Talk:Tim Noakes/Archive 1

Criticism by the medical community?

The comment "Noakes's ideas about a LCHF diet have been criticised by the medical community as unscientific” is vexatious, and its source is a rant on a South African consumer-level health news website. That rant, by Carine Visagie, draws largely on an article by David L. Katz, renowned for his self-promoting sock-puppet reviews of his own book.

Tim Noakes is an A1-rated scientist (according to the South African system), who has had the honesty to change his mind in the light of better scientific evidence. He has publicly apologised for the harm he did with his earlier dietary recommendations in "The Lore of Running”. [[1]]

The Visagie piece was last updated on 23rd June 2015, almost two years before Prof. Noakes was cleared of misconduct, and three years almost to the day before he was vindicated by the court of appeal. The HPCSA hearings hinged almost entirely on the validity of Prof. Noakes’s scientific ideas, which were thoroughly vindicated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anarchie76 (talk • contribs) 22:55, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Based on your editing history you are here on Wikipedia to peddle LCHF quackery. There is no reason to remove that source from the article. The medical community does not agree with Noakes' crazy dieting ideas. Skeptic from Britain (talk) 00:22, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I've looked at two sentences, and two sources, and they do not meet the requirements. The first is too weak a source to support a claim that he's been criticized by the scientific community. The second says almost exactly the opposite of what the source said. I've therefore removed those claims.

I suspect, based upon this experience, that if someone like User:QuackGuru went through the Tim Noakes#Controversy section and removed everything that failed verification, then it would be a much shorter section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Health24 is South Africa's leading consumer health website, the writer of that article just summarized the opinion of scientists. I am not sure why this would be an unreliable source. A quote from the article says "Our medical community, health authorities and academics (even Noakes’ own colleagues at the University of Cape Town, who formally distanced themselves from his theories) are very concerned that the Banting Diet is simply not based on good science." [2], pinging users who have edited related articles to dieting and might be able to help with this @Alexbrn: @QuackGuru:, @Strikerforce:, @Doc James:, @Timpo:, @EEng: Skeptic from Britain (talk) 13:06, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Not a suitable source for medical claims. But would be fine for non medical claims IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:00, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: can you explain what other sources fail verification? Perhaps that entire section needs to be cleared out or re-written. Skeptic from Britain (talk) 14:49, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

health24.com is used quite a few other times on the article, if it is not a reliable source for medical claims, then shouldn't all those be removed as well? Skeptic from Britain (talk) 14:51, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

The reference BizNews.com is used on the article. It does not look reliable to me. Skeptic from Britain (talk) 16:27, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't think you've quite got the reliability concept. It's not a question of whether a source is reliable. It's whether a source is reliable for this statement. So, for example, the Health24 article is IMO not reliable source for whether the scientific community does or does not hold a view on a particular scientist, but it is a reliable source for whether a particular person said particular words. We should not use it in the first case, and we should use it in the second case (especially since quotations are a WP:MINREF issue and therefore must always have an inline citation).

One does wonder at this whole kerfuffle. (Is there any professional body that would agree that mashed avocados and eggs – both "low-carb, high-fat" foods – are bad for babies?) Overall, I think this "trial" is being given way too much attention in this article. It should probably be replaced by a very brief statement, probably with little more detail than this: "In 2014, Noakes was charged with unprofessional conduct after tweeting that the first solid foods given to babies should be meat and vegetables, rather than highly processed foods, such as commercially manufactured infant cereal. In 2017, Noakes was cleared of all charges. In 2018, HPSCA's appeal was unanimously dismissed."

Anything you can do to move the article in that direction is likely to be helpful. I'll have a go in a few minutes to get that started. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I've blanked a bunch of stuff to get it down to a basic summary. The sources left may not be the best ones available (if anything's uncited or poorly sourced, then the medicalbrief.co.za article covers nearly everything except the appeal, I think), but I think that this is the overall level of detail that is WP:DUE. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Marika Sboros unreliable source

The articles on BizNews were written by Marika Sboros "co-author with Prof Tim Noakes of Lore of Nutrition" who has promoted conspiracy theories. I will go ahead with removing these references as they are unreliable. Skeptic from Britain (talk) 16:33, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Things written by Noakes' co-author would still be a reliable source for things about herself, her relationship with Noakes, things Noakes told her, etc. None of that is invalidated by her belief that industries and multi-national corporations pay people to promote whatever they're selling. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:32, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

What does this mean?

