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Chipping Away at The China Study
Posted by Lauren Snyder Grosz on July 10, 2010
Here is a recent post by one of my favorite real food bloggers who goes by the moniker Food Renegade.
I’ve answered plenty of reader questions about The China Study over the years. Most simply ask, “I appreciate the research and thought you’ve put into getting us this information about how pre-industrial diets can help curb the diseases of industrialization (heart disease, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, obesity, etc.), and I support your conclusions 100% based on my own experience. But I have friends who have read The China Study, and they say that it’s real, hard science disproving what you’re promoting. What’s your response to them?”
I’ve never written a post about The China Study, so rather than point them to my own content, I point them to a hodge podge of various posts online
written by people whose scientific judgments I trust as more valid than my own — some are doctors, some have Ph.D.s in nutrition research, and some are just folks who are science junkies. While I’ve found those handful of articles to be helpful, I’ve never found any one of them individually to be all that comprehensive or thorough.
That changed yesterday.
Now, I’ve finally read what I consider the go-to article online for helping folks in love with The China Study see the light. The post is written by someone who took the raw data from The China Study and mapped it out to see if she could draw the same conclusions that the famous book’s author (T. Colin Campbell) drew.
After spending a solid month and a half reading, graphing, sticky-noting, and passing out at 3 AM from studious exhaustion upon her copy of the raw China Study data, blogger Denise Minger decided it was time to voice her criticisms. And there were many.
Her 9,000+ word essay is as thorough as they come, and she concludes with this thought:
In sum, “The China Study” is a compelling collection of carefully chosen data. Unfortunately for both health seekers and the scientific community, Campbell appears to exclude relevant information when it indicts plant foods as causative of disease, or when it shows potential benefits for animal products. This presents readers with a strongly misleading interpretation of the original China Study data, as well as a slanted perspective of nutritional research from other arenas (including some that Campbell himself conducted).
In rebuttals to previous criticism on “The China Study,” Campbell seems to use his curriculum vitae as reason his word should be trusted above that of his critics. His education and experience is no doubt impressive, but the “Trust me, I’m a scientist” argument is a profoundly weak one. It doesn’t require a PhD to be a critical thinker, nor does a laundry list of credentials prevent a person from falling victim to biased thinking. Ultimately, I believe Campbell was influenced by his own expectations about animal protein and disease, leading him to seek out specific correlations in the China Study data (and elsewhere) to confirm his predictions.
So, if you’ve been wanting an in-depth rebuttal to T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study, go read her 9000+ word summary conclusion. And if you want even more detailed analysis, take a look at the complete series of articles she’s posted over the past month as she’s dissected both the raw data and the famed best-selling book.
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Lauren Snyder Grosz is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator. She writes for LiberationWellnessBlog.com. As a student on a lifelong quest for exceptional health and happiness, her mission is to empower people to take complete responsibility for their own health by rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true and rediscovering what truly works based on accurate science.
The China Study Smackdown Roundup | Free The Animal said
[...] Chipping Away at the China Study (at Liberation Wellness) [...]
freelee said
Denise’s analysis of The China Study is heavily flawed and therefore invalid. Debunked by a cancer epidemiologist…
Here it is…
http://www.30bananasaday.com/group/debunkingthechinastudycritics/forum/topics/a-cancer-epidemiologist
The proper testing procedure as stated by an expert on analysing stats…
http://www.30bananasaday.com/group/debunkingthechinastudycritics/forum/topics/my-response-to-denises
Campbells response to Denise..
http://www.30bananasaday.com/group/debunkingthechinastudycritics/forum/topics/campbells-response-to-denises
John said
I read Colin Campbell’s book, (as well as his response to the battering above). I thought it was a great shot at explaining the difference between the affluent and the impoverished. He admitted throughout how the scientific community were scathing about some of his shortcuts, and in so doing, explained that the study could never have been published had he gone through the (say) 15 years of extended studies on each and every aspect of the study. Campbell outlined and emphasized some of the already known, covering the marvellous anti-cancer properties in the four colours of veggies. All in all I was very impressed, although I decided that I personally would never in my life go 100% vegan. And since reading The China Study I’ve spoken with numerous people and read a tonne of data about grass-fed meats and milk —— and have decided I’ll keep meat in my diet, but do it differently.