The Naturocrit Podcast - Episode 017a [s02e07a] - Script & Annotations

This is the script, hypertext links, and notes for the five-part Naturocrit Podcast Episode 017, aka s02e07, titled “A CSF Framework Evaluative Analysis of 107 Licensed Connecticut Naturopaths’ Practices in Relation to Science, Ethics, Commerce, and Freedom.”

001. Standard Introduction:

Standard Introduction

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-four 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".

002. Main text:

Synopsis

In this Naturocrit Podcast Episode 017, also known as Season 2 Episode 7, I’ll cover a new 2026 study on the practices of Connecticut naturopaths which I have titled:

“A CSF Framework Evaluative Analysis of 107 Licensed Connecticut Naturopaths’ Practices in Relation to Science, Ethics, Commerce, and Freedom.”

The four main parts of this Episode are:

• the 2026 study’s Polished Report

• the 2026 study’s Final Report

• follow-up questions as a formal section

• and a rather long conclusion section.

But first, I’ll:

• read aloud the cover letter of an upload I submitted to the State of Connecticut in October of 2025 which I loosely term my second 2025 testimony or petition to them

• review and elaborate on how the Cullen-Snyder framework extends the work Flexner did in 1910 and which Connecticut so expertly undid in 2014

• and provide an overview of the 2017 Connecticut DPH report on naturopathy.

Here’s, offhand, a summary impression of all this:

demonic.

As a Perplexity response I will later detail states in answer to the question:

“Are there any business models -- legitimate or criminal -- that this Connecticut scenario or context most resembles?”

The answer:

“Net characterization.

On a spectrum from legitimate to criminal, the Connecticut naturopathic business environment, as depicted in these reports, most closely resembles:

A licensed, structurally deceptive professional marketplace that shares mechanisms with consumer‑fraud models [and the aspects it includes are] (information asymmetry, emotional leverage, sunk‑cost extraction) while remaining formally legal because the statute itself lowers the evidentiary bar.

Through the CSF lens, this is less a ‘bad‑actor’ problem and more a state‑enabled commercial pattern:

legalized epistemic and financial exploitation under the appearance of healthcare professionalism and freedom of choice.”

And in answer to the question:

“If one were to equate an era in American history wherein these kinds of ethical and commerce behaviors were not extraordinary, when would that be?”

The Perplexity answer:

“The closest analogue is the late‑19th‑century ‘patent medicine’ / Gilded Age period, roughly 1870 –1906, before the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Flexner‑era overhauls of medical education and regulation.”

Ah, the snake oil era of American medicine has risen from the grave, demon-like.

Now, I’m not much of a credentialed healthcare professional or someone with much in terms of academic credentials.

And I’m definitely not a lawyer.

But I am a citizen with healthcare, academic, law, and positive freedom interests.

I don’t claim that the Perplexity reports and answers to queries within the threads that resulted from this 2026 process by way of the Connecticut ND practices are perfect.

They have been run, and then adjusted when run again for errors and issues of language clarity.

I’m actually quite amazed that a large degree of clarity has resulted from such an internally inconsistent area.

Naturopathy often begins its self-definition with the phrase, and I’ll limit this to North America:

• “a distinct primary health care system that blends” etc., according to CAND, or,

• “a distinct system of primary care medicine […that] combines” etc., according to AANP.

I had half-expected that the computational aspect of AI-LLM -land would lock up into loops of befuddlement due to naturopathy’s befuddlement.

Ironically, perplexity – little ‘p’ – means befuddlement and it is Perplexity – capital ‘P’ – that was used upon this befuddlement.

Homeopaths must be fuming in terms of my processes resembling a certain kind of ‘like-cures-like’ while, scientifically and biomedically speaking, homeopathic ‘like’ does not cure like anything.

So, here are Perplexity’s results regarding the naturopathy perplexity.

Incidentally, when asked for an encapsulation at the end of all this Connecticut naturopathy context, Perplexity offers this:

“Naturopathy is a system that drapes discarded and unproven ideas in the language and licensing of modern medicine, so that patients cannot tell where science ends and story‑telling begins.”

I will also add this, as an extension of the standard introduction’s text.

With these 2026 reports, I’m looking at how the naturopathic muddle gets written into law.

In places like Connecticut, the legislature has literally declared naturopathy to be “science” while outsourcing the definition of that “science” to naturopathic schools and boards, no independent evidence gatekeeping required.

And remember, it is their NPLEX exam for licensure – their being AANP-CAND-AANMC-CNPA – that states that homeopathy is a “clinical science”, which I offer as a representation of how lax their science footprint and science processes are:

anything goes, and nothing is re-evaluated though they claim such persistent re-evaluation through the science label.

As Google’s Gemini AI states:

“Categorizing homeopathy as a ‘clinical science’ indicates a highly relaxed standard that embraces ‘alternative’ definitions of evidence rather than the rigorous, replicable, and evidence-based standards required of modern science.”

Actually, when explicitly claiming to define naturopathy, it is naturopathy that codes what is essentially the naturopathic.

