Stephen Barrett: King Quackbuster

Unscientific health practices are often bunched under the rubric of “alternative medicine.” Consisting of things like colon cleansing and aromatherapy, they “suck in the botched,” as H. L. Mencken put it in his hilarious take-down of chiropractic. In recent decades the critics of quackery have dubbed themselves quackbusters, and the unchallenged king of the busters has been Stephen Barrett.

Stephen Barrett, ghostwriter

Barrett has long run the Quackwatch web site. A peculiar irony is that while he has styled himself an all-purpose health expert, he is a psychiatrist, now retired. Psychiatry is marked by a long history of unscientific diagnoses and treatments that have often been indistinguishable from torture. Unlike popular quackeries, psychiatric treatments have often been, and still often are, imposed by force. In a lecture titled “This Unscientific Age,” physicist Richard Feynman took aim at his own favorite quacks: "Who are the witch doctors? Psychoanalysts and psychiatrists, of course.” The great critic of psychiatry, Thomas Szasz, wrote that "Psychiatry is institutionalized scientism: it is the systematic imitation, impersonation, counterfeiting, and deception.” Psychologist Robert A. Baker, a skeptic of considerable repute, referred to it as the "pseudoscientific branch of modern medicine we call psychiatry."

Whatever one thinks of psychiatry, psychiatric training in no respect qualifies the trainee as an expert in nutrition, physiology, or biology. Psychiatrists are generally unqualified to practice actual medicine. Barrett has long styled himself a medical, nutritional, and scientific expert, but his own profession might justly be categorized as “alternative medicine."

Barrett’s association with Beth Whelan and ACSH goes back to at least the 1970s. He edited the 1975 edition of Panic in the Pantry, a book Whelan supposedly co-wrote with Frederick Stare. The book notes that a quack "displays credentials not recognized by responsible scientists or educators.” Readers are apparently not meant to ask what makes a psychiatrist an expert on any of the topics addressed in the book. (I wouldn’t be surprised if Barrett rewrote the original edition for its 1975 reissue.) He remains on ACSH’s Board of Scientific Advisors.

While at ACSH in 1988 I did the editing and layout of a “special report” written by Barrett and published by ACSH, called The Unhealthy Alliance: Crusaders for “Health Freedom.” a superficial survey of unscientific health practices, and a reference to people Barrett considered prominent quacks. Once published, it sank into a chasm of disinterest.

After I left ACSH and formed the Consumer Health Education Council (CHEC) in 1989, I sent Barrett a news clip about a small investigation CHEC had done in Houston regarding the promotion of dubious AIDS treatments. He responded quickly, asking if I would write up a brief piece about the study for Nutrition Forum, a bi-monthly newsletter published by J. P. Lippincott Company that Barrett edited. (Nobody at Lippincott apparently thought to question whether a psychiatric degree is a recognized nutrition credential.) I had no interest in writing for him, so he asked if he could write it and put my name on it, to which I agreed. He did so and it was published in the March-April Nutrition Forum. Barrett, then, became my first and only ghostwriter.

The thing that interested me most about that experience, and the reason I let Barrett publish his report under my name, is that he made no effort to authenticate any of the information I supplied to him. He simply took the word of someone he had never met whose assertions validated his own assumptions, and he then submitted his writing as someone else’s work to a prominent science publisher and his readers. It is even among exhibits submitted to a 1994 congressional subcommittee that conducted a hearing on dietary supplements.

And so I learned firsthand how quackbusting works.

A brief email exchange with ACSH board member James Enstrom

In August 2018 I emailed two current members of the American Council on Science and Health Board of Trustees, James E. Enstrom and Daniel T. Stein. Only Dr. Enstrom responded.

James E. Enstrom is described by ACSH as "Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.” More interestingly, and part of why I emailed him, he is president of what is called the Scientific Integrity Institute, though it isn’t clear that entity is anything more than Dr. Enstrom himself. Having allied himself with “scientific integrity,” I was interested to know what he thought of my experiences with ACSH’s ethical deficiencies and the insulting and dishonest public comments by current ACSH president Hank Campbell. Not much, judging by his responses.

My initial email:

The “this” I linked to was my original blog post which gives context to this entry.

Dr. Enstrom’s replies are surprisingly revealing and troubling given that he heads an entity whose philosophy includes the statement, "It is vital that the pursuit of truth in all areas of science continue, unimpeded by non-scientific considerations such as popularity and politics.” ACSH has been knee-deep in politics since its inception.

His response:

What did I write that he finds “incredibly harse (sic)”? He does not say. Is he bothered by any of the unethical behaviors that I detailed? He doesn’t say. He also does not say that I wrote anything false. Humorously, and condescendingly, he offers a “respectful and productive discussion” — if I send him a resumé. What does my career trajectory have to do with ACSH’s ethics? His response is not what one might hope for from the president of the Scientific Integrity Institute.

I declined his offer to talk in my second email:

His final reply is honest to a fault.

As a member of the board of a 501(c)3 non-profit organization under federal law, and under the laws of New York State, he states that ACSH’s boards have always been “basically advisory groups with little direct power.” The president  “has essentially all the power, as you know from your time as ACSH.” What he says is true about ACSH, but would it be so if the board complied with its legal responsibilities rather than acting as a powerless advisory group?

I’m not a lawyer, but I can read the Governance Principles for non-profits on the web site of New York City’s government. The obvious reading is that board members have the authority and obligation to ensure that a non-profit behaves ethically and responsibly. I’m confident that New York state law has a similar mandate. But Dr. Enstrom’s email reveals why the ACSH board has acted as a rubber stamp for Elizabeth Whelan and Hank Campbell.

Dr. Enstrom, and the rest of the ACSH board, might want to read the “Overview for directors of not-for profit corporations” authored by a partner and senior associate of the Hodgson-Russ law firm of Albany, New York. The guidance states that the "board can delegate responsibilities, e.g., to committees or employees, but it is ultimately responsible for the workings of the corporation.” It is not the duty of a non-profit board to give the president “essentially all the power,” as Dr. Enstrom admits has been the case at ACSH. 

Dr. Enstrom’s last paragraph about “perspective on ACSH” seems to suggest that unethical behavior at ACSH is excused by the “dirty tactics and dishonesty of activist groups.” ACSH is also an “activist group,” which might be why it acts like one. 

Addendum: 

I don’t include this to insinuate anything about Dr. Enstrom and his work as a scientist, but because it is interesting. I’m prone to thinking that he got a raw deal, and was “fired,” as Fox News said he characterized it, for not producing research that pleased political and medical authorities. It’s a disturbing lesson about the politicization of science.

In 2010 the UCLA School of Public Health declined to rehire Dr. Enstrom because, as they reportedly put it, his "research is not aligned with the academic mission" of the institution. 

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an ideologically diverse group that has become an important defender of academic freedom, brought suit on behalf of Dr. Enstrom, and it was reportedly settled on terms favorable to him, if not entirely to his liking.