A fun name for a serious group :)
We can get our heads together and use this space to share idea's on formulating appropriate future responses - that can then be distributed on certain blogs by yours truly and anyone else who can assist :)
So first line of focus....
We need to formulate a fantastic response that can be circulated throughout the blogs listing Denise's critique, a lot may not be accepted but I've found a lot will be as well. The ones that do not feature responses from us are obviously HIGHLY threatened by our message, I have a certain level of respect for the blogs that do take the time to address comments against Denise's claims.
OK main defence Denise and other followers of her work are using is....
* Campbell did not perform his analysis on raw data however Campbell's correlations all perfectly match the raw data...Denise says she's "simply replicating the methods Campbell used "
(FROM B: How they used the exact same methods and came to completely opposite conclusions is beyond my small brain lol.)
* Denise claims she used the improper data, but now she's claiming campbell did as well. (on this from Vegamama : it's becoming apparent that she is confusing the raw data with uncorrected data.)
From Dr Campbell's 2006 Rebuttal....In contrast, the critics are uncritically using highly selected detailed observations with no respect for context. They rely rather heavily, for example, on choosing selected but uncorrected correlations (associations of one variable with another) from the huge number (about 100,000 or so) that were published in the 894-page China Project monograph itself (Chen, J., Campbell, T. C., Li, J., and Peto, R. Diet, life-style and mortality in China.(From B- It seems as though Denise is doing the same on her blog.)
Here is a list of the majority of blogs featuring Denise's claims...
http://freetheanimal.com/2010/07/the-china-study-smackdown-roundup.html
- The China Study exposed: actual data does not support vegetarian health claims (at Hunter-Gatherer)
- China Study Problems of Interpretation (at Whole Health Source)
- Polish a turd and find a diamond? (at PaNu)
- The China Study: Junk Science and Lies (at Robb Wolf)
- There is no justification for a plant-only diet (at Conditioning Research)
- Rest in peace, China Study (at The Healthy Skeptic)
- “The China Study”, Debunked (at Theory to Practice)
- "The China Study: Fact or Fallacy?" (at Let Them Eat Meat)
- Destroying China (the Study that Is) (at Aspire Natural Health)
- The China Study Discredited (at Food Renegade)
- The Study Everyone Talks About: Part 2: The Ravaging Reviews (at Feasting on Fitness)
- Debunking The China Study (at Crossfit 1776)
- The Debunking of the China Study (at TJ's Gym)
- Thoughts on Friday from the middle of the road! (at A Moderate Life)
- A Critique Worth Reading (at For His Glory & for Our Good)
- "T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study: Finally, Exhaustively Discredited" (at Crossfit Peachtree)
- The China Study: Crushed by its Own Data (at The Spark of Reason)
- China Study & T. Colin Campbell: Someone just made you their vegan bitch (at Paleo-ish)
- The China Study: Evidence for the Perfect Health Diet (at Perfect Health Diet)
- The China Study Has No Clothes: Smackdown Of T. Colin Campbell (at Nutrition and Physical Regeneration)
- The slam-dunking of "The China Study" (at the shmaltz)
- China Study Shakedown (at Natural Messiah)
- The China Study Toppled – A Tale of the Confirmation Bias (at Lean, Mean, Virile Machine)
- Slaying of a Hypothesis (at Animal Pharm)
- "Epidemiology is Bogus" (at Evolutionary Psychiatry)
- China Study Unveiled -- Not Supporting Veganism (at Primal Wisdom)
- China fiction? (at The Heart Scan Blog)
- The China Study - A Superb Analysis (at Primal Muse)
- Chipping Away at the China Study (at Liberation Wellness)
- The China study: Debunked (at Food, flora and felines)
- Buh-bye, China Study (at The Low-Carb Curmudgeon)
- China Study Debunked (at The Red Pill)
- Around the Fitness Horn (at x lyssa)
- RAW FOOD SOS sobre o China Study (at Canibais e Reis)
- Die veblüffende Biegsamkeit von Fakten: The China Study (at Urgeschmack)
- Veganbibelns fall (at Kostdoktorn.Se)
- Weekend Link Love (at Mark's Daily Apple)
- The China Study (at Kat's Food Blog)
- Debunking junk science: goodbye china study (at abundant brain & health)
Replies
Who else can we employ ?
in friendship,
prad
Greetings banana lovers :)
We really need some blog bandits to come help us spread the truth about Denise Minger's thoroughly botched China Study analysis.
We (The China Study Group) have been in contact with Colin Campbell and he would really appreciate the assistance as well. All you need to do is to post a comment or two on the following blogs....http://www.30bananasaday.com/group/debunkingthechinastudycritics/fo...
