The site's founder, Michael Allen "Mike" Adams, gained attention after posting a blog entry implying a call for violence against proponents of GMO foods, and then allegedly creating another website with a list of names of alleged supporters. He has been accused of using "pseudoscience to sell his lies".[10] Adams has described vaccines as "medical child abuse".[11]
Michael Allen "Mike" Adams (born 1967 in Lawrence, Kansas)[29] is the founder and owner of Natural News; the domain name was registered in 2005 and began publishing articles in 2008.[6] According to Adams' own website, he became interested in alternative nutrition when he developed type II diabetes at the age of 30 and one of his websites asserts "he cured himself of diabetes in a matter of months and transformed himself into the picture of perfect health in mind, body and spirit" himself using natural remedies. However, The Daily Beast found that his recommendation for Amazon Herb Company products in at least eight articles, including a supposed "third-party review...from a truly independent perspective" turn out to be misleading; he has a financial interest in the company, according to non-profit business records in Arizona.[6][30] He is a raw foods enthusiast and holistic nutritionist. He claims to eat no processed foods, dairy, sugar, meat from mammals or food products containing additives such as monosodium glutamate (MSG). He also says he avoids use of prescription drugs and visits to Western medical doctors.[30]
Writing in the journal Vaccine, Anna Kata identified Natural News as one of numerous websites spreading "irresponsible health information".[38] According to John Banks, Adams uses "pseudoscience to sell his lies" and is "seen as generally a quack and a shill by science bloggers."[10] One such blogger, David Gorski of ScienceBlogs, called Natural News "one of the most wretched hives of scum and quackery on the Internet," and the most "blatant purveyor of the worst kind of quackery and paranoid anti-physician and anti-medicine conspiracy theories anywhere on the Internet",[39] and a one-stop-shop for "virtually every quackery known to humankind, all slathered with a heaping, helping of unrelenting hostility to science-based medicine and science in general."[8] Peter Bowditch of the website Ratbags commented about the site.[40]Steven Novella of NeuroLogica Blog called Natural News "a crank alt med site that promotes every sort of medical nonsense imaginable." Novella continued: "If it is unscientific, antiscientific, conspiracy-mongering, or downright silly, Mike Adams appears to be all for it—whatever sells the "natural" products he hawks on his site."[12]
Individuals who commented about Adams' website include astronomer and blogger Phil Plait,[41]PZ Myers,[42] and Mark Hoofnagle.[43] In 2011 and 2015 Brian Dunning listed Natural News as #1 on his "Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites" lists.[44] Adams is listed as a "promoter of questionable methods" by Quackwatch.[45]Robert T. Carroll at The Skeptic's Dictionary said, "Natural News is not a very good source for information. If you don't trust me on this, go to Respectful Insolence or any of the other bloggers on ScienceBlogs and do a search for Natural News... Hundreds of entries will be found and not one of them will have a good word to say about [Adams] as a source."[46]
According to The Atlantic, Natural News is one of the most prominent anti-vaccination websites on Facebook.[5] An article in the journal Vaccine said the site "tend(s) to not only spread irresponsible health information in general (e.g. discouraging chemotherapy or radiation for cancer treatment, antiretrovirals for HIV, and insulin for diabetes), but also have large sections with dubious information on vaccines."[38]
After Patrick Swayze died in 2009, Adams posted an article in which he remarked that Swayze, in dying, "joins many other celebrities who have been recently killed by pharmaceuticals or chemotherapy." Commentators of Adams' article on Swayze included bloggers such as David Gorski[47] and Phil Plait, the latter of whom called Adams' commentary "obnoxious and loathsome."[48] When Angelina Jolie underwent a double mastectomy in May 2013 because she had a mutation in the BRCA1 gene, Adams stated that, "Countless millions of women carry the BRCA1 gene and never express breast cancer because they lead healthy, anti-cancer lifestyles based on smart nutrition, exercise, sensible sunlight exposure and avoidance of cancer-causing chemicals." Gorski called the article "vile" and noted that Adams had written similarly themed articles about the death of Michael Jackson, Tony Snow, and Tim Russert.[49]
In February 2014, Brian Palmer, writing in the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Illinois, criticized the site's promotion of alternative medicine treatments, such as bathing in Himalayan salt and eating Hijiki seaweed, and referred to the claims Natural News made about their efficacy as "preposterous."[50] In August 2014, Nathanael Johnson, writing for Grist, dismissed Natural News as "simply not credible" and as "nothing but a conspiracy-theory site."[51]
