The Health Robbers: A Close Look at Quackery in America

by Stephen Barrett

The "Health Robbers", featuring over twenty highly respected authorities, explains the dangers of quack medicine, "alternative" cancer remedies, health fads, and "miracle diets." It argues for... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879758554
• ISBN13: 9780879758554
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Prometheus Books
• Length: 526 Pages
• Weight: 2.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Science is just another word for ... the study of nature.

Look, you don't have to be a medical export, or a scientist, to understand what science is. Science is nothing more than the study of nature! Scientific method: Experiment. Observe. Eliminate as many variables that may affect the results as possible. Study ALL results, expected and non-expected. Share ALL results with peers, who challenge your results by conducting independent experiments and observations to verify. Hypothesize based on the FULL body of verified results. Repeat. Scientific method has yielded an astounding bounty of discoveries in the short amount of time since it has started to be widely practiced. True modern medicine is just applying scientific method to the act of healing people. This method has enabled human life to overcome and endure many diseases on a scale unimagined just 175 years ago, when medicine was largely a hunch-based-on-anecdotes practice. Are there bad practices and practitioners in modern medicine? Of course there are, as there are in any human endeavor, especially when so much money is at stake. But science and the foundations of modern medicine are not to blame for this. Modern medicine is there to serve you -- you just need to steer clear of bad practice and practitioners as best you can. Turning to those who have abandoned science, never embraced it in the first place, and/or found they could make a lucrative living by taking a stand against it, is an enourmous gamble. Pointless at best, it is possibly harmful to your health, especially if you have a genuine health concern that is not self-healing and that requires truly effective therapies to provide a better outcome. People can fool us into feeling things or believing things that have been repeatedly scientifically debunked. Sadly, nobody is better at fooling us then ourselves. That is the nature of self-awareness; we are no longer unbiased observers, especially when it comes to our own selves, which is why pseudo-science thrives in the alternative "health and well-being" industry. But, to paraphrase Richard Feynman, "nature cannot be fooled". Read this book for a very educational look into the nature of the deceptions that accompany most alternative therapies. You may not believe it now, but this knowledge WILL bring you closer to nature, which is, by the way, just another word for reality.

An absolute must read

Barrett just demolishes the quacks here with competent science--chiropractic, homeopathic, naturopathic--all treatments without a shred of scientific evidence to back them up. Look at some of the negative reviews on the page, obviously written by practitioners in these fradulent fields threatened by Barrett's exposure of their scams! They are hilarious!Barrett is a well-respected M.D. who has been a quack watch dog for a long time now, and anyone with any common sense should read this book.

Read this book and don't trust your health to quacks

Please, if you're finding yourself sucked in by the deceptive advertising, false promises, and outright lies of the despicable method of thievery called alternative medicine, stop right now and read this book. You have nothing to lose -- whereas if you stick with the quacks you're likely to lose thousands of dollars and maybe your life.And no, I have nothing to do with the AMA (whatever that is) or traditional medicine. I just know fraud when I see it.

Read this and help stop the insanity

This book is a needed antidote to the thousands of hucksters who are fleecing the American public. Giving hope to people in trouble is commendable, but knowingly spreading false cures and making millions off the gullible is reprehensible. I urge you to read this so that you or anyone you love may not be taken by the frauds and fakes in the irrational alternative medicine movement.

A Superlative Expose on Quackery in Alternative Medicine

I really enjoyed this book. It taught me much about why and how different types of scams are perpetrated by different types of alternative medicine huxters. It was very objectively written, with opinions that were backed up with excellent references. A great book to survey all forms of health quackery currently being hawked to the public.