Natural News

Last updated

Natural News
Natural News logo.jpg
Type of site
 Fake news website
Available inEnglish
Country of origin United States
OwnerMike Adams
Created byMike Adams
URL naturalnews.com
Commercial Nutraceuticals
Launched2008;17 years ago (2008)

Natural News (formerly NewsTarget, which is now a separate sister site) is a far-right website [1] that promotes anti-vaccination content, [2] conspiracy theories, [3] fake news, and pseudoscience. [4] The website began publishing articles in 2008 and is based in the United States. [4] [5] As of 2014, Natural News had approximately 7 million unique visitors per month. [6]

Contents

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. [6] He has been widely criticized and accused of using "pseudoscience to sell his lies". [7] Adams has described vaccines as "medical child abuse". [8]

The website sells various dietary supplements, promotes alternative medicine and climate change denial, [9] makes tendentious nutrition and health claims, [10] disseminates fake news, [18] and espouses various conspiracy theories and pro-Donald Trump propaganda. [19] [20] [21]

Natural News content has been restricted on various platforms including Google, Youtube, and Facebook.

The website launched an AI chatbot called "Enoch" in 2025. [22]

Founder

Michael Allen "Mike" Adams (born 1967 in Lawrence, Kansas) [23] is the founder and owner of Natural News; the domain name was registered in 2005 and began publishing articles in 2008. [5]

According to Adams' own website, he became interested in alternative nutrition when he developed type II diabetes at the age of 30 and then "cured himself of diabetes in a matter of months and transformed himself into the picture of perfect health in mind, body and spirit". He recommends products for his readers to do the same. [5]

He calls himself a holistic nutritionist, is enthusiastic about raw food, and claims that he excludes processed food, dairy, sugar, meat from mammals, and additives such as MSG from his diet. [24] He also says he avoids use of prescription drugs and visits to Western medical doctors. [25]

The Daily Beast found as least eight articles where Adams recommended products from Amazon Herb Company with some specifying to buy them from a distributor named Terry Pezzi. One such article is a lengthy review by Adams which he characterizes as "independent", despite Arizona non-profit business records showing that he had entered into business with Terrry Pezzi prior to writing it. [5]

Conspiracy theories and controversial positions

Adams has endorsed conspiracy theories surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, [26] and those involving Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. [27] He has endorsed Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, a movie about Stanislaw Burzynski, who treats cancer patients with unproven treatments that have received FDA warnings. [28] [24] Adams has also endorsed the books of conspiracy theorist Jim Marrs. [29] Adams has made music videos expressing similar viewpoints as the articles posted on his website, such as opposition to the swine flu vaccine. [30] He has described vaccines as "medical child abuse". [8]

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 [31] and Phil Plait, the latter of whom called Adams' commentary "obnoxious and loathsome." [32]

In 2012, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred, Adams called for "medication control" instead of gun control. [33] In March 2018, Adams created Hoggwatch.com, a website Snopes said was "apparently created solely for the purpose of attacking Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg." [34]

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. [35]

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." [36] [37] 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. [38]

Platform removals and restrictions

On February 22, 2017, Google delisted about 140,000 pages on Natural News, removing it from search results. [39] It was returned soon after. [40] 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. [41] The channel was subsequently reinstated and the videos returned.

In February 2019, The Atlantic reported that Natural News was one of the most prominent anti-vaccination websites on Facebook. [2] In June 2019, Facebook removed the Natural News page from its website for violating its policies against spam. [42] [43] 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. [44]

In May 2020, Facebook expanded the ban to include all Natural News content from its platform after discovering that the site was boosting its popularity using content farms in North Macedonia and the Philippines, a form of spamming. [45] Natural News bypassed the ban by republishing its content on a large number of topic-specific domain names, including trump.news, extinction.news, mind.control.news, and veggie.news. [45] [43] The Institute for Strategic Dialogue found 496 domain names associated with Natural News as of June 2020. [4]

Criticism

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." [46]

