I’m right, not controversial – Noakes
Science has beaten the ‘lie’,tim Noakes tells Michael Morris.
TIM Noakes has ceased to be “controversial”. Even if, for now, the renowned sports scientist has to say it himself, this is the meaning that counts most for him in the decisive “not guilty” finding of the Health Professions Council of SA’S misconduct hearing against him.
“You know, people say ‘Dr Noakes is controversial’. Well, I have now tackled seven so-called controversial ideas and I have won every single one, and have been proved right every time. That does not make me controversial.
“It’s time we start saying, ‘Actually Dr Noakes is right, not controversial. He looks at the evidence, he sifts it and comes to a conclusion, and seven out of seven, he has been right’. Very few scientists can end their careers with a 100% record. Of course, I was very long on carbohydrates, but I turned, I converted… So, to say I am ‘controversial’ is wrong.”
The same, arguably, could not be said of the considerable forces and personalities who, for the past few years, have been ranged against him, among them leading scholars and administrators at the country’s top universities whose willingness to cut him loose and denigrate him publicly he regards as the most appalling experience of his life in science.
His vilification by his University of Cape Town colleagues – Noakes is an emeritus professor of UCT of 35 years’ standing – was devastating, he said in an interview this week. It plunged him into a deep depression, but stiffened his resolve to show they were on shaky ground, and he was right.
Noakes, an internationally respected A1-rated scientist, was not loved by much of the conventional medical fraternity when his scientific enquiries prompted his abandonment of the antifat orthodoxy – his book, The Real Meal Revolution, promotes a low-carbohydrate‚ high-fat (LCHF) diet – and he attracted regular sniping.
While public endorsement grew, exasperated detractors in lecture halls and consulting rooms were content to paint him as a faddish maverick. And, as Banting options lengthened on restaurant menus – and favourable anecdotal accounts from obese and sick people suggested the high-fat low-carb option had a lot going for it – much of established science and medicine wouldn’t hear of it.
On the strength of his earlier experience of resistance to his scientific conclusions, Noakes was philosophical about the negative reaction.
But his real difficulties began in 2014, when he sent a tweet to young mother, Pippa Leenstra, who had sought advice on feeding babies and on breast-feeding. Leenstra’s tweet said: “@Proftimnoakes @Salcreed is LCHF eating ok for breast-feeding mums? Worried about all the dairy+cauliflower = wind for babies??” Noakes replied: “Baby doesn’t eat the dairy and cauliflower. Just very healthy high-fat breast milk. Key is to ween [sic] baby onto LCHF.”
This prompted a former president of the Association for Dietetics in South Africa‚ Claire Julsing-strydom‚ to tweet back furiously, and lodge a formal complaint against Noakes. An HPCSA preliminary committee of inquiry met for two days in May 2014 to discuss Julsing-strydom’s complaint, but failed to reach a decision.
A month later, the committee commissioned a report from retired Northwest University nutrition professor Este Vorster, who reportedly stated that as Noakes’s advice contravened South Africa’s dietary guidelines‚ he was either unfamiliar with them or distrusted them‚ and therefore was not qualified to advise on dietary matters.
This cleared the way for the hearing into Noakes’s alleged misconduct, which got under way in November 2015.
The tortuous trial of ideas came to a close last week when advocate Joan Adams‚ who chaired the five-member panel appointed to consider the misconduct charge, announced a “not guilty” verdict at the conclusion of a 60-page judgment. One of the panel dissented.
Noakes said this week the experience had been one of the most difficult of his life, but that he was determined to defend his science. Having won, he had no intention of pursuing the matter further.
“Many people might have thought I’d want revenge, or even that I should seek revenge, but I am not going to do that. I am past that now, and I have seen enough of the inside of courtroom to last me for the rest of my life. What matters is the vindication. That’s what we fought for for three years, and we got it.”
He noted that the “attacks” on him had begun earlier – including from his former colleagues at UCT – but “now we have won, no one can attack again on the grounds that I am doing harm or that I don’t have evidence”.
“We have proved that’s wrong. We have all the evidence to prove not only that we are not doing harm, but that we are doing good – and even that people who are continuing to prescribe traditional dietary advice are, in fact, doing harm.
“I put my career on the line, and had to come up with substantial sums of money, because I knew I was right and wanted to prove it to the rest of the world.
“We gave 12 days of testimony and evidence under cross-examination – I for nine days, and expert witnesses we flew in from around the world for three days – and we did not have to concede one error. Not one thing was contested by the prosecution. I personally gave 6 000 pages of scientific material, over 1 000 slides, and 360 documents. And the prosecution gave one paper. That’s the measure of the science.”
The outcome, in fact, was “a win for science”.
“The world has been watching this, let no one be mistaken, and it’s a major victory for the idea that we have been completely lied to for the past 50 years.”
If the outcome was gratifying, the test itself was “an awful experience”.
