By its very nature, science is full of uncertainty. Its strength 鈥� an innate desire to doubt, to challenge and to confront beliefs 鈥� is often its greatest weakness when it comes to engaging the public. This is particularly so in my area of interest, the world of food.
Ask a dietitian or food scientist which foods are unhealthy and the likely answer will be along the lines of: 鈥淲ell that鈥檚 an interesting question, but it really depends what you mean by healthy 鈥� no food should really be classified as healthy or unhealthy as that is not really helpful 鈥� we think that you should try to achieve a balance.鈥�
Ask the latest internet healthy-eating guru and they will say 鈥渨hite rice, sugar and anything with gluten鈥�.
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Who do you think the human mind, with its instinctive attraction to simple messages, is most likely to believe? The balanced, careful voice of science, or the simple, certain opinions of a self-appointed insta-guru, complete with and aspirational glamour?
This is the mental battle described by behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, describing the human mind as instinctively reaching for simple narratives and easy explanations over longer, more thoughtful ones.
Should we care? If clean-eating proponents the Hemsley sisters 鈥� whose prime-time TV show Eating Well With Hemsley + Hemsley debuts in the UK tonight 鈥� and others like them manage to get a few people to eat more vegetables, that鈥檚 good, right? Perhaps, but at what cost? So often when you scratch the surface of such messages, bad science is lurking underneath.
The Hemsleys鈥� diet advice advocates the exclusion of perfectly nutritious foods for no sound reason 鈥� . They talk about the importance of because 鈥溾��.
Worse, though, is that they have in the past , a brutally restrictive, pseudo-scientific regime that comes with the bizarre, unsubstantiated claim that it can cure autism. A leading paediatric dietitian is on record as .
A combination of likeability, photogenic appeal, a clear simple message and certainty in your beliefs is a powerful combination. In the wrong hands it has the potential to do harm.
That brings us to Belle Gibson, a Australian health blogger who claimed she had used natural healing techniques to cure her cancer before eventually confessing that she had fabricated the entire story. Even before she was , you would think that no sensible person would reject the might of conventional medicine in favour of the untested opinions of one person. Sadly many did and to great cost.