According to John Banks, Adams uses "pseudoscience to sell his lies" and is "seen as generally a quack and a shill by science bloggers." [7] Adams is also listed as a "promoter of questionable methods" by Quackwatch. [47]

Steven Novella of NeuroLogica Blog characterizes Adams as "a dangerous conspiracy-mongering crank" [48] and 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." [10]

David Gorski of ScienceBlogs, has called Natural News "one of the most wretched hives of scum and quackery on the Internet", [49] a "blatant purveyor of the worst kind of quackery and paranoid anti-physician and anti-medicine conspiracy theories anywhere on the Internet", [50] 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." [6]

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." [51]

Peter Bowditch of the website Ratbags has criticized the site, referring to it as a "cesspit" [52] and in 2011 and 2015, Brian Dunning listed Natural News as #1 on his "Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites" lists. [53] Other individuals who have commented about Adams' website include astronomer and blogger Phil Plait, [54] PZ Myers, [55] and Mark Hoofnagle. [56]

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." [57] In August 2014, Nathanael Johnson, writing for Grist, dismissed Natural News as "simply not credible" and as "nothing but a conspiracy-theory site." [58]

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." [16]

Notable claims and content

Natural News has made chemophobic claims about the purported dangers of "chemtrails", [2] fluoridated drinking water, [48] heavy metals, anti-perspirants, laundry detergent, monosodium glutamate (MSG), aspartame, and vaccines. [2] [10] [59] The site has also spread conspiracy theories about the Zika virus being caused by genetically modified mosquitoes [60] and the purported adverse effects of genetically modified crops, foods, and farming practices. [61]

In 2011, Adams posted a report on Natural News which stated that many blueberry food products did not contain real blueberries. [62] [63]

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. [64] [65]

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. [66] 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. [67] 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. [68] 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. [69]

In 2019, Natural News falsely claimed that wind turbines contribute more to climate change than fossil fuels. [70]

A 2020 study by researchers from Northeastern, Harvard, Northwestern and Rutgers universities found that Natural News was among the top 5 most shared fake news domains in tweets related to COVID-19, the others being The Gateway Pundit, InfoWars, WorldNetDaily and Judicial Watch. [11]

Natural News launched an AI chatbot called "Enoch" in 2025 that, according the Mike Adams, utilizes "a billion pages of content on alternative media." [22]

