It seems the magazine 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' doesn't like me

I was surprised to discover this afternoon that I've now made it into yet another* Facebook rant from the people behind What Doctors Don't Tell You (there have been many rants though this is my first inclusion). They've been escalating their rants about skeptic activists (while unironically noting how few of us there are) ever since Tesco decided to stop stocking their magazine. The reason Tesco gave was that the magazine wasn't selling^ - I've no idea if this is true or if Tesco really did listen to the complaints against the magazine's content (or possibly they just read it and drew the relevant conclusions themselves).

*https://www.facebook.com/WDDTY/posts/770960436257904
^https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152543438997767&set=p.10152543438997767&type=1&theater - this link might take you to a picture shared on WDDTY's public page, it's a screenshot of an email from Tesco saying that they'd removed it in response to feedback.

Anyway, What Doctors Don't Tell You is now blaming skeptics for the withdrawal of the magazine and is now reduced to publicising personal and work information about us. To me this is very telling. Each of us has blogs where we've criticised the magazine's content or the framing of its content. If they think we're wrong it would be better to point out where we've missed something. The fact that the chosen tactic relies on personal attacks speaks volumes.

Remember that a number of the advertisers in the magazine have been found to be in breach of the advertising standards guidelines and in one particularly amusing case, someone whose research was written about in the magazine pointed out that the author had got it wrong.

Here's what WDDTY would like you to know about me... or at least someone whose name rhymes with mine (I have spelled it as Jo Brodie for... ooh, forever).

The bits that are accurate are fine. The bits that are inaccurate are quite wrong (surprise!) and it ropes in another Jo Brodie who might be a bit miffed to find herself (himself? Jo can be a man's name too) connected with this, so my post here is published to clarify my own 'involvement' in the list of skeptical activists. At the end of this post I'm including links to any other relevant blog posts that clarify the misinformation in the WDDTY Facebook post.

My work / volunteering
I do indeed work two days a week (2.5) for the CHI+MED project, yes. It's funded by the EPSRC (one of seven research councils) which are funded by the taxpayer. We are not paid by the pharmaceutical industry or, for that matter, the medical devices industry. We do work with medical device companies - we're trying to reduce the harm that can happen when complicated devices are used under stressful conditions.

My job is partly to update the website and expand the project's online presence - fair enough. I also give talks about our research, in particular the work we've done on public (& stakeholder) engagement and science communication.

For the rest of the week I do not work at Diabetes UK and haven't done since June 2012. Diabetes UK made the entire Science Information Team redundant then (5 people affected) but I'm on friendly terms with them, they do good stuff and I learned a lot while there.

I have never worked for Prof Wharton and until today had never heard of him. If you google his name and add mine you'll find that he does have a secretary with my name (spelled -ie not -y) but it isn't me. There are a surprising number of people called Jo Brodie who aren't me in fact. Prof Wharton's based in Sheffield, I'm in London. I'm sure I'd do quite a good job if I did work for him though as I have a Masters degree in Neuroscience and he seems to work in that sort of area.

For the rest of the week I actually work (1.5 days) on the Teaching London Computing project - supporting computing teachers who'll be delivering the new subject / curriculum. I also volunteer one day a week (1d) at JDRF (the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) so that I can put my diabetes statistics knowledge to good use.

"I'm not medically trained"
The reason I freely admit that I'm not medically trained is because it's true and some of the things I post here touch on health and medical topics. I think it's important to state this so that people aren't misled - I am not qualified to give advice, in much the same way that this magazine isn't qualified to give medical advice. To be honest even if I was medically qualified I'd still not be acting appropriately in giving advice because I don't have access to your medical records and might give advice that isn't relevant to you.

