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Quackwatch Inc. is an American non-profit organization that aims to "combat health-related frauds, myths, fads, fallacies, and misconduct," with its primary focus on what it characterizes as quackery. Since 1996, it has operated a website, Quackwatch.org, which contains articles and other types of information criticizing all forms of alternative medicine.

History

Quackwatch was founded by Stephen Barrett, M.D., as the Lehigh Valley Committee Against Health Fraud in 1969, and incorporated it in the state of Pennsylvania in 1970. In 1996, the organization began the Quackwatch website, renaming the organization Quackwatch in 1997 as the website attracted attention.

Mission and scope

Quackwatch is operated by Stephen Barrett with input from his board of advisors and help from volunteers that include a number of medical professionals. The website has won three awards and has been quoted in the press and medical journals.

Quackwatch reports that its activities include the following:

"investigating questionable claims, answering inquiries about products and services, advising quackery victims, distributing reliable publications, debunking pseudoscientific claims, reporting illegal marketing, improving the quality of health information on the internet, assisting or generating consumer-protection lawsuits, and attacking misleading advertising on the internet."

The website contains essays on what it deems to be misleading or fraudulent health-related therapies and enterprises, loosely termed "quackery". The essays are not, and do not claim to be, peer reviewed scientific papers, but are mainly critical descriptions of treatments, commercial products, and health providers, mainly written by Barrett and his board of advisors for the non-specialist consumer. The essays generally explain in detail the reasons Barrett considers them fraudulent, misleading, or ineffective. They usually include references and links to sources used, as well as to sources for further study. Quackwatch is especially critical of those therapies that it considers potentially dangerous.

The site contains information about specific people who perform, market, and advocate what Quackwatch considers to be dubious therapies, in many cases providing details of convictions for past marketing fraud. The website also presents lists of sources, individuals, and groups which Quackwatch considers questionable and non-recommended, sometimes without explanation or justification. Among those mentioned critically are Linus Pauling, for recommending orthomolecular "mega-dose" vitamin C treatment of colds and cancer, and integrative medicine proponent Andrew Weil.

About the site

Quackwatch engages the services of 150+ scientific and technical advisors, who author articles and help to "evaluate web sites, answer health-related questions, review books, help prepare articles, and engage in other projects that foster the spread of accurate information on the Internet." As of 2003, 67 medical advisors, 12 dental advisors, 13 mental health advisors, 16 nutrition and food science advisors, 3 podiatry advisors, 8 veterinary advisors, and 33 "other scientific and technical advisors" were listed.

Quackwatch claims that it has no salaried employees and "…operates with minimal expense, funded mainly by small individual donations, commissions from sales on other sites to which we refer, sponsored links, and profits from the sale of publications. If its income falls below what is needed for the research, the rest comes out of my pocket… The total cost of operating Quackwatch's many Web sites is approximately $7,000 per year.".

The site is part of a network of related sites, such as Homeowatch (on homeopathy), Credential Watch (devoted to exposing degree mills), Chirobase (specifically devoted to chiropractic, cosponsored by the National Council Against Health Fraud and Victims of Chiropractic), and others, each devoted to specific topics.

Notability

Quackwatch has been mentioned in the media and various journals, as well as receiving numerous awards and honors, including:

In 1998, JAMA named Quackwatch one of nine "select sites that provide reliable health information and resources."

In 1999, U.S. News & World Report listed Quackwatch as one of three medical sites in their "Best of the Web".

In its "Best of the Web Directory — Health" category, Forbes online magazine listed Quackwatch among 25 sites and provided this review:

"Dr. Stephen Barrett, a psychiatrist, seeks to expose unproven medical treatments and possible unsafe practices through his homegrown but well-organized site. Mostly attacking alternative medicines, homeopathy and chiropractors, the tone here can be rather harsh. However, the lists of sources of health advice to avoid, including books, specific doctors and organizations, are great for the uninformed. Barrett received an FDA Commissioner's Special Citation Award for fighting nutrition quackery in 1984. BEST: Frequently updated, but also archives of relevant articles that date back at least four years. WORST: Lists some specific doctors and organizations without explaining the reason for their selection."