References

  1. ↑ Zeng, Jing; Schäfer, Mike S. (October 21, 2021). "Conceptualizing "Dark Platforms". Covid-19-Related Conspiracy Theories on 8kun and Gab". Digital Journalism. 9 (9): 1321–1343. doi:10.1080/21670811.2021.1938165. ISSN   2167-0811.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Madrigal, Alexis C. (February 27, 2019). "The Small, Small World of Facebook's Anti-vaxxers". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 11, 2025.
  3. ↑ Lutzke, Lauren; Drummond, Caitlin; Slovic, Paul; Árvai, Joseph. "Priming critical thinking: Simple interventions limit the influence of fake new about climate change on Facebook".
  4. 1 2 3 "Anatomy of a Disinformation Empire: Investigating NaturalNews". Institute for Strategic Dialogue . June 2020. Archived from the original on March 7, 2021. Retrieved February 5, 2021.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Weill, Kelly (June 9, 2019). "The New Infowars Is a Vitamin Site Predicting the Apocalypse". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on July 24, 2019. Retrieved August 29, 2019.
  6. 1 2 3 Blake, Mariah. "Popular anti-science site likens journalists to "Nazi collaborators" over GMO coverage". Mother Jones. Retrieved November 11, 2025.
  7. 1 2 Banks, John (September 26, 2013). "Meet the "Health Ranger" Who's Using Pseudoscience to Sell His Lies". Mic . Archived from the original on February 3, 2015. Retrieved February 2, 2015.
  8. 1 2 Gumbel, Andrew (January 25, 2015). "Disneyland measles outbreak leaves many anti-vaccination parents unmoved". The Guardian. Retrieved January 22, 2016.
  9. ↑ Goodman, Will; Stern, Marcus. "Far From Natural". Stories by weather.com | The Weather Channel. Retrieved November 11, 2025.
  10. 1 2 3 Novella, Steven (December 14, 2010). "H1N1 Vaccine and Miscarriages – More Fear Mongering". Neurologica (blog). New England Skeptical Society. Archived from the original on July 13, 2011.
  11. 1 2 Owen, Laura Hazard (October 26, 2020). "Older people and Republicans are most likely to share Covid-19 stories from fake news sites on Twitter". Nieman Lab . Retrieved October 20, 2021.
  12. ↑ Osmundsen, Mathias; Bor, Alexander; Vahlstrup, Peter Bjerregaard; Bechmann, Anja; Petersen, Michael Bang (May 7, 2021). "Partisan Polarization Is the Primary Psychological Motivation behind Political Fake News Sharing on Twitter". American Political Science Review . 115 (3). Cambridge University Press: 999–1015. doi:10.1017/S0003055421000290. ISSN   0003-0554. S2CID   235527523.
  13. ↑ Ognyanova, Katherine; Lazer, David; Robertson, Ronald E.; Wilson, Christo (June 2, 2020). "Misinformation in action: Fake news exposure is linked to lower trust in media, higher trust in government when your side is in power" (PDF). Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. 1 (4). Shorenstein Center. doi: 10.37016/mr-2020-024 .
  14. ↑ Guess, Andy; Aslett, Kevin; Tucker, Joshua; Bonneau, Richard; Nagler, Jonathan (2021). "Cracking Open the News Feed: Exploring What U.S. Facebook Users See and Share with Large-Scale Platform Data". Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media. 1. doi: 10.51685/jqd.2021.006 . ISSN   2673-8813. S2CID   236598470.
  15. ↑ "Google delists Mike Adams' Natural News website. Was it because of fake news?". Science-Based Medicine. February 27, 2017. Retrieved February 14, 2019.
  16. 1 2 LeVine, Michael (December 8, 2016), What scientists can teach us about fake news and disinformation, Business Insider , retrieved December 15, 2016
  17. ↑ Lynas, Mike (November 27, 2017) "Anti-biotechnology fake news: 'Natural News' claims RNAi used to 'eliminate black people' ", Genetic Literacy Project. Retrieved January 19, 2018.
  18. ↑ [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]
  19. ↑ Beth Mole (June 10, 2019). "Facebook bans health and conspiracy site Natural News [Updated]: Conspiracist founder compares Zuckerberg to Hitler, urges Trump to declare war". Ars Technica.
  20. ↑ Pearce, Matt (February 7, 2013). "Conspiracy theorists harassing, impersonating Aurora victims". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  21. ↑ Anderson, Nate (October 18, 2021). "Disinformation guru "Hacker X" names his employer: NaturalNews.com". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on September 19, 2025. Retrieved October 17, 2025.
