User:Michael Yudkin/sandbox

Velella, concerning your question whether Jack Winkler, my collaborator on the "Pure, White and Deadly" article, should declare a conflict of interest, Jack writes as follows:

''I do not have a Wikipedia page of my own on which to make a declaration. And I do not think I have any conflicts of interest. But, for what it is worth, here is the relevant information.

''I never collaborated with your father on anything. Indeed, I only met him once, when we happened to sit next to one another on the coach taking the delegates from the IUNS conference at Brighton in 1985 to a stately home somewhere in Sussex for the evening’s light relief. As you might imagine, we had a long and substantial conversation about sugar, during which he was very honest, and saddened, about the reaction of his nutritional peers to PWD and his work generally.

''More relevant is that I was for 13 years Chair of Action & Information on Sugars (AIS), a health advocacy group formed by nutritional and dental professionals concerned about excessive sugar consumption. In that group, your father was a hero. But there was no relationship with him and we were not involved in the later recognition of his work, because we closed down in 2002. So, I do not think of AIS as a conflict of interest. It is the reason I know as much as I do about the politics of sugar.

''Everyone who has the knowledge to contribute a Wikipedia entry has some involvement in the fields about which they are writing. That is mine. But I am such a pragmatist about policy, intentionally in communication as a matter of principle with everyone in a policy field, that I am contaminated by everyone, if contamination it be.''

Kind regards Michael Yudkin (talk) 15:03, 7 September 2018 (UTC)