Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a ‘Dr.’ Gillian McKeith
Ben Goldacre, of Bad Science fame, can barely contain his glee in today’s Guardian, reporting on the Advertising Standards Authority’s admonishment of ‘Dr.’ Gillian McKeith for misrepresenting herself as someone qualified to speak on medical matters:
A regular from my website badscience.net took McKeith to the Advertising Standards Authority, complaining about her using the title “doctor” on the basis of a qualification gained by correspondence course from a non-accredited American college. He won. She may have sidestepped the publication of a damning ASA draft adjudication at the last minute by accepting - “voluntarily” - not to call herself “doctor” in her advertising any more. But would you know it, a copy of that draft adjudication has fallen into our laps, and it concludes that “the claim ‘Dr’ was likely to mislead”. The advert allegedly breached two clauses of the Committee of Advertising Practice code: “substantiation” and “truthfulness”.
Excellent news. ‘Dr.’ McKeith is a complete fraud—one of her ‘qualifications’ is available for purchase online for a very reasonable $60, as Dr. Goldacre’s dead cat Henrietta can attest—and, worse still, her nutritional advice is as poor as one might expect from a woman who bought her PHD from a non-accredited distance learning institution/vitamin supplement shop.
Read the rest of Goldacre’s column to find out just how bad that advice is—the bits about chlorophyll oxygenating the blood and algae increasing the amount of DNA in your body are especially entertaining. Or, rather, especially worrying, considering ‘Dr.’ McKeith is probably the best known and most influential ‘nutritionist’ in the country.
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