pseudo-science
These days, it is not often that I function as a co-author of a scientific paper. One rare exception has just been published:
This survey investigated prevalence, usage, and perceived scientific legitimacy of anthroposophic medicine (AM), a prominent form of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM). It further explored associations with socioeconomic and psychological factors, with particular attention to authoritarian orientation, as measured by the KSA-3 scale and low ambiguity tolerance.
A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among the Austrian population assessing sociodemographic characteristics, healthcare utilization, attitudes toward conventional medicine, AM, and SCAM, as well as selected psychological variableA total of 429 individuals completed the survey. To enhance representativeness, the sample was post-stratified according to recent election results. Regression models and appropriate statistical tests, selected based on data distribution and scale level, were used to evaluate associations between sociodemographic factors, psychological characteristics, and the use of and attitudes toward AM and SCAM.
Individuals over 50 showed higher SCAM preference (p = 0.044), and were more likely to have used AM at least once (p = 0.083). Similarly, women showed higher SCAM preferences (p = 0.004) and a higher likelihood of AM use (p < 0.001). Participants who viewed AM as scientific tended to be older (p < 0.001), have a higher income (p < 0.001), and resided more often in rural areas (p = 0.012). Psychologically, lower ambiguity tolerance and stronger perceived health control correlated with a stronger belief in AM’s scientific legitimacy (p < 0.05). Higher authoritarian orientation was also significantly associated with an increased belief in AM as scientific and a preference for eminence-based approaches (p < 0.001).
We concluded that, in our sample, we demonstrate how differences in specific socioeconomic and psychological factors correspond to differences in attitudes toward SCAM and AM. These findings represent a promising foundation for more interdisciplinary research aimed at uncovering the underlying drivers of AM and SCAM utilization.
Several of the reported findings confirm previous research in this area. What might be new is that, our evaluation demonstrates that individuals with heightened authoritarian tendencies are more inclined to invest in SCAM treatments. In fact, our results show a statistically significant association between authoritarian orientation and the conviction that AM is scientifically valid. An observation that becomes even more fascinating when contrasting it with the finding that there is no statistically significant correlation between authoritarian orientation and whether a participant has tried AM before – only a slight tendency. This dissociation between the robust link to epistemic judgment and the absent link to behavior merits closer attention. It suggests that authoritarian dispositions operate primarily at the level of knowledge evaluation rather than treatment choice: individuals with higher authoritarian orientation are not more likely to have used AM, but they are significantly more likely to regard it as scientifically valid. This pattern is consistent with theoretical accounts of authoritarianism as a disposition toward deference to perceived legitimate authority. Within this framework, “scientific validity” may function less as an empirical assessment and more as a marker of epistemic trust: a judgment shaped by the perceived authority of the source rather than by engagement with the underlying evidence. The finding thus opens a productive line of inquiry into how the category of “scientific validity” itself operates as a site of authority attribution, and how psychological dispositions mediate the reception of epistemic claims in healthcare contexts.
The US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to make the annual flu vaccine optional for US military service members in April 2026 was not an exercise in “medical autonomy,” as he called it at the time. It was a recklessly ideological act that has now already cost a life. By lifting a long-standing, evidence-based mandate Hegseth dismissed as “absurd” and “overreaching,” he prioritized ill-advised principles over the health, welfare, and readiness of US service members.
The consequences arrived swiftly and were confirmed in mid-June 2026. At Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, at least 159–160 recruits fell ill with flu within weeks, with two hospitalizations. One sixth-week trainee, Keon McDaniel, died on June 16 at Brooke Army Medical Center after a medical emergency on June 12. While the official cause of death remains under investigation, sources report McDaniel had not received the flu vaccine. Vaccination rates among Air Force trainees plummeted to roughly 40% after the mandate was lifted, compared to near 100% coverage while immunization was mandatory.
The outbreak was so severe that the Air Force received an emergency exception from the Pentagon and reinstated mandatory flu shots for all recruits at Lackland – an admission that Hegseth’s policy was dangerously wrong. The exception was granted by the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, which can authorize mandatory vaccination when risk assessments warrant it.
