I know Christo­pher Mal­oney is a quack because this is how quacks act. PZ Myers wrote a blog post way back when point­ing out that Mal­oney is a quack, a natur­o­path­ic “doc­tor” in Maine. He urged par­ents to skip vac­ci­nat­ing their kids, and to have them drink berry juice and take gar­lic pills instead. That isn’t how the real world works, alas. The flu vac­cine real­ly does stop the flu, while black elder­ber­ry has noth­ing like the clin­i­cal evi­dence required for this sort of rec­om­men­da­tion.

Rather than tak­ing that crit­i­cism to heart, Mal­oney had his wife, a lawyer, send nasty­grams to the hosts of blogs that crit­i­cized her hub­by. That behav­ior, while cer­tain­ly loy­al, did­n’t dimin­ish any­one’s sense that Christo­pher Mal­oney is a quack.

Now she’s stirred the hor­net’s nest by send­ing a cease and desist let­ter to PZ Myers. And she insists that charges of quack­ery are unjus­ti­fied because “Dr. Mal­oney has impec­ca­ble edu­ca­tion­al cre­den­tials, receiv­ing a pre-med­ical degree from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty and a med­ical degree from the Nation­al Col­lege of Nat­ur­al Medicine.”

There’re a few prob­lems with that sen­tence. A pre-med degree does­n’t mean did­dly for a physi­cian’s com­pe­tence or qual­i­fi­ca­tions. It isn’t even required for admis­sion to med­ical school. And attend­ing med­ical school is no guar­an­tee against being or becom­ing a quack. Nor is NCNM an insti­tu­tion so pres­ti­gious as to dis­suade crit­i­cism. As Mrs. Mal­oney acknowl­edges, one is enti­tled to believe that natur­opa­thy is quack­ery, and so it can hard­ly be “libel per se” to express that belief about the prac­tice in gen­er­al and in par­tic­u­lar. And if natur­opa­thy is real­ly quack­ery, then truth is an absolute defense.

So, the OED defines quack as: “A per­son who dis­hon­est­ly claims to have med­ical or sur­gi­cal skill, or who adver­tis­es false or fake reme­dies; a med­ical impos­tor.” The low­est-hang­ing fruit here is “false or fake reme­dies.” This need not imply any intent to deceive on the part of Mal­oney, only that his med­i­cine lacks any merit. 

That con­clu­sion is easy to jus­ti­fy. A let­ter from the Mass­a­chu­setts Med­ical Soci­ety observes:

Natur­opa­thy is both poten­tial­ly and actu­al­ly inju­ri­ous when prac­ticed accord­ing to the accept­ed stan­dards of the pro­fes­sion. This injury is like­ly to be due to the fail­ure of the natur­o­path­ic prac­ti­tion­er to rec­om­mend appro­pri­ate med­ical treatment.
Unsci­en­tif­ic natur­o­path­ic beliefs pose irra­tional chal­lenges to proven pub­lic health mea­sures, most notably child­hood immunizations.
Irra­tional, unsci­en­tif­ic beliefs and prac­tices abound in natur­opa­thy, liken­ing it more to a cult than to a valid form of health care. These beliefs and prac­tices are not mere­ly at the fringes but are the stan­dards of the field. They are advo­cat­ed by the lead­ers themselves.…
Natur­opa­thy involves many non­sen­si­cal diag­nos­tic prac­tices that main­stream med­i­cine con­sid­ers quack­ery but natur­opaths con­sid­er standard.…
The dura­tion and set­ting of natur­o­path­ic clin­i­cal train­ing, even over­look­ing its con­tent, is inad­e­quate for pro­duc­ing com­pe­tent pri­ma­ry care physi­cians. This is clear from a com­par­i­son of the train­ing of med­ical doc­tors to that of natur­opaths. Just as a new­ly grad­u­at­ed med­ical doc­tor, no mat­ter how well-inten­tioned, would not be allowed to assume the role of a pri­ma­ry care physi­cian, nei­ther should this be allowed for a natur­opath whose train­ing is clear­ly inferior.

The Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety writes: “Avail­able sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence does not sup­port claims that natur­o­path­ic med­i­cine is effec­tive for most health prob­lems. Most of the claims of effec­tive­ness are based on indi­vid­ual cas­es, med­ical records, and sum­maries of prac­ti­tion­er­s’ clin­i­cal expe­ri­ences.” The NIH’s Nation­al Cen­ter for Com­ple­men­tary and Alter­na­tive Med­i­cine notes: “Some beliefs and approach­es of natur­o­path­ic prac­ti­tion­ers are not con­sis­tent with con­ven­tion­al med­i­cine, and their safe­ty may not be sup­port­ed by sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence. For exam­ple, some prac­ti­tion­ers may not rec­om­mend child­hood vac­ci­na­tions that are stan­dard prac­tice in con­ven­tion­al med­i­cine.” That rather tends to sup­port the con­clu­sion that, by the dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion and like all natur­opaths, Christo­pher Mal­oney is a quack.