This concept was made very clear to me while working at Diabetes UK. We took calls from the public, explained that we were science information officers and then hopefully did a competent job of explaining complex topics simply. Quite a few people referred to us as 'doctor' (of course we corrected them) and many callers maintained the belief that we were medically trained, some were surprisingly quite deferential. That bothered me because we were trying to signpost them to information, not give them medical advice, and we certainly didn't want to misrepresent ourselves. I hope to make it clear from the outset (in the blog bio bit at the top) that I'm not medically qualified and I also re-mention it in relevant posts too.

Qualifications and competence
The post mentions several other people, largely to try and imply that we're a bunch of un-medically-qualified folk who are not fit to assess the content in the magazine. By contrast, their own advisors include:

"seven medical doctors on its editorial panel, plus several PhDs and highly qualified practitioners of a number of alternative disciplines. Thousands of doctors and health practitioners of every persuasion regularly read WDDTY and comment enthusiastically. The two editors of our magazine have been medical science writers for 25 years, and every word in our pages is checked by a science editor with a an extensive history of writing and editing medical studies for the pharmaceutical industry."

You might be interested in the background of these doctors...

I'm amused by the bit pointing out that a fact checker worked for the pharmaceutical industry - the magazine often criticises Pharma for distorting evidence so I'm not sure what to make of that. Also if the magazine is called What Doctors Don't Tell You it seems odd to tout the fact that you're taking editorial advice from them.

While I am not a medical science writer I've done a fair bit of it (only 8 years, so I can see immediately how my qualifications fall dramatically short of theirs) and am not too bad at critical appraisal. Really, anyone who's been trained as a scientist is reasonably competent to critically appraise scientific or medical information - and we can all improve with practice.

WDDTY's message is that we're not qualified to comment on their magazine. While I maintain that anyone who can make sense of evidence is qualified to do this, it's not at all clear who WDDTY would accept as suitable:

• Not the eight of us because we're not medically trained
• Not doctors because they are medically trained...
• ... except some doctors who agree with them.

In addition to my sciencey qualifications I actually think that my most relevant-to-WDDTY one is that most of the complaints I put in to the ASA result in upheld adjudications or are informally resolved. I can think of only two that were rejected outright - one because the ASA disagreed with me and thought the advert wasn't misleading, the other one (recently) was because the complaint didn't actually fall within their remit.

Others have shared the Facebook status, taking WDDTY's message that we're not qualified to comment -

Personally I think the first line should read "This important magazine is being written by people who have no credentials whatsoever to give opinions on medical issues..."  my criticism is not about anyone's qualifications but based on the evidence of the magazine's published output. 

I'm a little bit miffed about the last line of course because my qualifications and experience are all about the health and medical field, just not as a doctor.

They end with:

"...write to Tesco today and ask them to re-stock What Doctors Don’t Tell You. And tell them a bit more about the people who fire off ‘complaints’ – that they are neither true customers nor people with either the training or experience to evaluate the information in our pages: customer.service@tesco.co.uk"

Unfortunately for WDDTY I (and the others mentioned) have both the training and experience to evaluate the information in their pages, and that's why they're a bit mean about us.

Others' take on being included in the list (will add as more are written)
Skepticat aka Maria
http://forum.thinkhumanism.com/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=6604

Guy Chapman's blahg
WDDTY goes "the full Errol"

WWDDTYDTY (What What Doctors Don't Tell You Don't Tell You)
Meet the people who would dictate your health care

The campaign against WDDTY continues, apparently

Lynne McTaggart has published a post [http://www.lynnemctaggart.com/blog/272-the-campaign-against-what-doctors-dont-tell-you-continues] suggesting that skeptics (we're in 'quotes' for some reason) have managed to convince Tesco that customers have been complaining about the magazine ​What Doctors Don't Tell You​ . I don't think this is quite right - any complaints I've sent to Tesco either by email or Twitter haven't focused on my customer status, only why I think the medical information in the magazine isn't up to scratch.

