This whole Banting diet issue has been very much in the news for a while now. It was all precipitated by Professor Tim Noakes coming out in favour of aspects of the diet. It is somewhat entertaining to watch the whole thing unfold.
We then had the Association for Dietetics in South Africa (Adsa) laying a formal complaint against Noakes at the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). Adsa accused Noakes of unprofessional conduct after he apparently suggested on Twitter that a mother wean her baby with a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet.
The HPCSA hearing failed to get going on the appointed day because the council did a most unprofessional thing by trying to start the hearing with a hearing committee not constituted according to its constitution. So the hearing has now been postponed and we have to wait for the outcome.
I wonder if Adsa really is worried about the one baby whose mother was given the Twitter advice or whether the association is sharpening its knives for Noakes anyway and was pleased to find that the Twitter incident gave it the break that it needed to lay a professional charge against him.
Let me hasten to point out that I am not a medic so I am not claiming any professional medical knowledge. Also, let me point out that I am not on any diet myself.
However, I did sit through an hour-long presentation given by Noakes, and I did speak to him briefly afterwards, as he was hastily getting ready to run to the airport.
What I can say is that I was impressed by his presentation. I am a qualified scientist and investigator, so I watched the presentation very critically. So, I am nailing my colours to the mast and saying that I side with Noakes in this ongoing investigation.
Three things particularly struck me with the presentation by Noakes. Firstly, he already had an impressive professional reputation so the easiest thing for him would have been to keep going with the flow – and he would have maintained his image. But he did not. He said: “I have been giving wrong advice for years and now I am changing my position.” That takes guts.
So, I figured that a fellow as sensible as he is must be rather sure, to make such a dramatic public about face. The second point was that he showed quite a few graphs and sets of data about heart attacks and suchlike around the world. That I am qualified to judge, because I know the science and maths behind how that is done.
Sadly, in medicine, one finds some of the most inaccurate scientific findings presented as fact. One of the most prevalent errors is that correlations are presented as causality.
What this means is that just because two graphs look the same, does not mean that they have any linkage. A friend in the US recently sent me a set of correlation graphs which are intended to be silly to make this point. For example, there are graphs of the number of lemons exported from the US, compared with the number of car accidents in Texas, and the graphs seem to match. Lemon exports do not influence car accidents in Texas. Many medical results presented as fact suffer from the same fault.
Heart attack incidence is plotted against the consumption of certain foods, and so on, and then just because graphs look the same in shape, people assume that, somehow, they are linked. Noakes correctly pointed out that they are not. He showed cases of clearly inaccurate medical conclusions concerning the carbohydrates and fats issue in diets.
For example, let me make one up. If a graph shows that people who eat a lot of hamburgers die from heart attacks, it does not mean that the hamburgers cause the heart attacks. It could be that the people do something else that leads to the heart attacks, but they also then go and eat a lot of burgers.
The third thing that Noakes showed was that well-meaning political decisions in the US designed to feed the poor had the unintended consequence of changing the eating patterns of the whole population. Such well-intended moves quite often have unintended bad consequences.
So, overall, Noakes has shown the courage to stand up for scientific truth. I wonder how many of the dieticians have actually done real scientific research into this issue, or are many of them showing a solidarity vote? If so, that is honourable, but it is not science.
So, Noakes should be given the chance to prove that he is scientifically right or wrong. He has shown that he has the courage to admit his mistakes, if he is wrong.