SCIENCE JOURNALIST 'SJAMADRIAAN': 'QUACKY CELEBRITIES CAN DO HARM'

Online it is teeming with self-proclaimed health gurus and life coaches, according to science journalist Adriaan ter Braack, known as quackery critic 'Sjamadriaan'. He competes with the opportunistic 'fake gurus', who promote products that, at best, do nothing.

very morning there was a glass of water on the table, with a piece of paper underneath. A grid of two by two boxes was drawn on this, in which random numbers were written. According to a naturopath, the energy of the numbers would radiate into the water, causing my father to recover.

AN OPPORTUNISTIC NATUROPATH DISRUPTED MY FATHER'S RECONCILIATION PROCESS WITH FATE

It was 2004, my father had recently been diagnosed with ALS: a progressive muscle disease that can now stabilize with the right medication, but at the time it meant his death sentence. In his last year of life, overlapping with my senior year of high school, he tried all kinds of alternative medicine out of sheer desperation. So he knocked on the door of a man with a dowsing rod, who let him carry a box with him; it would destroy the disease by sending light through his body.

For an 18-year-old, who was already interested in physics at the time, this was all incredibly confusing. I found it difficult to relate to this macabre quack circus. Looking back, I mainly feel a lot of anger. My father's process of reconciliation with fate was disrupted by an opportunistic naturopath who made money behind his back with nonsense. Meanwhile, everyone kept insisting: 'It can't hurt, can it?'

Critical' celebrities

My father's penchant for alternative therapies is one of the reasons why, as a physicist, I eventually became a science journalist. To help people understand a little better how the world works, so that they and their loved ones don't fall for pseudoscientific nonsense. I did that, for example, at the scientific magazine  Quest , but that was preaching to my own parish. Readers of such a magazine are usually critical enough not to fall for this. At the same time, I had to watch as the quackery and pseudoscience in a broader sense that I so hate has only become more rampant online.

Where alternative therapies used to be somewhat obscured, you are now being bombarded with dowsing rods and moonstones both online and on the old-fashioned TV screen. Particularly striking is how one 'critical' celebrity after another floats into the pseudoscientific welfare trap. For example, presenter Geraldine Kemper (641,000 followers at the end of May) promotes the unnecessary supplements from the controversial company Vitakruid on Instagram. This 'orthomolecular' vitamin farmer with a dubious image claims to be able to optimize your body and solve health problems with just the right concentrations of nutrients. But the effect of orthomolecular therapy has never been scientifically proven.

Or take fitness celebrity Fajah Lourens, who joined the talk show Op1 as a health expert to talk about taking vitamin D against corona. The same Lourens promotes  chakra healing , in which 'blockages are removed and the flow improves through intuitive energetic massaging of the chakras', and writes e-books and blogs about the spiritual powers of sweet potato and bioresonance therapy. The latter therapy was also applied through my father's box and states that your organs have a specific vibration frequency of an electromagnetic nature. And that you can cure diseases by applying vibrations that are opposite to the harmful vibrations. Actress Thekla Reuten told the radio program Nooit Meer Slapen that viruses are just energy and that water becomes ugly if you swear at it. Hundreds of thousands of people are presented with this. Pseudoscience packaged as a healthy, active lifestyle and mental enlightenment.

WORRYINGLY TRAINED SMOOTHIES BELIEVE THEY HAVE MORE KNOWLEDGE THAN DOCTORS

The physical version of the spiritual wanderer is the 'biohacker': someone who claims to be able to optimize his/her/their biological system. Worryingly trained smoothies believe they have more knowledge than doctors because they have trained as Orthomolecular Advisors. A course costing thousands of euros, provided by supplement farmers such as Vitakruid, where you learn in nineteen hours that everything can be cured with nutrition and supplements. The coaches, trained by themselves, then promote the supplements, accompanied by medical claims ('This supplement boosts your immune system!'). Vitakruid is not allowed to make these itself due to regulations. A STAP budget is available for the training (a government subsidy of up to 1,000 euros that allows anyone to follow an education, training or course), so this proliferation of pseudoscientific courses is indirectly stimulated by the government.

The idea of ​​biohacking is that you can perfect your body, as long as you know which supplements to take. And lie with your bare anus in the sun for fifteen minutes a day - the extra vitamin D is said to provide more energy and libido (don't do this, the skin on your perineum is very thin and the damage can be enormous). And if you just put Celtic salt in your water – it would contain healthy minerals, but the amounts are so small that you won't notice. The dangers of this recently became painfully clear when yoga teacher Denise Ermes in Mexico fell into a coma after a dramatic detox treatment, in which she had liters of lukewarm salt water pumped through her empty stomach. These advice and vitamins seem ridiculously nonsense, but biohackers swallow it like a sweet, gluten-free, low-calorie cake.