Ms McTaggart also suggests that we've "harrassed dozens of [WDDTY's] advertisers by reporting them to the ASA" - well I'd say the advertisers have made misleading advertising claims and the expected response to that would be to report it to the ASA. From what I can tell the ASA agreed that the ads were misleading and adjudicated against quite a few of them for breaching the advertising guidelines that all marketer are meant to follow.

Then things get a bit odder - she says that various skeptic organisations "sent their foot soldiers to hide our magazines on the shelves of stores and attempted to destroy our Google ranking."
True enough several people hid magazines, but framing this as 'foot soldiers' is a bit daft. A couple of people tweeted about doing it on the #wddty hashtag, it amused some others and they did it too. Not really a command from on high.

Regarding the Google ranking - this seems to relate to a persistent misunderstanding of how 'Do Not Link' works. When a website links to another website it is effectively implying to Google's webcrawlers that it values that website. By using tools like Do Not Link we're telling Google to ignore this implication - but we're not worsening the Google ranking, we're just not increasing it.
The sentence "One of our websites was even mysteriously hacked into" seems to suggest that "skeptics did it" but websites are hacked all the time and I suspect it's more likely a coincidence. Of course it is possible that there are rogue skeptics doing this but I doubt it.

"Simon Singh is busy these days tweeting his supporters to write Tesco to thank them for not stocking us." - yep, I followed this suggestion as it seemed a good one. I was quick enough to write to them when they were selling it, no bad idea to thank them for (eventually) listening to my concerns.

I've thanked Tesco for taking #WDDTY off its shelves

The magazine What Doctors Don't Tell You is available to purchase from their website and various other outlets throughout the UK and even abroad. It's an extremely easy magazine to get hold of, though I'm not sure why you'd want to once you understand what's in it.

It's written in an engaging narrative style and suggests that there's information out there that can help you with your health, but that doctors are keeping quiet about it - either because they don't understand it or are deliberately hiding it so that they can make more money from mainstream treatments. There's a whiff of  conspiracy theory about it but what particularly annoys me is the way it handles evidence and information.

If, when working as a science info officer at a medical charity, I'd taken the same attitude to evidence that some of the magazine's content has done I'd expect colleagues and my boss to have had a quiet word. It's all too easy to come across Medline abstracts that agree with your ideas but "in science we have to count the misses as well as the hits"⁽¹⁾ and you need to consider a wider range of evidence and put things in context.

It's extremely unusual that all the information you need to make sense of a study / paper can be found from just reading it (even in full) - you may need some prior knowledge about the health condition, or study design, to know how much weight to give it. You may need to read other documents to find out more, and ask people for their thoughts (you might have missed something). Critical appraisal can be a fun and collaborative thing.

There have been a number of things in the magazine that seem to be very wrong (and on one notable occasion the author of at least one study⁽²⁾ has stated that the magazine has drawn incorrect conclusions about the work). We all make mistakes and since I work in the area of human error (@chi_med) I can't be too snooty about that, however there seems to be an absence of 'errata'⁽³⁾ (the bit where publishers print what was previously wrong and what the corrected version should say).

Following a long exchange of emails and tweets asking several supermarkets to stop selling it Tesco has apparently soft-announced (by contacting complainants rather than press releasing anything, I believe) that it will no longer be stocking the magazine. Hooray.

I was quick enough to bleat so have sent them a thank you note, which is below.

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Good evening

I'm delighted to learn that you've decided to stop stocking the magazine What Doctors Don't Tell You. It's full of silly ideas mixed in with some sensible stuff (in my opinion this makes it all the worse as it cloaks itself by having just enough sense in it not to trigger too much amazement) but sadly the silly ideas are also potentially rather dangerous.

Implying that sunbathing can help manage diabetes (through increases in Vitamin D in the skin when exposed to the sun) is an odd take on the relationship between Vitamin D and glucose levels. Suggesting that homeopathy can help treat cancer is really quite bonkers.

Had they stuck to vague advice about eating your greens and made their medical disclaimer a bit more obvious I might not have taken against the magazine but a few of us have looked at it in some depth and have serious concerns with its content.

