Stephen Barrett

File:Stephen Barrett MD Quackwatch.jpg

Stephen Barrett, M.D.

Stephen J. Barrett, M.D. (born 1933), is a retired American psychiatrist and author best known for his consumer advocacy related work regarding health issues. He is a founder of the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) and webmaster of twenty-two websites which describe what he considers to be "quackery and health fraud," most notably on Quackwatch, a non-profit consumer information website partially funded through donations and book sales. He bases his writings in consumer protection, medical ethics, and scientific skepticism. Barrett's critics have accused him of bias, lack of objectivity, and of lacking the proper credentials to make certain charges. He has been involved in litigation and has filed several libel lawsuits with mixed outcomes.

Biography

Barrett is a 1957 graduate of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and was a licensed physician until retiring from active practice in 1993. He resides in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He has said that his appreciation of medical science probably began with a college course in medical statistics, from which he "learned what makes the difference between scientific thought and poor reasoning". He went on to say "My anti-quackery activities have intensified my interest and concern in distinguishing science from pseudoscience, quackery and fraud."

In addition to webmastering his websites, Barrett is a founder, vice-president and a board member of the National Council Against Health Fraud. He is an advisor to the American Council on Science and Health, and a Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). From 1987 through 1989, he taught health education at The Pennsylvania State University.

Barrett is the medical editor of Prometheus Books and is a peer-review panelist for several top medical journals. He has written more than 2,000 articles and delivered more than 300 talks at colleges, universities, medical schools, and professional meetings. His media appearances include Dateline, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Primetime, Donahue, CNN, National Public Radio, and more than 200 other radio and television talk show interviews.

Barrett's work has received numerous awards, including the Best physician-authored site by MD NetGuide, May 2003. He has been named as one of the outstanding skeptics of the 20th century by Skeptical Inquirer. In 1984, he received an FDA Commissioner's Special Citation Award for Public Service in fighting nutrition quackery. In 1986, he was awarded honorary membership in the American Dietetic Association. Barrett has been profiled in Biography Magazine and in Time Magazine.

Online activism

The Quackwatch website is Barrett's main platform for describing that which he considers to be quackery and health fraud. The website is part of Quackwatch, Inc., a nonprofit corporation that aims to "combat health-related frauds, myths, fads, fallacies, and misconduct." Barrett's writing is supplemented with contributions from 150+ scientific, technical, and lay volunteers. Barrett defines quackery as "anything involving overpromotion in the field of health," and reserves the word fraud "only for situations in which deliberate deception is involved."

Barrett has written about numerous modalities that he (based on his analysis of the claims made for them) either considers to be quackery, or to include it in one way or another, for example: Acupuncture; Algae-based therapies; Alternative medicine; Amalgam removal within dentistry; Applied kinesiology; Ayurvedic medicine; Candidiasis (yeast allergies); Chelation therapy; Chinese herbal medicine; Chiropractic; Colloidal silver and minerals; Craniosacral therapy; Detoxification therapies; DHEA; Dietary supplements; Ear candling; Ergogenic aids; Faith healing; Genetic diagnoses; Glucosamine; Growth hormones; Hair analysis; Herbal medicine; Homeopathy; Hyperbaric oxygen therapy; Iridology; Juicing; Magnet therapy; Metabolic therapy; Nutritional therapy for emotional problems; Organic food; Osteopathy; Pneumatic trabeculoplasty; Reflexology; and Therapeutic touch.

Barrett, on his main website, also maintains public lists of sources, individuals, and groups which he considers questionable and non-recommendable, including two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling (for his claims about mega-doses of Vitamin C ) and integrative medicine proponent Andrew Weil, MD. .

Controversies & Litigation

Accusations of bias and lack of objectivity

Barrett has ongoing disputes with a number of individuals, largely as a result of his widely-publicised views on non-traditional health practices.

