in this multi-part Naturocrit Podcast Episode 015, aka s02e05, retitled from “The JACM 2019 Special Issue on Naturopathy” to “A Qualitative Content Analysis of Curated World Naturopathic Federation Publications and Reports Employing the Online Misinformation Engagement Framework Within a Paradigm of Methodological Naturalism,” I'll be sharing a study I've recently written in an semi-scholarly manner.
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In this first part of Episode 015 Part C, I'll cover the context of that conversion in terms of the study or project, what I've termed naturopathy's methodological con-fabulation, and naturopathy's vitalistic / supernaturalistic oncology through the institutional structures of healthcare publishing, the law, and academics.
Welcome to, as that robot voice says, The Naturocrit Podcast, and thank you for boldly listening.
What ARE we even talking about?
Well, this podcast series is my take on naturopathic medicine, an area I've been studying for about thirty-three years, including my time in so-called 'scientific nonsectarian naturopathic medical school'.
My approach is a pairing of scientific skepticism and a deep knowledge of naturopathy's intimate details.
In previous episodes of this series, I established that naturopathy is, essentially, a kind of knowledge blending, misrepresentation, and irrationality.
I have termed naturopathy both 'an epistemic conflation falsely posing itself as an epistemic delineation' and 'the naturopathillogical':
the science-exterior is mixed with what is scientific, then that whole muddle is absurdly claimed to be science as an entire category, while particular sectarian science-ejected oath-obligations and -requirements are coded or camouflaged, therein effectively disguising naturopathy's system of beliefs in public view.
Naturopathy's ultimate achievement is a profound erosion of scientific integrity and freedom of belief packaged in the marketing veneers ‘natural, holistic, integrative and alternative’ and improperly embedded in the academic category ‘science’.
Introduction: A Reflection, An Explanation, and a Broad Plan.
Howdy folks…
Admittedly, part B3 of this Episode 15 was published in October of 2023 and it has been about five years since I published part A1.
In all transparency, I’ve been working towards a doctorate in health sciences.
This final Part C of Episode 015 arose out of one piece of that educational process.
For this Part C, I’ve decided to subsume the “The JACM 2019 Special Issue on Naturopathy” aka SIN endeavor – based on a Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine issue published about 5 years ago, so often mentioned in the parts listed just now – into a larger project that is now titled:
“A Qualitative Content Analysis of Curated World Naturopathic Federation Publications and Reports Employing the Online Misinformation Engagement Framework Within a Paradigm of Methodological Naturalism.”
I’m excited about this, and I formulated it to be interesting to me while still within the footprint of the recent scholarly research parameters I conceived the endeavor within.
An analysis of the SIN, not to be forgotten, will occur as an Appendix within the WNF project I’ll present / within this study I’ll present, and this is because so many participants within the SIN are primary authors and supervising editors of the material the larger project centers on.
And, similarly in terms of context, both endeavors center upon…Australia.
Canada and the U.S. too, will feature, because Australia, Canada, and the U.S. are what I primarily center the study on.
For someone who studied a lot of Australian film and literature in the early 1990s during my B.A., the Australia aspect is quite interesting in terms of context.
The intention of this Part C will be to present
in a palatable manner, as opposed to merely by way of its academic language or an academic paper’s mode.
Yet, I’ll be talking about the study and pertinents in sidebars as well as presenting the study proper.
Because…why not?
I would prefer this as an audience member myself, and as a classroom teacher for twenty-something years, it’s also my preferred mode.
Finally, in this Part C, I’ll comment upon the experience of being an asynchronous contemporary online student at the two schools I’ve recently attended to study health sciences:
Excelsior University for my master’s [excellent] and Bay Path University [shit] as I was working towards their DHSc.
This will be augmented by my experience of being a credentialed health care educator.
One addition to this audio podcast file that listeners should employ while listening for the full or in-depth experience is a PDF of PowerPoint slides I will refer to that I have uploaded to the Archive.org web page hosting this episode’s Part C.
