Gillian McKeith vs. Ben Goldacre

Paul Carpenter


· Social Media

In case watching people sifting through poo with their fingers isn’t your bag, Gillian McKeith was the presenter of Channel 4’s “You Are What You Eat” between 2004 and 2007.

During the peak years of the fad for self-improvement TV shows, she could be seen taking a regular schmo with a weight problem each week and dissecting their diet via the novel idea of catching their crap in a sieve and looking through it. As a result of this fecular oraclery, she would create a new improved diet for the poor schlub who would then become a new person and yada yada.

Her nemesis is Dr. Ben Goldacre – author of a regular column with The Guardian, the awesome Bad Science blog and now a book about misleading health claims and ‘science’ in the media. In 2007, it was a reader of his blog who appealed to the Advertising Standards Agency on the basis that McKeith – billed as a ‘Dr’ and a ‘clinical nutritionist’ by Channel 4 – did not have any medical qualifications (full story here).

Needless to say, the resulting publicity and scrutiny of her credentials seemed to put a big dent in McKeith’s public profile and she faded from the airwaves. Nontheless, she is still working as a nutritionist and clearly bears ill-will towards Goldacre.

Now I’m not here to play Devil’s Advocate about whether this animosity is misplaced or not, but McKeith is a celebrity in her own right and is discovering that her Twitter feed – no doubt sold to her as a ‘great way to engage with your fan base’ by some agency or other – is a double edged sword. She’s now found herself embroiled in what will undoubtedly prove to be an embarrassing episode that she would have done well to avoid.

HOW NOT TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA

Step 1 – describe Ben Goldacre’s book as “lies”

Your Twitter feed is, unless locked, publically available for anyone to read. Say anything defamatory, libellous or illegal and you are subject to the same laws as anywhere else in what you say in public. And hey – maybe even the person you’re making accusations against will see it almost instantly.

Step 2 – try to deny that you’re the official Twitter feed

Remember when the kids used to say “Oh… as if I’d ever…”? Here is the modern Twitter version of this classic non-denial.

Step 3 – delete the link to your Twitter feed from your *VERY* official website

Hmm… is there something missing from that design – what do you think…?

Step 4  – leave the link in the source code for all to see

it’s kind of irrelevant anyway because there’s the miracle of Google caching, which will freeze your page in aspic as it was, for all to see. Even so… whoops!

Oh – and you could leave the link on your other properties, such as your official YouTube channel.

Step 5 – discover the hard way that someone somewhere can always find what you’ve been up to

(source: boingboing)

Step 6  – take away some very painful lessons.

In the open era of the internet, secrets are hard to hard to keep and covering your tracks is next to impossible. If you’re going to engage with social media then you have to be both honest and on your best behaviour – and if your reputation is already compromised in some way by a publicity problem, then that counts for double.


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Discussion

  • Becky

    LOL .. this is so funny and just goes to show that what you post online on any social networking site is there for all to see even if you delete the entry. Everyone is there ready to take a screenshot! I love the commenting out in the source code of the site.. doh!
    Anyone with a public profile shouldn’t be let loose with a twitter account as in a blink of an eye it can all go wrong.

  • buyer beware

    Last week it was mumsnet’s turn

    http://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/18122185081

    http://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/18125519602

  • Richard Gaywood

    Great article!

    I had pretty much the same thing drafted for my blog, with the same screenshots and everything, but you beat me to it so I just linked to you instead :oD

  • Sumi Olson

    I’ve been following the twitter discussion with interest and went back to the orginal Feb 2007 article. My favourite bit was GM’s suggestion that her qualifications meant her knowledge & expertise exceeded the authority of her taxi-drivers trained and accredited doctor wife.

    Good for Ben Goldacre and his like for providing some rigour into this area.

  • The Truth

    It’s crazy how “normal” Gillian comes across on Television when in FACT she is a manipultaive, lecturous boil. Crazy that people can get away with that.

  • John_Mac

    >>fecular oraclery<<

    Phrase of the month! Fantastic copywriting, well done that man.

  • Blogercise

    lol@the commenting out of the twitter link on the website

  • Gordon

    Oh how I hate charlatans, and Oh how I enjoy their unfrocking. Shame is that this “Dr” Poo has made so much money from exploiting the fears of the gullible.

  • J

    While it is true that McKeith’s PhD wasn’t real, it is a little bit ironic that this was found by Mr Goldadre, who uses the Dr title extensively while he does not have a doctorate either.

    Because one thing is to be called ‘doctor’ as a colloquial synonym to physician/surgeon, and another to adept the Dr title when your highest education is a masters degree.

    Yes, it is true, everybody does it these days. Even vets and dentists abuse the Dr title and confuse the colloquial usage of ‘doctor’ with the right to use the Dr title, but that’s not an excuse and Goldacre should know better.

    • Andrew

      Could I just correct you.

      In order to be a psychiatrist you must first study as a ‘doctor of medicine’, which I understand Ben has. You simply can’t just call yourself a psychiatrist without actually studying to be a doctor or, in Ben’s case, a psychiatric registrar.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Goldacre

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