• As part of his activities Barrett wrote a short email to Sahelian inquiring about his relationship with Physician Formulas. Ray Sahelian, B.Sc.(nutrition) M.D., is Board certified in Family Medicine, the author of health related books, an expert in nutrition and a proponent of supplements. According to Sahelian, the "rude" e-mail prompted him to comment:

"Dr. Barrett does some good in pointing out scams in the alternative health field, but, in my opinion, he is not fair and balanced, and he is not a true objective scientist as he claims to be. Someone who has a website specifically tailored for criticism needs to have higher and more objective scientific standard, and Barrett fails in this regard." He asks: "Why has Stephen Barrett, M.D. focused most of his attention on the nutritional industry and has hardly spent time pointing out the billions of dollars wasted each year by consumers on certain prescription and non-prescription pharmaceutical drugs?"

Barrett admits to not giving equal time to some subjects, and has written on his web site:

"... quackery and fraud don't involve legitimate controversy and are not balanced subjects. I don't believe it is helpful to publish "balanced" articles about unbalanced subjects. Do you think that the press should enable rapists and murderers to argue that they provide valuable services?" .

Sahelian admits that he is not "perfectly fair" either:

"Am I, Ray Sahelian, M.D., perfectly fair in my review of supplement research? No, I am not, and I don't believe anyone can be. It is well known in psychology that people perceive things according to how they want to see them." (See: Confirmation bias). Sahelian says: "We did not feel the need to respond to Stephen Barrett, M.D. It is quite presumptuous of him to probe in this manner, plus I felt it was a rude way of asking. There was no polite introduction such as "Dr. Sahelian, I hope you are well, would you mind if I ask you a personal question" or ending the request with something like "thanks for your time," or 'sincerely' etc. Ending the email with "or what?" is extremely impolite and shows lack of manners and sensitivity. Didn't Stephen Barrett's mother, father, or schoolteacher teach him the proper way to address a letter? If he had addressed the letter politely, I would have asked my staff to respond to him."

• Some assertions of Sahelian find support in an article by Joel M. Kauffman, Ph.D.(MIT), professor emeritus of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. Kauffman analyzed eight Quackwatch articles, including five written by Stephen Barrett, and found them to be:contaminated with incomplete data, obsolete data, technical errors, unsupported opinions, and/or innuendo and gives numerous examples with extensive, peer reviewed references, stating that: "it is very probable that many...have been misled by the trappings of scientific objectivity," "With 80 papers on chemical and medical topics, and 11 patents, including 2 on antituberculosis drugs, Dr. Kauffman has turned his attention to exposing fraud in medicine"and is also author of Malignant Medical Myths: Why Medical Treatment Causes 200,000 Deaths in the USA each Year and How to Protect Yourself. Kauffman's review was published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, a peer-reviewed publication which provides "a professional forum for presentations, criticism, and debate concerning topics which are for various reasons ignored or studied inadequately within mainstream science."

• An article in the Village Voice written by journalist Donna Ladd also raised the issue of Barrett's objectivity. Ladd wrote: He does not criticize conventional medicine because he says "that's way outside my scope" but he depends heavily on negative research and case studies in which alternative therapies do not work to criticize alternative medicine. According to Barrett, most case studies that show positive results of alternative therapies are unreliable and he believes most alternative therapies simply should be disregarded without further research. She then quotes Peter Barry Chowka, a former adviser to the National Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine as saying of Barrett that "He seems to be putting down trying to be objective."

• As president of the American Chiropractic Association, James A. Mertz, DC, DACBR wrote in a letter to Time in 2001: "The American public is being grossly misled by Dr. Stephen Barrett. While he positions himself as a protector of the public, his statements are, in reality, so one-sided that he simply cannot be taken seriously."

• Lorraine Day M.D, a proponent of natural and alternative therapies, states that "a large percentage of people realize that Stephen Barrett is just a shill for Organized Medicine and the Pharmaceutical Companies". "Stephen Barrett, along with his cronies in Organized Medicine and the Pharmaceutical Industry, would like you to believe that you have no control over your health – no control over whether or not you develop disease. He wants you to be totally helpless. He wants you to have to rely on the drug doctors who will give you dangerous pills that will only cover up the symptoms and never cure the disease."

• There are ongoing disputes and lawsuits involving "health freedom" attorney Carlos Negrete, who accuses Barrett of acting "like a shill for the medical and pharmaceutical cartels".

• Tim Bolen, who also acts on behalf of some of those criticised by Quackwatch, accuses Barrett of bias, and being part of a conspiracy to suppress "innovative forms of treatment". . Bolen is "hired by clients to deal with their public relations component of when they may be attacked by medical board or similar entity".

