I visited Patrick Holford’s site earlier today and realised a slight contradiction.
(image from here)
Apparently Patrick doesn’t want us to waste money on vitamins yet on another page we have this lovely image and an advert for his pill-peddling site.
(Image from here)
Unfortunately this has left confused about nutrition and as the page linked to is down I’ll have to get my advice from a more reputable source.
Certainly, Holford must not be Professor, because he is quack.
However, there is more interesting fact.
The “proud and mighty” David Colquhoun is not Professor longer. Here is his words from his blog:
“”5 March 2008. Next Monday there will be a meeting of Academic Board to ‘discuss’ new proposals for professorial pay. Since I’m now a research assistant, I have no vested interest in the outcome. The system so far has been wrapped in mystery, Every year you got a letter to tell you what your pay would be for next year. The proposed system is available here. There are some good things about it. Unlike many of my colleagues, I have always felt that it should be possible for pay to go down in late life for people who cease to be productive. As long, of course, as people who remain productive after 65 can continue to make contributions (UCL has implemented the latter in a manner so stingy that there must be doubts about its legality).”
(http://dcscience.net/?page_id=179)
UCL doesn’t consider Colquhoun deserves Professor title and doesn’t think that his present work is the fitting contribution into science.
Criticism of bad science is useful thing, surely. But critic must not forget that good science is his own MAIN duty. He must be good scientist himself.
Actually DC is quite entitled to use the title Professor having previously held the A.J. Clark chair of Pharmacology at UCL and, if you check the current UCL Pharmacology website he is still employed as a “Research Professor”. If you continue to read DC’s entry for the 5th of March you will also notice that the proposed professorial pay scale etc does not require one to be devoted to the production of good science and would prefer you to be a manager who still dabbles. It is well known that DC is oft outspoken on such issues and has criticised such practices so it would hardly be a surprise if UCL had decided to relinquish his chair, although I rather suspect it is more likely that DC himself resigned the position (or may have been forced too by the ludicrous enforced retirement policy that is present in academia) to allow more time to devote to research rather than the management.
As for questioning DC’s science his recent publications can be found here.