Frauds are everywhere.
The tricky thing about frauds is that they look so much like the real thing. The great ones can be nearly impossible to detect.
This is true pretty much everywhere in life. It’s certainly true in science and research. That’s why science is a peer-reviewed process where validation of someone’s results over time is a core tenet. And it’s something so important for the public to understand - one study alone is not enough proof. Multiple studies showing similar results over time, replicated and reproduced by different teams in different locations - that’s a pretty solid bet that the findings are something you can start to trust.
How can you tell the difference between research that’s well done and research that’s pseudoscience when you’re unfamiliar with the discipline, or even research at all? Luckily, there are some pretty safe and solid ways to tell the difference between pseudoscience, bad science, and straight up lies, even if you have zero background in science. My trick is to look at the people sharing the information. Don’t get too hung up on whether or not the science itself is good or bad. Let the researchers figure that part out through the self-correcting process of science. The trick to keeping yourself safe while navigating the unregulated wellness world is to learn how to spot the bad actors within it.
First - I want to take a moment and say that spotting the fakes is hard, so don’t feel bad if you’ve fallen for some gimmicky thing on the internet only to find out it’s crap. We’ve all been there. Even me.
This is the thing I want people to understand - people in pain or under emotional stress make bad choices. Brain activity and function actually decrease as your stress response rises. People who are in pain or under a lot of stress are already in a very vulnerable state where their ability to make well reasoned choices is impaired. Simply put - your gullibility increases with your stress loads. If the pandemic hasn’t made that abundantly clear yet for you - belief in conspiracies and online misinformation has skyrocketed during this time of high stress and uncertainty - then you may be one of the folks actually suffering from this exact phenomenon. It’s an important thing to keep in mind when we’re learning how to validate and fact-check other people’s work - where are YOU emotionally right now? Are you in a headspace where making reasoned and informed choices and opinions are even possible? No? Then maybe go deal with that first before you do anything else.
Predatory practitioners flock to careers where they will not only be more likely to be able to prey on vulnerable people, but be praised for doing so because their clientele and even other people in that profession haven’t been taught how to weed the bad actors out. This is why teaching proper ethics and research principles, as well as having a very robust system for oversight is so important in any field where people’s health and safety is on the line.
If the complementary and alternative medicine disciplines want to actually be taken seriously as professions, they need to develop these systems. Anyone who doesn’t want them is a part of the problem. Think of it like good boundaries - the only people who get upset about you using good boundaries are the people who benefit from you not having any. That’s why they’re so important to learn - to keep yourself safe from people who are actually pretty toxic. Same idea here. The only people in these professions who don’t want proper regulations are the people who are benefitting from them not being there. They will squawk and fight REAL hard against having them put in place, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It actually makes it even more important that you stand your ground and develop them.
So, all of that said - let’s get into ways you can judge whether someone is a bad actor within a field to help you keep yourself safe while navigating wellness:
Who’s presenting the science and who’s doing the science? Is this a study done by an actual reputable University by people who have spent years researching this exact thing, or is it some random dude on the internet? Also beware the people commenting on stuff totally outside of their wheelhouse. If you’ve got an astrophysicist or chemist commenting on public health policy - that’s like going to my dentist to get his opinion on what’s wrong with my car. Unless that dentist has a background in mechanics, their opinion on cars is about as good as some random at a bus stop. They may or may not have any idea what they’re talking about, but there are lots of folks better suited to give you an actual opinion on it. Your responsibility to yourself is to seek out the proper sources of information for advice. Take it seriously.
What is the research trying to prove? To help with keeping our own egos and biases in check, researchers don’t try to prove that we’re right. We try to prove that we’re wrong. That’s the big difference between pseudoscience and actual science. Because the thing that’s true will still be true no matter how many holes you try to poke in it. If you’re too tied to proving yourself right, you’re going to overlook all of the ways in which you may be wrong. To try to correct for this we try to ‘prove the null hypothesis’. You come up with the hypothesis you want to test and then actually flip it to ‘if this hypothesis is wrong, what evidence would convince me of that?’ And then go about trying to find that evidence instead. This is why science seems really confusing for the general public and partly why misinformation and pseudoscience are so rampant right now. People want certainty. They want to validate their own opinions and biased views. They want to be right about whatever hill they’ve chosen to die on and are willing to overlook flaws in the research as long as they can hold something up to say ‘see, I’m not the only one who thinks so!’ That’s how pseudoscience works. Science is about ‘how might I be wrong about this?’ And then systematically designing experiments to show that we’ve covered all of our bases and thoroughly tested all of the things this could also be. Only once we’ve done that can we say, ‘okay, we’ve ruled out what else might be happening that gave us that result, so this might be what’s happening, but I might have missed something so it’s important that you all fact check this for me too and see if I screwed up somewhere.’ Science is collaborative that way. We try to look for holes in each other’s ideas, research and hypotheses, but because we’re actually doing science. It’s not to be cruel. It’s to help see what else someone might have missed. The general public sees this process and misinterprets it or views this process as controversy instead of an important part of Doing Science. That’s why educating yourself on the process of science and scientific literacy is actually very important to be able to properly interpret scientific findings. If someone is using science as a prop to prove themselves right, versus offering up data and forming their opinions based on what that data tells us while also considering all of the things the data does not tell us, you may want to treat that person as suspect.