Quackwatch has also been cited or mentioned by journalists in reports on therapeutic touch, Vitamin O, Almon Glenn Braswell and his claimed baldness treatments, dietary supplements (especially when sold by health care providers), Robert Barefoot's coral calcium claims, noni juice, shark cartilage, infomercials, and the Mexican clinic where Coretta Scott King died.

Criticism

The Quackwatch website has attracted critics, most of whom are alternative medicine proponents. Many of them are also critical of Stephen Barrett, the owner and founder of the website:

Joel M. Kauffman, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at USP who contests conventional medical consensus in nutrition on saturated fat and cholesterol wrote a website review entitled "Watching the Watchdogs at Quackwatch" which was published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. His website review examined eight Quackwatch articles and he concluded that the articles were "contaminated with incomplete data, obsolete data, technical errors, unsupported opinions, and/or innuendo". Kauffman stated in a disclaimer that "any recommendations... are based on studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. I am not an M. D. and cannot engage in the practice of medicine." He concluded:

"Hostility to all alternatives was expected and observed from the website, but not repetition of groundless dogma from mainstream medicine…It remains a mystery how they and I have interpreted the same body of medical science and reached such divergent conclusions…It is very probable that many…visitors to the website have been misled by the trappings of scientific objectivity… The use of this website is not recommended. It could be deleterious to your health."

Alternative medicine proponent Burton Goldberg wrote: "In the paradox of 'quackbusting,' the quackbusters say they're protecting public health, but in fact, they're abandoning the public to their own suffering to protect the financial interests of conventional medicine, which has no interest in or ability to produce benefits for these conditions. The 'quackbusters' say they're serving the public, but the truth is they're grossly disserving patients." and "As alternative medicine continues to grow more popular—an estimated 42% of Americans now use it—the "quackbusters" are growing more clamorous in their denunciations of our field. They have to be—they're almost a minority view."

Ray Sahelian, MD, board certified in family medicine, is an advocate of holistic medicine and the author of health related books on nutrition and a proponent of supplements asks: "Why has Stephen Barrett, M.D. focused most of his attention on the nutritional industry and has hardly spent time pointing out the billions of dollars wasted each year by consumers on certain prescription and non-prescription pharmaceutical drugs?" and "Another point I would like to make regarding Quackwatch is that Dr. Barrett often, if not the majority of the time, seems to point out the negative outcome of studies with supplements (you can sense his glee and relish when he points out these negative outcomes), and rarely mentions the benefits they provide."

Elmer M. Cranton, MD, author of Textbook on EDTA Chelation Therapy, has responded to criticism by Quackwatch of the chelation therapy that he explicitly supports by stating: "There exist a small number of self-styled medical thought-police who call themselves 'quack busters'. They even have their own website, QuackWatch. This organization has the mission of attacking alternative and emerging medical therapies in favor of the existing medical monopoly." He further stated: "I will answer below, point by point, a critical article on the Quackwatch website by Dr. Saul Green entitled 'Chelation Therapy: Unproven Claims and Unsound Theories', in which Dr. Green attempts to discredit EDTA chelation using half-truths, speculation, and false statements."

Peter Barry Chowka, an investigative journalist, medical-political analyst and former adviser to the National Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine, has said that Barrett "seems to be putting down trying to be objective." He went on to state that "Quackwatch.com is consistently provocative and entertaining and occasionally informative,… But I personally think he's running against the tide of history. But that's his problem, not ours."

Patrick Timothy (Tim) Bolen is a supporter of naturopathic medicine and the webmaster of Quackpot Watch, a website that challenges Barrett's views on Alternative Medicine. Bolen characterizes Quackwatch.com as dubious, and as "the "bible" for the quackbusters, the place where all the "quackbusters" send their unsuspecting victims for allegedly "good information".