authored and cross-blogged this item with Belfast, Northern Ireland writer Dean Sterling Jones who shares my interest in the subjects of free speech and censorship. For example, click here for an item he blogged recently about a Belfast pastor on trial for preaching a "grossly offensive" sermon.

###

source

On November 5, a letter signed by over 180 credentialed professionals, including a number of prominent faculty members at major universities, was sent to the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal).

The letter -- organized by Bonnie Liebman MS at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a Washington, DC-based advocacy nonprofit -- requested that the journal retract The scientific report guiding the US dietary guidelines: is it scientific?, a September 23 article by journalist/author Nina Teicholz that criticized the methodology and findings of the 2015 US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC).

Never heard of the DGAC? Until recently, neither had we.

source

We'll leave it to experts -- including the National Academy of Medicine -- to debate the scientific issues and the merits of Teicholz's article.

We're interested in these journalism-related questions.

1) Why the pile on? Is her article a danger? If so, to whom?

2) Instead of trying to disappear her article, why not write a letter to the editor or a rebuttal?

3) Has CSPI ever organized retraction request letters for other articles?

4) Have any of the signatories ever requested retractions of other articles?

Re: that last question, part-time unpaid bloggers that we are, Dean and I don't have the time to ask everyone who signed. However, we will ask CSPI and the 14 members of the 2015 Guidelines Advisory Committee, all of whom signed the letter.

At the moment we can report that 18 co-signers of the original letter have been deleted from a subsequent version.

What happened is that after receiving the November 5 retraction request, the BMJ published a November 19 post Executive Editor Theodora Bloom that included:

In line with our usual practice, this will require all signatories to declare their competing interests, which are not provided in a version of the letter posted on the website of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest.

On December 17, the BMJ posted an updated version of the CSPI letter, absent the names of 18 scientists and grad students.*

We know why one of the co-signers is MIA. As I reported last month, University of Colorado professor and former American Heart Association president Robert Eckel MD e-mailed me that he'd removed his name because I'd filed a related public records request with the university.

1. Sharon R. Akabas, PhD
Director, MS in Nutrition
Associate Director for Educational Initiatives
Columbia University
Institute of Human Nutrition
New York, New York, USA

2. Carol J. Boushey, PhD, MPH, RD
Associate Research Professor
Epidemiology Program
University of Hawaii Cancer Center
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

3. Robert H. Eckel, MD
Professor of Medicine
Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes
Division of Cardiology
Professor of Physiology and Biophysics
Charles A. Boettcher II Chair in Atherosclerosis
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Director Lipid Clinic, University Hospital
University of Colorado, Denver
Denver, Colorado, USA

4. Wafaie Fawzi, DrPH
Richard Saltonstall Professor of Population Sciences
Professor of Nutrition, Epidemiology, and Global Health
Chair, Department of Global Health and Population
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Boston, Massachusetts, USA

5. Enrique Jacoby, MD, MPH
Regional Advisor on Nutrition and Active Living
NMH Pan American Health Organization
World Health Organization
Washington, D.C., USA

6. José Lapetra, MD, PhD
Médico de Familia
Responsable del Grupo de Investigación "Dieta, Nutrición y Prevención de Enfermedades en Atención Primaria"
CIBEROBN, Instituto de Salud Carlos III
Unidad de Investigación del Distrito Sanitario Atención Primaria Sevilla
Sevilla, Spain

7. Graham MacGregor, MA, MB, BChir
Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine
Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine
Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary
University of London
London, United Kingdom

8. Meena Mahadevan, PhD
Associate Professor
Program Coordinator for Applied Nutrition
Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences
Montclair State University
Montclair, New Jersey, USA

9. Salvatore Panico, MD, MS
Professor of Internal Medicine
Federico II University
Naples, Italy

10. Emma Patterson, PhD
Project Manager for School Food Sweden
Community Nutrition and Physical Activity
Karolinska Institutet
Stockholm, Sweden

11. Mike Rayner, DPhil
Professor of Population Health
Director, British Heart Foundation Centre on Population Approaches for Non-Communicable Disease Prevention
Nuffield Department of Population Health
University of Oxford
Oxford, United Kingdom

