Most of us use a certain amount of scepticism when looking at medical websites and when reading the views of 'alternative' practitioners. There are a number of 'quackwatch' sites which seek to expose some of the more brazen con artists but not all of the possible suspects have reached enough notoriety to be covered on their pages..
This site http://www.quackometer.net/?page=quackometer
contains a fun gadget (to be taken seriously?... well that's up to you!) It tries to assess whether a website or an individual might be a medical quack. The more canards, the greater the possibility of some sort of quackery.
I had some fun putting in several names that have recently appeared as 'gurus' on diabetes forums. Their scores (out of 10) ranged from 1 (almost respectable) to a certain Austrian doctor who received 7 canards and made it to number 3 on today's high score list. I thought this was probably going to be the highest result. Then, after scanning through some recent postings on a diabetes forum , I put in the name of the author of a book on coconut oil that had been recently mentioned by a poster. I'd never heard of him before but I hit the jackpot... this gentleman now has the honour of topping todays high score list with a whopping 9 canards.
For comparison I put in my own favourite writer /researcher on diabetes nutrition. , Dr G Slama . He has edited a series of conference reports sponsored by Danone, so this might have raised suspicion. This was noted, but still zero canards.
I also put in the whole grains council website and Oldways (advocate of the Med diet) ... both of which I used a lot recently and Diabetes.org.uk. Fortunately none of them had any canards.
Now, you have to use your own judgement and be skeptical of the skeptics but whose advice would you follow, someone with no canards or someone with nine?
Why not try the site for yourself?
This site http://www.quackometer.net/?page=quackometer
contains a fun gadget (to be taken seriously?... well that's up to you!) It tries to assess whether a website or an individual might be a medical quack. The more canards, the greater the possibility of some sort of quackery.
I had some fun putting in several names that have recently appeared as 'gurus' on diabetes forums. Their scores (out of 10) ranged from 1 (almost respectable) to a certain Austrian doctor who received 7 canards and made it to number 3 on today's high score list. I thought this was probably going to be the highest result. Then, after scanning through some recent postings on a diabetes forum , I put in the name of the author of a book on coconut oil that had been recently mentioned by a poster. I'd never heard of him before but I hit the jackpot... this gentleman now has the honour of topping todays high score list with a whopping 9 canards.
For comparison I put in my own favourite writer /researcher on diabetes nutrition. , Dr G Slama . He has edited a series of conference reports sponsored by Danone, so this might have raised suspicion. This was noted, but still zero canards.
I also put in the whole grains council website and Oldways (advocate of the Med diet) ... both of which I used a lot recently and Diabetes.org.uk. Fortunately none of them had any canards.
Now, you have to use your own judgement and be skeptical of the skeptics but whose advice would you follow, someone with no canards or someone with nine?
Why not try the site for yourself?
I sure wouldn't trust any Quack-O-Meter ... unless it ccould identify biased medical journal articles that were ghost-written by BigPharma PR departments.
ReplyDeletefair comment, no algorithm will be a substitute for careful reading and a healthy dose of skeptism.
ReplyDelete