And then you have the actual medical professionals who have a positive experience with quackery.
See, for example, long-time quack Dr. Bill Rawls, MD. He uses his "Lyme story" and online ads to peddle his own line of supplements:
https://truthinadvertising.org/articles/dr-rawls-lyme-story-vital-plan-supplements/
Many victims of chronic Lyme quackery become unlicensed health coaches.
The buyers become the sellers, growing the harmful movement.
I'm working on a project where I'm diving into wellness TikTok and... why does it seems like all *Holistic Health Coaches* are always sick with or trying to cure something.
Interview between two people who grew up in the Scientology cult, Chris Shelton and Ian Rafalko.
Rafalko bravely blew the whistle on his father, chiropractic fake doctor and anti-vaxxer Eric Berg
https://youtu.be/QzAiaIoZkdY
Ralph Lewis, MD: Spirituality, wellness, and conspiracy theories offer an illusion of control, special knowledge, and understanding of the world.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/finding-purpose/202209/spirituality-wellness-and-conspiracy-beliefs
An old pre-pandemic meme that has new relevance in view of the hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and vitamins promoted by some elected officials.
Great interview on the pseudoscience that is naturopathy 👇
Welcome back to season 3 of the pod! We kick things off this season with the topic of naturopathy. This is the first episode in a two-part series on this controversial topic. Special guest former ND Britt Hermes provides insider knowledge on this industry:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CjDduv4ug0x/
This satire is indistinguishable from press releases about worthless studies funded by the NIH's pseudoscience section @NIH_NCCIH
BREAKING: A landmark study found patients receiving acupuncture alongside standard care for sepsis had fewer complications on days 3 and 8 of an average 17 day hospital admission.
“The results approached significance. It’s a big deal.”
- Nance Flannel, NIH Acupuncture Division
This story of a teacher being suspended for identifying pseudoscience evokes the Scopes Monkey Trial:
A school Principal in Calicut district, Kerala was made to apologize to Homeopaths by Homeopaths 🤌because of this question which featured in 7th grade English Paper.
I think the State Govt must honor the teacher who framed this question.
It's just brilliant 💯💐
It’s easy to misinterpret a conventional Lyme test—that’s based on antibodies, not direct detection—to reach a false conclusion.
And predatory labs peddle unconventional testing that is essentially unregulated.
Quacks exploit psychology and predatory labs to falsely diagnose:
How quack #Lyme labs trick people:
☑️ Charge big bucks
☑️ Test for many biomarkers because some will invariably be not negative
☑️ Create proprietary diagnostic criteria
☑️ Return indeterminate results, which will often be interpreted as positive
Abby Hartman was a victim of chronic Lyme quackery for 11 years.
She initially learned of Lyme through a chiropractor, but was very skeptical of his magical diagnostic technique.
But the CLD cult has many sciency-sounding techniques to recruit.
https://www.itstrainingcatsanddogs.com/blog/2019/2/11/lyme-warrior-no-more
Science fiction is getting a fake diagnosis from a predatory lab that claims to be legitimate because it’s CLIA-certified.
Fantasy is getting a fake diagnosis from psychic powers like applied kinesiology muscle testing.
@acweyand Or diagnoses you with “food sensitivities” by doing muscle “strength testing” and then offers to sell you supplements they conveniently offer at their clinic and bad mouths vaccines and “traditional medicine”…
New book by Dr. Joe Schwarcz:
Quack Quack: The Threat of Pseudoscience
https://bookshop.org/p/books/quack-quack-the-threat-of-pseudoscience-joe-schwarcz/18375828🦆🦆
Red flags of quackery:
🚩 functional medicine
🚩 detox
🚩 bogus vaccine claims
🚩 Paul Marik, leader of the quack group FLCCC
quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack
#QuacksFLCCC
Some of the absurdity from Healthline’s MedicalNewsToday.
Healthline and associated site MedicalNewsToday are unreliable and filled with misinformation.
Yet their search-engine optimized content is top ranked on Google.
