Not so much Angry as Disappointed and Disillusioned
Barry Lennox - 12th October 2026
Lance Kennedy
Mark Honeychurch said that “I may risk another angry email from Lance.” He is partly right. But I am not so much angry as disappointed and disillusioned.
Skeptics should be following the example of good scientists. But it appears Mark fails to understand the scientific approach. As Professor Carlo Rovelli says, scientific models tend to be conditional, and the best theories can change if confronted by new data.
This does not weaken the results of good scientific research. Scientists writing up their results will always use conditional language, including the words ‘may’ and ‘might’. I suspect that if we look at early research reports on the relationship between smoking and lung cancer, those reports would be full of mays and mights. Their conclusions were still correct.
I have a neighbour who is a global warming denier. I have discussed this with him and a major argument he uses is that climate scientists, in their papers on global warming, use conditional language instead of absolute statements. This is normal in science, and someone like Mark Honeychurch should realise that. The use of ‘may’ and ‘might’ is not an argument to refute conclusions.
The comments by Barry Lennox were, of course, correct. I have read the reports he refers to. There have been numerous reports on the health effects of higher and lower vitamin D in the human body. But what Barry overlooks, is that the vast majority of such studies were comparing groups of people taking vitamin D tablets versus those not. The results show clearly that the benefits of vitamin D pills are minimal.
But there have also been a very small number of studies comparing those who get their vitamin D from ultra violet versus those who do not. The results are much more dramatic with high vitamin D from UV being associated with high health benefits.
Why, you ask, should the pill be less effective? For the same reason that vitamin C tablets are less beneficial than regular consumption of fruit and vegetables. It is because the pill delivers one nutrient. The alternative delivers a wide range of benefits, including a number of new metabolites.
I would also point out something that we all know from our own knowledge. Excessive UV on human skin is countered to an extent by the protective substance, melanin. This is what gives us a sun tan, or gives a person from a tropical region his or her natural dark skin. But when UV levels drop, so does the melanin level. Why? If there was no benefit from low levels of UV, why should evolution or acclimation remove the melanin? But evolution has caused human populations far from the tropics (like my Scottish ancestors) to evolve pale skins. It also means that those who spend a lot of time in the sun in summer, and get sun tans, lose that tan in winter. Pointless to lose the protective melanin unless that loss confers a benefit.
Hopefully, if others want to deny the good science behind what I have written, they will be a bit more scientific about how they go about it.