How is the research being delivered? Think of this one like the difference between criticism and constructive criticism - one of those is often done in a manner to tear someone down, the other is done to try to help build them up. They’re both pointing out weaknesses, but one comes from a place of being cruel and one comes from a place of being helpful. So if someone is shouting and being dickish about some piece of science - you should probably not listen to them. Same for if someone is shouting only about the good and positive results with zero downsides and miracle cure whatever (or only the negative ones) - also not science and you should probably not listen to them. Think about it - you can tell the difference between someone who’s saying they’re ‘just offering constructive criticism’ but they’re doing it in such a way that it’s actually them just being cruel and insulting and slapping a neutral label on it to try to get away with it. THAT person is the fraud - they’re trying to trick you on purpose to get away with something we all know is awful. Science is the same - pseudoscience comes from ego and the need to be right, bad science comes from not knowing better and lack of experience, fraud science comes from manipulation and predation. If you remember that, it makes them all easier to spot.
Are they being balanced in their assessment of the evidence? Are they including all the evidence and viewpoints, and if not do they have good reasons why they’re excluding it? Are they including stuff that’s weak evidence and weighting it the same as strong evidence? In short - are they judging all of the available evidence dispassionately and appropriately for what they’re trying to prove? News media can be bad for this. They try to present a balanced view of the issues, but one side of the argument is ‘the earth is round’ and the other side is ‘no it’s not, it’s flat and all of the science saying it’s round has been faked’. That’s not actually a balanced review of the evidence. Not all claims should be equally weighted. Another thing to watch for are where the sources of the data are from. Are they including Facebook memes and conspiracy websites in their evidence sources or are they using legitimate and valid sources of information to base their opinions and views on? Not all media outlets have the same ethical standards for what and how they report things. Some media outlets are nothing more than ‘entertainment that no reasonable person would take as fact’, and use that as their legal defence when sued (yes, Fox News, I’m looking at you). You have to factor that information in to anything they report. It’s not credible. They themselves say so.
How open does this person seem to be to counter-ideas? Science adjusts when new information comes in about a topic. Is this person clinging to a poorly done study from two years ago that’s since been disproven? Are they capable of admitting they were wrong? Are they vehemently defending their stance despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary? The science on mask wearing is an excellent recent example. There are lots of folks using poorly done old studies as their reasons for why they shouldn’t have to wear a mask. They are cherry-picking data and willfully misinterpreting studies to fit their agendas. If your science is sound, you don’t have to shout about it. Scientists are super geeks. We love to figure out what’s going on. If you’re right about something, we’ll figure that out when we reproduce your results. The person doing all that shouting that they’re right and everyone else is wrong? That person is likely a fraud. If they were right, the validation studies would show it. We all know ‘that person’ who, when you point out that they’re wrong about something gets all belligerent and loud and attacks the credibility of the other person to try to save face but is actually a hallmark of some mental health issues, like narcissistic personality disorder. That’s not someone you should be taking health advice from, not if you want health advice that is actually based on the most current science.
So, let’s talk a bit about why you are taking health advice from people who show hallmark characteristics of fraudulent behaviour and mental health conditions. It’s because they’re loud and persistent and your brain is operating at a diminished capacity and is more gullible right now due to pandemic stress. See how that works? When uncertain times hit, our stress levels skyrocket and our ability to rationalize goes way down. We look to someone, anyone, who seems to have a plan. We have been trained as a society that the person who shouts the loudest is likely the person in charge, so we follow their orders. A lot of fraudulent and predatory actors in healthcare use this same principle to get your attention when you’re dealing with health concerns. Because the CAM therapies are mostly unregulated, their ads and marketing are designed to capture your attention the same way a firefighter at an emergency might - by being loud. Regulated healthcare providers actually aren’t allowed to do this for exactly this reason. People in stress-states are vulnerable to misinformation. So healthcare providers follow strict rules about how you’re allowed to advertise and present health related information. Unfortunately, this sets up a situation where the most vulnerable people are drawn towards the loud gimmicks used by fraudulent and predatory practitioners and there’s no counter-loudness from the good guys to balance it out. It’s a situation that desperately needs to be rectified, but it will take time to do it properly.
In the meantime, you can help to protect yourself by taking the time to step back and evaluate not only the information being presented but how it’s being presented to help protect you from falling for the loudest, uniformed voice in the room when your actual health and safety are on the line. Having standards for who should be allowed to help people navigate health decisions during times when they are vulnerable to misinformation helps to protect everyone during times when they really need that kind of protection. It’s also why it’s so important that the professionals in any field who want to provide health information to the public meet certain standards for how they go about doing that and hold each other to those standards. Any person or individual who doesn’t want that regulated is benefitting from being able to lead people in vulnerable states astray. None of us should be okay with that.
As always, if you have any questions or want to know more - you know where to find me!
Til next time, folks!