Therein, naturopathy’s deviant relaxation goes so far as to redefine what defining means.

That move doesn’t just mislabel a belief system as medicine.

It feeds a whole [not to pun, but punning anyway] ecosystem:

students take out federally backed loans to attend “naturopathic medical schools,” graduate into state‑licensed “physician” roles, and then sell homeopathy, detoxes, and functional‑medicine testing under an official science‑sounding banner.

Patients, citizens, and borrowers are all stuck inside that same epistemic fun-house.

So, this episode isn’t just about what naturopathy claims to be.

It’s about what happens when a state’s statutes, regulators, and institutions decide to pretend those claims are true – and how that decision quietly corrodes scientific integrity, consumer protection, and the basic conditions for real freedom including of belief and of choice.

My October 2025 Upload's Cover Letter to the State of Connecticut

Sidebar:

I had dated this project December 22, 2025 even though I submitted it earlier in October.

Closed sidebar.

And the cover letter goes like this:

"December 22, 2025

Honorable Saud Anwar, Co-Chair

Honorable Cristin McCarthy, Co-Chair

Honorable Committee Members

Public Health Committee

Legislative Office Building, Room 3000

Hartford, CT 06106

Dear Co-Chairs and Members of the Public Health Committee,

This is my second and final submission to the PHC portal as testimony for the year 2025 regarding naturopathy in Connecticut.

This submission, as one PDF, includes:

• a cover letter 

• the scripts / transcriptions for two mp3s [available here and here in audio format] 

• and an additional Q & A set.

Sidebar:

Those scripts for the mp3s are for Episode 016 of the Naturocrit Podcast.

Closed sidebar.

I appreciate the forum in its limited form [literally], and I’m more than happy to engage by other means in the future.

With this PDF submission, I seek to unify and summarize my research and evaluation of Connecticut and naturopathy as it presently stands.

I must emphasize that my focus in this matter is, for starters, factuality as a constituent aspect of positive freedom as opposed to a certain kind of predetermined and oblivious authoritarianism.

I believe the 64-page transcription [archived here]

Sidebar:

That hypertext link is to the archive.org PDF upload I created.

Close sidebar.

effectively summarizes many of the issues I see concerning the State of Connecticut’s partnership with the archaic and erroneous – and indeed demonic, as I have termed such in a colloquial sense – medieval healthcare artifact known as naturopathy.

I have specifically tabulated the medievalisms on pp. 7-9 of this cover letter, for clarity and emphasis.

I am satisfied that this material communicates important aspects of my experience and my expertise regarding the Connecticut naturopathy matter as has occurred from the mid-1990s until the present day.

As a reminder, my [humble] M.S. in Health Sciences with a specialty in Health Professions Education was completed through a capstone project in this specific area – the epistemically unwarranted naturopathic – albeit regarding naturopathy curricula in the states of Washington and California.

I don’t expect to submit anything for the foreseeable future unless there are, and there usually are, future asks by the principals of the Connecticut and national naturopathy sector in terms of practicing here.

I am grateful that I live in a country, or at least an area of my country, this here Connecticut, where I can seriously criticize and disagree with the government – yourselves – at the state level without fear of many of the immediate things I’m seeing happening in other states.

In New York, coincidentally, across the street from the high school that I attended and graduated from, in the city where I was born, is Thomas Paine’s cottage.

In The Rights of Man, 1792, Paine stated:

“The defects of every government and constitution both as to principle and form, must, on a parity of reasoning, be as open to discussion as the defects of a law, and it is a duty which every man owes to society to point them out.”

Therein, obviously, I suffer from optimism.

From The American Crisis, 1776, I again quote Paine:

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

That’s a dose of realism.

And in terms of moral responsibility and anti-apathy, as Mill wrote in 1867 as best as can be ascertained:

“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

To combine the ideal and the real, it appears virtue is inversely related to power.

I am aware of the local political landscape surrounding naturopathy in Connecticut – a constellation marked by scarcity of virtue, opaque processes, misdirection, and blithe power – and yet I am putting my head inside the lion’s mouth.

In other words, I understand that I am writing directly to the authors, sponsors, supporters, and maintainers of the legislation that upholds and permits this horrid and decreed context.

Chapter 373 of the Connecticut General Statutes, in its first paragraph defining naturopathy, has the term “science” occur five times with such statements as “the practice of naturopathy means the science” and “the practice of mechanical and material sciences of healing.”

But what kind of science is composed [oops, I say 'comprised'] of discarded medievalisms, pseudoscientific and sectarian approaches, and opaque commitments and therein lacks the most essential aspects of science:

being self-testing and self-correcting, testable, transparent, and rigorous?

I’ve yet to be convinced of the goodness of the Connecticut apparatus – yourselves and naturopathy – when it actively constitutes and maintains institutional structures and processes that support unfreedom.

There obviously isn’t accountability and oversight through an independent process which objectively assesses and reassesses especially peculiar healthcare permissions that lack factuality.