  22. 1 2 Myers, Steven Lee; Thompson, Stuart A. (November 4, 2025). "Right-Wing Chatbots Turbocharge America's Political and Cultural Wars". The New York Times .
  23. ↑ "Health Ranger Profile and History". HealthRanger.com. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  24. 1 2 "Mike Adams: Natural News, "everyone's favorite über-quack #1 anti-science website"— "even the quacks think he's a quack"". Genetic Literacy Project. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  25. ↑ Blatchford, Christie (October 29, 2009). "Flu-shot skeptics weave a Web of lies" . The Globe and Mail . Archived from the original on December 15, 2014. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
  26. ↑ Phillips, David (July 13, 2010). "More BP Gulf Oil Spill Conspiracies Flourish – From Algae Farms to Armed Dolphins". CBS News . Retrieved May 15, 2014.
  27. ↑ Phillips, Tom (September 8, 2014). "MH370: Six 'reasons' why plane vanished". Daily Telegraph . Retrieved September 8, 2014.
  28. ↑ Orac [David Gorski] (December 12, 2012). "Stanislaw Burzynski: A pioneering cancer researcher or a quack?". Respectful Insolence. ScienceBlogs . Retrieved March 11, 2014.
  29. ↑ Kelly, Christopher (February 17, 2013). "Thinking Beyond the Creationists and the Darwinists". The New York Times. Retrieved November 1, 2014.
  30. ↑ Brownstein, Joseph (September 2, 2009). "The Swine Flu Goes Mainstream". ABC News . Retrieved July 20, 2014.
  31. ↑ Orac [David Gorski] (September 16, 2009). "Mike Adams adds religious nuttery to his armamentarium as he slimes Patrick Swayze posthumously". Respectful Insolence (blog). Scienceblogs . Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  32. ↑ Plait, Phil (September 25, 2009). "Alt med ghouls". Bad Astronomy (blog). Discover. Archived from the original on September 27, 2013. Retrieved September 25, 2013.
  33. ↑ Cockerell, Isobel (July 8, 2022). ""He was in a 4Chan bubble": Inside the Highland Park shooting suspect's social media diet". Coda Media .
  34. ↑ Kasprak, Alex (April 16, 2018). "'Natural News' Creator's Newest Site Focuses Entirely on Teenaged Mass Shooting Survivor". Snopes . Retrieved November 30, 2022.
  35. ↑ Orac [David Gorski] (May 15, 2013). "The quack view of preventing breast cancer versus reality and Angelina Jolie". Respectful Insolence (blog). ScienceBlogs . Retrieved August 2, 2013.
  36. ↑ Kloor, Keith (July 22, 2014). "Mike Adams, Monsanto, Nazis, and a very disturbing article". Discover . Archived from the original on July 25, 2014. Retrieved July 26, 2014.
  37. ↑ Kloor, Keith (July 24, 2014). "Mike Adams Elevates his Ugly Anti-GMO Campaign". Discover (magazine) . Archived from the original on August 6, 2014.
  38. ↑ Entine, Jon; Raeburn, Paul (July 25, 2014). "Mike Adams claims Monsanto set up "kill GMO supporters" website, as scientists, journalists face death threats". The Genetic Literacy Project. Knight Science Journalism Tracker.
  39. ↑ Novak, Matt (February 23, 2017). "Google Blacklists Natural News, the Web's Leading Authority on DIY Ebola Vaccines". Gizmodo. Retrieved February 26, 2017.
  40. ↑ Schwartz, Barry. (February 28, 2017). "After rare Google confirmation of on-site penalty, Natural News is back in Google's index", Search Engine Land. Retrieved April 20, 2018.
  41. ↑ McKay, Tom (March 5, 2018). "Self-Declared 'Health Ranger' Mike Adams Has Apparently Been Booted From YouTube". Gizmodo . Retrieved March 7, 2018.
  42. ↑ "Troll farms from North Macedonia and the Philippines pushed coronavirus disinformation on Facebook". NBC News. May 29, 2020. Retrieved October 21, 2025.
  43. 1 2 Heilweil, Rebecca (June 25, 2020). "Facebook's war against one of the internet's worst conspiracy sites". Vox . Retrieved February 5, 2021.
  44. ↑ Weill, Kelly (June 10, 2019). "Facebook Removes Conspiracy Site Natural News". The Daily Beast. Retrieved August 29, 2019.
  45. 1 2 Funke, Daniel (June 5, 2020). "Health misinformation website rebrands as pro-Trump outlet to get around ban from Facebook". PolitiFact . Retrieved February 5, 2021.