Methodological Con-fabulations: Examples Regarding Naturopathic Institutional Shenanigans and Vitalistic or Supernaturalism-Focused Oncology.
[00.07.47]
Sidebar:
You’ll have to indulge my need for an idiosyncratic term to encompass naturopathy’s shenanigans here, and that term will represent the concept of ‘a conspiracy of fabulation’ with fabulation indicating ‘an act of inventing in a fictional or fantastical manner what is untrue or fanciful.’
I will shorten that concept to ‘con-fabulates’ with a hyphen after the letter ‘n.’
It feels suitable, and maybe its revenge for all the times I have to read naturopaths changing the word disease to dis-ease -- as if the only thing that matters is how you feel, when sick, which itself is a radical and insulting narrowing of the entire reality of illnesses, conditions, diseases, pathologies and the like.
Because disease has both subjective and objective aspects.
I will later also contrast the normal footprint of science, methodological naturalism, with naturopathy’s methodological con-fabulism.
So, a different usage of confabulates than as ‘consults.’
I do like the ‘honest liar’ aspect of the neuropsychiatric usage of confabulates, in the sense that naturopathic thinking is what I’ve termed naturopathillogical: a mixture of the honest and the false.
Anyway…
End sidebar.
Before I delve into the WNF Project -- which will be quasi-scholarly as an approach for this episode as I’ve said – I have some examples which will serve to highlight how naturopathy con-fabulates or basically rhetorically invents its epistemic status by way of three categorizations: the peer-reviewed scholarly article form, state statute, and the academic area -- the publishing-law-academic triad of institutionalization.
I will also provide what I’ll call a ‘spray’ regarding, since it is so memorable from the study materials I’ll be relating, vitalistic oncology or naturopathy’s now quite confident self-proclaimed expertise as cancer care providers.
The Article: The Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Article Form.
This may be the easiest kind of ‘heist’ one can engage in, these days.
The example article is both separate from and a part of the Project and the SIN contents.
Within the project, it is a primary template for the “Chapter 10 - International Prevalence of Consultations with a Naturopath/Naturopathic Doctor” within the 2021 document “Naturopathy Practice, Effectiveness, Economics & Safety” which they often call the Health Technology Assessment.
Outside of the WNF material, the article in question is:
Steel, et al. (2022). International prevalence of consultation with a naturopathic practitioner: A systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ Open, 12(7), e056075. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056075
At issue is the broad claim of science upon the essentially naturopathic.
For the former, the within-the-project version, the authors listed are:
“Amie Steel, Andy McLintock, Janet Schloss, Holger Cramer,
Rebecca Redmond, Joshua Goldenberg, Matthew Leach, Joanna Harnett, Claudine Van
De Venter, Ryan Bradley, Jason Hawrelak, Kieran Cooley, Brenda Leung, [and] Jon
Wardle.”
For the latter, the outside-the-project version, the authors listed are:
“Steel, A., Redmond, R., Schloss, J., Cramer, H., Goldenberg, J., Leach, M. J., Harnett, J. E., Van de Venter, C., McLintock, A., Bradley, R., Hawrelak, J., Cooley, K., Leung, B., Adams, J., & Wardle, J.”
Particularly the authors Steel, Leach, Bradley, Cooley, Adams, and Wardle – of the about fifteen authors listed for both of those versions -- are quite abundant in incidence within the project material and the SIN.
Huh?
Doesn’t peer-review mean stringent vetting?
Perhaps…but not in a legitimate science process sense, sometimes.
The statement within the journal article by the fifteen authors that catches my attention is:
“The curriculum of these naturopathic programs typically includes content in health sciences (e.g., anatomy, physiology, chemistry and biochemistry), clinical sciences (e.g., clinical examination, differential diagnosis), social sciences (e.g., psychology, counseling), and naturopathic sciences (e.g., nutritional medicine, herbal medicine, lifestyle medicine, dietary modification, homeopathy and manual therapies).”
This statement does not happen within the WNF material version.
“Naturopathic science” within all the WNF material only refers, by name, to an Italian naturopathy school.
