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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.
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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
Visiting Fellow
School of Medical Sciences
University of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia