Holistic / Wholistic Thoughts on CNME-NACIQI-ED [pre] Determination, the 2026 CT ND Final Report, and Knowledge Integrity, Ethics, Commerce, and Positive Freedom

here, musings by way of some AI-LLM muscle within my own Naturocrit'in on these Naturocritters.  I’ve been thinking about CNME, NACIQI, and ED in light of ‘all that I know.’ And in gaming-out the either thumbs up or thumbs down that ED will do, I realized that such is just a surface distraction / the bushwa [a nice Americanism?] from the larger issues at hand. Therein, some thoughts before I even know about what ED will decide...

[my notations are below in blue and right-aligned]

001. two taskings were assigned to Perplexity:

001.a. “In terms of the findings of the attached 2026 CT ND Final Report PDF and the soon-to-be-determined fate of CNME by way of NACIQI and ED, expound upon the attached DOCX commentary.”

[Note: The commentary was this quick ‘back of a napkin’ scribble:

 “Whether ED determines a thumbs up or at [oops, 'a'] thumbs down for CNME, I feel that what I’m watching is superficial. What’s dire is not being addressed, in terms of both knowledge integrity, ethics, commerce, and the integrity of freedom — in so many ways. So, it’s like watching the leaves change on a tree — the thumbs up or thumbs down — on a tree that eats people. All that’s being talked about are the leaves, not the trunk and root issues which are more dire. E.g., the homicidal tree metaphor. All eyes are averted in terms of the dire; it is so decreed, structured, and in terms of processes...baked in. Special treatment...tree-tment. [I’m in my old man punning mood...].”]

001.b. “In terms of the entire system -- federal administrative, state legislative, academic accreditation, broad investigative and evidentiary malaise -- create an explanation of the national, state, and intellectual / lack-of-intellectual  virtues and values / vices and transgressions as relates to knowledge integrity, ethics, commerce and positive freedom in the Snyderian sense.”

002. answers [all puns aside]:

It's the 2000th Post!!!

It's the 2000th post.

It's about science, reason, critical thinking, ethical behavior in terms of the professions, and consumer rights in terms of commerce.

It's about laying bare nonsense disguised as reason- and science-backed, and unfair trade.

It's about the public's right not be be used as cannon-fodder by educational institutions which sell pseudoscience as science and fill their coffers with students' Federal loan money based on those false labels.

It's about recording it all for future engagements, providing an arsenal for whomever ends up needing such.

--- 

[Musings this 2026-06-04:

a) For some reason, the 500th Post post from 2011 is the most viewed Naturocrit Podcast post of all time.  There is also a 1000th Post post from 2015.  And a 1500th Post post from 2018.

b) And sorry, if it's a bother, but I still enjoy right-aligned text for short scribbly things! 'Easier to change the world than to change me.'  I've been using 'sauce for the goose' lately, and since I regard naturopathy as quite 'hasty, messy, or careless' in the sense of logic, therein scribbly, yes,'sauce for the goose' all around.

c) So, also, I put the above text into the Perplexity thread that generated the past few posts.  The 'what can be said' response:

"This passage is from the same Cullen/Naturocrit framework, and reading it against the CT ND context as it stands in June 2026 produces a remarkably precise alignment across every clause.

"Science, reason, critical thinking, ethical behavior in terms of the professions"

This maps directly onto the dual analytical failure the CT record documents. The CT Final Report's Cullen-Snyder Framework applies exactly this standard — epistemic rigor (science, reason, critical thinking) and professional ethics simultaneously — and finds CT naturopathy failing on both axes. The NACIQI finding adds a federal institutional voice to the same conclusion: CNME failed as a quality authority not only because its standards were weak but because it rationalized that weakness, which is an ethical failure of the credentialing profession, not merely a procedural one.

"Laying bare nonsense disguised as reason- and science-backed"

This is the precise analytical operation the CT Final Report performs with the Cullen framework — identifying "science camouflage," the mechanism by which vitalism, homeopathy, and energy medicine [and kind!!!] are presented under the exterior of a four-year doctoral credential, state licensure, and clinical title. The CT Board's NABNE substitution is itself an instance of this same disguise operating at the regulatory level: substituting one acronym for another to obscure a substantive federal finding behind administrative-looking paperwork.

"Unfair trade"

This is the most underappreciated dimension of the CT ND situation and the one with the most direct consumer protection purchase. Connecticut's Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA), CGS §42-110b, prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce. An ND presenting homeopathy, constitutional hydrotherapy, or non-standard Lyme testing as scientifically supported medicine, charging clinical fees for these services under state licensure, constitutes a colorable CUTPA claim. The state's licensure of these practices does not immunize the individual practitioner from deceptive trade practice liability — licensure authorizes practice, it does not certify the truth of the scientific claims made in the commercial context of that practice. [That's right baby!] This is a largely unexplored enforcement avenue in CT.

"The public's right not to be used as cannon-fodder by educational institutions which sell pseudoscience as science and fill their coffers with students' Federal loan money based on those false labels"

This clause has acquired specific and urgent meaning in 2026 that it did not fully have in 2017 when it was written. The University of Bridgeport's College of Naturopathic Medicine — the CT-specific ND institution Cullen has documented extensively, which shut down in 2022 — was a CNME-accredited program. Its students took out Title IV federal loan debt to attend a program whose accreditor has just received a 12-0 NACIQI denial recommendation on the grounds that it "fundamentally compromised its integrity as a reliable authority on educational quality." Those graduates of UBCNM are, in the precise language of this passage, cannon-fodder — they are bearing federal loan obligations for credentials whose accreditor has been found by the federal advisory system to have allowed substandard outcomes while citing student demographics as justification. The "borrower defense to repayment" complaint Cullen mentions filing with ED in 2017 is now structurally far more viable than it was then: borrower defense requires showing that the institution made a misrepresentation on which the student relied. A CNME-accredited program that marketed its graduates as scientifically trained naturopathic physicians while CNME maintained the standards NACIQI found deficient has a serious borrower defense exposure.

