“Anke hasn’t eaten or drunk her for four years own urine: ‘The sun is my source of nourishment’.”
“Acupuncturist and massage therapist Eline: ‘I lift through fire cupping stagnations and pain on’.”
Just two headlines from articles on Linda.nl, the website of the magazine of the same name. For the Association against Quackery (VtdK) articles like this were the reason for awarding the magazine the annual Master Kackadoris Prize this Saturday.
From the jury report: “Linda de Mol is (…) a credible icon for millions of women. However, she grossly neglects her responsibility to protect her audience from costly and pointless deceptions.”
The association, which has been active since 1881, is increasingly less alone in its struggle. This is how science journalist Adriaan ter Braack experienced his definitive breakthrough last year. On Instagram, he gathered more than 46,000 followers as ‘Sjamadriaan’ by publicly addressing influencers and celebrities who make such medical claims.
Both regularly go into it with their legs straight. The VtdK does this, for example, with a prize that is intended to arouse shame in the recipient. And ‘Shamadrian’ with a stream of memes, disqualifications and curses. About The Biohack Project, for example, a KRO-NCRV program in which a group of well-known Dutch people learn to optimize the performance of body and mind through assignments. Ter Braack’s quip to the makers partly ensured that the program now includes a disclaimer. “It is a gaping wound from which disinformation continuously pours out,” Ter Braack fulminated about this in the TV program Media storm. The VVD stated Parliamentary questions about the program. “Medical misinformation is thus normalized on national television.
But what exactly is the harm in unproven medical claims? Doesn’t the principle ‘if it doesn’t help, it doesn’t do any harm’ apply here? On a terrace in Amsterdam-West, Ter Braack is visibly excited about this suggestion. “When I see that the vaccination rate in Amsterdam has fallen over the past year, I think: could that have something to do with influencers who are campaigning against this? And when I see that skin cancer is increasing, while influencers massively warn against sunscreen, it just makes me furious.”
Moreover, as he also shows in his blogs, good money is made on unproven treatments. But what bothers him most? “The false hope you give to people.” When his father’s illness entered the terminal phase, he also sought refuge in unproven therapies. “While at such a moment someone benefits much more from acceptance.”
As editor of popular science magazine Quest there was a clash between Ter Braack and his editor-in-chief, who, in his opinion, became too involved in pseudoscience. The collision caused a fracture.
Since then, Ter Braack, now a freelance journalist, has been a man with a mission. On social media he promotes himself as a “holistic wrecking ball” who defends science with all his might against “nonsense”. He shows up precisely in the place where medical information is rampant a counter-narrative to belong.
“You don’t have to be a bitch,” he wrote this week, for example a video message about an influencer who claimed that by ‘manifesting’ you no longer had to be childless and unhealthy. The post generated more than 5,000 likes.
Doesn’t he miss his mark with such insults? “Yes, ‘cunt’, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. But I am absolutely not a connector. I’m not a good person in this role. And I also want to treat people on social media like adults. You can also make other choices than making people feel guilty about their own health or childlessness.”
Humor and content go hand in hand in all his expressions, he says. Yet he indicates that he sometimes struggles with the question of what the most effective strategy is. “I get a lot of messages from people thanking me. They say that my posts have made them more critical. But of course you don’t know whether my approach will actually strengthen others in their beliefs.” He sees that when someone calls you a quack or charlatan, it can actually increase your credibility among followers. “Like: you see, this message should not be made public.”
Also read: Quackery award for glossy LINDA.
Hardliners
There are two movements within the Association against Quackery, says rheumatologist and epidemiologist Alfons den Broeder. This Saturday he will be one of the speakers at the symposium where the Master Kackadoris Prize will be awarded. “We have one group, the hardliners, who believe that you should condemn quackery as clearly as possible. I myself belong to the group that takes a more lenient approach. I believe that every person is above all free, even to believe in nonsense. We might be more in favor of the Association evidence-based medicine can be. Because yes, ridiculing that may be counterproductive. Maybe someone like Freek Vonk (TV biologist, ed.) who excites and informs people will work better.”
Which communication strategy works, which clearly does not and which may be counterproductive? There is no consensus on this, according to a tour of communication and behavioral scientists. Ionica Smeets, professor of Science Communication in Leiden, often shows scientists in presentations that you can inform a skeptical audience with science, but you cannot convince them. “It is about belief systems that are deeply rooted in people.” The funny thing is, she says laughing, “that many scientists cannot believe it when I tell them that.”
Bastiaan Rutjens conducts research into scientific psychology with a group of colleagues at the University of Amsterdam. “At the beginning of this century everyone was talking about it information deficits. The consensus at the time was that scientists had to overcome a lack of information and that people would then be convinced of the facts. Hardly anyone believes that anymore.”
According to him, the target group ultimately determines which method is best to use. “You won’t convince your neighbor with this naming and shaming or with debunkbut in the public debate about quackery you can be a bit more emphatic about it.”
The Nijmegen communications scientist Aart van Stekelenburg wants to nuance the image that facts are defenseless against beliefs. Although such a communication strategy is a long-term affair. “Our research shows that if you show an audience over a long period of time what the scientific consensus is, for example on climate or vaccinations, at a certain point the recipients of information will indeed move in the direction of that consensus.”
Manufacturability
“Kindness helps, and you should try not to be arrogant,” says VtdK member and doctor Den Broeder, who regularly encounters people in his practice who have read about a diagnosis or treatment “somewhere on the internet”. “Clarity also helps.” He often shows critical patients meta-studies that shed a different light on the matter. “Sometimes that helps, sometimes not.”
Medical science, he also says, is often a way to keep a patient occupied while nature does its work. “This applies to both regular and alternative methods.”
There is also a great deal of uncertainty about the effectiveness of regular care. The most important conditions for health – sewerage, clean food, child vaccinations – have long since been met in the Netherlands, he says. “Medical science only adds an additional year and a half of life.”
But people no longer accept that these days, he says. “You are born, you love, you die. That is it. But in the meantime we expect much more from it.” According to him, this creates the demand for quackery. Although you also have to put that into perspective, he says. “In the sixteenth century, smoke was simply blown into your anus by the doctor if you had shortness of breath. Quackery was even worse back then.”
‘Sjamadriaan’ ter Braack now earns approximately 700 euros per month from the paid part of his weblog and also makes a living from writing assignments. “I could earn a lot more with my number of followers if, for example, I accepted sponsors. But I prefer to remain independent. And well, harping on things that everyone already knows, such as eating healthy, drinking less and quitting smoking, is not a revenue model, is it.”
A version of this article also appeared in the October 7, 2023 newspaper.