• A number of practitioners criticized by Barrett held degrees from the now-defunct Columbia Pacific University. One such alumnus, Paul Hartal, writes: Barrett's "Quackwatch" misleads the public. His method of data selection is guided by the principle of not letting the facts interfere with his biased judgement of wholistic therapies. He has no training in natural medicine, herbalism, chiropractic, ayurveda, yoga, acupuncture, homeopathy, or other alternative health care modalities, but nevertheless he dismisses all non allopathic practices as frauds.

• Ayurveda proponent Deepak Chopra, M.D. has called Barrett "a self-appointed vigilante for the suppression of curiosity" after Barrett called Chopra a purveyor of "Ayurvedic mumbo jumbo."

• Alternative medicine proponent Burton Goldberg wrote: "It is genuinely hard to imagine how a suffering patient could actually be persuaded by Barrett to dismiss alternative approaches when the conventional ones were not useful, or even worse, were harmful." Goldberg continues, "In the paradox of 'quackbusting,' the quackbusters say they're protecting public health, but in fact, they're abandoning the public to their own suffering to protect the financial interests of conventional medicine, which has no interest in or ability to produce benefits for these conditions. The 'quackbusters' say they're serving the public, but the truth is they're grossly disserving patients. Barrett describes himself as an author, editor, consumer advocate and expert in medical communications.

Litigation

In a biographical article about Barrett, Fred D. Baldwin wrote:

"Despite Barrett's pattern of naming names of people as well as products, he has never been sued for libel, except for a counter-suit to a libel suit he once filed (the counter-suit was dismissed ). His explanation? 'I protect myself by not saying anything that isn't true.'"

Barrett has filed several libel suits against various individuals who have reposted Tim Bolen's "opinion pieces." Barrett considers certain claims made in them to be libelous, and has explained why he has therefore filed the libel suits:

"None of us are thin-skinned or care when people attack our ideas. But unjustified attacks on our character or professional competence are another matter. As Bolen's campaign unfolded, my colleagues and I have notified him and many of the people spreading his messages that libel is a serious matter and that they had better stop. Some did, but it soon became clear that others would not. To defend ourselves, several of us have filed suit for libel."

Barrett and the NCAHF have had mixed results in these cases. Courts dismissed two of the suits under Strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) statutes and ordered Barrett and the NCAHF to pay attorneys' fees of the parties they sued. The results of such lawsuits are explained below.

Libel suits filed by Barrett

Barrett v. Mercola suit

• In October 2000, Barrett filed a libel suit in Pennsylvania against Joseph Mercola, a Board Certified osteopathic physician in Illinois. In June 2001, Barrett withdrew the suit on jurisdictional grounds and refiled it in Illinois on July 30, 2001. On April 17, 2003 the suit was dismissed by mutual agreement.

Barrett v. Clark suits

• In November 2000, Barrett and two associates sued Hulda Regehr Clark, Tim Bolen, Jan Bolen, David P. Amrein, Ilena Rosenthal, and their related companies. On July 25, 2001, the judge ruled against all three plaintiffs regarding Ilena Rosenthal, only, Director of the Humantics Foundation. Nothing she had written was considered to be defamatory, nor could the plaintiffs provide any evidence of damage. They awarded attorney's fees to her for all three plaintiffs. On Appeal, the courts again backed Ms. Rosenthal, except for one comment she re-posted regarding Terry Polevoy and his "stalking" a Canadian Talk Show Host. The Supreme Court ruled in Rosenthal's favor, November 20, 2006 and reiterated: "As the lower courts correctly concluded, however, none of the hostile comments against Dr. Barrett alleged in the complaint are defamatory." [2] The case against the other several defendants can now continue after this ruling.
• In 2003, his case against Carlos F. Negrete and Hulda Regehr Clark was dismissed under SLAPP.

• In 2005, an appeals court reversed the district court's decision, and the case against Carlos F. Negrete and Hulda Regehr Clark was remanded for further procedings. "The scurrilous nature of the defendants' allegations of wrongdoing and their efforts to publicize them widely on the Internet, when coupled with their utter failure to offer any proof of their charges" provided sufficient reason for the case to proceed.