Hegseth styled himself “Secretary of War” while declaring mandatory vaccination “not rational.” Yet the mathematics of infectious disease are clear: in communal settings like military bases, where close contact is unavoidable, voluntary vaccination leads almost inevitably to outbreaks. Yet Hegseth ignored decades of public health evidence that flu vaccines reduce morbidity, prevent complications, and maintain operational readiness. His decision was irresponsible and little more than political posturing aligned with anti-vaccination rhetoric that currently undermines public health across the US under Trump’s administration.
The death of a young trainee is a human cost Hegseth cannot dismiss. Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro is now calling for a full DoD accounting of the outbreak and an investigation into McDaniel’s death. Whenever military leaders make policy decisions, they must prioritize readiness and safety over ideology. Hegseth failed that duty in the most appalling fashion. His flu shot reversal was by no way a victory for autonomy; it was a failure of leadership that endangered service members and will likely cost more lives if not urgently corrected across the entire armed forces.
As of June 20, 2026, the mandatory flu vaccine has not been reinstated across all armed forces – only at Lackland. The broader policy remains voluntary, leaving the rest of the military exposed to Hegseth’s stupidity and similar outbreaks.
In the realm of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM), “chemical” has long been a dirty word. This phenomenon, known as chemophobia – an irrational fear of synthetic substances – drives a multi-billion-dollar industry obsessed with the “all-natural.” While it stems from an understandable desire for safety (and for making money out of the fear of the public), the chemophobia of SCAM relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of basic chemistry and toxicology, building a false dichotomy between wholesome nature and malicious chemistry.
To truly dismantle this anxiety, one needs to look no further than a perfect example from nature: the humble apple. If an organic, all-natural apple were required to carry an ingredient label written by a chemist, it would look far more intimidating than any processed food label. A single bite of an apple delivers a complex cocktail of chemical compounds. Beyond its bulk structure of water, dietary pectin, and sugars like fructose and sucrose, an apple is a dense matrix of amino acids—including glutamic acid, aspartic acid, and tyrosine—and fatty acids like linoleic and palmitic acid. It is enriched with vitamins and minerals, from ascorbic acid and alpha-tocopherol to potassium and magnesium. Even its delightful aromas and flavors are synthesized by nature using a mixture of volatile organic compounds: esters like butyl acetate, alcohols like hexan-1-ol, aldehydes like trans-2-hexenal, and a sharp dose of malic acid. More surprisingly perhaps, this wholesome fruit features nature’s own “toxins.” Apples naturally contain trace amounts of formaldehyde, and their seeds contain amygdalin, a cyanogenic glycoside that degrades into deadly hydrogen cyanide when digested.
The chemical reality of this simple apple highlights the core fallacy of chemophobia: the belief that natural compounds are inherently safe, while synthetic ones are unavoidably toxic. In reality, nature is a master chemist, and the foundational rule of toxicology dictates that it is mostly the dose that makes the poison. Anything can be toxic in excess—even water—and many synthetic molecules are identical to, or safer than, their natural counterparts. Aspirin, for instance, has less side-effects that an extract of willow bark!
The chemophobia of SCAM proponents strips away all nuance and treats the mere presence of a complicated chemical name as an absolute hazard. By fostering a deep-seated distrust of science, it steers ill-informed individuals away from life-saving conventional treatments towards unproven quackery. True health literacy requires moving past misleading branding and recognising that everything in our universe, from a crisp apple to a synthetic antibiotic, is made of chemicals.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, is demanding that the journal Toxicology Reports explain in detail why it removed a 2021 paper he has cited in support of his anti-vaccine stance. The study had concluded that “While the findings in this paper are not proof of an association between infant vaccines and infant deaths, they are highly suggestive of a causal relationship.”
In his letter to the editors, Kennedy accuses the journal of suppressing research linking vaccines to sudden infant death. However, the evidence reveals quite clearly that Kennedy is not seeking transparency but rather attempting to bully a peer-reviewed journal that correctly identified fatal methodological flaws in a paper Kennedy continues to promote.