In fact, the root “scien” does not happen in the WNF version of this article, either.
The supporting citation for the BMJ Open version of the article is one of the documents the WNF Project includes, the “WNF - Naturopathic Roots Report” of 2016.
So, what is science within naturopathy, by way of that quote?
The ‘tell’ or the indication of broad laxity that I see, at the textual level – which appears to me as con-fabulation or invention in an ink-on-paper sense – is the inclusion of homeopathy, particularly, within “naturopathic sciences”.
Nowhere in the cited WNF material supporting that quote, that is in the “WNF - Naturopathic Roots Report” of 2016, is homeopathy established in any manner through scientific processes.
In fact, oddly enough, nowhere in that 2016 Naturopathic Roots Report is there the term “naturopathic sciences.”
Importantly, WNF simultaneously writes of:
“The strong science-based training of most government accredited naturopathic programs” within their 2015 “World Naturopathic Federation Report: Findings from the 1st World Naturopathic Federation Survey” document and the copyright page of the Health Technology Assessment states “important note: healthcare and medicine are ever-changing sciences.”
I shit you not.
So, the posture is that within science-based as training is homeopathy, and the categorization ‘science subset healthcare and medicine subset naturopathy subset homeopathy.’
Therein, homeopathy is science -- supposedly.
The statement is different within the WNF cited material as compared to the 2022 published BMJ Open article.
In the “WNF - Naturopathic Roots Report” of 2016, on page 6, when a similar summative list is made there for the ‘unique naturopathic’ area of the naturopathic curriculum, it is presented as:
“nutrition, herbal medicine, hydrotherapy, physical therapy, homeopathy, lifestyle counseling, etc.)” and instead of “naturopathic sciences” the term used to categorize that collection is “naturopathic disciplines.”
Homeopathy there is termed a “core” naturopathic modality in the sense of being present in, as the report states, 77% of global naturopathy practice and 66% of global naturopathic curricula.
Of note in that report is the presence of homeopathy at 100% for North American naturopathic curricula.
As we’ll see ahead, the North American model is ascendant, and the WNF seeks to standardized it across the globe.
That migration of homeopathy as a “naturopathic discipline” in the source document, which is merely a poll across many countries and not any kind of process that scientifically establishes homeopathy’s legitimacy, to “naturopathic sciences” within a peer-reviewed context, is the crux of the shenanigan I’m pointing out.
The journal categorizes its contents as “medical research”, but it is not uncommon the have homeopathy categorized by contemporary medicine as “witchcraft.”
For example, the British Medical Association communicated such a label as reported in The Telegraph in “Homeopathy is Witchcraft, Say Doctors” on May 10, 2010.
With all due respect concerning acknowledging the unique, horrific phenomenon, particularly in Europe, of the persecution of women as witches.
Oddly enough, it is quite magical to convert “naturopathic disciplines” into “naturopathic sciences.”
A kind of alchemy, a kind of abracadabra: ink-on-paper magic.
And, of course, science is science: there are no special conditions of epistemic charity regarding a science that is simultaneously or permissively ‘naturopathic’ -- in light of what the naturopathic is.
Such an example, as I have quoted, is a way of measuring, as I’ve said, laxity and an inherent lack of integrity to the domain.
And it is not atypical for naturopathy to claim homeopathy is within science while the ascendant North American naturopathy model, by way of the Association of Accredited Naturopathic Medical Colleges (AANMC) and their 2019 Core Competencies document states:
“naturopathic medical graduates critically appraise, assimilate and apply scientific evidence to improve healthcare.”
Right.
Within the BMJ Open article example here, a similar process of posed but inevitably faked or con-fabulated science is dressed up in a tuxedo of peer-review and demonstrated, obviously, to exist in process as a collective or social norm.
But it is no different than someone, not wearing a tuxedo, solo, claiming magic carpets are science on soap box on a street corner, epistemically speaking.
Within the article, additionally, of course, naturopathy’s science-ejected vitalism is coded as the “healing power of nature” within what the article terms “codified philosophies and principles […which are] globally accepted by the profession.”