  46. ↑ Kata, Anna (2012). "Anti-vaccine activists, Web 2.0, and the postmodern paradigm – An overview of tactics and tropes used online by the anti-vaccination movement". Vaccine . 30 (25): 3778–89. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.11.112. PMID   22172504. S2CID   38720733.
  47. ↑ "Promoters of Questionable Methods and/or Advice". Quackwatch . November 29, 2013.
  48. 1 2 Novella, Steven (January 25, 2010). "Mike Adams Takes On 'Skeptics'". Neurologica (blog). New England Skeptical Society.
  49. ↑ Overton, Andrew (June 25, 2013). "Vaccines Are Not a Shot in the Dark". VICE. Retrieved October 21, 2025.
  50. ↑ Orac [David Gorski] (August 7, 2008). "A fungus among us in oncology?". Respectful Insolence (blog). ScienceBlogs. Archived from the original on April 22, 2013.
  51. ↑ Carroll, Robert T. (December 30, 2010) [December 14, 2010]. "Sources: How the WWW allows one person to seem to be many sources – The Eileen Danneman Story". Skeptimedia (blog). skepdic.com [The Skeptic's Dictionary online].
  52. ↑ "Natural News". Comment and Opinion. The Millenium Project. RatbagsDotCom, Peter Bowditch. January 23, 2010. Archived from the original on December 17, 2010.
  53. ↑ Dunning, Brian (November 8, 2011). "Skeptoid #283: Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites". Skeptoid . Retrieved October 23, 2020. 1. Natural News; "Skeptoid #495: Updated: Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites" "1. Natural News" December 1, 2015
  54. ↑ Plait, Phil (December 13, 2010). "Mike Adams fails again: Astrology edition". Bad Astronomy (blog). Discover. Archived from the original on July 21, 2019. Retrieved March 19, 2013.
  55. ↑ Myers, PZ (May 11, 2011). "Mike Adams: Pretentious git, slandering liar". Pharyngula (blog). ScienceBlogs.
  56. ↑ Mark Hoofnagle (April 1, 2013). "Natural News' Mike Adams Adds Global Warming Denialism to HIV/AIDS denial, Anti-vax, Altie-med, Anti-GMO, Birther Crankery". Denialism (blog). ScienceBlogs . Retrieved September 25, 2013.
  57. ↑ Palmer, Brian (February 22, 2014). "Hundreds believe preposterous stories on Facebook". Daily Herald . Retrieved February 22, 2014.
  58. ↑ Johnson, Nathanael (July 29, 2014). "Don't believe anything you read at Natural News". Grist. Retrieved August 6, 2014.
  59. ↑ Orac [David Gorski] (October 27, 2011). "Mike Adams vs. the flu vaccine". Respectful Insolence. ScienceBlogs . Retrieved March 11, 2014.
  60. ↑ Qui, Linda (February 9, 2016). "No evidence to support rumors tying Zika to genetically modified mosquitoes". Politifact. Retrieved February 22, 2016.
  61. ↑ Blum, Deborah (December 20, 2013). "An Honor for Elemental (the cyanide version)". Wired . Retrieved June 21, 2016.
  62. ↑ "The fake blueberries uproar". The Week . January 27, 2011. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
  63. ↑ "Investigation finds many fruity foods don't contain real fruit". Fox News . January 26, 2011. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
  64. ↑ "Chicken nuggets under the microscope". News.com.au. August 29, 2013. Archived from the original on November 1, 2014. Retrieved February 2, 2015.
  65. ↑ Mariani, John (October 8, 2013). "Chicken nugget or chicken little? Study shows fast-food favorite contains less meat, more leftover parts". Syracuse.com . Retrieved February 2, 2015.
  66. ↑ Engel, Meredith (August 11, 2014). "Website claims to treat Ebola with natural remedy". New York Daily News. Retrieved August 13, 2014.
  67. ↑ Champion, Matthew (August 11, 2014). "Yes, a website published a 'homeopathic treatment for Ebola' article". The Independent . Archived from the original on September 12, 2015. Retrieved August 13, 2014.
  68. ↑ Osborne, Hannah (August 20, 2014). "Ebola outbreak: Woman's 'healing powers' claim caused deadly virus' spread from Guinea". International Business Times . Retrieved September 19, 2014.
  69. ↑ Cockerell, Isobel (October 21, 2022). "Fear, panic and fake news spread after Ebola outbreak in Uganda". Coda Media . Retrieved October 23, 2022.
  70. ↑ Johnson, Scott (December 23, 2019). "False claim that wind turbines generate more global warming than fossil fuels misrepresents study it relies on". Science Feedback. Energy Feedback . Retrieved September 16, 2024.
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