Under support for high fat low carb there is a statement "often referred to as the "Tim Noakes", "B of cognitive dissonance.” " What exactly does this sentence mean and can it be changed to something that makes sense? --Drewder (talk) 01:54, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, that typo was my fault. I didn't manage to delete quite all of a previous sentence. It looks like someone has cleaned it up now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:33, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Reversion of my edit on the central governor hypothesis

User:Alexbrn reverted my edit on the central governor hypothesis on the basis that it had used unreliable sources and failed WP:V. My sources were citations of Noakes' peer-reviewed scientific papers on the hypothesis, which advance the hypothesis as laid out; I cannot understand why this reversion was made.Mikalra (talk) 23:00, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

We need WP:MEDRS for biomedical content, this was a long laundry list of primary research, none of which (so far as I can tell) support the assertion that "He is known for ..." a hypothesis, which looks like original editorializing. Even if the sources were reliable, article ledes must summarize bodies not have new content put in them, and WP:OVERCITE is nasty. Alexbrn (talk)

Medicine is an art, not a science

We need to distinguish between the orthodoxy of the medical community, which is a shared opinion and generally intolerant of dissension which may cause patients to doubt the priestly powers of its practitioners and the science of biology, which is based on the converse notion of the falsifiability of claims - i.e any scientific claim is by definition open to challenge.

The Greek philosophers opened the debate between "doxa" and "teka" as an investigation around thorny subject of "truth" q.v. substantive/minimalist/pluralist et al."

Medical truisms, especially around widely marketed products is apt to be distorted by powerful commercial interests. The hot debate between statins supporters and the recently (and in my view deeply regrettably) deletion of the Wikipedia article THINCS (red ink intentional) may perhaps be a case in point?

P.S. Interestingly the THINCS site starts with two quotes which (→IMHO) I think may be highly relevant:

• “The great tragedy of Science-the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” (Thomas Henry Huxley) presumably in in the medical world of that time, a irreligious troublemaker?
• ”The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement” (Karl Popper ) medically speaking today, probably a insignificant philosopher?)

For more, see see external link The International network of cholesterol skeptics)

Timpo (talk) 11:41, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Vaccination

I've returned the tag about theundue weight issue on vaccination. The problem is that this section is about a single tweet where he raised the question of the (disproved) autism/vaccination claims, and a follow up tweet saying that he had no opinion on the matter. I'm a bit lost about why we would need a full section on his "stance", when apparently his stance is "no opinion", expressed in two brief tweets. - Bilby (talk) 20:12, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

It seemed to cause a stir in the news (in RS). We follow that. In comparison to the unsourced trivia above this section, this is solid knowledge. Alexbrn (talk) 20:20, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

This is an incredibly minor issue to get a whole section to itself. Just because someone expressed something resembling support for Wakeflied, we don't need to cover it every time it occurs. - Bilby (talk) 20:35, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

The section's just to keep it discrete; I'd not mind merging into another section. We cover what RS covers. A few outlets covered this incident. Alexbrn (talk) 20:40, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

You really think one tweet warrants this? What outlets make this so important? - Bilby (talk) 20:44, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

It's not what I think (or you) that counts; it what RS thinks that counts. We've got the current source - or Medical Brief or Health24 as a simple search will warrant. Anyway, I've de-sectioned this so it's less prominent. Presumably RS gets excited because in ZA statements like this about public health are incredibly controversial, as I'm sure you will appreciate. Alexbrn (talk) 20:48, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

If it was incredibly controversial, it would have been covered more. Having "no opinion" is a non-issue. - Bilby (talk) 20:51, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

You think a scientist having "no opinion" on whether the CDC is covering-up a vaccine/autism link is uncontroversial!? Alexbrn (talk) 21:00, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