12. Lesley Schmidt Sindberg, MPH
Senior Research Coordinator
Healthy Eating Research
University of Minnesota School of Public Health
St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

13. Francisco J. Tinahones, MD, PhD
Professor of Medicine
Director, Endocrinology and Nutrition Services, Hospital Universitario Virgen de la Victoria
Coordinator, Complications of Obesity, CIBEROBN
University of Málaga
Málaga, Spain

14. Dianne S. Ward, EdD
Professor, Department of Nutrition
Gillings School of Global Public Health
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

15. Julia Wärnberg, PhD
Nutritionist
University of Malaga
Malaga, Spain

Graduate Students

16. Stacy Blondin, MSPH
USDA Doctoral Fellow
ChildObesity180
Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy
Tufts University
Boston, Massachusetts, USA

17. Larissa Calancie
Doctoral Candidate - Nutrition Interventions and Policy
University of North Carolina
Gillings School of Public Health
UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

18. Violet Kiesel
Graduate Student
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Here's the original letter with the 18 names highlighted:

* Not on the original November 5 letter, but she signed onto the December 17 version:

Rosemary Stanton, PhD, OAM
Visiting Fellow
School of Medical Sciences
University of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia

Monday, November 30, 2015

Prominent University of Colorado prof, former AHA president says he's removing his name from retraction request letter to British Medical Journal [UPDATE: He's been scrubbed from the letter]

UPDATE, 12/18/15, 4:22pm ET: The Center for Science in the Public Interest has deleted University of Colorado professor and former American Heart Association president Robert Eckel MD as a signatory on a letter to the British Medical Journal requesting that an article by journalist/author Nina Teicholz be retracted.

Via the original version of the letter dated November 5, 2015 (at this writing still accessible via Google cache):

Via v.2 of the letter dated yesterday:

Below the hash marks is my original item in which Dr. Eckel and the University of Colorado legal counsel stated that he chose to remove his name because I filed a public records request.

Since I reported that item, the university completed my records request. In the near future, I plan to report about what turned up.

###

source

Robert H. Eckel MD, a long-time faculty member at the University of Colorado and former president of the American Heart Association, is removing his name from a letter to the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) that was signed by more "than 180 prominent cardiovascular and nutrition scientists from 19 countries."

source

The letter, which was organized by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a Washington, DC advocacy nonprofit, urged the BMJ to retract The scientific report guiding the US dietary guidelines: is it scientific?, a September 23, 2015 article by New York City journalist/author Nina Teicholz.

Before I get to why Dr. Eckel says he chose to remove his name from the letter, have you ever heard of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines or the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC)?

I hadn't until recently when they were brought to my attention by Yale professor/author/columnist Dr. David L. Katz.

I was reporting a story about an Amazon book review and two Huffington Post columns in which Dr. Katz praised a novel called reVision without disclosing he wrote it under a pseudonym.

When asked to comment, in mid-October Dr. Katz told the Yale Daily News:

(reVision) 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.

As I wrote to Dr. Katz, that sounded like an interesting story I might wish to report.

Per this CSPI press release, on November 5 the story got even more interesting.

source

I'd never heard of an attempt by scores of credentialed professionals -- including Dr. Katz -- to urge a medical journal to retract an article by a journalist, so I wanted to learn more.

Click here for the letter and you'll see that a few dozen of the co-signers work at public institutions.

So a couple weeks ago, as I often do when reporting a story, I filed open records requests for related paperwork, including one for:

To my surprise, last week I received this:

I was curious to learn why Dr. Eckel decided to remove his name from the letter, so last night I asked him.

To my surprise, in a series of back and forth e-mails -- see below and click here to download -- he explained that it had to do with my records request and that the university informed him he may face "criminal actions."

According to Dr. Eckel:

I was out of town and that's what the University legal office voice mail message indicated if I didn't respond [to your records request] by a certain date. When I finally reached them my decision was to withdraw my name.

I'm not positive, but Dr. Eckel may be under the impression that removing his name from the CSPI letter terminates the university's obligation to complete my records request.

In any event, I've instructed the university to complete my request and I'll report the results.

This item has been slightly updated.