The removed study claimed to link vaccines to infant deaths using data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The journal removed the paper because VAERS is a passive reporting system that cannot establish causality. Any conclusion claiming vaccines cause deaths from such data is therefore not valid. The editors determined the methodology was seriously flawed and that the author’s responses to critiques were unsatisfactory. Consequently, the paper would mislead readers and harm the public. In this situation, it would have been unethical NOT to retract!
Kennedy’s demand for a “full explanation” ignores that the journal had already provided a clear, evidence-based removal notice. He wants to know who reviewed the paper and what standards were applied, yet these are standard peer-review procedures. Framing a legitimate scientific correction as censorship reveals Kennedy’s disregard for science and evidence-based medicine. As HHS secretary, he is responsible for protecting public health, yet he continues to cite fraudulent research that contradicts established scientific consensus on vaccine safety.
The story is reminiscent of the ongoing conflict over the landmark Danish vaccine study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. It tracked over 1.2 million children born in Denmark between 1997 and 2018. Exploiting a natural experiment created by evolving national immunization schedules, researchers analyzed the dose-response relationship of aluminum adjuvants. The study found no evidence linking increased cumulative exposure to an elevated risk of 50 chronic pediatric conditions, including neurodevelopmental, autoimmune, and allergic disorders.
Despite its massive scale and rigorous design, Kennedy labeled the research a “deceitful propaganda stunt” and demanded its retraction. However, Kennedy’s criticisms rely on data misrepresentation and a fundamental misunderstanding of epidemiological methodology. First, Kennedy cherry-picked non-significant supplementary data, falsely claiming a 67% increased risk of Asperger’s syndrome. In reality, the finding had a wide confidence interval, lacked statistical significance, and completely vanished when researchers analyzed the full follow-up data. Second, Kennedy objected to the lack of a completely unvaccinated control group. Experts counter that the unvaccinated cohort (1.2%) was too small to measure rare outcomes accurately and would introduce severe confounding bias due to differing family lifestyles. Finally, Kennedy levelled inaccurate claims of financial corruption against Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut, a public research body that had long since divested its vaccine manufacturing arm.
The medical community has firmly rejected Kennedy’s attacks. The journal refused his retraction demand, and independent experts have defended the study as the strongest available evidence of vaccine aluminum safety. After all, aluminum salts have been used safely for a century, and vaccine-derived amounts are eclipsed by daily environmental and dietary intake.
The inescapable conclusion is that Kennedy’s campaigns are not about accountability or about promoting scientific rigor; they are about promoting his dangerous type of misinformation. His continued advocacy of pseudoscience exposes his commitment to ideology over evidence, a truly dangerous stance for anyone leading the nation’s health agency. It is high time, I feel, that he gets sacked before he does any more lasting damage to public health in the US and beyond!
So-called alternative medicine (SCAM) likes to present itself as a champion of disease prevention. Its advocates routinely claim to promote health before disease develops, to strengthen the body’s defences, and to address root causes rather than symptoms. This rhetoric is highly attractive, because prevention sounds proactive, humane, and economical. Crucially, it is also good for the SCAM practitioner’s bank account. Yet there is a snag: almost none of the preventive claims made for SCAM are supported by reliable evidence, whereas the prevention that works comes overwhelmingly from conventional medicine and science.
To show preventive benefit, an intervention must demonstrably reduce the incidence of symptom, disease, complication, or mortality in properly designed studies. That may require randomised trials, epidemiological studies, large cohorts, reproducible findings, and enough follow-up to show that fewer people actually experienced the given endpoint. Mainstream medicine has repeatedly met this standard. Immunization, blood pressure control, smoking cessation, lipid lowering, cancer screening, and risk-factor modification are all products of biomedical research, not of alternative healing traditions.