Those principles and so-called philosophies are throughout the 2016 material that I listed above that naturopathy terms their curriculum’s “health sciences […] clinical sciences […] social sciences […and] naturopathic sciences.”
That opaque vitalism and kind within posed science is naturopathy’s codified coding or disguising and naturopathy’s codified false-labeling.
This is essential to understanding global naturopathy: wherein it seems the democratic processes of science take a back seat to and are merely a veneer disguising hardened, institutionalized processes of authoritarian peculiar declaration.
As equally important is the positioning of naturopathy as globally consistent in terms of its “philosophies and principles […and overarching categorization of] science.”
The WNF published an article collection in 2020 in the journal Advances in Integrative Medicine – material that is separate from the WNF material of this study I’ll present and its SIN appendix – as what they termed a “Special Edition of World Naturopathic Federation COVID-19 Rapid Reviews of Naturopathic Medicine.”
[from Hunter, J. (2020). Rapid peer reviewer checklist for rapid reviews - RAPeer (DRAFT). Advances in Integrative Medicine, 7(4), 183–186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aimed.2020.07.003]
That collection was comprised of 11 articles centering around a few typical natural products they prescribe.
No where in the articles is there any mention of vitalism, either transparently or opaquely, principles, or philosophy while this is all under Elsevier’s heading “science direct.”
The term “evidence” actually occurs 107 times in my OCR of the collection.
There are such expressions, in terms of science and evidence, as:
“there is currently no reliable or sufficient scientific evidence […] this review found no research evidence […] no evidence acquired […] is there any evidence? […] until conclusive evidence becomes available […] collectively the evidence […] there is currently no evidence […] given the body of evidence […] there is no strong evidence to date […] mechanistic evidence […] observational and experimental evidence […] moderate to high quality evidence […] low quality evidence […] there was no evidence […] based on moderate quality evidence […] the available experimental evidence […] based on the evidence […] indirect evidence from systematic reviews […] no other direct evidence pertaining […] a detailed analysis of the indirect evidence […] pending any definitive evidence […] currently, there is no direct evidence to determine if […] preliminary findings of this rapid systematic review found limited direct evidence […] indirect clinical evidence […] whilst the grading of the evidence will be down-rated due indirectness […] in the absence of more direct evidence […] pending any definitive evidence […] there is limited indirect evidence.”
[00.23.07]
This is rich in light of the overall context of naturopathy claiming, with zilch evidence and a science refutation, that what profoundly has no science support such as homeopathy, or vitalism, or supernaturalism and kind, is indeed science and their core.
Fidelity and deception, relative to scientific rigors and naturopathy’s sectarian obligations, are obviously a calculated matter.
Such an organized naturopathy shenanigan as this one via Steel et al. 2022 -- wherein “naturopathic disciplines” becomes magically and I’d argue quite evilly “naturopathic sciences” within a peer-reviewed and by-consensus context – I will term methodological con-fabulation:
manufacturing distorted and self-serving information.
And the ‘con’ there, too, strikes me as a heist or grift, as in persuasion by deception.
Manufacturing distorted and self-serving information is a central concern of the study I’m sharing regarding the World Naturopathic Federation.
The study is within a paradigm of methodological naturalism, as I stated in its title earlier.
‘He wanted to become a successful science fiction writer, but instead ended up writing -- quite unsuccessfully, actually -- about fictitious science.’
My broad use of con-fabulation in this manner in not meant to short-change the very real condition of naturopathy’s formal epistemic and ethical illness, obviously, since the pathological of the naturopathillogical is illness or mental issue.
Or, sometimes, incompetence.
Methodological con-fabulation is a defining aspect of naturopathy that is chronic, which is quite ironic, since naturopathy claims to be the answer for the world’s issues concerning chronic illness.
And, as I’ve said, I regard it as a heist, a robbery, a shenanigan by way of sleight of hand.
So that is the healthcare publishing area, now for both the academic and law areas.
Further Associations.