Contained within this testimony is this summary of naturopathy in Connecticut, which I stake every bit of my integrity upon:

“The situation amounts to a protected legal exception for pseudoscientific and sectarian approaches, one that is institutionally overlooked only because of statutory carve-outs specific to naturopathic licensing – not because of any change in the fundamental requirements for scientific fidelity or consumer protection that every other healthcare profession observes under law [...]

the PDF points out a ‘race to the bottom’ in institutional standards only when it comes to examine [sic, examining] naturopathy: while stakeholders (physicians, nurses, etc.) participate collectively in advisory groups or oversight, the peer standards they tolerate for naturopathy are strikingly lower than those required in their own fields.

As the document describes, the same epistemic and ethical failures would be unacceptable – and actionable – if found in their own professions.”

Now, as referenced within the document, I cannot take credit for authorship of the above excerpt [...] it was computationally arrived at through the Perplexity AI-LLM.

It’s amazing when inherent biases are isolated from this matter and dispassionate analyses and evaluations occur.

I anticipate having more powerful assistance in such acts of civic disobedience by way of such mechanisms in the future as regards this matter.

Civically, it is impossible to avoid the topic of the stark difference separating ‘rule by law’ and ‘rule of law’ that the matter at hand serves as an example of.

The latter supports our robust freedom.

For the former, when a law is unjust or the hands writing and wielding the laws are permissive in creating exceptions for what they favor to the point of absurdity – e.g., the well-worn ‘for my friends everything, for my enemies the law’ – unfreedom is occurring at an institutional level by imperious decree.

I think we can all agree that unforeseen and even well-known bad things are enough to combat, never mind seeding further bad things, creating therein unfreedom, and nurturing such through institutional means and peculiar preferences.

One can calculate, with some AI-LLM help, ranges regarding the consumer / patient expenditure for Connecticut licensed naturopathy and educational consumer expenditures for the national educational scene.

One such query I have recently used via ChatGPT is:

“Based on published accounts of the number of licensed naturopaths in Connecticut, the mean income of a Connecticut naturopath, and usage statistics of the sector, estimate a low and high range of total expenditure by consumers / patients in the Connecticut marketplace for the past five years.”

A practitioner income method yields this kind of range:

Sidebar:

So there's a table which I'll include in the transcription at the Naturocrit Blog for this Episode 017 podcast episode and of course it is up at the archive.org version of this submission to the State of Connecticut.

Close sidebar.

So, one to two couple of hundreds of millions of dollars for the cited years, in sum.

A visit-fee method yields this kind of range:

[another table] 

 

Therein, a range of seventy to about six hundred million.

A final quantification [via Perplexity] was posed:

“Can you generate a rough estimate of how much Title IV program student loans have occurred for the AANMC U.S. naturopathic medicine programs since 1978?”

1978 is, of course, the year ND Pizzorno – a 1975 NUNM ND graduate – “coined” the marketing label “science-based natural medicine” particularly for naturopathy within Bastyr University’s vitalism-based pan-degree curricula

[For an indexed PubMed reference, see: Baker, S. (2024). Conversation with Joseph Pizzorno, ND. Integrative Medicine (Encinitas, Calif.), 23(4), 40–43].

Such an interrogative is, of course, a big ask.

The answer:

Two to three billion dollars for ‘science subset nonscience’ – as my 64-page PDF easily demonstrates as perpetual [as well as this cover letter’s pp. 7-9] – and all the horrifying transgressions of informed consent through grifting is an insane cost for this pseudoscience, deceit, and sectarian capture.

This ‘science subset nonscience’ error is best encapsulated by the National University of Natural Medicine page “Naturopathic Principles of Healing” wherein we’re told:

“The practice of naturopathic medicine emerges from six principles of healing.

These principles are based on the objective observation of the nature of health and disease and are examined continually in light of scientific analysis.

These principles stand as the distinguishing marks of the profession.

[#1] The healing power of nature – vis medicatrix naturae.

The body has the inherent ability to establish, maintain, and restore health.

The healing process is ordered and intelligent; nature heals through the response of the life force.

The physician’s role is to facilitate and augment this process.”

When an AI-LLM is asked to “analyze and evaluate it [the above quote] in terms of accuracy, truthfulness, error, and distortion”, the answer, in part, is:

“While naturopathic institutions claim to ‘continually examine principles in light of scientific analysis’, the vis medicatrix naturae concept itself is not empirically testable and therefore cannot be scientifically verified or falsified […] no scientific evidence supports the existence of an organizing ‘vital force’ that consciously directs healing.

Biological processes are governed by biochemical and physiological mechanisms, not by intelligent intent […] the passage conveys a core metaphysical principle of naturopathic philosophy rather than a scientifically verifiable statement.”

How inconvenient!

NUNM is the heart of naturopathy institutionalization in North America, and intractable pseudoscience is at the heart of naturopathy:

E.g., the above quite erroneous yet definitive ‘science subset nonscience’ position can be found within the archives of the State of Nevada which hosts the NUNM 1978-1980 school catalog.

That 1978 catalog states:

“This vital force, the vis medicatrix naturae, is the foundation of naturopathic philosophy and practice […and is part of] the science of naturopathic medicine […and] naturopathic medical science.”

