Why You Should Not Follow Youtube Health Advice: who is the "Drugless Doctor" on Youtube?

If you look on Youtube for health advice, you may have come across Dr. Bob DeMaria, who goes by the moniker "Drugless Doctor", and sometimes, "Dr.Bob".

The problem is, he never got an MD. The closest credential he got was a chiropractic degree he got from the "National College of Health Sciences" (now National University of Health Sciences) back in 1978.

Bob mentioned in his LinkedIn profile that he went to Clayton College for further studies. What he did not mention was that Clayton College of Natural Health was NOT an accredited school, does mostly distance learning, and closed in 2010 instead of seeking accreditation, and was sued by students who got neither degree nor refund. Indeed, one investigation by the state turned up someone who managed to obtain FOUR diplomas from this school over 14 month period: BS, MS, Ph.D., AND "Doctor of Naturopathy".

Clayton College is also known for selling their founder's nutritional supplements "Doctor Clayton's Naturals", from minerals and vitamins to homeopathic remedies.

But that's not the most disturbing thing about Bob DeMaria (I refuse to call him doctor)...

Scam Psychology: Engaging Antivaxxers: What I learned from them vs. Scheme Denialists

Recently, I engaged a couple antivaxxers on Twitter. It was a learning experience. One just wants to talk about his conspiracy theory (There is no reason for the government to care about your health!)   (Uh, what about taxes?)  while the other ONLY want to talk about the harm done by vaccines and ignore all the good it did (Let's talk about how many children the original Salk vaccine harmed...)

Let's be absolutely clear here: Yes, the original Salk vaccine did sicken 200 children and killed 10, but it also saved about 15000 (or even 20000) children from paralysis THAT YEAR ALONE!  Go ahead, Google that yourself. A vaccine that saved 98.6+% of the children (210/15000) from a crippling disease such as polio was a success, NOT a failure!

But the anti-vaxxers only want to talk about the children that were harmed, not the 14000+ children saved that year from paralysis. They are NOT interested in seeing the whole picture.

I am not going to provide a blow-by-blow of my encounter. I'll just say that as predicted, they engaged in multiple goal-post shifting (trying to shift the topic), citing bogus experts (Mercola), claiming conspiracy theory and Galileo gambit (Wakefield and Sears), outright refuting facts ("measles is not dangerous"), name-calling ("Where are the honest provaxers?") then concluded with pigeon chess mixed with conspiracy theory ("You are stifling dissent, but you can't suppress the truth forever! ")

And this is the virtually identical pattern to the financial denialists I've engaged before. Except they want to somehow prove their pyramid or Ponzi schemes are legitimate money-making enterprises. Which pretty much proves that more than a few scammers are "financial denialists".

DADA Loop: Data / Analysis / Decision / Action and the MLM mind

How do you make decisions?  It's usually a 4 step process:

1. Gather Data

2. Analyze Data

3. Decide on Action

4. Perform the action

This is pretty obvious to most people. Military call it the OODA loop, civilians called it DADA loop (data, analysis, decision, action), but it's the same thing.

So how can this loop go wrong?  EVERY one of the four steps can go wrong.

• One can gather the WRONG data (victim of deception or bad data gathering)
• One can fail to analyze data objectively (by ignoring good data)
• One can fail to decide on any action (stalled loop)
• One can fail to perform the action correctly.

Let's see how MLMer reacts to these steps.

Scam Tactics: Indignantly imply everybody else is wrong i.e. Nerium Proponent's Comment Dissected

skepticism, skeptical inquiry, critical thinking,
critical inquiry, and truth-seeking. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When you see a random claim, do you simply accept it as is, or do you adopt the Reagan doctrine: "Trust, but verify"?  A skeptic uses the latter.

Indeed, scam tactics often simply deny everything, randomly make some claims, and claimed to be outraged at the lack of facts presented.

Recently I came across this comment by a Nerium proponent. I am going to number the claims (i.e. sentences that appear to be factual, not merely an opinion), and let's verify each one.

Get your facts correct please. Nerium sold at Sears was counterfeit. (1) You will no longer find it there. (2)
The extract itself, NAE-8 is patented. (3) Look it up. Do a tiny bit of research on Jeff Olson (4) (you’ll kick yourself for your ignorance).
The before & afters are from its distributors. (5) One bad apple doesn’t spoil the bunch & that apple was taken care of (6) – & others warned.
Most importantly, results from the night treatment are published in the peer-reviewed literature. (7) Try looking up the Journal of Aging, Science, Jr of Clinical & Investigative Dermatology, etc…… (8)
The patented extract is the first superantioxidant on the planet. Look it up. (9)
Please don’t confuse searching with research! Try it, you might just learn something new!

Claim 1: Was Nerium sold at Sears counterfeit?

As we have not seen this listed ANYWHERE (search for Nerium + Sears just brings up similar night creams) we'll have to say "unverifiable", as we have nothing to show either true, or false.

UNSUPPORTED CLAIM, BUSTED

Claim 2: Is Nerium sold at Sears?

Nope, nothing there.

TRUE (but inconsequential, how often have you seen MLM products in retail? Never!)

Claim 3: Is NAE-8 patented?

Nope, NAE-8 is a registered trademark, not a patent. Nerium appears to hold at least two patents on how to extract oleander and aloe, but NAE-8 is not "patented", just trademarked as "non-medicated skin care preparation ingredient" under cosmetics.

BUSTED!

Claim 4: Is there anything surprising on Jeff Olson?

Searching for Jeff Olson shows that he used to ran People's Network, a Self-Improvement TV Channel, that got bought by Prepaid Legal in 1997ish, and he became Prepaid Legal's CEO in 1999. In 2001 PL was hit by Wyoming Attorney General with charges of illegal income claims, then SEC also hit Prepaid Legal for misclaiming expenses as assets (i.e. inflating its financial situation). PL was sued hundreds of times in Missouri, won a few, lost more, decided to settle the remaining 400+ cases. Then things were quite until 2009, when both FTC and SEC subpoenaed some documents for fact-finding missions. In 2011 PL was bought out and reorganized, and Olson left (or was forced out) and started Nerium.

Nothing too surprising, or worthy of emulation, IMHO. Got lucky and got acquired, had to wield whip on sales force to keep them in line, and got forced out during corporate shuffle.

HALF-TRUE