Friday, April 29, 2016

Where Fools Rush In

 I   t's been a while since I actually did any research on the Spinternet about anything medical, in depth.

But what the past week or so has taught me is that you have to be ultra-vigilant if you don't want to get ripped off.

In an area such as this—some new and only partially-understood area of medicine/health care—the travelling medicine shows with their poultices, potions and Dr. Luther's Magick Elixirs rolled up long before the genuine, degree-owning medical practitioners did.

Spotting them can be very, very hard but there are usually couple of things you can do to avoid falling into their con traps.

And the bona-fide medical outfits don't make it easy, frequently using research papers that spout impenetrable medical or scientific jargon that "normal" people don't have a chance of interpreting.

So how do you know who's legit and who probably isn't?

A couple of guidelines:

Beware of any websites called themselves "dr" or "doctor" anything. No self-respecting researcher or physician or chemistry expert would ever put up a website with "doctor" in its name; so anything like "drwilson.com" or "drdavidwilliams.com" or "drperlmutter.com" are 100% (not 98 or even 99%, but ONE HUNDRED PERCENT) guaranteed to be scams, either filled with homeopathic nonsense or pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo (real doctors rarely see the need to emphasize their "doctor-dom" in their web titles).

A real doctor has nothing to sell, because he or she didn't go through 12 years of gruelling school just to hop on the Internet and start selling a personal line of bullshit.

And some of these "doctors" aren't even doctors at all, except in their own minds—I will remind you that chiropractors are nothing to do with the real medical profession and are about as qualified to treat people as astrologers, despite the "doctor" in the name (I can be a doctor too, simply by calling myself one. Just ask Dr. John).

If you don't have "M.D." after your name, guess what: you probably aren't a medical doctor.

Furthermore, here are some of the buzzwords you need to be watching for when doing any research about the human biome (note that these are the same buzzwords that homeopaths and naturopaths and scammers use):

Big Pharma
healing
biomedical
holistic/wholistic
wellness
integrative/integrated
complementary
alternative
natural
(insert word)-boosting
quantum

and the following should be red flags if appearing on any website about this topic (including but not limited to):

organic, toxic, vegan, gluten-free, soy-free, GMO-free, good fats, grass-fed, hormone-free, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, detoxify, alkalizing, vitamin-rich, epigenetic, herbal, anti-aging, metabolic, oxygenated, synergistic, traditional, , energy boosting, no HFCS, paleo, raw, superfood, eco-friendly, macronutrient, additive-free, magnesium, iodine, cellular damage.

So why do so many people fall for this crap and not trust legitimate sites that aren't selling miracle cures?

Well, in many cases it's the fault of the scientists themselves. You'll have to wade through paragraphs of obscure or technical documentation that non-scientist can't hope to understand—and genuine researchers have few reasons to simplify this stuff for public consumption—it's not what they do.

So just to recap: if you run across entire websites whose content is the microbiome, they're more than likely selling something. Furthermore, a lot of these places will mix believable science facts with authentic-sounding mumbo-jumbo, like this guy does.

And of course, when you come across sites that have fifty banner ads running down every page, you know the site is probably not worth spending much time on.

If you want an example of a great, trustworthy website about all things medical, look no further than Science-based Medicine.

A few verifiable quacks (I'll try to add as I come across them):

Dr. Oz (one of the most egregious of all the quacks)
Andrew Weil

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