Disguising such with other language often, and posing a false science categorization broadly in the same manner as Chapter 373, is naturopathy’s big lie that then makes all other naturopathy lies easier to swallow.

And therein what occurs is sectarian capture and institutionalized falsehoods.

Naturopathy’s growth trend in such a process is as follows, roughly:

[And this is a graph titled ND Graduation Per Year 1978-2025 and it is a continuous increasing slope beginning in the small numbers from about 20 to 100 and its farthest right-most amount around 400.]

As just written, I’ve stated that ND Pizzorno coined the label “science-based natural medicine” in 1978 upon naturopathy and at the same time, his alma mater, NUNM, in the same year, expressedly stated the science-ejected as the basis of naturopathy.

The naturopathillogical error and naturopathy’s harmful inducement increasingly spreads like a virus, like a plague, visited upon unsuspecting consumer / patient and student populations.

A public health committee, a legislature, should aid in preventing such with measures that are effective as far upstream as possible and definitely not, as I have seen for decades and as continues, participate in the contagion’s success through science camouflage.

Perhaps it can be expressed this way, if you like satirical logical representations in the form of a relational analogy:

naturopathy : scientific and ethical healthcare = innumeracy : accounting.

Aka: “Naturopathy relates to legitimate, evidence-based medical practice in the same way that being bad at math (innumeracy) relates to being competent at accounting. It implies an incompatibility or deficiency: that naturopathy is as unsuited to scientific and ethical medicine as innumeracy is to accurate financial work.”

A con’s circle knows more than their marks, intrinsically, and licensed naturopathy is an institutionally facilitated con.

[This is the pp.07-09 stuff I'd mentioned.] 

As the current data set [the coded version] I’ve culled from World Naturopathic Federation materials (WNFM) indicates – Connecticut’s CNPA is an AANP affiliate and the AANP is listed first on the founding members list of the WNF – for the Perplexity AI-LLM task “On a spectrum of 0 through 10, with 10 being most and 0 being least, itemize, rank, and quantify the contents of the attached PDF that are similar to the medical ideas of the Middle Ages that have been discarded”:

Answer: “Several themes in the attached PDF show strong similarity to discarded medical ideas from the Middle Ages, particularly regarding vitalism, humoral theory, and the healing power of nature. Below is an itemized, ranked, and quantified spectrum (0–10, 10 being most similar) of these contents, highlighting their correspondence with medieval medical concepts.

Highest Similarity (Scores 8–10)

Concept / Theme	Score	Description
Vitalism / "Life Force"	10	Frames health as governed by an unseen "vital force" or "life force", directly paralleling pre-scientific, spiritual explanations of illness and healing prominent in medieval medicine. Explicitly termed a central tenet in naturopathic philosophy and compared by the PDF [WNFM] to terms such as chi, prana, spirit, and soul, and placed outside measurable scientific concepts
Healing Power of Nature (Vis Medicatrix Naturae)	10	Rooted in the idea that nature or the body has an intrinsic, ordered ability to heal itself, termed "ordered intelligence" or "extension of creator consciousness," essentially mirroring the vitalistic, teleological thinking that modern science has abandoned
Humoral Theory ("Four Bodily Humors")	9	Described as "a central theory by naturopathic practitioners." Attributed to early philosophers, it details the four humors, their organs, elements, and diseases, explicitly paralleling Hippocratic-Galenic models abandoned post-cellular theory but maintained here as explanatory for health and disease in naturopathic settings

High Similarity (Scores 6–7)

Concept / Theme	Score	Description
Emunctory Theory	7	Focus on stimulating the body's elimination pathways (excretion / sweating / etc.) to restore "vital force," reminiscent of medieval and pre-modern theories of disease as an imbalance of bodily substances or insufficient "cleansing"
Holistic / Spiritual Language	7	Frequent framing of health in spiritual or cosmic terms ("spirit," "cosmic consciousness," "personal essence"), echoing medieval blends of medicine and metaphysics

Moderate Similarity (Scores 4–5)

Concept / Theme	Score	Description
Doctrine of Signatures	5	Not explicitly referenced but implied in historical descriptions of "guiding principles" derived from early modern/medieval thinking on analogical herbal medicine
Non-Evidence-Based Individualization	4	The individual tailoring of treatments rooted primarily in philosophical tradition rather than consistently in robust empirical evidence, reflecting pre-modern individualized regimens

Low Similarity (Scores 0–3)

Concept / Theme	Score	Description
Miasma, Astrological Medicine, Alchemy, Supernatural Causation	0–2	No substantive appearance in core themes or clinical practices in the PDF. Direct references are absent, though the underlying spiritual worldview remains present in other themes.

Ranked Itemization Summary

• Vitalism / life force: 10/10 – Ubiquitous, foundational, directly inherited from medieval and pre-modern models.

• Healing power of nature: 10/10 – Explicitly positioned as an ancient, supra-empirical tenet. 

• Humoral theory: 9/10 – Embraced as a core living theory, not as a case study in obsolete history.

• Emunctory / cleansing theory: 7/10 – Emphasizes bodily purging, a hallmark of pre-germ theory medicine.

