The following email was submitted to the Salon.com letters department in response to a letter by Stephen Barrett, M.D., the founder and chief writer/researcher at Quackwatch.com, a major website that specializes in producing negative, but supposedly fair and accurate, articles on complementary and alternative medicine. Perhaps because my letter was necessarilly rather long and complex and arrived late in the debate, the editors of Salon chose not to publish it. I believe Quackwatch needs to be held as accountable as the "quacks" they seek to expose. Consequently, I'm publishing the letter here.Syd Baumel
Editor, The Aquarian
Watching the Quackwatcheran unpublished letter to Salon.comAfter characterizing Debra Ollivier's favourable article on homeopathy [Salon.com, March 16, 2000] as "a disgrace," Quackwatch.com's Stephen Barrett, M.D., concludes: "Accurate information is available at Quackwatch.com."
March 30, 2000In my experience, it is the wilful and hypocritical inattention to accuracy at Dr. Barrett's website that is a disgrace.
In his long article on homeopathy, Barrett's accounting of the clinical research is compromised by omissions that would be unthinkable for any impartial scholar or journalist. In recent years, two major meta-analyses of homeopathic clinical trials have dominated the English medical literature on the subject. Both - one in 1991 in the British Medical Journal, the other in 1997 in The Lancet - have independently documented a highly significant trend for homeopathic remedies to be superior to placebos or no worse than standard medical treatments in roughly 100 controlled clinical trials. Barrett ignores both of these studies. Instead, he cites comparatively obscure, negative (as Barrett presents them, even when they're really equivocal) critiques and reviews and just one fundamentally supportive review (commissioned by the European Union), but then again only to selectively present the negative, "glass half empty" side of its findings.
Quackwatch.com gives the appearance of priding itself on publishing negative feedback. In January, to test the waters I sent Barrett a brief "reader comment" on another article. Among other things I pointed out that he was wrong to write: "There is no published evidence that St. John's wort is effective against severe depression." I referred him to a 1997 controlled clinical trial that had found the herbal extract virtually equal to a standard dosage of the gold standard treatment for severe major depression, but with far fewer side effects. At the same time I emailed the author of a FAQ on the essential nutrient tryptophan that Quackwatch.com links to for their "accurate information" on this controversial supplement. [NOTE, 2003: This article no longer appears to be online.] I asked the author, a medical doctor and academic with multiple positions in the organized skepticism and anti-health-fraud community, for the source for his statement that ten cases of EMS (eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome) had occurred in Canadian users of tryptophan in 1973. As someone who has written extensively on tryptophan, pro and con, I know of only the one tragic outbreak of EMS in 1989 that was traced to a single supplier of tainted, genetically engineered tryptophan. The FAQ's author replied that he'd lost or misplaced his references but believed I was right in suspecting error. The year, he thought, should have been 1993. I sent him research abstracts and citations to suggest he was still wrong, and that there had never been any cases of EMS in Canada (or elsewhere) outside of the discrete 1989 epidemic (there have been a few other cases of EMS-type symptoms). To the contrary, 19 of 19 EMS cases reported circa 1993 in Canada had proven unrelated to tryptophan. I urged him to do his homework and correct his FAQ so as not to mislead his readers and Quackwatch's.
Recently, when I read Dr. Barrett's self-righteous letter to Salon.com, I rechecked his "accurate" website for my reader comment on St. John's wort. It still wasn't there, though Barrett had on March 1 revised his article to incorporate new evidence to further deter people from using the herb. For its part, the tryptophan FAQ was also unchanged. I e-mailed reminders both to Barrett and the FAQ's author. Barrett haughtily brushed off my concerns saying he had many more important things to do. The FAQ's author said he had vainly asked the webmaster to change 1973 to 1993 but would ask again. I replied on March 24 that this change would still, as far as any of us knew, be an error and that it would lead to a gross misrepresentation of the potential toxicity of tryptophan (which is still available by prescription and on the grey market and is still used safely and successfully in clinical trials). He has yet to reply. Perhaps he will eventually make the correction. But Barrett is steadfast in his denial. "Whether your particular points are valid or not would not change the conclusions about the current significance of SJW or tryptophan," he wrote to me on March 25, dismissing me as probably just another "nitpicking pest" and that "this will be my last response to you on these matters." Nor did he express any intention to publish my "insignificant points" so that Quackwatch.com readers could decide for themselves. I can't help but think of the yellow journalist's creed never to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Perhaps if I had attacked Barrett in a boorish, illiterate rant, he would have published that. Judging by the preponderance of such "jeers" on his website, this is the only critical feedback he welcomes.
The world needs a Quackwatch.com. It's a pity it has the one it's got.
Syd BaumelEditor, The Aquarian; author of Dealing with Depression Naturally.
All contents copyright © 2000 The Aquarian.
16 Victoria Row, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, R2M 1Y2
ph: (204) 255-4884 | fax: (204) 255-5057
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions.
www.aquarianonline.com | info@aquarianonline.com