Thank you for taking it off your shelves. Now, is there any chance you might give the Daily Mail the heave-ho while you're at it ;-) They're usually OK on science but often pretty dire on health stuff.

Best wishes,
Jo

@JoBrodie----

(1) I'm sure loads of people have said it but I associate it with an amusing talk by Michael Shermer.
(2) Ctrl+F / search for Sun et al
(3) Well gosh! They've only gone and corrected something. Apparently the recipe was meant to say tomahto but ended up saying tomayto so they've addressed that serious problem ;)

Uh oh! I hope this doesn't become a habit: a correction in the latest issue of #WDDTY pic.twitter.com/GS4sdMoUzE
— Alan Henness (@zeno001) June 27, 2014

Note for the hard of thinking: asking a major supermarket to stop stocking a magazine has nothing at all to do with the freedom to publish or say something, which is what is generally understood by the phrase 'freedom of speech'. Or at least that's how I understand it but you're welcome to correct me, but ill-thought through comments will be deleted :)

Delighted that #WDDTY have reported on the #AllTrials campaign

In the past I've been a tiny bit⁽¹⁾ critical of both the content and editorial stance of the magazine 'What Doctors Don't Tell You'.

I am really pleased though that they've recently acknowledged (admittedly indirectly by not actually mentioning them by name) the work done by Ben Goldacre, Sense About Science and many others to put pressure on the pharmaceutical industry, via the Government, to make its full trial data available, not just the good bits.

Here's what's on WDDTY's website - UK government demands drugs industry comes clean on hidden data⁽²⁾ (7 January 2014) What Doctors Don't Tell You 

The first paragraph mentions that the UK Government wants greater openness from pharmas after having spent £424m stockpiling Tamiflu without being able to be certain if it works.

The second para mentions that the Public Accounts Committee wants all trial data from all prescription drugs published.

Then it cuts off and the last bit is hidden behind a login but this is visible on cached copies, or from this copy. WDDTY highlights the source of the news is the BBC's website, from 3 January 2013.

From a search on the BBC's site I assume it's referring to this page - Lack of drug data 'extreme concern' (3 January 2014) BBC News which mentions all the stuff above (Tamiflu, £424m, Public Accts Cttee, concern at lack of data) and it also mentions the AllTrials campaign which WDDTY leaves out in a sort of reverse cherry-pick manoeuvre.

The AllTrials campaign has been running for over a year now and many organisations have signed it, though I don't believe WDDTY have done so yet. This is both expected and surprising. Expected because the campaign is organised by people and organisations that WDDTY is critical of and has been criticised by, and surprising because the campaign is aimed at the pharmaceutical industry. Given that WDDTY sets itself contra 'Big Pharma' it would seem they'd want to be involved with something that's allied to their goals, however I suspect it will be a while before there's any 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' type of rapprochement.

A number of people have posted information to WDDTY's Facebook page about the AllTrials campaign although all of these messages appear to have been promptly removed and those posting the information have also been blocked. I did try to post information there but had already been blocked (and yes, I was polite in my disagreements), so blogged about it instead back in October.

Still, it's good news that they've now decided to highlight the aims of the campaign even if they've been a smidge untransparent about its origins, it's a start I suppose.

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(1) OK quite a lot
While there's some good sense in the magazine this is spoiled by an awful lot of very poor advice floating around in a marinade of ambiently bad advice. There's been a tendency also to overplay fairly small studies and not really put them into contex, which can be very misleading. On top of that several of the companies advertising in the magazine have made some claims that were not quite as they should be. Consequently there have been a number of complaints made to the Advertising Standards Authority upheld and recorded as adjudications on their website.

The editors have also behaved quite unusually when people have asked for evidence or pointed out discrepancies.

