Talk:Nina Teicholz

Notes

The page in mainspace about Nina Teicholz is salted due to continual promotional efforts. I have attempted to create a decent article about this person.

The first diff, in which I created this draft, contains adoptions of two sentences about publication of the book and its being a "best book of the year" from User:Leslieaun/Teicholz draft, which was written by Leslieaun, who works for a PR firm that was under contract from Teicholz. The history here is a bit complicated, but while Leslieaun was working the draft she made through AfC, another paid editor created the Teicholz article directly, and according to Leslieaun, with whom I spoke, Teicholz then fired her firm.

Leslieaun told me that she kept trying to get her version adopted even after Teicholz fired her firm, because Teicholz is accomplished and deserves a decent WP article. I moved Leslieaun's draft out of AfC and into her userspace (User:Leslieaun/Teicholz draft), since it was no longer appropriate for AfC, as it duplicated an existing article.

However, the created-by-the-other-paid-editor Nina Teicholz page was then speedy deleted, as that paid editor turned out to be a sock. So we are back to no article and nothing in the AfC queue.

Hence this draft,which I wrote, with the exception of the bit mentioned in the 2nd paragraph above.

Teicholz' notability, to the extent that folks agree that she has it, is really centered in the period 2014 to 2015, when her advocacy for a low-carb/high fat diet was leveraged with Arnold Foundation money just at the time that the 2015 guidelines were coming out. Before and after she is a fairly run of the mill journalist. There is little coverage about her other than that. Jytdog (talk) 21:51, 19 February 2018 (UTC) (added some clarifications via redactions Jytdog (talk) 23:58, 18 April 2018 (UTC))

Cannot find a RS for her birth year. I understand it is 1965 from prior versions of the article... :( Jytdog (talk) 03:06, 20 February 2018 (UTC) (added Jytdog (talk) 18:30, 20 February 2018 (UTC))

• User:Bri thanks for your edits. Please do look at this critically (I am sure you are :) ) Jytdog (talk) 15:31, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Sure. Is there a "sponsor" for the article? Will it be submitted via AfC or...? ☆ Bri (talk) 23:16, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I wrote this draft and submitted it through AfC. I did that per the note above. When one deals with advocacy on a topic for this long one gets kind of "involved" and I wanted others to review this before it published. Jytdog (talk) 23:59, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I misunderstood. So this is the AfC draft that got basically pre-empted by the non-viable articlespace item. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:50, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

User:Bri, nope. The draft that go pre-empted is here: User:Leslieaun/Teicholz draft. Sorry, I should have linked to that above. I wrote this from scratch, using some of the sources at the Lesliaun draft and more that I found. I used a bit of Leslieaun's wording as I acknowledged above. Jytdog (talk) 23:58, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Okay. It's a decent enough article now. If the Latin America NPR reporting could be sourced, that would be interesting to include. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:12, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

In the "selected works" the second piece there is an example of that...Jytdog (talk) 02:40, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

The other draft says her degree is in American Studies, which is more or less what one would expect for an NPR Americas reporter. Any idea how she became knowledgeable about nutrition? ☆ Bri (talk) 04:42, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

The earliest bit I have seen on it from her is this 2004 piece in Gourmet listed in the "Works". (her book published in 2014). I don't know what led her to write that piece. There are not a lot of sources about her which is why this page has had such a bad history. One reason i included the list of Works (which I usually don't care for) was so that readers could look through them and see for themselves what her evolution was. It was the only way I could think to do it. Jytdog (talk) 06:27, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I re-found this interview she did with Medscape where said that it grew out of work that she did for Gourmet. I tried very hard to use independent sources so didn't cite it. I reckon I could do, since there is the question. Jytdog (talk) 06:37, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

 Done in this diff Jytdog (talk) 06:41, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Criticized

User:Capricornthought -- about your edits here and here.

The New yorker piece says " In promoting red meat and rejecting grains, the paleo diet challenges just about every precept that nutritionists have been pushing for the past fifty years. In effect, it turns the familiar food pyramid on its point. This is an increasingly common inversion, if not in academic circles or at the U.S. Department of Agriculture then on the talk-show circuit. ....Though the paleos, the anti-glutenists, and the lard-ons are not exactly anti-vaccination or Area 51 types, they are, by necessity, conspiracy theorists. There must be some reason that the U.S. government has kept the dark truth about spelt and tofu hidden from us. Durant blames “the vegetarian lobby.” Teicholz suspects “olive oil money.”"

