Neo-prohibition and selective scrutiny – Word on the Grapevine

Four years ago, I published the first of two articles on biodynamics; unbeknownst to me, this diptych would springboard my nascent profile to much greater standing, significantly increase my blog traffic, and bring about my first entanglement with wine industry controversy. To date, the articles have amassed more than 30,000 views and still regularly rank among my most-read monthly works. Admittedly, I have wondered endlessly the past two years whether, with greater experience and prose, I should revise both articles. Tempting though this is, if not least for my own vanity, my primary assertion on biodynamics remains wholly unchanged. 

Biodynamic agriculture is certified, pseudoscientific claptrap. Gnomic poeticisms aside, Steiner’s nine treatments are agro-snake oil, purported to ‘work with the cosmos, earth, and spiritual entities’ to facilitate a relationship with astral influences—in lecture 5, Steiner remarks that ‘the bladder of the stag is connected … with the forces of the Cosmos’; in lecture 4, that ‘the cow has horns in order to send into itself the astral-ethereal formative powers‘; and in the same speech, that ‘if you could crawl about inside the living body of a cow … you, would smell how the astral life and the living vitality pours inward from the horns‘. Similarly, magical properties are attributed to almost all of the components of each proposed treatment (500, 501, 502, 503, etc.).

Importantly, the published peer-reviewed research (mostly low-quality, spurious noise) provides little evidence that biodynamic preparations improve soils, enhance microbes, increase crop (or wine) quality, or controls pests or pathogens. Additionally, the effect size of significant observed effects on soils are generally not meaningful in real-world terms and are most likely to be more significantly influenced by additional variables. Published research notwithstanding, there is clearly no reasonable reason to believe these magical conjurings would do much more than consume one’s time. 

Upon publishing my articles, responses were predictably mixed, ranging from emphatic support to utter disdain—one celebrated winemaker got in touch to ask why I had a ‘hard on’ about biodynamics. By far the most common responses, though, were less predictable. Many sensible people parroted a common trope of quacks and charlatans, that ‘modern science’ can’t measure or tell us everything, suggesting there is perhaps some untapped dimension within which biodynamics enacts its magic. Others sympathised with well-meaning farmers, asking what harm they were really doing. Even if biodynamics is pseudoscience, it’s just cow horns, hippies, and urbanite trendies, right? 

Fast forward four years, and wine enthusiasts have discovered a new fervour for selective scrutiny of bad science, quackery, and supranational intervention. This penchant for skepticism comes in the wake of the World Health Organisation’s new guidance on alcohol, namely that there is no safe level of consumption, and its associated ambition to influence national health policy on alcohol. Following this announcement, Felicity Carter published a wonderful piece of investigative journalism chronicling the WHO’s takeover by neo-prohibitionist, temperance groups, and pointing out the misinformation and bad science pedalled in these latest announcements.

None of this will surprise anybody with the faintest sceptical leanings. The WHO has a longstanding pseudoscience problem, regularly makes incorrect assertions based on bad science—its incorrect proclamation that glyphosate ‘probably causes cancer’ fuelled widespread hysteria among naturalists—and was captured by special interest groups, private capital and postmodern ideologues many moons ago.

In May 2013, the WHO—the world’s leading authority on health—released its Traditional Medicine Strategy 2014-2023, in which it announced its ‘commitment to integrating traditional medicine [including homoeopathy, acupuncture, naturopathy, and ayuverdic medicine] in tax-funded, national health systems’. More recently, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hosted the WHO Traditional Medicine Global Summit, during which he urged all countries to commit to examining how best to integrate traditional and complementary medicine into their health systems—all this in the name of achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and recognising ‘indigenous ways of knowing’. Incidentally, the premise of these same goals inspired much of the WHO’s first foray into anti-alcohol policy, as well as its disastrous support of ‘sustainable agriculture’ in Sri Lanka.

Unsurprisingly, one of the benchmark documents in the WHO’s TMS is on anthroposophic medicine, the bizarre system conjured up by none other than Rudolf Steiner (the father of biodynamic farming) in which health emerges from an equilibrium between ‘the four formative forces and the threefold nature of the human being‘. In this document, the WHO defines the soul, astral organisation, and esoteric concepts, including rhythmical embrocation, a type of energy healing that involves rhythmic strokes on the body. 

This entire document was sponsored by another special interest group, just like the those Carter points to in her work (the International Federation of Anthroposophic Medical Associations), and includes a sample training curriculum that includes learning about the four classical elements, cosmic forces, and vegetabilised metals, where pulverised metals are added to the soil in which allegedly medicinal plants grow to produce a transformed remedy. Another benchmark WHO document focuses on naturopathy, including training on homoeopathy, a thoroughly discredited tradition that dilutes ingredients out of existence; iridology, a pseudoscience that claims ill health in the body can be diagnosed by looking at the eye; and detoxification, a mainstay of wellness culture that is quick to blame any health problem on ill-defined toxins.

Carter is right to scrutinise the influence of special interest groups on the WHO’s anti-alcohol agenda, and to interrogate the biased interpretation of scientific findings adopted in support of its claims. Wine enthusiasts are also right to celebrate her scrutiny, even if the jury on alcohol and health is far from out—there is almost certainly a relationship between even modest alcohol consumption and breast cancer. However, all this misses the crux of the problem; the unfettered proliferation of pseudoscience is a troubling rot at the very core of a productive and free society. Give pseudoscience an inch and it takes your trusted institutions, sovereignty and liberty. What starts as benign preoccupations pursued by innocent eccentrics quickly spiral, and without robust scrutiny, those same preoccupations march through institutions, inflicting tangible woes on the unsuspecting public. 

Years ago, I pleaded for indiscriminate scrutiny of pseudoscience in wine, no matter how innocuous it might seem, or how compelling a winemaker’s beliefs. Today, faced with a supranational assault on our most cherished interests, enthusiasts have launched a spirited defence, intensely scrutinising patent absurdity. My only hope is that, in the interest of avoiding these debacles in future, we maintain such emphatic scrutiny in the vineyard, winery and our own writings. I hate to say I told you so …