Quackwatch - Site Reviews

Site Reviews

Consumers are seeking to find quality health information on the Internet. Quackwatch is a member of the Consumer Federation of America and was a nonprofit organization until 2008. Building on a worldwide network of volunteers and expert contributors, the site provides information on quackery-related topics and investigates questionable claims.

The Good Web Guide of the United Kingdom said Quackwatch "is without doubt an important and useful information resource and injects a healthy dose of scepticism into reviewing popular health information" but is "firmly anti-holistic medicine". Cunningham and Marcason in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association described Quackwatch as "useful", while Wallace and Kimball, in the Medical Journal of Australia, described the site as "objective". The Rough Guide To The Internet writes "don't buy anything until you've looked it up on Quackwatch, a good place to separate the docs from the ducks."

Waltraud Ernst, Professor in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University, has some personal objections to the work of those who criticize alternative medicine, but she still commends "Barrett's concern for unsubstantiated promotion and hype," and states that "Barrett's concern for fraudulent and potentially dangerous medical practices is important."

A review paper in the Annals of Oncology identified Quackwatch as an outstanding complementary medicine information source for cancer patients.

Helen Pilcher writing for Nature News believes "Up to 55% of the Internet's 600 million users gather medical information from it. Patients with life-threatening diseases, such as cancer, often use the web to seek out alternative therapies, but with over half a million sites offering advice, the quality of that information varies greatly." Edzard Ernst says, "Good websites do exist, and the majority of those tested provided useful and reliable information. Two sites, Quackwatch and Bandolier, stood out for the quality of the information they provide.

The Handbook of Nutrition and Food explains "Maintaining adequate nutrition is important for general health of cancer patients, as it is with all patients, and diet plays a role in preventing certain cancers. However, no diet or dietary supplement product has been proven to improve the outcome of an established cancer. Detailed information on today's questionable cancer methods is available on the Quackwatch web site".

Steven L. Brown states "Dr. Stephen Barrett's website www.quackwatch.com provides excellent, detailed, well-researched, and documented information about alternative therapies that have been disproved."

Journalist John MacDonald, writing for the Khaleej Times, called Quackwatch "a voice of reason on everything from the efficacy of alternative medicine to the validity of advice from best-selling diet gurus, and the various forms of medical quackery being perpetrated on gullible consumers".

The 2009 Internet Directory advised that "Have you ever read a health article or had a friend suggest a remedy that sounded too good to be true? Then check it out on Quackwatch before you shell out any money or risk your health to try it. Here you will find a skeptical friend to help you sort out what's true from what is not when it comes to your physical well-being."

The book Chronic Pain For Dummies says "Although many reliable resources are on the Internet, including those we list in this chapter, sadly, far too many sites offer only incorrect and/or outdated information, and many are downright hoaxes designed to sell empty promises. Make sure you gather information only from reliable resources. Two good sites for checking out possible hoaxes are www.quackwatch.org and http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org."

The Arthritis Helpbook articulated that "Addresses ending in .edu, .org, and .gov are generally more objective and reliable; they originate from universities, nonprofit organizations, and governmental agencies. Some .com sites can also be good, but because they come from commercial or for-profit organizations, their information might be biased, as they might be trying to promote or sell their own products. One good source for information about questionable treatments is Quackwatch.org, a nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to combat health-related frauds, myths, and fallacies (www.quackwatch.org). They also have other sites that are accessible from Quackwatch."

Katherine Chauncey writes "The main purpose of Quackwatch (www.quackwatch.org) is to combat fraud, myths, fads, and fallacies in the health field. This is a hard-hitting site developed by Stephen Barrett, MD. Not only is quackery-related information targeted, but quack individuals are named. You'll find information here that you won't find anywhere else. One of the goals of the site is to improve the quality of information on the Internet. Just reviewing this site will show you how to recognize information that may be coming from dubious sources."

In a The Consultant Pharmacist review, pharmacist Bao-Anh Nguyen-Khoa characterized Quackwatch as "relevant for both consumers and professionals". Nguyen-Khoa noted two Quackwatch articles to be of interest to consultant pharmacists - "Selling of Dubious Products" about pharmacists stocking and recommending dubious alternative products that they have a poor knowledge of but continued stocking them because of the higher profit margins, and "Misuse of Compounding" about some pharmacies compounding readily available commercial products from bulk instead of available prescriptions because the ingredients may be less expensive. Nguyen-Khoa remarked that the "site makes an effort to cross-reference keywords with other articles and link its citations to the Medline abstract from the National Library of Medicine". The site has received praise from reputable reviewers and rating services. As of 1999 steps were taken to correct the presence of so many articles written by Barrett which left one with a sense of a lack of fair balance in one author's condemnation of many dubious health therapies, as many reputable professionals have signed on to populate the site in their area of expertise. Nguyen-Khoa stated that the implementation of a peer review process would improve the site's legitimacy, which is a logical transition for a site that uses a lot of accepted medical literature as its foundation. The success of QW has generated other related sites.

The former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Science Panel on Interactive Communication and Health named Quackwatch as a credible source for exposing fraudulent online health information in 1999. Dr. Thomas R. Eng, the director of the panel's study, later stated, "The government doesn't endorse Web sites." Still, he said, " is the only site I know of right now looking at issues of fraud and health on the Internet."