Quack Quack: The Threat of Pseudoscience

A tsunami of misinformation and disinformation is threatening to engulf evidence-based science. While quackery--loosely defined as the spread of false "knowledge," often accompanied by various versions of "snake oil"--is not a novel phenomenon, it has never posed as great a threat to public health as today. COVID-19 has unleashed an unprecedented flurry of destructive information that has fuelled vaccine hesitancy and has steered people toward unproven therapies. Conspiracy theorists have served up a distasteful menu of twisted facts that create distrust in science. In Quack Quack, Dr. Joe Schwarcz, who has been battling flimflam for decades, focuses on the deluge of anecdotes, cherry-picked data, pseudoscientific nonsense, and seductive baseless health claims that undermine efforts to educate the public about evidence-based science. The wide scope of the topics drawn from past and present aims to cast a life preserver to people drowning in a sea of misinformation.