Curious about crystal-infused water? This article was “medically reviewed” by an integrative medical acupuncturist, so naturally it butchers the part about evidence and placebo.
https://www.healthline.com/health/mind-body/do-crystal-infused-water-bottles-really-work#benefits
Former ILADS president Raphael Stricker, MD has edited three predatory MDPI special issues and is known for publishing garbage papers, including in MDPI.
Stricker evokes Andrew Wakefield.
The predatory publisher MDPI @MDPIOpenAccess allowed former ILADS president Raphael Stricker to edit three(!) “special issues” even though he has been found guilty of scientific misconduct by the NIH and UCSF, among another horrific antics. https://twitter.com/LymeScience/status/1189527993481383943
ILADS leader Leona Gilbert was named as an MDPI predatory special issue editor after she was found guilty of research misconduct
ILADS anti-science activist Leona Gilbert was found guilty of research misconduct by her university and reportedly fired.
Now she is an editor of the 14th conspiracy theorist special issue we know about published by predatory publisher MDPI!
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/tropicalmed/special_issues/Spirochetoses
Alleged image duplication discovered by @fallenigloos
Cranks love to use MDPI’s special issues to promote their nonsense.
And Jean Dodds is a long-time crank and an MDPI editor who has been cited for practicing veterinary medicine without a license.
https://thecaninereview.com/2022/01/10/jean-dodds-persists-as-doctor-with-apparent-impunity-veterinary-board-tells-tcr-citation-fine-not-paid/
@fallenigloos Wow nice catch! MDPI should retract.
The photo from Jean Dodd’s dubious 2019 paper (in her vanity special issue) was in a 2015 YouTube video about the world’s fattest cats.
cc: @SkeptVet @RetractionWatch @MicrobiomDigest
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/9/8/534/htm
https://youtu.be/pgLzN6KRT1k
We republished an article by Jeffrey Beall, who placed MDPI on his list of predatory publishers.
He describes how MDPI makes big money from special issues.
We know of 17 MDPI special issues edited by cranks.
https://lymescience.org/mdpi-special-issues-journal-open-access-frontiers-research-topics/
Predatory publisher MDPI is a notorious spammer 👇
I did not reply to your first email for a reason.
Since you asked a second time…
Robert went to a “Lyme specialist” and underwent years of antibiotic treatment due to falsely diagnosed chronic Lyme disease.
The true diagnosis was a brain tumor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=823jkRIaLgA
When an integrative/functional/Lyme literate charlatan defrauds patients, real problems remain unaddressed:
Opinion | That's Not Chronic Lyme, It's Cancer
Three case reports demonstrate the risks of 'assuming that patients have chronic Lyme disease.'
www.medpagetoday.com
We need more of this type of analysis!
The reviewer understood what I was doing with this project. (It's not a debunking book, though sometimes dispels myths.) I explore: Why is this happening? Why now? What are we looking for?
And, of course, how does this industry capitalize on our vulnerabilities and deep desires?
In Arizona, Martha Grout, MD is a long-time predator associated with quack groups like ILADS and Institute for Functional Medicine.
She gave a cyanide-containing fake cancer treatment to a toddler, who died of cyanide poisoning.
She kept her license.
https://ailinghomeopathy.journalism.cuny.edu
In Connecticut, ILADS leader Charles Ray Jones, MD abused many children with long regimens of antibiotics.
He falsely told parents that autism and childhood psychiatric disorders were really Lyme disease.
He kept his license.
Lyme literate child abuser disciplined twice
lymescience.org
Many states, such as California, have laws designed to protect quacks.
Even when a medical board has good evidence that a doctor is abusing patients, the doctor typically keeps their license:
Steven Harris: Disciplined for intravenous garlic
lymescience.org
Health fraud is essentially legal in the United States, whether perpetrated by quack integrative/functional doctors or by naturopaths and chiropractors pretending to be doctors.
Fake tests, fake diagnoses, and fake treatments feed the wallet and the ego.
'What Used to Be Fraud Is Now Alternative Medicine'
Perry Wilson, MD, discusses the new quackery with Steven Novella, MD
www.medpagetoday.com
Bogus, harassing lawsuits like this are why we need a federal anti-SLAPP law
Dr. Robert Malone, the """inventor""" of mRNA vaccine technology, is suing the Washington Post for defamation.