• Holistic / spiritual language: 7/10 – Strongly echoes medieval synthesis of body, mind, and spiritual cosmos.

• Doctrine of signatures (implied): 5/10 – Indirectly present through reverence for historical herbal analogies.

• Non-evidence-based "individualization": 4/10 – Claims patient-centric care through pre-scientific frameworks.

• Other medieval concepts: ≤2/10 – Largely absent as explicit doctrines.

Key Observations

• Vitalism and healing power of nature are modern forms of concepts squarely rejected by contemporary biomedical science because they lack empirical support or mechanistic basis.

• The PDF [WNFM] gives humoral theory actual explanatory power, going beyond mere historical interest, distinguishing it from its complete dismissal in scientific medicine.

• Emunctory and ‘cleansing’ theories rest on discredited physiological models pre-dating germ theory and cellular pathology.

All rankings and statements are directly supported by the PDF’s [WNFM] explicit and repeated language on these topics.”

For a satellite-view type broad representation that’s a little more recent, for the prompt to Perplexity “Can you create a graph comparing the scientific dismissal of the theories, claims, and processes central to North American naturopathy and the increase in scientific support for the theories, claims, and processes central to modern healthcare over the past 60 years?”, what results is this graph:

[And the graph has naturopathy's dismissal as an upward slope paralleling science's greater establishment.

And in terms of some language that is within that graph, I state:]

 

I think the above description is actually quite generous, in that lifestyle recommendations, diet, and exercise – when science- and evidence-based – exist as stand-alone interventions unrelated to the naturopathic.

Overall, if the meaning of the graph is not clear, what is indicated is that as scientific support increases in terms of healthcare’s knowledge processes and rigors over time, naturopathy's dismissal in terms of its theories, claims, processes and laxities increases as well over time.

I believe we can do much better than what Connecticut is posing and advocating for by way of naturopathy in terms of scientific integrity, consumer rights, healthcare ethics, transparency, institutional permissions, educational standards, the integrity of law, and respect for the sanctity of belief.

I applaud Connecticut’s K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum of 2025 and 2015 adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards.

As a part of such high educational standards, the National Research Council wrote in 2012 [National Research Council. (2012). A framework for K–12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. The National Academies Press]:

"Science is replete with ideas that once seemed promising but have not withstood the test of time, such as the concept of the 'ether' or the vis vitalis (the 'vital force' of life)."

More recently, there’s 2022’s “Physics of Life” [National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2022). Physics of life. The National Academies Press] wherein we’re told:

“19th-century experiments [that is, if you are counting, the 1800s…] were instrumental in establishing the laws of thermodynamics and banishing [the] ideas of vitalism.”

These last generative bits are to prove a point:

middle schoolers can disprove the science claim that naturopathy places upon its fundamental premise and procedures [as well as Chapter 373] with educator guidance and easily available computational tools such as AI-LLMs.

I take to heart the statement:

“The effectiveness of public health policies, practices, and actions depends upon public trust gained through decisions based on the highest ethical, scientific, and professional standards. Public health gains public trust in part because its practices are informed by evidence. When the needed evidence is lacking, public health seeks it, and when the evidence reveals faulty or inadequate practices, public health seeks to improve those practices” [APHA].

But, for better public guidance, I’ve had the Perplexity generative AI-LLM revise APHA's values statement through the lens of the Cullen-Snyder Framework Applications #001-005 to more accurately reflect the Orwellian reality of Connecticut, national, North American, and world naturopathy in process, obligation, and institutionalization wherein values are grossly reversed:

"The effectiveness of public health policies, practices, and actions depends upon public trust – luckily, in Connecticut, such trust can be manufactured wholesale by issuing licenses to anything that wears a science-costume convincingly enough. Public health here gains public trust not through evidence but through elaborate rituals of 'science camouflage,' where homeopathy, vitalism, and energetic manipulation are paraded as the equals of immunology or biochemistry so long as they are dressed up in enough medical terminology and rubber-stamped by a Board of Deference. When evidence is lacking – no bother! – Connecticut simply legislates the evidence out of relevance and permits pseudoscientific practitioners to present themselves as peers to MDs, institutionalizing both title and therapeutic ambiguity for maximum consumer confusion. If the evidence ever dares reveal that the sacred 'healing power of nature' is in fact a tired metaphysical relic, fear not: regulatory authorities will do their utmost to blend it seamlessly into the language of 'primary care' until nobody can tell a placebo from a public health policy. For practices discovered to be faulty or fraudulent, Connecticut's solution is bold: issue a broader license, build a state board out of practitioners of those very same methods, then shield the result with statutory language so that neither patient nor taxpayer ever need worry about pesky concepts like scientific validity, factual integrity, or ethical clarity again. Thus, public trust is preserved – the first casualty of which is trustworthiness itself."