They've also claimed that skeptics are trying to 'ban' the magazine (I'm not aware of anyone who's actually called for that, if they have it's certainly not been picked up and campaigned on). Everyone's perfectly happy that the magazine should be printed, it's been published for 20 years for subscribers after all, but doctors / scientists / skeptic bloggers etc are concerned at it being given a prominent place in supermarkets, a kind of endorsement. I don't want it banned, I just don't want it sold in supermarkets.

Annoyingly, and I think misleadingly, the promotional material that WDDTY have been putting out about their magazine uses this claim that people are trying to ban the magazine. I think that's a bit cheeky.

(2) This is a 'do not link' link. Amusingly WDDTY's editor, Lynne McTaggart, has claimed that skeptic bloggers use this form of linking to do SEO damage to the magazine. The link cannot do that, it merely doesn't add any extra 'google juice' to the link. Whenever a site links to another site that's recorded by search engines* as the first site recommending the second. Using a neutral link means there's no recommendation, but equally there's no damage.

*Or at least has been recorded in that way in the past, search engines are changeable beasts.

WDDTY 'exposes' the ASA but slightly misses the point I think

Since I've been blocked from the "What Doctors Don't Tell You" Facebook page I can't comment there and I doubt they'd publish a letter from me so I'm posting it here. I'm still smarting a little bit from the ban to be honest as I don't think I could have been any more polite while disagreeing with someone - I pointed out that people who are critical of WDDTY might not be 'Big Pharma shills' (after all, I'm not).

Of course my blog is indexed in Google (nothing unique to me, most blogs are and Blogger is owned by Google) so this text may well show up when people search for WDDTY-related material in a way it probably wouldn't if I'd posted it on Facebook. So swings and roundabouts.

I've had a look at the December edition of this magazine and was disappointed though not surprised by the WDDTY Opinion Piece on the Advertising Standards Authority. I think bits of it are wrong, but bits of it are also encouraging people to focus on the wrong battle. In addition to the ASA there's a lot that a knowledgeable, motivated, collaborative and snarky bunch of bloggers can do and have done to try and tackle misleading advertising claims.

If you spot any mistakes in my arguments below please let me know, thanks.

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Dear WDDTY

There seems to be some confusion in your opinion piece on the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) and its role. Since the pharmaceutical industry is not allowed to advertise directly to the public in the UK the ASA does not rule on any of its marketing material. The PMCPA (Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority) is the body that makes sure that pharma companies are operating within the ABPI's (Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry) code - if drug advertising (found in the medical not general literature) is misleading then the PMCPA can take action against it. The ASA instead ensures that marketing material is compliant with the CAP (Committee of Advertising Practice) code.

In both cases the two agencies are paid for by the industries that they regulate, so I don't think the ASA is paid for by pharma companies. Undoubtedly some pharma companies have a non-prescription only medicine wing that they might advertise to the public so I'll accept that there might be some money from them.

I am more concerned that the tone of the article suggests to readers that the ASA is getting a bit above itself and can be ignored. I'm not sure that this is helpful to any of your readers who are making health claims without robust evidence because they may not realise what happens if someone reports them to the ASA.

I've probably reported only around 30 adverts or marketing items to the ASA. In one or two cases the ASA disagreed with me and felt there was no case to answer, a few more have been resolved informally but rather a lot have resulted in an adjudication in 'my' favour. To be honest I'd have preferred that the organisations involved just amended their pages when first asked, and saved themselves and the ASA the bother.

Within this relatively small, compared with other skeptic bloggers, number of complaints I have had a pretty high success* rate and this is what I've learned from going through the process several times.

*I think it's important to say that my definition of success is a misleading claim being removed or modified and not just someone getting told off. I'd be lying though if I said I hadn't also enjoyed some of the worst cases being told off.

A complaint is made to the ASA
Initially the ASA will probably contact the organisation / marketer and ask them to amend any misleading claims. Even if they do so promptly the ASA will still list this on their website as an 'informally resolved' case - i.e. the mere act of me reporting a website tends to result in their trading name being listed on the ASA (this is why I'd prefer to have a quiet word with the marketer first but this rarely goes well).