Disinfo ocean

As long as these self-proclaimed therapists only share on Instagram that they get up in the middle of the night to drink a stem cell and aloe vera smoothie for a good night's sleep and they put a frozen parsnip in their urethra to promote fertility (it was on a blog somewhere) I can have a good laugh about it. But the danger does not stop here either. A cheerful mother influencer named De Huismuts (152,000 followers) recommends microdosing the hallucinogen psilocybin on Instagram for more focus and energy, without mentioning the dangers. While people prone to psychosis can react strongly to hallucinogens. Someone would rather not take diabetes medication anymore? No problem, biohacker Joep Rovers (63,000 Instagram followers) recommends taking berberine, a substance extracted from plants, including a Vitakruid discount code. And therefore to get off diabetes medication without medical guidance. This can cause the sugar level to suddenly rise sharply, which can cause many problems in the body, such as damage to the blood vessels.

Combating the spread of scientific misinformation is like emptying the ocean with a bucket. Fact checkers are fighting an unfair battle. While influencers can tell beautiful stories unconstrained by scientific consensus, scientists must stick to boring, dry facts that specialists within a field have agreed upon after many studies. Very different from purchasing an online 'manifesting' course for thousands of euros and learning that your dream house will come along automatically if you think about it often enough. You can then fill that house with energetic crystals from the Sissy-Boy, and with tens of euros worth of supplements in your kitchen cupboards you will also stay perfectly healthy. People would much rather listen to these fantastic fabrications than to someone who tells them that they are just that: fabrications. "But it's not harmful, is it?" people often notice. But that is exactly what scientific and medical disinformation is, in several ways.

A COCOON IS CREATED FULL OF PRIVILEGED PEOPLE WHO CAN AFFORD TO LIVE IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY

An alternative treatment plan can get in the way of legitimate treatment from an actual expert and therefore endanger the patient. An example is 'healing' medium Jomanda, who strengthened actress Sylvia Millecam in the late 1990s in her belief that she did not have cancer. Millecam therefore did not undergo treatment and died. In a trial that followed against Jomanda, she was ultimately acquitted on appeal. Two alternative doctors were convicted in the same case and received three and six weeks' suspended prison sentences respectively. If you're struggling with mental health issues and someone tells you to just manifest your best life, you can get into even more trouble if it turns out that doesn't work. 'Is it just me?' The brain is a vulnerable, precious and dear organ, you should not just let someone with sweet talk tinker with it.

Wellness right, conspirituality, conspiracy theorists, call it whatever you want; an elitist cocoon of anti-scientific welfare bullshit slowly emerges, full of privileged people who can afford to live in an alternate reality. It is also striking that these privileged well-being thinkers often draw on age-old traditions and healing methods from non-Western cultures: they pick out some elements, combine them into their own therapies and build a business model around them. Central is the idea that you don't need anything and no one to provide for your own well-being, as long as you get started. With your intuition. Preferably in Ibiza. They don't want to know anything about a government that says you have to vaccinate. Your immune system is in perfect condition. The fact that other people's immune systems are not is their problem, not yours. Pseudoscience thus goes hand in hand with chilling narcissism.

Privilege ostriches

It is not surprising that many people who are in the spotlight try to make a living here. Rapper Snelle and influencer and anti-vaxxer Tisjeboy Jay promote their ginger juice with false medical claims. Their videos have now been removed on the orders of the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority. TV presenter and YouTuber Kaj Gorgels sells unnecessary supplements based on a contrived online questionnaire. Singer and anti-vaxxer Tim Douwsma and radio presenter Giel Beelen have a platform on which they give quacks and conspiracy theorists the space to talk about reincarnation therapy or to proclaim that diseases originate in your mind and that vaccinations are nonsense. Doutzen Kroes (8.5 million Instagram followers), has stopped modeling and now has a day job posting hearts under every loose conspiracy theory that passes the Insta review, for example when Jandino Asporaat questions the moon landing based on debunked theories and rickety physics .

For people who want to delve into astrology and crystals, it is difficult to distinguish between what is correct and what is not if they continuously find conflicting sources on the internet. It is one of the strengths of pseudoscience: it pretends to be science and appears reliable. But you have to look beyond your own intuition to see through it and that is very difficult for many people. Who wouldn't want to hear that his/her/their best possible life is yours for the taking, if you manifest it enough? Especially when your favorite celebrity shouts it out and there are hundreds of jubilant reactions under the message.

Until we find a way to contain the tsunami of medical misinformation on social media, in my opinion it is up to the media – the gatekeepers of correct information – to take the lead and no longer present someone like Fajah Lourens as health expert. So that people do not self-medicate based on unfounded online advice and become completely disconnected from reality. But above all so that the proliferation of pseudoscience can be limited and society – vulnerable people in particular – does not ultimately pay the price for the harmful ideas of these egocentric privilege ostriches. If, to top it all off, fewer patients who have completed treatment fall prey to money-grabbing naturopaths or better yet, if Fajah Lourens can fly to Ibiza less often due to financial malaise, then that is a bonus. I drink a glass of irradiated water to that.