Along the same lines, for the task “Based on the permissions for nonsense and misrepresentation that Connecticut law and structure permits for its naturopathy within the state, can you list similar kinds of nonsense and misrepresentation within commerce in Connecticut that would occur if such laxity was extended towards the state's commerce, healthcare, and professions in general?”, we’re told:

“Analogous Nonsense and Misrepresentation

Commerce:

Businesses could legally market products making scientifically refuted or impossible claims (e.g., perpetual motion machines, miracle supplements, homeopathic electronics) as equivalent to rigorously tested and regulated goods. Caveat emptor would reign, and consumer protection authorities would be forbidden to act unless a product caused explicit financial fraud, but not for misleading or pseudoscientific marketing. "Energy-balance shoes" or "vital-force bottled water" could claim physiological health effects with impunity, so long as industry standards simply deferred to the profession's own pseudo-regulatory board instead of facts or evidence.

Healthcare:

Any provider – dentist, acupuncturist, homeopath, or nurse – could claim primary care status regardless of their adherence to recognized standards of safety or efficacy. Cancer specialists could openly admit they lack standard qualifications and promote unproven therapies as standard-of-care, so long as their own in-group regulatory board deemed it acceptable. This would erase factuality and dramatically undermine public safety.

Professions in General:

Architects could design buildings using numerology, astrologers could draw up city zoning maps, and engineers could receive licensure for designs based on dowsing rods or wishful thinking if a professional board comprised of fellow believers gave their approval. Professional titles and credentials would be divorced from any empirical foundation, at the mercy of political or lobbying influence with names and self-policing boards substituting for external standards.

If such standards were universally applied, Connecticut would face near-total collapse of commerce, professional trust, and consumer protection, eroding the backbone of market confidence and undermining the value of licensure, education, and public policy within every arena [oops, I say 'area'].”

I’ll end this long overview with this Perplexity-generated broad summary:

“The regulatory environment fails to uphold key ethical standards such as honesty, competence, and non-maleficence. The official statutes and educational materials do not adequately warn the public about the non-scientific basis and potential risks of naturopathy, thus compromising integrity. While explicit financial fraud can be prosecuted, the promotion of unscientific therapies itself is institutionally protected, amounting to sanctioned deception. This indicates systemic ethical failings and oversight incompetence.”

Thank you for your consideration and for your service [in some matters].

Respectfully,

Robert Cullen."

So, that’s the cover letter to that October 2026 submission.

[2026-03-07 - The upload seemed successful, to the State of CT, since the confirmation box did pop up.  But they've never contacted me in any manner since it was uploaded.] 

I’ll add a link right here in the Naturocrit Blog transcription of this Podcast Episode to the entire upload-detailing post.

I did a Naturocrit Blog post after the upload titled “Science-Failing, CSF-Failing, and Historical-Rejection Tables for My CGA PHC Testimony #2 - 2025-12-22" which I’ll now cover in just a moment as part of that Cover Letter content.

There’s a point of warning I want to emphasize, immediately, regarding the language in the graph “Scientific Support for Modern Healthcare vs. Dismissal of Naturopathy (1965-2025).”

I stated just above:

“I think the above description is actually quite generous, in that lifestyle recommendations, diet, and exercise – when science- and evidence-based – exist as stand-alone interventions unrelated to the naturopathic.”

In the entire upload, I quoted from the naturopaths’ oath on page 64:

“According to my best ability and judgment, I will use methods of treatment which follow the principles of naturopathic medicine […] to teach the principles of healthy living and preventive medicine.”

But, here’s a question or task to Perplexity about naturopaths, lifestyle, and prevention:

“Overall, should naturopaths' lifestyle recommendations, including diet and exercise, and their claim that they are experts in prevention, be trusted even when they state that such is science- and / or evidence- based?”

The answer, specifically as regards the dataset of NDs’ practices that this 2026 study is based on:

“Not by default.

Even where naturopaths give reasonable diet and exercise advice, their prevention claims should be treated as selectively trustworthy and independently verified, not relied on simply because they call them ‘science‑’ or ‘evidence‑based.’

What the reports show about lifestyle claims:

• The analyses of multiple Connecticut NDs note that they often mix genuinely evidence‑based elements (dietary improvement, exercise, sleep hygiene, stress management) with pseudoscientific or weakly supported modalities, all under a single “evidence‑based” or “science‑backed” branding

• Lifestyle advice is routinely bundled with homeopathy, detox programs, adrenal fatigue, craniosacral therapy, energy devices, ‘biofield’ or frequency testing, and unvalidated labs (IgG food panels, broad micronutrient / genomic panels, Qest4, etc.), presented as if all of it is equally scientific

• Marketing repeatedly frames naturopaths as primary prevention experts who uniquely address root causes, while mischaracterizing conventional medicine as ignoring prevention, even though standard guidelines already emphasize diet, exercise, and risk‑factor modification […]

Bottom line:

• Naturopaths often say the right things about diet, exercise, stress, and prevention, but they do so inside a practice model that systematically blurs science and pseudoscience and monetizes that blur

• Their lifestyle recommendations may align with evidence in part, but their self‑designation as science‑based prevention experts, taken as a whole, should not be trusted without external verification against independent, guideline‑level sources.”

Hear, hear.