Come to this thread and let us know that you are joining us please!
islam has the same roots as judaism and as such promotes the same discriminatory practices. the religions developed at a different point in history where things were rather uncivilized. however, several decent things exist in both religions. for example, look at this from the koran:
There is not an animal on the earth, nor a flying creature on two wings, but they are people like unto you.
depending upon the character of the individual, he or she will choose to not to adopt oppressive ways of being that do exist in many religions. therefore, it is more appropriate to criticize the individuals who have decided to support the oppression of sentient beings than the religions themselves since many who practise the religion do not support such actions.
here is an example from turkey which might surprise you:
Changing the subject abruptly, I am very glad to report that in my time in Turkey, I was happily surprised to find out that the thousands of cats in this country are mostly in very good health and not malnourished. I was even shock to see bowls with water and food on the streets and even at the bazaars,stores, hotels, restaurants... Yes, the owners of the shops or business take care of these strays. Another big surprise was that is mostly the men who take care of these cats!.
I saw cats allowed to scratch and play on hand made carpets at carpet stores, jump on chairs at restaurants (most of the times that is considered kind of normal).. I even saw cats at Mosques, arqueological zones, museums and even deep inside the Hagya Sophia! No problema...
There are few street dogs and they look quite healthy, even if they are running on the busy streets and often in packs.
Another thing that really surprised me, is that drivers in Turkey STOP for the animals, in cities, towns or villages. Of course, sometimes with their crazy driving ways accidents happen, but all the times that I almost got a heart attack seen dogs, cats, goats, cows or horses in the middle of the street or road, even in heavy fog conditions or night, the cars always stop for them.
http://catcahelpanimals.org/59.html
besides, all this stuff is a bit off topic for this group anyway.
in any case, we're relieved you have decided not to go and destroy the paleo blogs with your IT skills, since it would leave the blog bandits with little to do. :D
in friendship,
prad
thx for the news about the ranking - 30bad is modest, but it's nice to know people out there appreciate us. ;)
i see betty banana made it on to nikoley's blog post too.
you may also be interested in B's group:
http://www.30bananasaday.com/group/30badinternetoutreachguerrillas
as far as info, make sure you read through B's thread here:
http://www.30bananasaday.com/forum/topics/has-denise-minger-read-the
his work is excellent.
in friendship,
prad
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/22/super-quick-china-study-update/#co...
Maxwell
"I can’t resist stepping up to the banana and putting on my blindfold one more time…
I want to make sure all comers take the time to read TCC’s “Last post” published here: http://campbellcoalition.com/?p=142
Campbell gives Denise and her followers a bit of a spanking.
One final note before I get chased out of town by the congregation:
Denise’s approach leading up to her posts attacking TCC and The China Study is deeply troubling to me. If she were truly interested in understanding The China Project I think she would have contacted TCC when things didn’t add up for her based on her preliminary analyses. Picture yourself in her shoes. You start crunching some numbers and you see what you believe are glaringly obvious errors in another person’s work. Wouldn’t you try to get a hold of the person and ask him/her to explain what you were missing?
Instead she concluded TCC must be a buffoon and a liar and proceeded to attempt to publicly debunk him.
Imagine how different Denise’s posts would be if she had contacted TCC from the start, engaged with him, and come to truly understand his methods and process before deciding she objected to them.
Her posts would explain where she and TCC have genuine differences of opinion in the way they approach the data. Maybe she’d be taking specific exception to some of the ways he corrected the raw data. Maybe she’d be explaining a difference of opinion she has with TCC about the biological plausibility of a certain something he included in his model.
But instead we see an argument from Denise that is akin to a novice mathematician refuting the published, peer-reviewed work of a great mathematician by holding up what the novice claims is a series of errors in basic addition!
The crowd of supporters cheer and jeer. They understand addition. The great mathematician isn’t so great after all! What a buffoon!!
Of course then the great mathematician takes a few minutes to explain, he wasn’t doing basic addition. He was doing something a bit more complicated. Which is why Cornell had hired him. And why NIH had funded him. And why so many journals had published him. And why so many other scientists had collaborated with him. What he was doing wouldn’t be too difficult for the novice to understand. But, it would require a significant amount of time and effort and study.
But this was time and effort the novice (and the crowd) didn’t have to spend. So they kept pointing to more and more errors in basic arithmetic!!! They demanded an explanation!!! They asked him questions about geometry, calculus, trigonometry, and long division. Very, very, very long division! Why wasn’t he answering!!! They grew more vocal! He must be hiding from them!
By this time all the great mathematician could do was shrug his shoulders and say, “Would it really be worth spending a few months trying to teach these goons high school math?”
Probably not.
And that brings us to TCC’s “Last post”. He’s frustrated. Understandably so. And Denise owes him a big apology for an approach that wasn’t designed to help Denise (or anyone else) understand.
Last post of Dr. Campbell:
The casein studies, as I have already said many times, were not undertaken to test the hypothesis that casein causes cancer. Our interests at that time were 1) to investigate the effect of protein (kind unspecified) on experimental cancer and 2) to confirm (or deny) the findings of the Indian researchers. We not only confirmed those findings, we broke new ground – especially in the construction of biological principles – that should apply to a broad spectrum of conditions. Eventually, the carcinogenic effect of casein was proven to be so substantial that it eventually begged the question of whether it applied to other proteins.
