What Doctors Don't Tell You - A call to action
The Pinnacle of Pseudoscience
What Doctors Don't Tell You (WDDTY) is a magazine that's published monthly and is available on the shelves of some supermarkets in the UK, USA and parts of Europe. With an estimated readership of 40,000, the 80-plus pages are glossy, well produced and, most importantly, filled with page after page of misrepresented scientific studies, alternative health modalities and outright nonsense.
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It's the pinnacle of pseudoscience presented as respectable mainstream science and health journalism. In reality it's conspiratorial, anti-vaccine and should be utterly distasteful to anyone with a high-school science education. In previous issues, this supposed health magazine, has suggested homeopathic options instead of vaccinations for foreign travel and cancer, continues to link autism and the MMR jab, the HPV vaccine with sudden deaths of teenage girls, and much more. All of these have either been debunked, are a complete misrepresentation, or cherry picking of genuine scientific research.
A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
But that's not the greatest risk with this publication. It's the appearance of respectability. With its relaunch back in 2012, it went from a home print, stapled in the top corner fanzine, to a fully fledged glossy, professionally printed and distributed magazine. Its production quality now far exceeds the quality of its contents.
This is at the heart of the problem. Now appearing respectable, it was picked up by the biggest grocery outlets in the UK. Tesco, Asda, Morrison's, Waitrose and more began to stock this along with New Scientist and The Sky at Night. Since then a sustained campaign in the UK, including two articles in The Times [1][2] and some TV coverage, has seen the magazine removed from the shelves of two of the biggest chains. We continue to do all that we can to explain to British retailers that this isn't about freedom of speech or customer choice, but about being a responsible business that sells trustworthy products.
Of course, as I mentioned in my opening paragraph, this isn't just a British problem anymore. WDDTY went global and specifically State side. You can pick up an American edited version at any number of US shops including big chains like Whole Food Market. I also understand that a lot of health food shops now stock it.
As rational humans we should endeavour to fight against the pseudoscientific in whatever way we can. Little successes sometimes mount up to big successes and can also help increase visibility to a cause or issue along the way.
To that end, dear reader, I have some simple but useful skeptical activism I would love for you to take part in.
This time last year WDDTY was a nominee in the Website of the Year awards. They claim to be the "largest annual online people’s choice award" and I don't really have any great interest if they are or not. What they are doing is lending legitimacy to credulous nonsense. Worst of all, despite the efforts of many, WDDTY won the Best Website award in the Health & Well being category. While as far as I can tell, not one other winner makes mention of their category win, WDDTY has it on the front of every issue. A nice golden wreath that pains me to see.
It's little awards like this that catch the eye of the unsuspecting. People assume legitimacy and integrity, when that isn't always the case. The casual observer would find it difficult to separate this fiction from scientific reality.
So, here's my request. Go to The Website of the Year site (you'll note that there's no "geo-gating" preventing non-UK citizens from entering) and vote for anything else. I'm not going to tell you who to vote for, but the NHS Choices website is actually up there with the best for good evidence based advice.
Important note: You'll see that the site you vote for is rated, rather than it being a straight up vote. I've checked the regulations and there is also be some value in "down-voting" (rating badly) the WDDTY nomination. Section 5.3 of the rules states, "The website with the best average score within its category will be the winner, if the website has received at least 10% of the total number of votes within its category."
Of course, you can only vote once per person, so I guess you'll have to ask someone else to do that for you...
Here's the link to the voting site.
It really is that simple to help sometimes! Please share this, post far and wide. Voting closes on 31st October, so there's only a few weeks to go. Let's really get behind this, both in the UK, USA and the rest of the world. Stand up for reason and common sense!
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If you are enthused with energy to act regarding this magazine, find somewhere nearby that sells it and write to the company. Tell them that dressing up this kind of pseudoscience as good advice is both dangerous and misleading.
You never know what successes, big or small, you might have!
Further reading: For hundreds of articles and blogs relating to this topic, Josephine Jones has been busy compiling a comprehensive 'Master List'. For any Americans/Canadians unfamiliar with this topic, I recommend Jann Bellamy's post on Science-Based Medicine.
Header: Lee Turnpenny (I do so love that duck!)
Body: WDDTY (used under "fair use" laws for critical evaluation or comment)