SCAM, by contrast, tends to use prevention in a loose, impressionistic, and unfalsifiable way. A practitioner may claim that a treatment “balances energy,” “supports immunity,” or “keeps the body in harmony,” but such phrases do not establish a preventive effect. They are placeholders for evidence, not evidence itself. In practice, the absence of disease after treatment is treated as proof that the treatment worked, even though the same outcome occurs every day without any intervention at all.
Acupuncture is a good example. Its defenders portray it as a preventive system capable of preserving general health or warding off illness, but the evidence base does not support that claim. Some reviews do suggest that acupuncture may help with some pain-related and symptom-focused conditions, yet its preventive value is largely unproven. I am not aware of solid evidence to show that acupuncture prevents anything – but, if I am wrong, please do correct me.
Chiropractic care is even more revealing because preventive claims are often tied to the doctrine of spinal “subluxation” and nervous system dysfunction. Yet the literature on prevention is thin and methodologically weak. I am not aware of solid evidence to show that chiropractic prevents anything – but, if I am wrong, please do correct me.
Herbalism benefits from the romantic appeal of “natural” remedies, but that appeal should not be confused with demonstrated preventive efficacy. Individual plant compounds have certainly inspired real drugs, yet that is a triumph of pharmacology, not of herbalism as a system. When herbal medicines are tested for prevention, results are usually weak, inconsistent, or insufficient to support recommendation. I am not aware of solid evidence to show that herbal medicine prevents anything – but, if I am wrong, please do correct me.
Homeopathy is one of the most extreme cases within SCAM. It is often sold as gentle, individualized, and even preventive, but its basic principles are scientifically implausible, and its clinical evidence is either flawed or negative. Preventive homeopathy, including ideas such as “homeoprophylaxis,” is particularly problematic because it can give people a false sense of security while displacing interventions that genuinely prevent disease, such as vaccination. I am not aware of solid evidence to show that homeopathy prevents anything – but, if I am wrong, please do correct me.
SCAM speaks almost constantly about prevention, but the evidence for actual preventive benefit is close to non-existent. What we know about prevention, what truly reduces disease incidence and improves population health, comes from conventional medicine, epidemiology, public health, and biological science. SCAM will no doubt continue to borrow the language of medicine and prevention, but – as far as I can see – it has failed to supply the proof.
Needle-based acupuncture is used in some detoxification settings. However, its efficacy for illicit drug use disorders remains uncertain because prior reviews often mixed comparator types, co-interventions, or non-needle modalities. This review aimed to evaluate needle-based acupuncture monotherapy using comparator-stratified meta-analysis.
The authors searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, CNKI, CBM/SinoMed, trial registries, and supplementary sources from inception to September 12, 2025. The quantitative synthesis was restricted to randomized trials of manual acupuncture, electroacupuncture, or needle-insertion auricular acupuncture delivered without concomitant pharmacotherapy or psychotherapy. Although the registered protocol allowed non-randomized comparative studies, none were pooled because of insufficient comparability and a higher risk of confounding. Sensitivity analyses excluded trials with moxibustion co-treatment.
Thirteen randomized trials (n = 1,027) were included in the meta-analysis. For the prespecified primary outcome of withdrawal severity at the end of treatment, acupuncture favored blank/no-acupuncture controls [g = −2.089, 95% confidence interval (CI): −2.869 to −1.309; τ² = 0.712; I² = 82.9%], but the prediction interval (PI) crossed the null (PI: −4.306 to 0.128). Against active non-acupuncture comparators, the pooled effect was imprecise (g = −1.70, 95% CI: −5.43 to 2.02; PI: −23.49 to 20.09). Against sham acupuncture, two comparisons yielded an imprecise estimate (g = −1.45, 95% CI −9.41 to 6.51), and no PI was estimated. Among secondary outcomes, anxiety favored acupuncture over blank/no-acupuncture controls (g = −1.537, 95% CI: −2.047 to −1.026; PI: −2.939 to −0.134), whereas evidence from sham-controlled studies was less certain (g = −0.998, 95% CI: −1.744 to −0.252; PI: −2.828 to 0.832). For depression outcomes, PIs crossed the null in both blank- and sham-controlled analyses. The certainty of the evidence was low to very low.