I can point things out a different way too, in terms of NDs’ oath and therapeutic order obligations.

Prevention is, broadly, the prevention of harm.

So, ‘nip it in the bud’ or ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a point of cure’ kind of sentiments and intentions.

Within the ND belief system, ignoring “vital force” in a naturopathic treatment course risks causing a great deal of harm.

They often term such a harm “suppression.”

But what harms a vital force figmentation, or is good for it in terms of lifestyle – truly an article of faith and here I’m not intending to denigrate faith acts and contents but merely point out a difference between naturopathy’s concepts of prevention and healthcare overall – is well beyond the rigors and methods of science and evidence.

As I say on pp. 54-55 within the upload in the section on the NUNM 1994-1995 Paper-Based Catalog:

“Naturopaths often say, ‘we do no harm just like regular doctors’.

But, their ‘do no harm’ is quite different – it is sectarian and occult – in the sense of what they are considering and usually what they are not telling you they are considering in terms of harm.” 

[Follow-up Post to the 2nd Testimony of 2025.]

Science-Failing, CSF-Failing, and Historical-Rejection Tables for My ‘CGA PHC Testimony #2 - 2025-12-22’

This is the post in full:

"Here, a compression of said testimony / petition into tables highlighting science-failing and CSF-failing aspects of naturopathy, and the time span of such failings, plus / yet the ct.gov false claim of it all being science:

001. via Perplexity, the entire "CGA PHC Testimony #2 - 2025-12-22" was evaluated through the task:

"For the attached document on naturopathy, create a scoring rubric table which complies to the following: column 1 title – "parameter" with boxes below being each aspect / parameter measured / judged within the document; column 2 title – "scientific integrity" which will be measured on a scale of 0 to 10 with 10 being the highest in terms of modern scientific preponderance.

For each scientific integrity box, provide a specific reason in terms of either science-ejection or science-inclusion."

[And I note I may have overridden the rubric aspect of the task with the subsequent directions!]

002. results [the scores are lower than I anticipated!]:

[And this is Perplexity's answer:]

"Below is a scoring rubric table synthesizing the attached testimony and the Cullen-Snyder Framework for Evaluative Analysis of Naturopathy.

Each parameter represents a central aspect judged within the document’s analysis of naturopathy.

Scientific integrity is rated 0–10 for modern scientific preponderance, with justification in terms of either science-inclusion (supported by contemporary evidence) or science-ejection (excluded / disproven by current science).

Parameter	Scientific Integrity (0–10)	Specific Reason (inclusion / ejection)
Vitalism (natural healing force)	0	Science-ejected: concept fundamentally rejected in modern biology and medicine
Homeopathy	0	Science-ejected: lacks plausibility, repeatedly disproven in controlled studies
Phytotherapy	5	Mixed: some plant-based treatments have empirical support, many do not
Colon hydrotherapy	0	Science-ejected: no scientific validation, known risks
Electrotherapy/Phototherapy	3	Mixed: some modalities (outside ND use) are evidence-based; context here is mostly unsupported
Articular manipulation	4	Mixed: overlaps with evidence-based chiropractic, but ND usage often lacks rigor
Diagnostic authority (by NDs)	2	Science-ejected: authority granted without commensurate training / expertise
Institutional legitimacy (licensure)	2	Science-ejected: state licensure and board oversight confer legitimacy despite poor evidentiary basis
Patient autonomy	3	Ejected: autonomy compromised by misinformation and misleading presentation of pseudoscience
Treatment unpredictability	2	Ejected: individualized care leads to inconsistent and unpredictable outcomes
Mobility (care continuity)	3	Ejected: licensing expands alternative care but undermines scientific consistency in treatment
Factuality of information	1	Ejected: high degree of blending factual /scientific info with disproven claims
Solidarity / community health	2	Ejected: undermined when public health is influenced by widespread non-evidence-based practices
Education program content	2	Ejected: curricula incorporate pseudoscientific topics as if science-based
Advertising / science-equivalency claims	1	Ejected: promotional and licensure language frames unscientific modalities as scientific
Public warning/disclosure	0	Ejected: laws and regulations fail to inform public of pseudoscientific underpinning or hazards

Notes on Parameters

• The scientific integrity rating follows evidence standards as presented in biomedical literature and meta-analytic consensus.
• The “reason” column directly summarizes how each parameter aligns with (or departs from) scientific consensus as documented and analyzed in the testimony.
• Items with “mixed” ratings reflect partial inclusion of evidence-supported practice alongside major pseudo- or unverifiable content.
• This rubric encapsulates the documented phenomenon of “science camouflage” and institutional endorsement described in the Cullen-Snyder Framework."

003. the results through a historical lens:

003.a. so a follow-up [to Perplexity] was asked, "Are these science failings due to recent developments or are they longstanding? How longstanding, for each parameter?";

003.b. results:

"These science failings in naturopathy are longstanding – most have roots dating back to pre-modern medicine and the scientific revolution of the 17th to 19th centuries.

The rejection or lack of acceptance by modern science is not a new development, but rather a persistent historical fact that continues into the present. 

