Twelve Black Code Monkeys

I just read an article by Anthony Calpo of theOmnivore.com(site no longer available), where he discusses the Atkins coroner’s report debacle, which I’ve talked about earlier. This is one of the best pieces I’ve so far read about it not just because it is very coherent and convincing, but it is extremely thorough! Calpo not only talks about the PCRM and their links to PETA which many by now are familiar, but also talks about the Nebraska doctor Richard Fleming you got the report from the NY Medical examiner in the first place and then passed it onto the PCRM. I had read he was a low-fat advocate, and thus likely critic of low-carb, and that he had written at least one book. What I did not know, but what Calpo discusses at length, concerns a study that Fleming handled that was unique in showing a benefit of low-fat to low-carb in terms of both weight loss and cholesterol number improvement. Unfortunately there seem to be serious questions with how exactly Fleming conducted the study. Many of the conventions of peer-reviewed studies were simply not included in it, including a citing of nurses and technicians who helped conduct the study, in addition to who funded the study. The claim was that one hundred people participated in the study, which would make it the biggest of its kind. Such studies are extremely expensive to conduct and so must have had major money backing it, if it indeed is even real. Apparently Gary Taubes even suggested that Flemming might have faked the study entirely! Taubes is the science writer that got the ball rolling when he penned “What if it’s all been a Big Fat Lie” about how low-carb diets had gotten a bum rap and how there was actually good science behind them. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. I won’t convict Fleming myself, but I hardly find it surprising that a doctor closely tied with the PCRM is being accused of deception.