The authors concluded that acupuncture exhibited favorable average effects on withdrawal severity, but null-crossing PIs limited confidence in the reproducibility of these effects across different settings and treatment protocols. Anxiety was interpreted as a secondary finding. No serious acupuncture-related adverse events were explicitly reported, although surveillance was often passive or insufficiently described.
The review treats acupuncture as “effective” for illicit drug disorders by highlighting short-term improvements in craving or anxiety, while the outcomes that matter for addiction – abstinence, relapse, use frequency, and retention – show no reliable benefit.
This, I think, is a classic case of presenting a negative result as a positive finding!
The review explicitly found no consistent difference between acupuncture and comparators for substance use endpoints, and the apparent positive outcomes were limited by low-quality evidence and publication bias. By foregrounding surrogate outcomes and obscuring the lack of clinically decisive effects, the paper misleads readers into perceiving acupuncture as a viable monotherapy for drug use disorders. Yet the evidence does clearly not support that conclusion.
The US resurgence of measles in 2026 serves as a stark, data-driven refutation of the anti-vaccine rhetoric championed by quacks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For years, vaccine antagonists have framed immunisations as a matter of personal autonomy, minimizing the societal dangers of declining rates. Yet, public health is not governed by ideology, but by biology. The realities of 2026 – marked by over 2,000 confirmed measles cases across 40 US jurisdictions – demonstrate that when charlatans undermine trust in medical science, the real-world consequence is the return of preventable, highly contagious and dangerous diseases.
The core flaw in RFK Jr.’s rhetoric, it seems to me, is the failure to understand that vaccine protection is a collective barrier, not just an individual shield. Measles is one of the most infectious viruses known to humanity, requiring a high community vaccination threshold of 95% to maintain herd immunity. When coverage drops below this line, the virus easily finds pathways to spread. Because of sustained anti-vaccine sentiment, US kindergarten MMR coverage dropped from 95.2% in 2019–2020 to a dangerous 92.5% by the 2024–2025 school year. This decline left roughly 286,000 children unprotected, effectively dismantling the wall that kept measles at bay for decades.
Furthermore, public health crises thrive on localized vulnerability. While national averages can mask the severity of the issue, anti-vaccine messaging often clusters within specific communities, creating relatively dense pockets of under-vaccinated populations. When measles enters these communities, it does not remain isolated; it triggers rapid, localized outbreaks where almost all of cases are tied directly to these transmission clusters.
Beyond its well-known immediate dangers, a measles infection inflicts severe, long-term damage on the human body by causing a phenomenon known as immune amnesia. The measles virus actively targets and destroys memory T and B cells, the specialized white blood cells responsible for remembering past pathogens. A single measles infection can wipe out 11% to 73% of a person’s preexisting antibodies, effectively erasing the body’s immunological memory. While the patient develops immunity to measles itself, their defense system is left “flying blind” against other entirely unrelated viruses and bacteria they had previously beaten or been vaccinated against. This induced state of generalized immunosuppression typically lasts from two to five years, leaving recovered individuals dramatically more vulnerable to secondary, life-threatening infections long after the initial measles rash has cleared.
Ultimately, the current measles spikein the US illustrates that US public health control is being sabotaged. When prominent morons like RFK Jr. weaponize anti-vax delusions and distort clinical data, they do not simply foster debate, they actively erode the herd immunity threshold. The current US outbreak proves that the protection wall has thinned below the critical margin of safety. Far from being under control, measles has found a resurgence precisely because the rhetoric of figures like RFK Jr. has opened the door for a dangerous, preventable virus to reclaim its ground in and beyond the US.
So-called alternative medicine (SCAM) remains widely used worldwide, yet longstanding concerns persist regarding the balance and reliability of the evidence presented in SCAM journals. This investigation examined long-term trends in publication practices within leading SCAM journals, with particular attention to changes in publication types and the prevalence of positive versus negative study outcomes as indirect indicators of potential publication bias.
