Joseph Mercola runs an empire that hawks snake-oil, denigrates conventional medicine, & has given over $2.9 million dollars to anti-vaccine activism. And he epitomises precisely how vulnerable we are to falsehoods, & the consequences. A thread 1/n washingtonpost.com/investigations…
..for context, Joseph Mercola runs mercola dot com. A vocal proponent of alternative medicine, Mercola pushes medical disinformation at an alarming rate. Among his myriad claims
1. Cancer is a fungus
2. Vaccines cause illness
3. HIV isn't cause of AIDS
and such nonsense. 2/n
1. Cancer is a fungus
2. Vaccines cause illness
3. HIV isn't cause of AIDS
and such nonsense. 2/n
..and yet, Mercola controls a media empire. His website is one of the most popular in the world, he's had 2 NYT bestselling books (1st a dodgy diet one) & the other alleging bird flu was a medical industry hoax. He's a frequent guest on Dr Oz. He made $7 million in 2010 alone 3/n
But this is despite the fact his claims are frequently completely bogus. They're also high volume and damaging. I give a talk on cancer myths for patients & the public, and here's a slide I frequently use listing just a handful of the absolute tripe Mercola propounds 4/n 
This is so incredibly dangerous - false claims about illnesses like cancer do incredible harm, and frequently cause patients to delay and refuse conventional treatment, and this sometimes costs them their lives. I wrote recently for @guardian on this 5/n amp.theguardian.com/science/2019/j…
@guardian @eosull Mercola has not only gotten warning letters from the @US_FDA on the wares he peddles, he's also been fined $5.3 million for false claims about the sunbeds he sells. But that's small change when your site gets almost 2 million unique visitors monthly 6/n newyorker.com/news/news-desk…
@guardian @eosull @US_FDA I've written quite a bit about Mercola in my book, #TheIrrationalApe - I would have much preferred not to, but as he gets more visits than the bloody @NIH it wasn't something I could ignore alas. His absolute hypocrisy and disrespect for visitors is staggering 7/n
@guardian @eosull @US_FDA @NIH And of course, his anti-vaccine activism is especially toxic. I know I harp on about it, but anti-vaccine falsehoods drive vaccine hesitancy & drive rates down to crisis levels. I talked to the @nytopinion about this a week ago 8/n
@guardian @eosull @US_FDA @NIH @nytopinion So we can agree Mercola is full of it, and a disgrace I'd hope. But we have to ask ourselves, why then is his website so popular? Especially when it goes as far as to imply chemo and radiotherapy for cancer are a scam & allege medical conspiracy (also from #TheIrrationalApe ) 9/n
@guardian @eosull @US_FDA @NIH @nytopinion Well, part of the reason is as @gorskon says - he mixes "...the boring, sensible health advice with pseudoscientific advice in such a way that it’s hard for someone without a medical background to figure out which is which." He slips in the outlandish under veil of sensible 10/n
@guardian @eosull @US_FDA @NIH @nytopinion @gorskon ..the alarming thing is that evidence to date says we are EXTREMELY poor at differentiating between the reputable & reprehensible online. Heuristics like sleek presentation and social media following often lull us into wrongheaded conclusions, as I've written before 11/n
@guardian @eosull @US_FDA @NIH @nytopinion @gorskon We're also at a huge disadvantage combating health disinformation, because while the scientific-medical community deal in facts, there is no such obligation on those spreading falsehoods. As I wrote recently for @bmj_latest 12/n blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2019/11/06…
@guardian @eosull @US_FDA @NIH @nytopinion @gorskon @bmj_latest Mercola is a symptom of the paradox of our time; we live in an era where the world's repository of information is quite literally at our fingertips, & yet we have never been more vulnerable to charlatans, demagogues, and fools. We lack the vital skills to identify bullshit (13/n)
@guardian @eosull @US_FDA @NIH @nytopinion @gorskon @bmj_latest There is no quick fix for this alas. The only thing we can do is to improve our critical thinking & media literacy, & learn what we must be on guard against. If we cannot do this, we will suffer immensely for it, a huckster like Mercola is only just the tip of the iceberg. (14/n)
@guardian @eosull @US_FDA @NIH @nytopinion @gorskon @bmj_latest But to conclude, we can learn tools to defend ourselves in this era of rapid falsehood. We need to marshal our ability to think critically, and to know precisely what questions we need ask of the claims to which we're subjected non-stop online - ESPECIALLY about our health 15/n
@guardian @eosull @US_FDA @NIH @nytopinion @gorskon @bmj_latest Anyway, if you want to know more about these topics, or more about critical thinking & how we get things so wrong, I've written a book on exactly that. It's called #TheIrrationalApe, & features everything from murderous popes to UFO cults. Enjoy 16/16
amazon.co.uk/Irrational-Ape…
amazon.co.uk/Irrational-Ape…