Thus, we tested a couple of plant proteins to test the hypothesis that the protein effect on cancer was primarily a function of its amino acid composition. Both of the plant-based proteins sharply differed from casein by not promoting cancer development and, further, the effect was related to the ‘completeness’ of the protein. This research, done in depth and published extensively, showed that casein was the most relevant chemical carcinogen ever identified.
At this point I knew, of course, that relative completeness (i.e., with respect to amino acid composition) is a hallmark of animal-based protein effects in many other systems. A large number of proteins – plant and animal – have been tested over the years for a variety of responses and animal-based proteins consistently outrank plant-based proteins, because of their ‘completeness’, thus giving them the rather silly reputation of being ‘high quality.’ One study during the 1980s by K.K. Carroll showed that when a large number of proteins (including fish protein) were tested for their ability to affect serum cholesterol, ALL animal proteins (including fish proteins) outranked ALL plant proteins – no overlap – in their ability to induce higher cholesterol levels.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of experiments during the 1930s-1960s showed that, except for gluten, all animal proteins outranked all plant proteins in their so-called biological value (i.e., amino acid composition). Also, all animal-based proteins, when fed to lab animals or to young monogastric farm animals promoted a higher rate of body growth than plant proteins, based on a concept of protein efficiency ratio (PER) that, incidentally, was used to justify the bizarre use of ‘tankage’ for cow feed – ‘feeding cows to cows’ (I know this well because we did it on our dairy farm and, later I taught it as a teaching assistant in a ‘Feeds and Feeding’ course early in my teaching career – now the same justification is applied to the feeding of chicken manure to cows).
Moreover, when human subjects are switched from their usual diets relatively rich in animal-based protein to soy protein, serum cholesterol is consistently and markedly decreased. We now have evidence that a change like this leads to an increase in circulating insulin-like growth factor (IGF) that stimulates cell replication – we documented increased liver cell growth in 1972 and later showed in 1997 that it was related to an increase in IGF that paralleled increased cancer growth. Way back in 1941, it was clearly shown that casein, when compared to soy protein in experimental rabbit studies of atherosclerosis, dramatically increased both serum cholesterol and atherogenesis (forerunner to atherosclerosis and heart disease).
On your question concerning my views on wheat flour and heart disease – and your disparaging inference that I may have published a “flawed” paper, you overlook my comment after the short ‘conversation’ in my response when I said, “Incidentally, aside from Denise’s claiming there were no confounding factors [for the wheat flour, heart disease correlation], I might have taken her seriously when she posed a possible effect of wheat flour on heart disease, because it may be possible to gather prior evidence that could be considered as supporting the opposite point of view.” This is exactly what I had in mind and there is no need for you to make such a snide remark if you pay attention to what I had written. I am open to the idea that there could be ill effects from wheat flour, particularly in a refined state, but exploration of such an idea requires reasoned discussion about biological plausibility and prior evidence, and this is not the approach you seem to be taking.
Before closing, I want to let you know that I have no further time for engaging in this kind of reductionist and misguided debate. You belie your own claim that you are an objective commentator when you repeatedly and derisively comment about the possibility that I commit “sins of omission’” and “distort” data. As a result, you inflame the passions of would-be scientists who love to hear things about their bad habits. You now have acquired some very strange bed fellows. You highlight your views by citing a univariate correlation of wheat flour correlation with heart disease as an example of one of my “sins of omission”, while omitting correlations that contradict your supposition. Your example then gets cited on the Internet to prove that I am a buffoon or fraud. You go on to a second example of a ‘sin of omission’ by chiding me for not including the data of one county (Tuoli) that you suspect was a sleight of hand on my part – when I had clearly explained elsewhere why these data from this county reflected food consumption for a festive occasion (as during the survey) instead of the usual food patterns over a course of a year, an unreconcilable difference.
And to the broader audience, I am recommending that this discussion thread, originally intended for a civil discourse is clearly becoming anything but (based on the large number of comments and questions received thus far). I had hoped to have had a civil discourse, but this is difficult when the questions come from uncivil people. I also don’t have time to answer superficial questions of others like ‘what is the detailed mechanism of protein induction of high cholesterol levels’ – that easily could become an entire but relatively useless dissertation when the “mechanism” most decidedly is a symphony of mechanisms, as I explained in our book. At this point, the far more important observation is the dramatic increase in serum cholesterol.
One last comment – science is not about examining an hypothesis to its absolute conclusion, only to end up with a highly reductionist finding having little relevance for the human condition. Science is about observing the natural order of things to an extent that begins to indicate a pattern. In the process, the scientist should state clearly his or her biases then try hard to be objective. My bias was my personal and professional preference to find that dairy and other animal-based foods, the food of my youth and most of my adult life, represented the best that can be obtained for good health. Our experimental findings clearly showed that I was wrong. Now, I am finding this experience is extending to a large number of the readers of our book, as it had to the patients of my physician colleagues. And this is the reason that the book has proven so popular, even without any kind of organized PR support."
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