Stephen Barrett and Quackwatch – “Biased and Unworthy of Credibility”

Opinion by Dr. David Macallan

Stephen Barrett is a retired psychiatrist who never passed his specialty board, and who spends his time zealously propagandizing against any progressive approaches to health care, including nutritional supplementation.  Were it not for the power of the internet, he’d be completely unknown and irrelevant, except amongst a handful of equally Luddite cronies. But because his fervent, opinionated writings are many, and his clever geek team has learned how to manipulate search engines to get his retrograde rantings placed near the top of search pages, he’s now able to actively interfere with the work of thousands of top alternative health care professionals, supplement companies and the like - and in what I’m sure is a tragic number of cases, steer people away from health care approaches that may have helped them.

Of course, the only people who end up misled are those who take Barrett at his word and who don’t research further to uncover both Barrett’s agenda and his utter lack of credibility. As a former BBC newsman and stickler for the truth, I took the time to dig deeper when his overblown pronouncements first caught my attention.  Anyone else who takes the time to do the research will quickly find that Barrett simply doesn’t have the credentials or education to set himself up as the expert or “expert witness” he claims to be.  In fact, in a court case in California (which he lost – a common pattern for him) a panel of judges declared him “biased and unworthy of credibility.”  Imagine that . . .

I’ll write further on Barrett and his bitter band of blustering buffoons, but meanwhile here are a couple of links that will be helpful.  Both letters were written by our Director of Research and Development, Denise Autry, and while she was much more conciliatory than I would have been in the earlier submission (I don’t think Barrett’s site or intentions are in any way “laudable”), Denise’s carefully considered rebuttals are both excellent examples of why anyone who’s thoughtful and reasoning should view Barrett’s runaway rhetoric as precisely that: extreme opinions and selective propaganda presented in the guise of “fact” with a vindictive fervor normally reserved for radical religious or political views. No-one in their right mind should take Barrett at face value, or frankly, with any seriousness at all.

For Denise Autry’s 2001 letter to Barrett click  here.

For Denise Autry’s 2007 article on Barrett, click here.