Barrett v. Rosenthal suit

• In July 2001, an Alameda County (California) judge dismissed Barrett's libel suit against Ilena Rosenthal and awarded Rosenthal attorney's fees against Barrett, Christopher Grell, and Terry Polevoy. The judge states: Rosenthal's statements that appellants are "quacks," that appellant Barrett is "arrogant" and a "bully," and that Barrett tried to "extort" her "are not actionable," the court stated, "because they do not contain provably false assertions of fact, but rather are expressions of subjective judgment." Insofar as it relates to Barrett, appellants do not seriously refute this determination, which we find to have been correct. And The court's conclusion that appellant Barrett could not prevail on his defamation claim was correct, as the statements respondent Rosenthal published that relate to him are not demonstrably false statements of fact. The Court of Appeals decided that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act did not grant Rosenthal immunity from liability because Barrett provided notice that content on her website alleged defamed him, but the California Supreme Court overturned that decision, ruling that Section 230 did grant immunity. See also Barrett et al. v. Rosenthal The Supreme Court decision also reiterated the lower court's ruling regarding Barrett, "As the lower courts correctly concluded, however, none of the hostile comments against Dr. Barrett alleged in the complaint are defamatory."

Barrett v. Fonorow suit

• In July 2001, Barrett filed a libel suit against Owen R. Fonorow, and Intelisoft Multimedia, Inc. That case was dismissed, and Fonorow filed a motion for sanctions, which was also dismissed. Both lower court decisions were affirmed on appeal.

Barrett v. Sherrell suit

• In November 2002, a federal court judge in Eugene, Oregon ruled that Barrett is a "public figure and the defamatory statements involve a matter of public concern, and that plaintiff has failed to meet his burden to prove actual malice, and/or actual injury". The judge dismissed Barrett's $100,000 defamation lawsuit against anti-fluoridation advocate Darlene Sherrell.

Barrett v. Koren suit

• In October 2005, Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas overturned an earlier arbitration ruling that chiropractor Tedd Koren had committed libel after Koren published that Barrett was "de-licensed," "in trouble because of a $10 million lawsuit" and a "Quackpot." The judge found that Barrett had failed to prove "actual malice" ("knowledge of falsity" or "reckless disregard for the truth").

A different type of suit

One of the stated missions of Quackwatch Inc. is "assisting or generating consumer-protection lawsuits."

King Bio suit

• In a 2001 suit NCAHF brought against King Bio Pharmaceuticals, a homeopathic pharmaceutical company, Judge Haley J. Fromholz noted that "both witnesses’ fees...are paid from a fund established by Plaintiff NCAHF," thus giving them a "direct, personal financial interest in the outcome.... Based on this fact alone, the Court may infer that Dr. Barrett and Sampson are more likely to receive fees for testifying on behalf of NCAHF in future cases if the Plaintiff prevails in the instant action and thereby wins funds to enrich the litigation fund described by Dr. Barrett." The judge declared Barrett and Sampson to be "zealous advocates" rather than "neutral or dispassionate witnesses or experts." He then concluded that "their testimony should be accorded little, if any, credibility". King Bio won the case, and also the 2003 appeal case.

Barrett disputes the account regarding payments and has provided supplemental information about what he claims happened behind the scenes.

Credentials

Although he has provided expert testimony as a psychiatrist, a discipline in which he practiced for thirty years, Barrett was never board certified in psychiatry. He qualified as a physician in 1957 and completed his psychiatry residency in 1961, but failed the neurology portion of the optional board certification exam in 1964. According to Barrett, only about 1/3 of psychiatrists were board certified at the time so he chose not to resit, because "when I began practice (early 1960s), nobody cared," and "I was grandfathered on the staffs of the hospital clinics where I worked and was not dependent on HMOs for private patients." In the 1970s the number of board-certified medical specialists rose steeply and when Barrett retired in 1993, about 81% of eligible physicians (74% of total physicians) were board certified by the ABMS. Barrett says that "nowadays, lack of certification would make it difficult to repeat what I did."