If you do not see that as "critical" then I would be interested in seeing how you characterize that. This is probably the weakest source there - I used it just so I could bring in that great quote.

The Economist review is the real "meaty" source here. It says:

• "But the vilification of fat, argues Ms Teicholz, does not stand up to closer examination. She pokes holes in famous pieces of research—the Framingham heart study, the Seven Countries study, the Los Angeles Veterans Trial, to name a few—describing methodological problems or overlooked results, until the foundations of this nutritional advice look increasingly shaky."
• Yet even now, with more attention devoted to the dangers posed by sugar, saturated fat remains maligned. 'It seems now that what sustains it,' argues Ms Teicholz, 'is not so much science as generations of bias and habit.'"

The other sources here are clear on this as well. In the Medscape interview Teicholz says: "That hypothesis seems to be fundamentally wrong. It's not a matter of slightly shifting course but completely overturning it." (this is not just "investigation" but "criticism" indeed tearing down and "overturning")

The Politico piece starts out with "When Nina Teicholz called out the authors of the federal dietary recommendations for shoddy science and conflicts of interest in a prominent medical journal late last month, she left out some key details about herself. While she presents herself as a journalist, her approach is more crusading than impartial. Her most recent book is a take-down of the nutrition establishment called, “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet,” which advocates the health benefits of a high-fat diet – considered heresy in many quarters. " Again - this is unambigious "criticism"

The rest of the sources say the same.

In Wikipedia we summarize sources. In my view "criticize" is a much better summary than "investigate". Please explain your reasoning. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 15:10, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog. It sounds like we just have a bit of differing opinion on use of the word “criticized”. Happy to explain my reasoning. You used some variation of “criticized” in nearly every paragraph of this page, so I was initially looking for synonyms. Given Teicholz career as an investigative journalist, and her interviews on the subject, it seems to me that “criticism” of nutrition science was merely the conclusion from investigations into the foundational studies behind the food pyramid. Given how you use “criticized” on the rest of the page, mainly surrounding negative criticism of her book, it just felt to me like your initial sentence sounded like Ms. Teicholz had a vendetta against the saturated fat industry. It seems that’s where we disagree. What about replacing “criticized” or “especially criticized” with “analyzes” or “critically analyzes”? Capricornthought (talk) 17:27, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

That's an interesting observation about the word "criticized". I hadn't realized it was in here so much. I am happy to replace it with an actual synonym for more pleasant style variation, but not with something that waters it down. Teicholz is an unabashed advocate who is looking to turn things upside down and attacks/criticizes the mainstream view, and her views have in turn been attacked/criticized. We need to describe that here (we have to be careful not to replicate that here per WP:Beware of tigers). "investigate" and "analyze" are too... weak.

by the way she is opposed to the mainstream view of diet that seeks to minimize fats (flipping that, she is an advocate for including saturated fat in people's diets). you stated her view backward above. Jytdog (talk)17:40, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I like "criticized" and think it is inherently appropriate for one whose career is built on debunking mainstream science. I don't see a good reason to soft-pedal things. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:36, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Jytdog, Bri: Capricornthought is a confirmed Cougarsurf/BurritoSlayer sockpuppet ([1]). Nina Teicholz is likely a client of the reputation management firm Go Fish Digital, so expect new sockpuppets coming. --MarioGom (talk) 14:38, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

studies

User:Sirlanz, what is the source for what Teicholz studied? Would be great to add that but we cannot, without an RS. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 00:28, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Problematic

The article seems more interested in criticisms of her views than the views themselves, which is problematic, and which I hope to address. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 19:27, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

I've got no objection to factual description of the views, but another editor has advised me at WT:WikiProject Medicine that they should apply reliable sourcing applicable to medical articles. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:11, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

If reliable sources are mostly critical of Teicholz's views, then our article should be mostly critical of Teicholz's views. A biographical article doesn't just exist to promote the views of the subject. See WP:FRINGELEVEL which says "Articles which cover controversial, disputed, or discounted ideas in detail should document (with reliable sources) the current level of their acceptance among the relevant academic community". -- Colin°^Talk 11:19, 12 October 2021 (UTC)