Harald Walach, perhaps the most illustrious member of our ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE HALL OF FAME

Harald Walach is probably known to many of my readers (he is also a co-author of the paper that was the subject of yesterday’s post), not least because I posted numerous articles about him on this blog, e.g.:

• Prof Walach: what lies ahead for research into SCAM?
• Walach’s new meta-analysis of homeopathy revisited
• A new review of the ‘efficacy’ of homeopathic Arnica by Harald Walach & Co
• Prof Harald Walach and the intriguing ‘Vaccination Control Group’ project
• Prof Harald Walach is really unlucky
• Is Prof Harald Walach incompetent or dishonest?
• Prof Harald Walach’s new ground breaking study of praying the Rosary
• COVID-19 vaccinations: Prof Walach wants to “dampen the enthusiasm by sober facts”

The reason I dedicate yet another post to Walach is that recently I looked him up on Wikipedia where I learned things I did not previously know. As Walach is (since 2021) a member of our illustrious ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE HALL OF FAME, I find it appropriate to discuss him once more. The following is a slightly abbreviated version of his impressive Wikipedia page:

Walach was born in 1957. He received a degree in Psychology from the University of Freiburg in 1984, a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Basel in 1991, and a PhD in History of Science from the University of Vienna in 1995. In 1998 he received his habilitation in psychology from the University of Freiburg. He was affiliated for a time with the Samueli Institute before its closure in 2017.

He worked for a time at the University of Northampton, then as director of the Institute of Transcultural Health Studies at Europa Universität Viadrina, where he led a training course for doctors in complementary medicine and cultural sciences. In 2012, the state of Brandenburg’s commission for reviewing Universities concluded that Walach’s institute should not be continued within the university.

In 2017, he was a part-time associate professor at Poznań University of Medical Sciences, teaching mindfulness to the international medical students. In July 2021 the university cut its ties with Walach, in response to a paper that he published in Vaccines, stating that Walach’s work “misleadingly used data to yield conclusions that are wrong and may lead to public harm.”

In 2017, he started the CHS Institute to publish his own writing, including COVID-19 satire and denial. Starting in 2001, along with theoretical physicists Hartmann Römer and Harald Atmanspacher, Walach developed what they termed a model of “weak quantum theory” or “generalised entanglement” that purported to explain anomalous phenomena, such as non-specific therapy effects and parapsychological claims. This was not taken seriously by other physicists.

In 2012, Walach received the negative prize “Goldenes Brett” from Austrian skeptics, an annual award for the “most astonishing pseudo-scientific nuisance” of the year. The prize was awarded in part for a masters thesis about the Kozyrev mirror conducted under his supervision, which was widely regarded as unscientific.

Walach was on the scientific advisory board of a blog called “CAM-Media Watch”, which was sponsored by the alternative medicine company Heel, among others. The blog described itself as a “spin doctor” for promoting Complementary and Alternative Medicine (“CAM”). In 2012, it was reported that the blog had been paid to smear Edzard Ernst, a scientist critical of homeopathy.

As of 2024, Walach has had three publications retracted.

In June 2021, Walach published two high profile papers containing research pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic, one exaggerating the risks of vaccination, and the other concluding that children should not wear masks. Both papers were retracted the following month.

• The first paper, published in Vaccines, was retracted within a week because of “misrepresentation of the COVID-19 vaccination efforts and misrepresentation of the data,” “several errors that fundamentally affect the interpretation of the findings,” and “incorrect and distorted conclusions”. Five members of the editorial board of Vaccines resigned when the article was published, protesting it as “grossly irresponsible”.
• The second paper was published in JAMA Pediatrics, to immediate criticism. This study was funded by an organization (MWGFD) that was founded to fight governmental pandemic protocols, and is known in Germany for promoting COVID conspiracy theories and distributing anti-vaccine flyers. The journal retracted the paper 12 days later, after the authors did not provide sufficiently convincing evidence to resolve the scientific issues raised about the study.

In 2023, another paper about the efficacy of homeopathy was retracted “due to concerns regarding the analysis of the articles included in the meta-analysis”.

In a press statement, the Poznań University of Medical Sciences dissociated itself from Walach and asserted that his vaccine study “misleadingly used data to yield conclusions that are wrong and may lead to public harm.”

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I know, some people are not impressed by Wikipedia, yet I must say that I did learn a lot from this page. I thought I knew everything relevant about Walach, but I was mistaken.

In any case, I am proud to have – since already 3 years! –  such a prominent man in our

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE HALL OF FAME.

PS

I should perhaps mention that the ‘ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE HALL OF FAME’ is a gathering for pseudo-scientists who managed during their entire career  to publish only or almost only positive results of their favorite SCAM (feel free to search on my blog for other members of this exceptional club)