According to Negrete, Barrett claimed to be a "legal expert" even though he had not completed his formal legal training. In one court case the Judge said "Dr. Barrett's purported legal and regulatory knowledge is not apparent. He is not a lawyer." According to his CV he completed 1½ years of the correspondence program in American Law and Procedure, at the now defunct LaSalle University Extension Division, Chicago, from 1966 to 1968.

Regarding his qualifications on alternative medicine modalities, to the question "What qualifies you to write on so many topics?" Barrett answers:

"My medical education has provided the background to understand most aspects of health, disease, and health care. Many experts are available to review what I write and answer questions that come up. The most convenient is my wife, who happens to be a very scholarly family physician. Much of my writing is based on my own investigations of the health marketplace."

However Judge Haley J. Fromholz wrote in a court decision:

"(Barrett) has no formal training in homeopathic medicine or drugs, although he claims to have read and written extensively on homeopathy and other forms of alternative medicine."

Ray Salhelian M.D. adds:

"According to the Quackwatch website, Stephen Barrett, M.D. says this about quackery: "Dictionaries define quack as 'a pretender to medical skill; a charlatan' and 'one who talks pretentiously without sound knowledge of the subject discussed.'" "Stephen Barrett, M.D. does not have a degree in nutrition science. He has been trained in Psychiatry but has not practiced psychiatry for many, many years and has, to the best of my understanding, never practiced nutritional medicine. In my opinion, Stephen Barrett, M.D., when it comes to the field of nutritional supplements, can be easily defined as a Quack since he pretends to 'have skills or knowledge in supplements and talks pretentiously' without actually having clinical expertise or sound knowledge of herbal and nutritional medicine."

Julian M. Whitaker, M.D., in a 1997 letter to Lyn Behrens, Ph.D. President, Loma Linda University also raised the issue of Barrett's credentials in nutrition : " Under cross examination, Dr. Barrett admitted that he was not in fact, an expert in nutrition science, describing himself instead as an expert in 'consumer strategy' and a "journalist.'"

Selected publications

In 1985, Barrett was the author of an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that exposed commercial laboratories performing multimineral hair analysis. He concluded that "commercial use of hair analysis in this manner is unscientific, economically wasteful, and probably illegal." His report has been cited in later articles, including one which concluded that such testing was "unreliable."

His 50 books include:

• Consumer Health: A Guide to Intelligent Decisions - Barrett SJ, Jarvis WT, Kroger M, London WM (2006). (textbook, 8th ed.) McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-248521-3

• Dubious Cancer Treatment - Barrett SJ (2001). Florida Division of the American Cancer Society

• The Health Robbers: A Close Look at Quackery in America - Barrett SJ, Jarvis WT, eds. (1993). Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-855-4

• Health Schemes, Scams, and Frauds - Barrett SJ (1991). Consumer Reports Books, ISBN 0-89043-330-5

• Reader's Guide to Alternative Health Methods - Hafner AW, Zwicky JF, eds. (1993). American Medical Association, ISBN 0-89970-525-1

• The Vitamin Pushers: How the "Health Food" Industry Is Selling America a Bill of Goods - Barrett SJ, Herbert V (1991). Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-909-7

• Vitamins and Minerals: Help or Harm? - Marshall CW (1983). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins ISBN 0-397-53060-9 (edited by Barrett, won the American Medical Writers Association award for best book of 1983 for the general public, republished by Consumer Reports Books).

See also

• Alternative medicine
• Consumer protection
• Evidence-based medicine
• Medical ethics
• National Council Against Health Fraud
• Pseudoscience
• Quackwatch
• Scientific skepticism

External links

Barrett official website

• Quackwatch - Guide to quackery and health fraud

Critics that are or have been involved in litigation with Barrett

• Health Freedom Law - Carlos Negrete
• Quackwatchwatch - Ilena Rosenthal
• Quackpot Watch - Tim Bolen

Other links

• Quackwatch by David Mendosa - David Mendosa
• If It Quacks Like a Duck… - Fred. D. Baldwin, MedHunters.com
• 'Quack Buster' busted - The Chiropractic Journal
• Quackwatchers - Chiro.org
• "Watching the Quackwatcher" - Syd Baumel
• "Quackwatch and the Quackery of Conventional Medicine" - John "Birdman" Bryant