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When it comes to dealing with pseudoscience, just being right isn’t enough. We need not only to show how pseudoscience is wrong, but also address the ways it harms people.
CFI’s goals are societal – they go beyond philosophical level opposition. It is central to our mission to improve the world, and it is our belief that problems are best addressed through the application of the scientific method, and that reliance on pseudoscience causes direct, measurable harm to individuals in society.
Science and pseudoscience stand in direct opposition to one another.
Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. Scientists approach any situation with an open mind. They observe the situation, formulate hypotheses about it, and test those hypotheses with experiments. Where the results of the experiment do not conform to the expected results predicted by the hypothesis, then the hypothesis must be reexamined. This is the central nature of science – it is determined by results, not preconceived ideas.
Pseudoscience, on the other hand places the cart before the horse. It predetermines the desired result, and then seeks evidence for it. When the evidence does not support the desired outcome, that evidence is manipulated and altered. Pseudoscience portrays itself as following the scientific method, but in fact represents the antithesis of science. It dresses itself in the garb of science, and draws on the credibility science has earned. However, it is agenda driven, seeking only to provide justifications for predetermined outcomes.
Pseudoscience is marked by a series of common strategies that can be seen as placing it outside the realm of science, and into the realm of agenda driven presupposition and misrepresentation of facts. These strategies of those who promote pseudoscientific evidence to manufacture false controversies include “(1) the use of mercenary scientists, (2) the use of cherry-picked data and manipulation of statistical methods, (3) the manufacture and promotion of doubt and uncertainty, and (4) the use of rhetoric to manufacture controversy in addition to uncertainty.” Jane Moreno & Brian Holmgren, Dissent Into Confusion: The Supreme Court, Denialism, And The False “Scientific” Controversy Over Shaken Baby Syndrome, 2013 Utah L. Rev. 153, 154 (2013) citing Leah Ceccarelli, Manufactured Scientific Controversy: Science, Rhetoric, and Public Debate, 14 Rhetoric & Pub. Affairs 195, 197 (2011).
The Office of Consumer Protection from Pseudoscience seeks to fight back against the harms caused by quacks, crooks, and charlatans, big and small.
Pseudoscience impacts the public in multiple ways. It leads to bad decisions being made by government, and it directly harms consumers, both physically, and in their pocket books. CFI seeks to challenge pseudoscience in all these areas, and the Office of Consumer Protection from Pseudoscience exists to challenge the negative effects of pseudoscience on the members of the general public.
THE HARMS TO CONSUMERS OF PSEUDOSCIENCE
In the health and wellness field, the government refers to pseudoscience as “Alternative and Complementary Medicine.”
This IS itself a misnomer. As comedian and songwriter Tim Minchin tells us, “You know what they call alternative medicine that has been proved to work? Medicine.”
Medical pseudoscience hits consumers in three ways, depending on what it is they are taking, and whether they are “complementing” real medicine with it, or using it as an “alternative” to real medicine.
Financial Harm
First and foremost, consumers are harmed because they spend money — lots of money — on products that simply don’t work. Pseudoscientific AltMed practitioners and companies get rich selling products that have no medical value whatsoever. It’s fraud. And it costs American consumers billions of dollars every year.
Physical Harm
Pseudoscientific products aren’t regulated in the same way real medicine is. They may be shoddily manufactured with poor quality control, or their practitioners may be improperly trained and dangerous.
Homeopathy often uses poisonous substances as the “active ingredient” in its preparations. In theory, these are diluted to the level where they are no longer dangerous (in fact, in many homeopathic preparations, they are diluted to the point that it is a scientific impossibility that any of the original ingredient remains). But if quality control isn’t what it should be, it isn’t hard to see how poisons could remain in dangerous levels and be marketed to an unsuspecting public. As Scientific American reported, over a ten year period, the FDA collected 370 reports of “adverse events” in children whose parents used Hyland’s homeopathic teething tablets or gels on them. 8 babies were reported as dying. FDA records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act stated that “Babies who were given Hyland’s teething products turned blue and died. Babies had repeated seizures. Babies became delirious. Babies were airlifted to the hospital, where emergency room staff tried to figure out what had caused their legs and arms to start twitching.”
