{"id":333399,"date":"2025-12-07T17:42:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T17:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/neo-prohibition-and-selective-scrutiny-word-on-the-grapevine\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T17:42:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T17:42:33","slug":"neo-prohibition-and-selective-scrutiny-word-on-the-grapevine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=333399","title":{"rendered":"Neo-prohibition and selective scrutiny – Word on the Grapevine"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Four years ago, I published the first of\u00a0two 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.\u00a0Tempting though this is, if not least for my own vanity, my primary assertion on biodynamics remains wholly unchanged.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Biodynamic agriculture is certified,\u00a0pseudoscientific claptrap. Gnomic poeticisms aside, Steiner\u2019s nine treatments are agro-snake oil, purported to \u2018work with the cosmos, earth, and spiritual entities\u2019\u00a0<\/em>to facilitate a relationship with astral influences\u2014in lecture 5, Steiner remarks that \u2018the bladder of the stag is connected \u2026 with the forces of the Cosmos\u2019;<\/em>\u00a0in lecture 4, that \u2018the cow has horns in order to send into itself the astral-ethereal formative powers<\/em>\u2018;\u00a0and in the same speech,\u00a0that \u2018if you could crawl about inside the living body of a cow \u2026 you, would smell how the astral life and the living vitality pours inward from the horns<\/em>\u2018. Similarly, magical properties are attributed to almost all of the components of each proposed treatment (500, 501, 502, 503, etc.).<\/p>\n

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\u00a0are most likely to be more significantly influenced by additional variables. Published research notwithstanding, there is clearly no reasonable reason to believe these magical\u00a0conjurings would do much more than consume one\u2019s time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Upon publishing my articles, responses were predictably mixed, ranging from emphatic support to utter disdain\u2014one celebrated winemaker got in touch to ask why I had a\u00a0\u2018hard on\u2019\u00a0about biodynamics. By far the most common responses, though, were less predictable. Many sensible people parroted a common trope of quacks and charlatans, that \u2018modern science\u2019 can\u2019t 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\u2019s just cow horns, hippies, and urbanite trendies, right?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u00a0wonderful piece of investigative journalism\u00a0chronicling the WHO\u2019s takeover by neo-prohibitionist, temperance groups, and pointing out the misinformation and bad science pedalled in these latest announcements.<\/p>\n

None of this will surprise anybody with the faintest sceptical leanings.\u00a0The WHO has a longstanding pseudoscience problem<\/a>, regularly makes incorrect assertions based on bad science\u2014its\u00a0incorrect proclamation that glyphosate \u2018probably causes cancer\u2019<\/a>\u00a0fuelled widespread hysteria among naturalists\u2014and was\u00a0captured<\/a>\u00a0by special interest groups, private capital and postmodern ideologues many moons ago.<\/p>\n

In May 2013, the WHO\u2014the world\u2019s\u00a0leading authority<\/em>\u00a0on health\u2014released its\u00a0Traditional Medicine Strategy 2014-2023<\/a>, in which it announced its \u2018commitment to integrating traditional medicine [including homoeopathy,\u00a0acupuncture, naturopathy,\u00a0and ayuverdic medicine] in tax-funded,\u00a0national health systems<\/em>\u2019. More recently, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hosted the\u00a0WHO Traditional Medicine Global Summit<\/a>, during which he urged\u00a0all countries<\/strong>\u00a0to commit to examining how best to integrate traditional and complementary medicine into their health systems\u2014all this in the name of achieving the UN\u2019s\u00a0Sustainable Development Goals<\/a>, and recognising \u2018indigenous ways of knowing<\/em>\u2019. Incidentally, the premise of these same goals inspired much of the\u00a0WHO\u2019s first foray into anti-alcohol policy<\/a>, as well as its disastrous support of \u2018sustainable agriculture\u2019 in\u00a0Sri Lanka<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, one of the benchmark documents in the WHO\u2019s TMS is on\u00a0anthroposophic medicine<\/a>, the bizarre system conjured up by none other than Rudolf Steiner (the father of biodynamic farming)\u00a0in which health emerges from an equilibrium between \u2018the four formative forces and the threefold nature of the human being<\/em>\u2018.\u00a0In 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This entire document was sponsored by another special interest group,\u00a0just like the those Carter points to in her work\u00a0(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\u00a0document\u00a0focuses on naturopathy, including training on\u00a0homoeopathy, 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.<\/p>\n

Carter is right to scrutinise the influence of special interest groups on the WHO\u2019s anti-alcohol agenda, and to\u00a0interrogate\u00a0the 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\u2014there 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\u00a0society. 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Years ago, I pleaded for indiscriminate scrutiny of pseudoscience\u00a0in wine, no matter how\u00a0innocuous it\u00a0might seem, or how compelling a winemaker\u2019s beliefs. Today, faced with a supranational\u00a0assault 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,\u00a0we maintain such emphatic scrutiny in the vineyard, winery and our own writings. I hate to say I told you so \u2026<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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