In a piece of contrarianism worthy of Jack of Kent, it was suggested by a number of people (e.g. here) on twitter that the latest round of Gillian McKeith bashing would serve only to make a martyr of the awful old poo lady. Perhaps she would like that. She has always left me with the impression of somebody lonely, in a mid-life crisis, absolutely desperate for fame and attention (I don’t know; an impression only, of course, no objective insight into her character is implied).

But this is not a martyrdom. This is the suicide of a wounded career. McKeith built a flimsy reputation on the weak foundation of a title that gave the impression of a serious medical and/or scientific qualification, and a cargo-cult science programme on national television. When Ben Goldacre gave those foundations a gentle kick*, the whole thing came tumbling down. Ben showed that McKeith's qualification turn out not to meet widely-held definitions of a doctorate; McKeith's reputation suffered a serious blow, and, so far as I am aware, she no longer regularly appears on mainstream television -- no longer gets to peddle nonsense to an unsuspecting nation; no longer gets easy publicity for her books and pills. Even if anybody did think she was a martyr, at least she's not poking at shit and talking crap in front of people who are trying to eat their dinners.

Most people don't hate McKeith. Most people don't love McKeith. Truth is, most people don't care. Most people are neither believers in hardcore woo, nor practitioners of hardcore skepticism. The average person has no strong feelings either way. Four years ago, for the average person, McKeith was that woman on the telly who poked entertainingly at poops and gave diet advice. Today, for the average person, McKeith is irrelevant, fading rapidly into obscurity (or, in many cases, that woowoo woman who used to fiddle with feces on the telly, before that epic pwnage by that bloke in the newspaper). Ben lowered McKeith's public image and credibility from "doctor" to a level that better fits her qualifications, and that's a worthwhile achievement, and great value at the price of a professional membership of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants. Only to a hardcore minority that was already predisposed to nonsense did McKeith’s reputation remain intact.

That was the case before this past week’s bizarre events. Before McKeith’s twitter account accused Ben Goldacre of deliberate dishonesty and undeclared conflicts of interest; and before the desperately, disastrously incompetent damage limitation that followed, in which a crude attempt was made to imply that the account and the accusation were not really hers. It looked dishonest. But more importantly, it was hilariously, cringingly embarrassing. A train wreck. A giant train wreck that even other pseudoscientists must recognise as such. Martyrs aren’t made out of train wrecks like these. Those last hangers-on who were predisposed to McKeith’s nonsense? I’d expect them to be keeping their distance right now.

It’s all well and good getting skeptics to engage in dialogue with pseudoscientists and altmed peddlers. And absolutely we need people in science and medicine to be positively promoting and explaining evidence-based practice. But at the same time, there’s nothing dishonourable or ineffective about deflating the unearned credibility of pseudoscientists and altmed practitioners; helping them lose their unearned platforms, and fade into obscurity.

* an epic gentle kick, of course. I am not suggesting that Ben’s work was anything less than brilliant, even if McKeith did turn out to be a ludicrously easy target.