On August 11, 2014, Natural News published a blog post promoting a homeopathic treatment for Ebola, which was met with harsh criticism from several commentators, and was taken down later that day.[52] In a statement on the article, Natural News said that the blogger who posted the article, Ken Oftedal, was "under review" and that they did not condone anyone interacting with Ebola.[53] However, as of August 20, 2014, the site was still featuring an article written by Adams promoting the use of herbal medicines to treat Ebola.[54]Natural News was among the pseudoscience platforms which promoted hoaxes about the 2014 Ebola epidemic, including claims that an infected woman was found in Atlanta and that Ebola was a bioweapon.[55]
On December 8, 2016, Michael V. LeVine, writing in Business Insider, criticized the site as part of a scientific fake news epidemic: "Snake-oil salesmen have pushed false cures since the dawn of medicine, and now websites like Natural News flood social media with dangerous anti-pharmaceutical, anti-vaccination and anti-GMO pseudoscience that puts millions at risk of contracting preventable illnesses."[18]
On February 22, 2017, Google delisted about 140,000 pages on Natural News, removing it from search results.[56] It was returned soon after.[57] The following year, on March 3, 2018, YouTube removed the Natural News channel for terms of service violations, effectively removing its library of videos from the site.[58] The channel was subsequently reinstated and the videos returned. In June 2019, Facebook removed Natural News from its website for violating its policies against spam. Adams wrote on InfoWars that his site was "permanently banned" from Facebook, and on The Gateway Pundit that the ban was part of a conspiracy against his website.[59]
In 2011, Adams posted a report on Natural News which stated that many blueberry food products did not contain real blueberries.[60][61]
In 2013, Adams posted an article describing what he saw when he examined Chicken McNuggets under a microscope. He said in the article that the patterns he saw included "dark black hair-like structures" and a round algae-like object.[62][63]
In July 2014, Adams compared media outlets that wrote positively about GMOs with Nazi Germany's propagandists, calling them, "Monsanto collaborators who have signed on to accelerate heinous crimes being committed against humanity under the false promise of 'feeding the world' with toxic GMOs." He continued with a statement that he set in boldface: "that it is the moral right—and even the obligation—of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity."[64][65] A day after the post a website called "Monsanto Collaborator" appeared online which listed the names of scientists and journalists who allegedly collaborate with the bio industry; Adams denied creating the website claiming that Monsanto set up the website in order to frame him.[66]
Joseph Michael Mercola is an American alternative medicine proponent, osteopathic physician, and Internet business personality. He markets largely unproven dietary supplements and medical devices. On his website, Mercola and colleagues advocate unproven and pseudoscientific alternative health notions including homeopathy and opposition to vaccination. These positions have received persistent criticism. Mercola is a member of several alternative medicine organizations as well as the political advocacy group Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which promotes scientifically discredited views about medicine and disease. He is the author of two books.
Pyriproxyfen is a pesticide which is found to be effective against a variety of insects. It was introduced to the US in 1996, to protect cotton crops against whitefly. It has also been found useful for protecting other crops. It is also used as a prevention for flea control on household pets, for killing indoor and outdoor ants and roaches. Methods of application include aerosols, bait, carpet powders, foggers, shampoos and pet collars.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), formerly Brixton Endeavors, is a British not-for-profit NGO company with offices in London and Washington, D.C. with the stated purpose of stopping the spread of online hate speech and disinformation. It campaigns to deplatform people that it believes promote hate or misinformation, and campaigns to restrict media organisations such as The Daily Wire from advertising. CCDH is a member of the Stop Hate For Profit coalition.
ScienceBlogs is an invitation-only blog network and virtual community that operated initially for almost 12 years, from 2006 to 2017. It was created by Seed Media Group to enhance public understanding of science. Each blog had its own theme, speciality and author(s) and was not subject to editorial control. Authors included active scientists working in industry, universities and medical schools as well as college professors, physicians, professional writers, graduate students, and post-docs. On 24 January 2015, 19 of the blogs had seen posting in the past month. 11 of these had been on ScienceBlogs since 2006. ScienceBlogs shut down at the end of October 2017. In late August 2018, the website's front page displayed a notice suggesting it was about to become active once again.