You can check out the full complaint here. It contains a few gems.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61910a2d98732d54b73ef8fc/t/62ff8fb8c5c0245654e5f02e/1660915642244/WaPo+Suit+August+19%2C+2922+blanked+personal.pdf
When a doctor or nurse practitioner decides to become an integrative/functional/naturopathic medicine grifter:
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/article/wellness-hippie-to-scientist-how-my-brush-with-cancer-changed-my-beliefs/8m0heeezt
Another chiropractor guilty of sexual misconduct
https://www.njoag.gov/new-jersey-licensing-board-permanently-revokes-the-license-of-bergen-county-chiropractor-for-sexually-violating-four-female-patients/
Kudos to the CDC for doing a new #Lyme surveillance dashboard AND releasing the data files that power it. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/datasurveillance/surveillance-data.html
written version: https://mylespower.co.uk/2021/12/27/prince-charles-is-a-threat-to-the-health-of-the-nation/
Myles Power @powerm1985 earlier this year: Prince Charles is a threat to the health of the nation
https://youtu.be/lYggB8nvU5g
Jonathan Jarry: How to Effectively Push Back Against Misinformation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb7MTDj2izU
Advice to journalists: Patient advocates who are hostile to psychotherapy and physical activity are probably not good examples to feature in your stories.
Amy Proal had health issues as a college student and became enamored with the cure-all claims of “Marshall Protocol” pseudoscience, which was the topic of her PhD in quackery.
Trevor Marshall (inventor of the MP despite no medical credentials) became Proal’s thesis advisor. 🚩🚩
This should be interesting since Yahoo News often posts syndicated content that has misinformation
Big news! Yahoo has acquired @thefactualnews! This will make it easier for millions of people to find trusted news sources across the political spectrum. Read more about our next chapter here: https://www.thefactual.com/blog/the-factual-has-been-acquired-by-yahoo/
Amy Proal has a PhD in quackery and is a longtime conspiracy theorist on the level of Judy Mikovits.
It’s disturbing to see that she is receiving attention and money for long COVID research.
It’s also presumptuous to promote viral persistence as a cause of post-COVID symptoms.
X-rays are real. N-rays are not.
The story of false belief in N-rays is a good one:
https://www.wired.com/2014/09/fantastically-wrong-n-rays/
Here’s the dangerous pseudoscience group LymeDisease,org promoting Nicola McFadzean Ducharme’s bizarre claims about a “Lyme diet”
Nicola McFadzean Ducharme is a naturopathic fake doctor who is spreading the gospel of the chronic #Lyme cult.
She even does this in Australia, where real Lyme isn’t endemic but thousands of people have been fraudulently diagnosed.
I have a second instagram account where I follow conspiracy theorists and pseudoscience grifters.
And this is the sponsored content @Meta feeds me.
Checkmate scientists! NASA admits the world is flat!
We call it "flat earther tactics" when cranks misread a web page and claim the government supports their nonsense.
A flat earther searched the NASA web site for the phrase “flat earth”, found it, and declared that NASA is admitting the world is flat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWqfuMUzCbQ
All the data converges on one conclusion:
There is no link between ALS and #Lyme disease.
https://lymescience.org/lyme-is-not-multiple-sclerosis-als-alzheimers-autism-parkinsons/
William Lee Cowden, MD was reprimanded twice by regulators in Texas but kept his license until he decided on his own to relinquish it.
Supplement sales do pay!
And the Arizona Homeopathic board was happy to register him thereafter.
https://quackwatch.org/cases/board/med/cowden/2002order/
Of course, William Lee Cowden, MD is virtually worshipped in the Chronic Lyme Cult because of his "Cowden Support Program", which is peddled by shady supplements company Nutramedix for $350 for the first month
In Wired, Alan Levinovitz wrote, "When confronted with the possibility of a troubling diagnosis, people often prefer to avoid hard truths."
Neurologist Steven Novella explained how a naturopath exploited one of his ALS patients:
https://www.wired.com/2015/04/alternative-medicine-believers-journey-back-science/amp