The authors conducted a complete census of articles published in four leading SCAM journals at two contemporary time points (2018 and 2023), replicating the design and classification framework of a seminal 2001 analysis covering 1995 and 2000. Articles were categorised by publication type, subject area, and author-reported study outcome (positive, negative, or inconclusive, corresponding to the “open” category used in the original 2001 study). Descriptive analyses were used to compare trends over time and with earlier findings.
The total number of published articles increased substantially between the earlier and contemporary periods. The proportion of empirical studies, particularly clinical trials, rose over time. However, the prevalence of positive outcomes also increased markedly, with positive findings accounting for over 80% of published articles in the contemporary period, compared with 49% in the earlier study. Negative and inconclusive outcomes remained relatively infrequent.
The authors concluded that despite growth in publication volume and a shift toward empirical study designs, SCAM journals continue to exhibit a pronounced predominance of positive outcome reporting. These findings suggest that longstanding concerns regarding publication bias in SCAM publishing have not diminished over time and appear to have intensified, with selective publication and related reporting and dissemination practices plausibly contributing to the observed patterns. This has important implications for research integrity and evidence-based decision-making in medical practice.
It is great to see that our past research [the 2001 study mentioned above is one of my team] is being continued. It is less great, of course, to learn that the SCAM-bias continues and might even be on the increase. The reasons why there are so few negative results in SCAM journals might be complex. Two possible clues are:
- The quality of SCAM research tends to be low, and poor quality research tends to generate positive findings, particularly if it is conducted by pseudo-researchers who abuse science for confirming their beliefs rather than for testing hypotheses (see also the ALTERNATIVE HALL OF FAME on this blog).
- If nonetheless a high quality study emerges in SCAM – which, of course, does happen every now and then – it tends to produce a negative result and is likely to get published in a good quality journal rather than in one of the dodgy SCAM journals.
As I have often noted, the end-effect is bad for all concerned: SCAM and SCAM journals are slowly becoming the laughing stock of science. Consequently, nobody takes them seriously. If one day an effective therapy should emerge, we all might faile to notice. In a nutshell: publication bias harms us all!
Dr. Toby Rogers, a political economist and fellow at the libertarian Brownstone Institute, ignited a firestorm in March 2026 when he declared the current childhood vaccination program “one of the greatest crimes in human history” (“libertarian” refers to someone who advocates for extreme individual liberty—particularly freedom from government mandates and regulations—believing that the state should be minimized and that individuals should have absolute autonomy over their own bodies, property, and choices without state coercion).
Rogers’ 2026 statement is not an isolated outburst but the culmination of years of vaccine skepticism. After his partner’s son was diagnosed with autism in 2015, Rogers abandoned his original doctoral focus to study autism’s causes, reviewing nearly 1,000 studies over four years. He concluded that vaccines are the primary driver of the autism epidemic. The overwhelming scientific consensus, however, is that vaccines are safe and that autism’s rise stems from improved diagnosis, broader criteria, and complex genetic and environmental factors unrelated to immunization (see the plethora of previous posts on this subject). His PhD thesis, The Political Economy of Autism, and subsequent publications have been widely criticized by the scientific community. Its methodological flaws include:
- selection bias,
- cherry-picking,
- inclusion of weak studies,
- dismissing robust epidemiological research.
Rogers’ 2026 statement elevates personal conviction and contested research over scientific rigor and public health reality. Rogers argues that children receive too many vaccines too early, warning of “cumulative effects” on developing immune systems. Yet the Institute of Medicine has found no evidence of major safety concerns with the current childhood immunization schedule, and the National Academy of Sciences has repeatedly affirmed that vaccines are safe and effective. Rogers dismisses the 22 major studies confirming vaccine safety as “worthless” because they lacked a true unvaccinated control group—a standard that is both ethically impossible and scientifically unnecessary given the massive population data demonstrating vaccine safety over decades.