Marketer decides to defend their claims
If they decide to challenge the ASA by providing evidence then the ASA will deliberate further and make an adjudication. Either it will go in the marketer's favour (not upheld) or it won't (upheld) but again in either scenario the case will be listed on the ASA's website on its own separate page and will likely be tweeted.

Marketer told to amend claims, marketer doesn't
If, after an adjudication is upheld, the marketer still doesn't amend the claims then the ASA may add them to its list of non-compliant online advertisers. It can also work with search engines to remove paid-for advertising and take out an advert itself about the misleading claims. In parallel with this there's a high chance that it will be tweeted and blogged about and may even make it to the mainstream press. The ASA has recently (as of 21 November 2013) strengthened its relationship with Trading Standards and if the claims are still problematic then the ASA can refer the marketer to Trading Standards. At that point things could well become rather serious as Trading Standards can bring a case against them to court which is likely to result in a fine or (rarely) a prison sentence.

Bloggers and newspapers might publicise this further
Again, in parallel, there will probably be some blogging and possibly mainstream news articles about this which can damage search results (when people look for information or a company website they will find information pointing out that the company has been making misleading claims).

'Using' the ASA
To say that Simon Singh and the Nightingale Collaboration 'use' the ASA is a bit silly, since that is the body that deals specifically with misleading consumer advertising. Though on a much smaller scale you could also say that I 'use' the ASA to persuade marketers to make their claims more reasonable.

In some cases I report people to Trading Standards, sometimes to the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority. More recently I have reported some marketers to the CHNC (Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council) for misleading claims, where that marketer is registered with that professional body. The CHNC has suggested that its members should follow ASA / CAP guidelines.

Credit where it's due
Simon Perry devised the Fishbarrel tool which is a plugin for Chrome. However if readers of the Nightingale Collaboration's newsletter want to take part in a particular claim they rarely submit complaints to the ASA precisely for the reason of not swamping them. The Nightingale Collaboration usually asks readers to share relevant examples with them, and then they submit a master complaint - this is more efficient.

Don't get bogged down with just evidence - medical governance is important too
The ASA isn't just interested in evidence (robust evidence please, not these feeble little studies that show a small positive effect) but also what types of conditions people are talking about. There are a number of serious conditions that require the care of appropriately qualified doctors and if a website or leaflet is claiming to treat people with those conditions, but doesn't have a doctor on-site, then this is problematic - irrespective of the quality of any evidence.

Be careful what you wish for
Dismantling the ASA will not stop bloggers from reporting misleading trading claims to Trading Standards or other regulatory agencies. It also won't stop them writing about misleading claims, and in terms of search engine results that may be the bigger problem for those who rely on online reputation. I certainly can't imagine things would be much better for sellers of alternative medicine if the government began regulating it directly.

More strangeness to come from 'What Doctors Don't Tell You'

Being not very good at setting health information in its proper context and struggling with critically appraising medical articles is one thing but conspiracy theories are a new strange for WDDTY. I spotted this earlier today.

I'm scratching my head a bit at this one to be honest. Most of the computer-related glitches mentioned can just as easily be explained by successful phishing attempts (where you click on a rogue site that looks like a genuine one, it asks for your password, you supply it and your password is used to open and compromise your real account). These are commonplace on Twitter for example - often a compromised account is used to send a message with a link in it to that person's friends... who click on it, hand over their password... and so on.

In fact it's so common that Twitter has pretty much blocked people from sending links* via Direct Messages. It also provides information on what to do if your account's been compromised https://support.twitter.com/articles/31796-my-account-has-been-compromised#

Most 'hacking' is probably 'phishing' as far as I'm aware.

Visiting iffy websites (unwittingly, when clicking on a link from a friend whose account's been compromised) could also explain the viruses.