Bruce Harold Lipton is an American writer and lecturer whose work has been dismissed by some peers as pseudoscience. By his own admission, Lipton's ideas have not received attention from mainstream science. Lipton has not published original scientific research in a peer-reviewed medical journal in 30 years.
David Henry Gorski is an American surgical oncologist and professor of surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine. He specializes in breast cancer surgery at the Karmanos Cancer Institute. Gorski is an outspoken skeptic and critic of alternative medicine and the anti-vaccination movement. He writes as Orac at Respectful Insolence and as himself at Science-Based Medicine, where he is the managing editor.
Vani Deva Hari, who blogs as the Food Babe, is an American author, activist, and affiliate marketer who criticizes the food industry. She started the Food Babe blog in 2011, and it received over 54 million views in 2014.
Melanie's Marvelous Measles is a self-published children's book written by Australian author and anti-vaccine activist Stephanie Messenger. Through its story, the book claims, contrary to scientific data, that contracting measles is beneficial to health, and that vaccines are ineffective.
The Association française pour l'information scientifique or AFIS is an association regulated by the French law of 1901, founded under the leadership of Michel Rouzé in November 1968. As a skeptical organisation, it has been a member of the European Council of Skeptical Organisations since 2001, and publishes the magazine Science et pseudo-sciences.
Kevin M. Folta is a professor of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida. From 2007 to 2010 he helped lead the project to sequence the strawberry genome, and continues to research photomorphogenesis in plants and compounds responsible for flavor in strawberries. Folta has been active as a science communicator since 2002, especially relating to biotechnology. He has faced controversy over what his critics say are his industry connections. In 2017 he was elected as a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
GMO conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories related to the production and sale of genetically modified crops and genetically modified food. These conspiracy theories include claims that agribusinesses, especially Monsanto, have suppressed data showing that GMOs cause harm, deliberately cause food shortages to promote the use of GM food, or have co-opted government agencies such as the United States Food and Drug Administration or scientific societies such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
David "Avocado" Wolfe is an American author and conspiracy theorist. He promotes a variety of pseudoscientific ideas such as raw foodism, alternative medicine, and anti-vaccine sentiment. He has been described as "[o]ne of Facebook's most ubiquitous public figures" as well as an "internationally renowned conspiracy theorist" and a "huckster".
Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe is a 2016 American pseudoscience propaganda film alleging a cover-up by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of a purported link between the MMR vaccine and autism. According to Variety, the film "purports to investigate the claims of a senior scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who revealed that the CDC had allegedly manipulated and destroyed data on an important study about autism and the MMR vaccine"; critics derided Vaxxed as an anti-vaccine propaganda film.
Texans for Vaccine Choice (TFVC) is an anti-vaccine Facebook group turned political action committee in Texas which advocates for personal belief exemptions to vaccination requirements, based on "a collection of fake news, half- truths, and conspiracy theories". Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced former medical researcher and originator of the MMR autism hoax, and infectious disease specialist Peter Hotez, both describe TFVC's lobbying as very effective, with the rate of Texas students opting out of at least one vaccine at least doubling in around five years and over 50,000 Texas schoolchildren not being vaccinated.
The Stop Mandatory Vaccination website and associated Facebook group are some of the major hubs of the American anti-vaccination movement. It was established by anti-vaccination activist Larry Cook in 2015.
TruNews is an American far-right fake news website and channel owned and hosted by Rick Wiles. TruNews frequently publishes conspiracy theories in addition to racist, anti-LGBT, antisemitic, and Islamophobic content. It has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Christiane Northrup is a former obstetrics and gynaecology physician and author who promotes pseudoscientific alternative medicine and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. She has a history of opposing vaccination and has embraced QAnon ideology during the COVID-19 pandemic. Northrup reaches a significant audience through popular books and multiple social media platforms and spreads misinformation, notably about COVID-19.
Ty Bollinger is an American author and conspiracy theorist who disseminates misinformation about cancer treatments, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, unproven cures, alternative medicine treatments for cancer and vaccine-preventable diseases. Although Bollinger refers to himself as a medical researcher he has no medical training. Bollinger runs the website The Truth About Cancer and its associated social media accounts, where he sells books, videos, and nutritional supplements.
Disclose.tv is a disinformation outlet based in Germany that presents itself as a news aggregator. It is known for promoting conspiracy theories and fake news, including COVID-19 misinformation and anti-vaccine narratives.
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