From the "oops" department, cardiologist Salim Yusuf, MD, DPhil, apologized for maligning the Seven Countries diet study in the controversial diet talk he gave at the Zurich Heart House, which in turn explained it should never have publicly released the video.
However, neither walked back the substance of the talk at the Zurich Heart House's Cardiology Update 2017 symposium. Yusuf's discussion generated backlash from the nutrition community, with many finding fault with his conclusions on dietary fat, carbohydrates, meat, and the general state of diet science.
See the full story here on Yusuf's talk; and here was the response from the nutrition community.
In a from its leaders and Yusuf, the following explanation and apology was given:
"[Yusuf] explicitly declined to give permission to video tape, reproduce or broadcast his talk on diet and cardiovascular disease as it included preliminary and unpublished analyses from the large PURE study that he and about 200 investigators have been conducting for over 12 years. These analyses are ongoing and it is expected that the papers from the study will be submitted for publication soon after extensive checks, updates of follow up data and further analyses. It is wisest for commentators to wait for the publication to objectively assess the detailed methods and the findings and also place it in the context of meta analyses or summaries of other similar studies. The Zurich Heart House apologizes for inadvertently video taping the talk by Prof Yusuf and placing it on YouTube without explicit permission. The title of the YouTube post was not provided to Professor Yusuf and he was not aware of it until after it was posted. The video was immediately removed from YouTube by ZHH and joint efforts were made to ban the copied content.
"Professor Yusuf acknowledges that he made an error in one part of his talk. He had concerns about an analysis published by Keys based on data from governmental information from SIX countries. (A careful analysis of the data published by Keys and the discrepancies are described by Zoe Harcombe on ).
"Professor Yusuf mistakenly referred to this analysis from SIX countries as being from the SEVEN countries study. His remarks were not intended to refer to the SEVEN countries study. For that, he apologizes to the investigators of the SEVEN country studies."
Plant-based diet proponent Joel Kahn, MD, who in his post on Medium had labeled some of the comments regarding the Seven Countries study "slander" and called for an apology, said the letter was a step in the right direction. Still, Kahn wasn't fully satisfied.
"It is insanity that the Zurich Heart House [ZHH] still uses a link to explain the mess via Zoe Harcombe, PhD, who maintains in the link that Dr. Keys fudged data or other words similar," he said in an email to 乌鸦传媒. "How can an academic institution like ZHH use a blogger and not someone like Henry Blackburn, MD, of the University of Minnesota, still an active researcher for the Seven Countries Study at age 92? ZHH's effort was anemic."