Chiropractors may cause permanent or long term harm through inept manipulation. Adults, youths, children, and babies visit chiropractors, often for conditions completely unrelated to back pain, including sinus headaches, tumors, and epileptic seizures. Far too many of these patients suffer harm or even death. The website, whatstheharm.net, lists over 300 of these cases.
Some AltMed products are just inherently dangerous like Colloidal Silver. Taking colloidal silver doesn’t cure anything. It does, on the other hand, dye you blue.
These products are dangerous and worthless, yet they are sold on retail shelves, portrayed as valid alternatives to science based medicine that has gone through years of testing for safety and efficacy.
Opportunity Cost
Pseudoscientific products don’t work. If consumers take them as replacements for real medicine, they suffer from the symptoms of their disease longer than necessary.
In some tragic cases, this can be fatal. When a person with epilepsy, or cancer, relies on fake pseudoscience in place of science based, tested, real medicine, they are denied the chance of recovery or control of their disease.
Other times, such as childhood ear infections, failure to properly treat can lead to long term hearing disability. Alternative medicines often target concerned parents, with gaudy labels promoting their “natural” origins and absence of interactions or side effects. But all using them in place of real medicine does is prolong a child’s suffering unnecessarily, and may even result in permanent damage.
Alternative medicine often targets “self limiting” conditions, those diseases which get batter on their own. Once a patient recovers, as they would have without the alternative medical intervention, the proponents of pseudoscience point to it as a success story. But even then, the patient, all too often a child, has suffered the symptoms longer than necessary.
LEGAL AND LOBBYING ACTION
Lawsuits
CFI v. Boiron
CFI alleges in its lawsuit that “through a carefully crafted scheme of misrepresentation, obfuscation, ambiguity, innuendo and falseties, Boiron off loads otherwise worthless products upon the unwitting, the ill-informed and the vulnerable.”
CFI v. Walmart
Center for Inquiry alleges in a lawsuit that Walmart is deceiving consumers by making no meaningful distinction between real medicine and useless homeopathic treatments
CFI v. CVS
Center for Inquiry has brought CVS to court over their deceptive sale and marketing of homeopathic products
State Actions
Illinois: Your Legislature Must Not Approve This Pro-Naturopathy Bill
February 16, 2022The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is calling on all Illinois residents to let their state legislators know that they must not pass H.B. 4294, a pro-naturopathy bill that would work to the detriment of public health in the state. Today, the Illinois General Assembly’s House Health Care Licenses Committee is holding a hearing on the …
Wisconsin – Tell Gov. Evers: No Boosters for Naturopathy
February 1, 2022The Center for Inquiry (CFI) urges Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers in the strongest terms to veto state bill A.B. 529. This misguided legislation would license naturopathic practitioners as primary care physicians in the state of Wisconsin. In a letter to Gov. Evers, CFI makes clear that granting this kind of legal status and credibility to …
Illinois: Stop Naturopathic Licensing
March 22, 2021They’re not doctors. They’re not medically trained. Many of them deny the safety and efficacy of vaccines. But if they get their way, they’ll be given the authority to present themselves as “naturopathic physicians” to Illinoisans. They’re naturopaths, and we need you to stop the state legislature from granting medical legitimacy to these practitioners of …
Arkansas: Stop Naturopath Licensing
March 18, 2021They’re not doctors. They’re not medically trained. Many of them deny the safety and efficacy of vaccines. But if they get their way, they’ll be given the authority to present themselves as “naturopathic physicians” to Arkansans. They’re naturopaths, and we need you to stop the state legislature from granting medical legitimacy to these practitioners of …
Homeopathy. It’s Complete Pseudoscience.
AREAS OF INTEREST
- Homeopathy
- Fraudulent Supplements
- Naturopathy
How can you get involved, and help the Office of Consumer Protection from Pseudoscience to help you?
Let us know what is happening out there — fill in the complaint form and tell us what you have found. If it has impacted you directly, also feel free to contact your state consumer protection agency. The pass given to pseudoscience is because those who enforce consumer protection laws don’t see it as harmful, and because the billion dollar companies which push it do a great job of presenting themselves as harmless. So it is only when the public makes its voice heard that the authorities that are meant to protect us from these frauds will step up and do their job.