A scientist who has nothing to do with vaccination? Yes. It is possible not to have an opinion about things outside of your field. - Bilby (talk) 21:08, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Twitter ban

This MAY be relevant. Twitter has now (by late October 2022) permanently banned Tim Noakes' main Twitter account. What sort of Twitter violation would cause that? I do NOT know the answer. I have NOT seen a definitive justification.Barry Pearson 13:23, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Would need secondary sources covering this. Bon courage (talk) 14:03, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Barry Pearson, it's extremely difficult these-days to get banned on Twitter. Most people may be shadow banned meaning they are locked out of their account for a few days I think that is what has happened here with Noakes. I have had a look, Tim Noakes' Twitter has not been deleted [3], which means he is not perm-suspended liked he claims. I am not sure what happened there, his account is not deleted, i.e. he has not been perm-banned so I am guessing he was just temporally locked out. Yet I see he has also created a new account [4], here he comments about the issue [5]. As there are no reliable sources that document this, it's unlikely it needs to be mentioned on Wikipedia. Psychologist Guy (talk) 19:35, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Change of mind

[6]https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b09smnhd

I'm surprised that his change of mind on carbs / proteins isn't featured more directly. It was controversial and quite instructive both in it's development and reception. I'd like to add a section on this but naturally want to tread carefully and avoid any controversy of my own. Any advice please? Lukewarmbeer (talk) 18:35, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Any WP:SECONDARY, independent sources? Bon courage (talk) 18:36, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Some books and videos of Noakes being interviewed are easy to find - as well as that BBC podcast.

This is the extract from Amazon of one book by Noakes himself on the subject.

"You couldn’t make it up. Real Food On Trial, How Diet Dictators Tried To Destroy A Top Scientist, has been called the ‘John Grisham of the non-fiction world’, a ‘blockbuster, jaw-dropping page-turner’. Another reviewer calls it a book that “should be fiction … yet it isn’t’. It is a revised and an updated edition of the groundbreaking original, Lore Of Nutrition, Challenging Conventional Dietary Beliefs, first published in South Africa in November 2017 and now for the international market.It continues the true and shocking story of a world-first: the unprecedented prosecution and persecution of Professor Tim Noakes, a distinguished scientist and medical doctor, in a multimillion rand case that stretched over more than four years. All for a single tweet giving his opinion on nutrition.Noakes and investigative journalist Marika Sboros have added up-to-date, robust scientific evidence in support of his views that launched the case against him. They have added a new chapter on the appeal hearing – a last-gasp attempt by establishment forces to overturn a comprehensive not-guilty verdict on all 10 aspects of the trumped-up charge of unprofessional conduct for the tweet.It also contains a new foreword by internationally renowned endurance swimmer and UN Patron of the Oceans, Lewis Pugh. Noakes helped Pugh be the first to swim successfully across some of the coldest oceans on the planet. A maritime lawyer by profession, Pugh writes of the passion he shares with Noakes: “for the pursuit of truth and justice and a natural antipathy towards bullies and liars”.That points a major theme of Real Food On Trial: a penetrating deep dive into the global scourge of academic bullying, or academic mobbing, as it is popularly known. The authors show how academic mobbing infects all of South Africa’s top universities at the highest levels. They probe the soft underbelly of the powerful vested interests in food and drug industries and the medical, dietetic and scientific mobsters that front them. They lay bare the heavy price that Professor Noakes has paid, professionally, emotionally and financially, for going against orthodoxy. And for daring to challenge the medical and dietary dogma that keeps people fat and sick across the globe.Pugh writes that, from the outset, he saw the trial as a freedom of speech issue. He was “troubled” when the country’s medical regulatory body, the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA), went to war with Noakes on the basis of his scientific opinion on nutrition. “After all, it’s one thing to deny the Holocaust or to say something that incites racial, religious hatred or violence. It’s quite another to say that you think meat, fish, chicken, eggs and dairy are good first foods for infants,” Pugh says.This book shines light into the heart of darkness of a uniquely strange scientific saga. It’s not over yet. Watch this space!" Lukewarmbeer (talk) 17:00, 3 December 2022 (UTC)