Doctor who?

The abomination formerly know as 'Dr' Gillian McKeith has been told by the Advertising Standards Agency here in the UK that she must stop using the title Dr as it is misleading. Brilliant! Common sense prevails!

For those of you not in the know, this hideous woman (apparently referred to in medical circles as 'The Awful Poo Lady' - all will become clear) has made a very large pile of cash punting alleged health foods, potions, lotions and powders along side lucrative book and TV deals. Just how much of the health food products are snake oil is probably a question for debate on it's own, but it's her idiotic claims and utter babble which she tries to pass of as science, along side the use of the title doctor which really annoyed on regular reader of badscience enough to do something about it. It would seem her doctorate came from a correspondence course in America and carries no accreditation over here. She plays on this by wearing a lab coat and poncing about in what appears to be a lab on her Channel 4 TV show "You Are What You Eat" whereby she visits some terrible lard ass and takes a sample of their poo which she pokes about in on the telly (not something you want on at tea time) and then berates them for eating kebabs.

Now, you might think "What's wrong with that? Surely any prod given to fat bags to stop them eating themselves into an early grave and draining the NHS is a good thing?". Well, yes it is, but the nonsense this woman spouts under the pretence of science is frightening. I won't go over it here as there is an excellent article on badscience which lists a number of the inanities that have issued from her trap like the malodorous turds she likes to play with. Suffice to say that, as noted in the article, she seems to have failed to grasp the concepts of basic pre-GCSE level biology entirely. It is pap of the highest order and will be instantly recognisable to readers of New Scientists Last Word column as the kind of thing which deserves to be publicly derided lest anyone who might be a touch naive is taken in by it and believes it to be the truth. And there are plenty who would believe her because she calls herself Dr and wears a lab coat, mores the pity.

So, good on the ASA for upholding the complaint and delivering a well-aimed kick in the cobblers to another tranche of the moronic pseudo-celebrity mumbo-jumbo which pollutes our media. Goodbye 'Dr' McKeith - you won't be missed.

Listening to: eels - Beautiful Freak