by RobertaRussell » Mon Aug 27, 2012 10:21 pm This post is copied here because the discussion started in this topic.
A Look at the difference between Dr. Campbell's analysis of the data and Fuhrman's claims
The study in question, A High Nutrient Density Diet for Long-term Weight Loss ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES, May/Jun 2008, VOL. 14, NO. 3 53, by Drs. Sarter, Campbell and Fuhrman (Dr Campbell's name was eventually removed at his request and you won't find it in the on-line journal) has been Dr. Joel Fuhrman's basis for a series of misleading claims that all of the patients in his study lost an average of 53 pounds and kept it off for 2 years or more. Dr. T. Colin Campbell has made many attempts to correct these claims since he learned of them.
I am not a researcher, but I follow and study weight loss research findings. I was following up on Dr. Fuhrman's long term weight-loss outcome study because he had made some claims of success on my video interview years before about the very patients in the retrospective study. Those claims seemed out of realistic range and I was eager to see the follow-up data.
But after reviewing the raw data last year, I told Drs. Fuhrman and Sarter that I had found that their published report of an average 53 pound loss for the 19 patients remaining at the end of 2 years was wrong. I discovered this extraordinary error by calculating the average start and end weights for each of the patients from the raw data that Dr. Sarter gave me and arrived at a corrected average loss of 34.25 pounds at 2 years for the now 17 or 18 patients still remaining. We were all amazed.
However, the correction process was slow going. Eventually, I called Dr. Campbell whom I had met when I interviewed him for my Manhattan cable program, Lifetalk with Roberta Russell, years before. (I met Dr. Fuhrman when I interviewed him for the same show at another time.)
Dr Sarter, with Dr. Campbell's continued urging, eventually published an addendum changing the weight loss from 53 to about 37 pounds, a number that also reflected her decision to disqualify some patients after publication. She did not, however, recalculate the reported physiological changes, such as cholesterol, even though that data suffered from the same error of not comparing the end scores with each patient's starting scores. Nevertheless, there is no substantive data dispute at this time.
Dr. Fuhrman's ongoing claims that all of his patients in the study lost an average of 53 pounds without any regain in 2 years that are contradicted by published fact are creating the problem now. The solution is in the facts.
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant." Louis Brandeis
See and Hear Fuhrman's Claims Right Here:
After reading these 2 transcripts you can go to http://www.drfuhrman.com/events/default.aspxas of now at least and listen for yourself.
To follow are transcripts of Dr. Fuhrman's podcast interviews when his study was hot off the press. He is publicly making untrue claims about his patient's weight loss record in this published study. (an audio podcast link is currently at the end available as of 8-27-2012)
Radio Podcast May 1, 2008 (contact vegan.com)
Mr. (Eric) Marcus: Thousands of people have taken up you program over the years. Can you tell us the typical results somebody can expect when they get on your plan?
Dr. Fuhrman: “…We’ve even completed a study where we followed 100 consecutive people following the plan and the average person lost 53 pounds which was more weight loss than any other program ever tested. But I think the interesting thing was that even ... 2 years after the study nobody had gained any weight and as follow-up on those people after that period they still continued to lose and didn’t gain weight back."
Radio Podcast June 2008
Dr. Oz: …”You are making some drastic claims with regard to losing weight in the book. In addition, you are going past that and talking about reversing disease. Walk us through that scenario.”
Dr. Fuhrman: …I just had a recent study published this month in a peer-reviewed medical journal where they followed 63 people following the diet plan and they lost more weight than any study in history and they kept it off. They followed them for 2 years. None of the participants gained any weight back and that was the major difference between other diet plans.”
When asked he added that this study was published in the Journal of Alternative Therapies in Health & Medicine
----
Dr Campbell's Statement
Compare Dr. Fuhrman's interview claims above with an analysis of the data of the results of the very same study taken from a post by Dr. T. Colin Campbell here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31014&start=45 (Once at that site go a few screens down for Dr. Campbell's full text.)
" Dr. Fuhrman exaggerated in a very public place that this study resulted in "the most sustained weight loss ever recorded in a medical study” (or “in medical history"). This is not factual. Even though Fuhrman was claiming that all of the 56 subjects had lost weight and had kept it off for two years, only 4 had done so. He also said that average weight loss for these subjects was 53 pounds, but upon my calculation of the raw data, it was 34 pounds and then this was only for the individuals who complied. His very public claim that there were 65 patients is false; there were 56 patients. On another very public occasion, he said that there were 100 patients, not the 56 or even the 65 (he was NOT referring to some additional patients beyond the study, as he once claimed)."
(excerpt from Campbell post above)
However you interpret the data with or without mistakes, most patients dropped out in the first year, leaving only a handful of patients who had not been gaining weight between year 1 and year 2. The average weight loss of the 17 or 18 patients that were left does not reflect the average of the whole group of the 100, 65 or 56 patients who were in the study, depending where you want to start counting. There is no way of knowing from the raw data whether the average weight loss of 100, 65 or 56 people that started would even represent a loss at all.
The presented evidence in whatever form does not support Dr Fuhrman's repeated claims now seen in the widely viewed documentary Fat Sick and Nearly Dead (at 1 hour and 7 minutes).
Dr. Fuhrman's claims are not true, but many people seeing Dr. Fuhrman's medical degree and his advertised association with Dr. Campbell, who is one of the most highly regarded researcher's on nutrition in the world, will believe it is and will act accordingly.
Roberta Russell