There was “no question” that the worst of it was “when UCT turned its back on me in August 2014, when four professors wrote a letter – which was, frankly, defamatory – in which they said my level of science was incompatible with what the university expects and therefore they were disassociating themselves from me. This, despite the fact that I had worked for 35 years at that university…”
The principal signatory of that letter, published in the Cape Times, was Professor Wim de Villiers, then UCT’S dean of the Faculty of The Real Meal Revolution, promotes a low-carbohydrate‚ high-fat diet. Health Sciences, and now rector and vice-chancellor of Stellenbosch University. The others were Professor Bongani Mayosi, head of Department of Medicine, Professor Lionel Opie, emeritus cardiology professor, and Dr Marjanne Senekal, associate professor and head of Division of Human Nutrition. Opie reportedly later denied having signed the letter, saying he was in hospital at the time.
In his 2014 response, Noakes described the UCT academics’ rejection of peer-reviewed evidence in support of his views as “a classic example of cognitive dissonance” (clinging to an idea despite being confronted with its contradiction).
If he was intellectually outraged, he said this week, he was also emotionally devastated by their turning their backs on him.
“That was tough. I went through the usual phases of denial, anger, hostility and so on… depression, then acceptance. But the depression was tough. I went through a deep depression. My wife, Marilyn, knew, but not many others would have known. I was not myself for six to 12 months.”
Had any of his detractors been in touch or said anything to him since the finding?
“No, not at all,” Noakes said. “Not a word.” It comes as something of a surprise that on the HPCSA’S website, the segment marked “In the news…” is a blank, after the attention given to its prosecution of Dr Noakes, a saga that has been followed closely around the world. Its latest press release is on “practitioners (being) urged not to sign agreements that may violate ethical rules”. Nowhere on its site was there mention of the week-old judgment in Noakes’s case. (Noakes has been registered with the HPCSA since 1974‚ but has not practised clinically since 2000.) Dr Noakes does not have a good word to say about an organisation that describes itself as “a statutory body… committed to protecting the public and guiding the professions” and to “promoting the health of the population, determining standards of professional education and training, and setting and maintaining excellent standards of ethical and professional practice”.
“You know,” he said, “this is the first time a scientist has been prosecuted for expressing an opinion… and we wanted to make the point that when we talk science, all the evidence favours us, and we proved that.
“But what I learned from this is that the opposition do not want to engage on science, which is why they demonised me and humiliated me and set me up… and I was not going to let that happen.”
What was shocking to him was that after two years’ work with his legal team, advocates Michael van der Nest and Ravin “Rocky” Ramdass, who represented him for free, “spending enormous amounts of money and assembling all that science… the outcome was still on a knife edge. It could have gone either way”.
“And what really worried us is that the HPCSA committee is paid for by HPCSA and employed by the council for the period of the trial. They are not completely independent; the HPCSA tried to manipulate the number of people on the jury, to put on a sugar-funded dietitian, and when she was kicked off, they tried to put on another one. That’s why the trial was delayed. We were always concerned about what was going on behind the scenes. “It is a shocking process. “A lot of doctors have written to me to say they have had a bad experience. And look at the costs. They should have been in the region of R10 to R12 million, but Mike and Rocky (his advocates) gave their time free, so the costs were only a fraction of that. But most people faced with this would just throw up their hands and plead guilty for R10 000 rather than risk millions.
“On the other hand, the HPCSA has access to all the money they need, and all the resources, to defeat you. And they set the jury. It’s unfair. They were driving the process, and actually trying to get a guilty verdict. That was their goal.
“We won because we had the science.”
Noakes added: “Most practitioners bail out because the process is completely biased against them. And if it were not for the fact that my credibility and my whole career was on the line, I would have bailed out, too.
“But the HPCSA reported their intention to charge me in the media, and I could not pull out, because the world would have seen I was running away and that I must be guilty.”
Noakes said he fully supported the idea that “we want to protect the public”, but argued the procedure was deeply flawed.
“What failed in my case is that the preliminary HPCSA committee never gave me a chance to see the evidence they had collected against me or to answer it, and it was clear they just wanted to get me into court.
“So they simply skipped that basic process.
“They had senior academics on this board who should have said, ‘This is ridiculous, this lady (Julsingstrydom) has responded in anger, she has a conflict of interest. Noakes has written a book which is popular, and her profession is suffering as a consequence – that’s the basis of the complaint and Noakes cannot be held accountable for that’. But they never did that. That was completely wrong.”
Noakes also felt that there ought to be a “liability” for complainants who instigated “nebulous” complaints.
But it was over now. “And I cannot tell you the relief.”
On the day of the interview, Noakes said, he had gone to Claremont over lunchtime “and so many people – from every class, race and creed – came up and hugged me and thanked me, and said how happy they were for me”.
“It was honestly astonishing – people were just overjoyed that the ‘evil forces’ for once did not win.”