Quackwatch's Promotion of Psychiatric Propaganda

Richard Gale and Gary Null PhD

Progressive Radio Network, February 3, 2020

 

Every respectable journalist, especially investigative reporters, have multiple sources for stories they are working on. Major news outlets and news papers, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and television news networks will also have independent fact checkers who review and vet content to validate the content's accuracy.  One media source that has risen to become one of the world's most popular resources for information, used by more people than all of the major American newspapers combined, is Wikipedia.

However, unlike mainstream journalism, Wikipedia does not pass the smell test of being legitimately credible. Editors and writers are more often than not anonymous. Their background, expertise and scholarship on any given subject are largely unknown. This is especially the case for many of Wikipedia's pages dealing with Alternative and Complementary Medicine (CAM) and the personal biographies of CAM's leading practitioners and advocates. Moreover, although Wikipedia has strict rules for determining what are reliable and unreliable resources for sourcing citations, these guidelines are often not adhered to or intentionally ignored altogether.  Instead, many sources relied upon to discredit CAM and non-conventional medical doctors and practitioners are dubious at best. In some cases they are solely resources publishing ideological propaganda and personal opinions.