Rogers’ evidence relies heavily on a handful of independent studies to support his claims. These studies have been criticized for small sample sizes, selection bias, failure to control for confounders, and methodological flaws so severe that some of Rogers’ co-authored papers, such as “Autism Tsunami,” were retracted from peer-reviewed journals. His claim that vaccinated children have dramatically higher rates of autism and chronic disease rests on research that has not withstood independent replication or scrutiny by mainstream scientists. By contrast, the scientific community’s confidence in vaccine safety derives from massive, longitudinal studies involving millions of children, rigorous clinical trials, and decades of population surveillance.
Rogers’ credibility is compromised not least because he is a regular contributor to Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that has a long history of spreading debunked claims. Roger’s testimony before the US Senate Subcommittee on Investigations in September 2025, titled “How the Corruption of Science has Impacted Public Perception and Policies Regarding Vaccines,” tried to position him as a whistleblower exposing “flawed science.” In reality, it relied on the same flawed studies and conspiracy narratives that have been repeatedly discredited by the scientific community.
Rogers receives funding from several anti-vaccine and libertarian organizations, though specific salary figures are not publicly disclosed :
- Brownstone Institute is a libertarian think tank founded by economist Jeffrey Tucker that promotes vaccine skepticism, “medical freedom,” and opposition to public health mandates. The institute is funded by libertarian donors and provides fellowships to researchers who align with its ideology.
- Children’s Health Defense is explicitly an anti-vaccine organization led by Mary Holland (CEO) and founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The organization has illuminated funding sources through IRS 990 filings, showing it raised millions of dollars and pays researchers, speakers, and staff. In Rogers’ Senate testimony, he explicitly stated: “Since then I’ve continued my research with Children’s Health Defense, as an independent journalist, and as a Fellow at Brownstone Institute”.
- Rogers also appears at MAHA Institute conferences (Make America Healthy Again), which is aligned with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s movement and features speakers from anti-vaccine organizations including Children’s Health Defense.
Rogers’s financial ties to anti-vaccine organizations create clear conflicts of interest. His research supports the organizational mission of Children’s Health Defense and Brownstone Institute, and his income appears tied to producing content that aligns with these organizations’ anti-vaccine advocacy. The political economy of Rogers’ work is thus ironic: while he critiques the “political economy of autism” and government response, his own research is funded by private organizations with clear ideological and financial incentives to promote vaccine skepticism.
Rogers is not a medical doctor. He has a doctorate in political economy from the University of Sydney and a Master’s in public policy. He holds no medical degree or formal training in medicine, immunology, epidemiology, or vaccine science. His expertise is in political economy, not medical or vaccine research, which means his claims about vaccine safety and autism lack the scientific credentials required to make authoritative medical assertions.
During outbreaks of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), public health organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) combat “infodemics”, i.e. surges of false information and unproven so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) polluting social media (Bedrosian et al., 2016; Fung et al., 2016; Obol & Nzedibe, 2024). Because these SCAMs are ineffective and frequently dangerous, authorities issue warnings against their use. Here are just a few of the many claims that can be found:
- Bathing in or drinking hot, highly saturated saltwater solutions can sweat out or kill the Ebola virus (Fung et al., 2016). Public health agencies strongly advise against this practice. It does nothing to prevent or treat EVD and can cause severe illness and death from acute hypernatremia (Vijaykumar et al., 2019).
- Solutions containing silver nanoparticles act as powerful natural antimicrobials capable of neutralizing the Ebola virus inside the body (Fung et al., 2016). The WHO has explicitly stated that Nano Silver is an unproven compound with no demonstrated efficacy against Ebola. Authorities recommend avoiding these products, as silver accumulation can cause irreversible organ damage and a condition called argyria (which permanently turns the skin blue/gray).
- Consuming large quantities of specific botanical items, such as raw onions, ginger, or alligator peppers, can stave off infection (Nsoesie & Oladeji, 2020). These “natural cures” possess no therapeutic effects capable of stopping viral replication of the filovirus family. Relying on them creates a false sense of security, which delays life-saving, evidence-based triage and supportive care (Fridman et al., 2025; Nsoesie & Oladeji, 2020).