The Academic:
Naturopathy’s methodological con-fabulation is so chronic that the claim of “naturopathic sciences” reminds me of the mid-1990s AANP Alliance’s manufactured-distorted-self-serving knowledge position which induced my participation with the North American naturopathy education racket.
About thirty years ago, the AANP Alliance’s page “Scientific Basis for Naturopathic Practice” -- perpetually entombed for public access at Archive.org on the pages at www.teleport.com/~aanp/alliance/ -- [‘et11.html’ still works at Archive.org,2025-03] stated:
“when expert and objective scientists, educators, or regulators have examined the scientific basis of naturopathic medicine, they have concluded that naturopathic medicine, as practiced by the licensable professionals in the U.S., is well-grounded in modern scientific method and practice […] naturopathic medicine rests on a scientific foundation.”
They also stated, on the page “The Alliance Legislative Workbook” [‘main-f.html’, still works]:
“naturopathic physicians are the modern-day science based primary care doctor.”
The members of the AANP Alliance at the time were the AANP, Bastyr University, Sonoran University of Health Sciences then known as SCNM, and National University of Natural Medicine then known as NCNM.
So, primarily schools and their guild organization.
Similarly, in terms of a broad science claim upon the naturopathic, to preview from the WNF material the study centers around, we’re told by WNF that:
“modern vitalism is considered part of systems theory and biomedical science.”
This is from the document whose reference is:
World Naturopathic Roots Committee. (2017). WNF white paper: Naturopathic philosophies, principles and theories. Canada: World Naturopathic Federation.
And the immediate reference for that science claim – vitalism within biomedical science in the year 2017 -- is not a reference that is a ground-breaking scientific study at all that would establish such.
It is an argument as is presented in “Capra F. The Web of Life. New York, NY: Anchor Books; 1996.”
Capra writes:
“a clear understanding of the vitalist idea is very useful, since it stands in sharp contrast with the systems view of life that was to emerge from organismic biology in the twentieth century […] the intellectual tradition of systems thinking, and the models and theories of living systems developed during the early decades of the century, form the conceptual and historical roots of the scientific framework discussed in this book […] systems thinking […] connectedness, relationships, context. According to the systems view, the essential properties of an organism, or living system, are properties of the whole, which none of the parts have. They arise from the interactions and relationships among the parts.”
So, no, WNF…the reference is not about vitalism being within “systems theory or biomedical science” at all though it does briefly list some historical and contemporary vitalists.
Such is not a scientific process that would be needed to establish the existence, in a parsimonious, rigorous, ground-breaking, empirical manner, [of] a life force.
Not in any scientific sense of the word force.
Actually, the modern science explanation of life as properties that arise from complex biochemistry bases is quite happy without unnecessary figmentations being added for no reason.
The Committee in the document was comprised of T. Hausser, I. Lloyd, J. Yánez, P. Cottingham, R. Newman-Turner, and A. Abascal.
And according to her January 2025 bio. page, Yanez is the executive director of the AANMC and a board member of the AANP.
Vitalism is a much a part of biomedical science as 2 + 2 equals 5, in all honesty.
More magic, and…duh.
The AI that Google is currently employing in their search results states the difference as:
“systems theory is based on observable and measurable interactions within a system, making it a scientifically testable approach, whereas vitalism is often considered non-scientific as the ‘vital force’ cannot be directly measured or tested […vitalism is] a belief that a ‘life force’ is responsible for healing in the body, with no scientific basis for the existence of such a force.”
Agreed, Google AI.
So, for naturopathy, and its con-fabulation and its incompetence, anything goes in terms of what science can be used upon as a label.
What hucksterism.
I similarly use that Google AI in the study in terms of its overview of ‘the failures of science as religion and of religion as science’ because in those instances it appears to handily summarize the mainstream preponderance.
And of course, in a couple to a few years it would be interesting to see what AI is doing in response to those queries.
I hope, in what follows as the WNF Project with its SIN Appendix, that I can aid in clarifying these often tuxedoed and often camouflaged, and yes, perpetual, shenanigans.
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