"Recording it all for future engagements, providing an arsenal for whomever ends up needing such"

This clause describes exactly what the documentary record now is. The 2017 podcast scripts, the letters to CTDPH that went unanswered, the archived naturopathic organization websites, the legislative history of PA 14-231, the 2026 CT Final Report, the NACIQI March 2026 transcript, and the May 2026 CT Board meeting video together constitute precisely the arsenal this passage anticipates. Each layer of the record — the epistemic critique, the unanswered regulatory complaints, the federal findings, the board's evasive response — is a separate evidentiary strand that, in combination, supports multiple legal and policy theories simultaneously:

•     Legislative action to amend CGS §20-34;
•     CUTPA enforcement against individual practitioners;
•     Borrower defense claims by ND students;
•     APA-style challenge to the CT Board's ultra vires NABNE vote 

[the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act (UAPA), CGS Chapter 54; in essence, a successful APA-style challenge strips away the administrative buffer the board created and forces CT's regulatory apparatus to confront directly what the NABNE substitution was designed to obscure: that the statutory foundation of CT naturopathic licensure is anchored to an accreditor the federal system has found to have fundamentally compromised integrity];

•     Informed consent litigation by harmed patients;
•     Federal oversight attention to CT's regulatory non-response to the NACIQI finding.

The passage turns out to be a description of the strategic function of long-form documentation in regulatory and consumer protection contexts — and the CT naturopathy record is now one of the more complete such documentations in any state. Whether it is used depends on who picks up the arsenal." 

d) What's there to say about resembling oneself, across the years, just in varied forms and voices?

Like Bob Seger sang in 1976: "Well, all of Chuck's children are out there playing his licks." {with the children being the present creations / forms / voices, and Chuck's licks the past iterations.]

Gaming Out the ED SDO’s CNME Determination Due Later This Month in Terms of Connecticut NDs

here, speculation, from within one of my Perplexity threads regarding CT, CNME, NACIQI, and ED:

001. the Perplexity prompt:

"What is the gamed out likely determination from ED regarding CNME due to NACIQI's determination based on past determinations and current 2026 rule requirements?"

002. the answer:

"This is a multi-vector question — the procedural mechanics, the political environment, historical SDO behavior, and the new AIM rulemaking context all bear on the likely outcome.

[Regarding AIM: AIM stands for Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization. It is a negotiated rulemaking committee convened by the U.S. Department of Education to rewrite the federal regulations governing accreditor recognition — primarily 34 CFR Part 602, which is the exact regulatory framework CNME was found to violate. [...]  AIM does not just create a new regulatory environment going forward.  Its consensus language retroactively confirms that CNME's conduct  violated the principles the current administration has now formally  adopted as federal policy.]

The Procedural Mechanics: What ED Can Actually Do

Under 34 CFR §602.36, the Senior Department Official (SDO) — currently the Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education — has 90 days from the March 24-25, 2026 NACIQI meeting to issue a final determination. That window closes on or around late June 2026. The SDO has four options:

• Concur with NACIQI — deny CNME recognition outright
• Grant recognition with conditions — a shorter recognition period with required compliance reports
• Grant limited recognition — narrowed scope
• Override NACIQI — grant full recognition despite the 12-0 denial recommendation

My 2018 TNP Episode 14b on NUHS Naturopathic 'Duh': Devil's Advocacy, 'Duh' Snark, 2018 as a Warning Shot for 2026 CNME Issues, and Persistent Hooks

here -- with NUHS on my mind and initially likely because I read the NUHS faculty testimony from the March NACIQI meetings and because for some reason I see a decent amount of persistent listens or reads to the 2018 Naturocrit Podcast Episode 14b which deals with ND Smith's naturopathy textbook of 2008, its CNME compliance, and his academic home at National University of Health Sciences; and, because, admittedly, I forget about the middle of the country in terms of Naturopathyland, per Flyover Effect, and this includes the Illinois school so lets give that area some love -- I'll flesh out some musings through Perplexity AI-LLM interrogations across 2018 to the present 2026:

001. Episode 014b, titled "ND Smith and Spoliation [spo lee a tion] of Higher Education Science Integrity and Medical Ethics", is here as mp3 [Podbean; Archive.org]; and its script is here [Blogger];

002. regarding my use of spoliation [drawn from a query at the end of the Perplexity thread used]:

"'Spoliation' in the episode title ends up working as a pretty sharp metaphor for what the script documents at NUHS in 2018 and what becomes visible about CNME by 2026: not literal destruction of evidence, but a progressive damaging of the integrity of 'higher education science' in and around naturopathic programs that CNME accredits.

In law, spoliation is the destruction, alteration, or concealment of evidence by a party who has a duty to preserve it. The script’s title—'ND Smith and Spoliation of Higher Education Science Integrity and Medical Ethics'—borrows that concept and redirects it: instead of shredding documents, institutions are said to be shredding or contaminating the category of science as applied to health‑professional education [...by] eroding the boundary conditions that protect scientific categories and medical ethics from sectarian belief and pseudoscience."

[I'll also add that as mentioned in the previous post, NUHS does not apparently share their presumably dismal NPLEX licensure exam scores publicly...a kind of evidence concealment]. 

003. Perplexity tasking:

003.a. [as a Devil's Advocacy] "For the attached podcast episode script: a) Does the author's argument withstand scrutiny?; b) Does the author seem intolerant?; c) Does it seem the author respects the differentiation of belief and scientific processes?; d) What situations resemble the context that is being describe from, say, the past 100 years?";