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Nutritionists are alternative therapists, but have somehow managed to brand themselves as men and women of science. Their errors are much more interesting than those of the homeopaths, because they have a grain of real science to them, and that makes them not only more interesting, but also more dangerous, because the real threat from cranks is not that their customers might die—there is the odd case, although it seems crass to harp on about them—but that they systematically undermine the public’s understanding of the very nature of evidence.
He found that while some trials did suggest that vitamin C had some benefits, Pauling had selectively quoted from the literature to prove his point. Where Pauling had referred to some trials which seriously challenged his theory, it was to dismiss them as methodologically flawed: but as a cold examination showed, so too were papers he quoted favourably in support of his own case.
Dr McKeith’s PhD is from Clayton College of Natural Health, a non-accredited correspondence course college, which unusually for an academic institution also sells its own range of vitamin pills through its website. Her masters degree is from the same august institution. At current Clayton prices, it’s $6,400 in fees for the PhD, and less for the masters, but if you pay for both at once you get a $300 discount (and if you really want to push the boat out, they have a package deal: two doctorates and a masters for $12,100 all in). On her CV, posted on her management website, McKeith claimed to
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as George Orwell first noted, the true genius in advertising is to sell you the solution and the problem.
But there is a gold-standard systematic review from Cochrane which brings together the evidence from all twenty-nine different trials on this subject, covering 11,000 participants in total, and concluded that there is no evidence that vitamin C prevents colds.