I've never heard of any skeptic collecting someone's data but fair enough I really don't know what this refers to. Any website with Google Analytics collects some information about every visitor (time of visit, length of visit, type of web browser, what keywords they used to search Google to reach the site) - this is commonly used on pretty much ALL websites and hasn't got anything to do with skepticism. The opportunities to use this for 'evil purposes' are pretty limited to be honest.

I've been burgled, the burglar left a pair of socks - the Police were fairly puzzled too. Since burglary is not a rare crime and not particularly associated with skepticism my assumption is that the burglars were ordinary burglars and not in the pay of Big Pharma. I wonder if the gold watches were dropped in error by the burglars who'd pinched them from another property.

We skeptics should certainly try not to be rude though, no disagreement there. It's perfectly possible to disagree and remain on civil terms, although people calling us thieves doesn't make it easy.

*It's possible that this is a glitch though.

Tally of Facebook posts and press releases by WDDTY about The Times' articles

The last time The Times wrote an article about the magazine WDDTY (What Doctors Don't Tell You) they emitted numerous emails to their subscribers and published Facebook wall posts about it, to the point that I almost began to lose count.

Not this time though, I'm getting in early and totting them up. If I've missed any I'm sure someone will let me know.

1 November 2013 
At 13:31 WDDTY add this to their Facebook wall STILL TRYING TO BAN US discussing the fact that there would be a new article about them in The Times.

2 November 2013
The Times publishes its second article about the magazine, prompting WDDTY to post, at 20:58, another post called THE ELEPHANT STOMPS ON THE FLEA AGAIN FOR GOOD MEASURE

3 November 2013
Published at approximarely half past nine: WHY THE TIMES REPEATED THE SAME ATTACK ON WDDTY

4 November 2013
At around 8.30pm one of the editors of the magazine (Lynne McTaggart) published a post on her blog about Medical McCarthyism and cross-posted it to Facebook with the caps-lock-y title HAVE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER. . .TAKEN HOMEOPATHY? (this counts as posted once really I think, let's not be unreasonable). It's an odd sampling method.

Ms McTaggart repeats the claim that WDDTY has never said that homeopathy cures cancer - hmm, 'opinion is divided' on that one.

5 November 2013
A link was published to a post on the 'Adverse Reactions' blog on WDDTY's community section, called The Inconvenient Truth (there's a very interesting comment from a Dr, I hope it isn't deleted, which incidentally calls for WDDTY to sign the All Trials petition, as many others (including me) have).

6 November 2013
This morning Lynne McTaggart published THE REAL PSEUDOSCIENCE HERE on her own Facebook page.

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Previous press releases from WDDTY, in October 2013

• Our Word
• What the Times didn't tell you 
• The WDDTY wars 
• Subscribe before we are banned

The liability statement in "What Doctors Don't Tell You" is kinda fun #wddty

"While every care is taken in preparing this material, the publishers cannot accept any responsibility for any damage or harm caused by any treatment, advice or information contained in this publication. You should consult a qualified practitioner before undertaking any treatment." Source: What Doctors Don't Tell You, October 2012, p3 (bottom left, blue panel)

This seems like a perfectly sensible liability statement / disclaimer. It just made me chuckle given their seeming mistrust of the medical profession.

I wonder why they've hidden the statement at the bottom left of a panel in which they've put all the editorial information... rather than placing this somewhere more prominent. Probably every magazine does this but since they're keen to give people good health  advice you think they'd want readers to see that warning.

Sensible person takes photo... :-)

@jobrodie Just for the lazier among us... #WDDTY twitter.com/BsSkeptics/sta…
— David James (@BsSkeptics) October 4, 2012

The picture has stopped showing up but can be seen in the link below - don't seem to be able to get an embed code for this link though, so can't embed it here.

https://twitter.com/StortSkeptic/status/253862603527426049/photo/1