- Ebola has been attributed to spiritual curses or witchcraft that can only be reversed by traditional spiritual cleansing (Bedrosian et al., 2016). Public health organizations work alongside local communities to pivot away from these practices. Delaying medical intervention to seek traditional spiritual healing drastically increases community transmission and prevents patients from receiving SOTA antiviral therapies and fluid replacement, lowering survival rates (Obol & Nzedibe, 2024).
- A homeopath market “e-remedies” online, claiming that the “energy signature” of a remedy could be digitized into an audio file (Moffitt, 2018). He claimed that listening to a specific, hissing MP3 file could stimulate the body’s immune system to fight off Ebola. This prompted an investigation by the Medical Board of California into the doctor’s license for promoting unscientific and unproven online remedies (Moffitt, 2018).
- Some chiropractors claim that spinal manipulations can prevent Ebola infections, because misalignments interfere with the nervous system. Since the nervous system coordinates the immune responses, these misalignments weaken the body’s ability to recognize and destroy the Ebola virus (Terry Chiropractic Boulder). People “have nothing to fear but fear itself” regarding outbreaks if they keep their spines properly aligned to maximize their natural innate immunity. Global public health authorities and mainstream scientific institutions strongly reject these claims. There is zero credible scientific evidence demonstrating that manual spinal manipulation enhances immune competence or protects an individual against Ebola (Côté et al., 2020).
Ebola infection requires immediate, professional medical treatment. Treatments include monoclonal antibody therapeutics along with intensive supportive care. Relying on internet remedies significantly delays proper clinical treatment and increases the risk of mortality.
References
Bedrosian, S. R., Young, E. C., Smith, L. A., Cox, J. D., Manning, C., Pechta, L., Telfer, J. L., Gaines-McCollom, M., Harben, Kathy, Holmes, Wendy, Lubell, K. M., McQuiston, J. H., Nordlund, Kristen, O’Connor, John, Reynolds, B. S., Schindelar, J. A., Shelley, Gene, & Daniel, K. L. (2016). Lessons of Risk Communication and Health Promotion — West Africa and United States. MMWR Supplements, 65(3), 68–74. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.su6503a10
Fridman, I., Boyles, D., Chheda, R., Baldwin-SoRelle, C., Smith, A. B., & Elston Lafata, J. (2025). Identifying Misinformation About Unproven Cancer Treatments on Social Media Using User-Friendly Linguistic Characteristics: Content Analysis. JMIR Infodemiology, 5, e62703. https://doi.org/10.2196/62703
Fung, I. C.-H., Fu, K.-W., Chan, C.-H., Chan, B. S. B., Cheung, C.-N., Abraham, T., & Tse, Z. T. H. (2016). Social Media’s Initial Reaction to Information and Misinformation on Ebola, August 2014: Facts and Rumors. Public Health Reports®, 131(3), 461-473. https://doi.org/10.1177/003335491613100312
Moffitt, M. (2018). State doubts Los Gatos doctor can cure ebola with hissing MP3 files. SFGATE. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/dr-bill-gray-medical-license-homeopathy-treatment-12954925.php
Nsoesie, E. O., & Oladeji, O. (2020). Identifying patterns to prevent the spread of misinformation during epidemics. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-014
Obol, S. J., & Nzedibe, O. (2024). Critical perspective on infodemic and infodemic management in previous Ebola outbreaks in Uganda. Frontiers in Public Health, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1375776
Terry Chiropractic Boulder. (2014). Hold On Ebola: How Bolstering Your Immune System Can Help You Avoid Disease. https://terrychiropracticboulder.com/blog/hold-on-ebola-how-bolstering-your-immune-system-can-help-you-avoid-disease/
Vijaykumar, S., Jin, Y., & Pagliari, C. (2019). Outbreak communication challenges when misinformation spreads on social media. Revista Eletrônica de Comunicação, Informação e Inovação em Saúde, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.29397/reciis.v13i1.1623