Below, each parameter from the rubric is summarized with its historical context and how long it has been science-ejected or unsupported.

Parameter	How Longstanding?
Vitalism (natural healing force)	Rejected since the late 19th century; experimental biology and thermodynamics disproved vitalism more than 140 years ago. Remains basic to naturopathy in both overt and covert forms.
Homeopathy	Disproven by the scientific community since the late 19th / early 20th century; repeated failures in clinical and laboratory testing for over 100 years.
Phytotherapy	Evidence mixed since the emergence of modern pharmacology (~19th century), with some plant therapies validated and many others remaining folk or tradition-based without empirical support.
Colon hydrotherapy	Criticized and science-ejected since germ theory and modern gastrointestinal physiology (>120 years).
Electrotherapy /Phototherapy	Modern modalities validated sporadically since the late 19th / early 20th century, but ND use generally exceeds what science supports— failings documented for more than 100 years.
Articular manipulation	Historically mixed status; evidence-based chiropractic developed in the 20th century, but ND manipulation often falls outside accepted techniques — science acceptance remains low for decades.
Diagnostic authority (by NDs)	The issue of inadequate training has existed since ND licensing emerged in the early / mid-20th century; recognized as insufficient in mainstream medicine for more than 70 years.
Institutional legitimacy (licensure)	Problems present since statutory carve-outs began in the late 20th century; legitimacy granted without scientific parity.
Patient autonomy	Undermining by misinformation and pseudoscientific framing is longstanding since licensing and public acceptance (~late 20th century onward).
Treatment unpredictability	Present since ND practice began — individualized regimens rooted in pre-scientific and philosophical tradition, not standardized protocols.
Mobility (care continuity)	Licensing enabling mobility for alternative care has enabled continuity of science-ejected practice from state to state since the 1980s - 1990s.
Factuality of information	Persistent issue since the institutional blending of science and tradition from 1980s onward; epistemic conflation noted for >40 years.
Solidarity / community health	Erosion of public health cohesion from false equivalence and alternative practice present since ND expansion in late 20th century.
Education program content	Pseudoscientific topics embedded in curriculum since ND school creation (1978 Bastyr, mid-20th century for others).
Advertising / science-equivalency claims	Misleading promotion is longstanding, emerging with ND licensure and expansion over past 35+ years [e.g. Bastyr in Vegetarian Times 1986-09 p.109]
Public warning /disclosure	Lack of adequate warnings since state law first granted licensing, typically 1980s onward; regulatory failures recognized for decades.

Historical Overview

• Core pseudoscientific aspects (vitalism, homeopathy, humoral theory) have been science-ejected for more than a century, originating in medieval and pre-modern medicine.
• Institutional failings and epistemic conflation have intensified as ND licensure and educational expansion progressed during the late 20th century, but the basic science rejection persists from the earliest days of modern science.
• Marketing, public messaging, and statutory language have shifted from overt pseudoscientific claims to coded language since 2000, but the underlying lack of scientific support is constant throughout.
• In summary, the majority of these failings are decades to centuries old, with only superficial changes in language or marketing – even as the scientific consensus remains unchanged against their legitimacy."

004. and a final task:

004.a. "With all this that is tabulated, is it true that Connecticut law maintains that naturopathy is scientific?"

004.b. [the Perplexity] answer:

"Connecticut law explicitly maintains that naturopathy is a scientific practice, granting it full professional legitimacy and authority through statutory language and licensure, while embedding science-ejected concepts such as vitalism and homeopathy in both the legal definition and regulatory oversight of the field.

Statutory Framing and Endorsement

• The central Connecticut statute, Chapter 373, defines naturopathic practice as encompassing modalities like "the healing power of nature" (vitalism), homeopathy, and other approaches that lack contemporary scientific support – but are described in law as scientific and evidence-based care.
• State licensure and the authority to diagnose, treat, and advertise medical services rely on educational standards set by bodies such as the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education (CNME), which themselves codify and promote these pseudoscientific principles as part of their curriculum and licensure requirements.
• Connecticut’s Board of Naturopathic Examiners, which oversees the profession, is overwhelmingly staffed by licensed naturopaths and enforces standards according to the norms of naturopathy, not conventional science.

Legal and Public Messaging

• There is no statutory requirement for consumer warnings or disclaimers about the lack of scientific basis for many naturopathic practices; laws and public-facing statements actively frame naturopathy as science-based, misleadingly equating it with evidence-based medicine.
• Licensed naturopaths can publicly claim that their services are scientific, despite fundamental contradictions with established biomedical and scientific consensus.

External Evaluation

• The Cullen-Snyder framework analysis and multiple external reviews affirm that Connecticut law creates high “science camouflage,” whereby non-scientific or pseudoscientific practices are cloaked in the language and regulatory protections of science.
• Practices that would be classed as professional misrepresentation or consumer fraud if offered by other healthcare professions (e.g., MDs, nurses, pharmacists) are legally protected under the ND licensure system, solely because statutory carve-outs define their standards independently.

Summary Table

Aspect	Connecticut Law Position	Scientific Reality
Vitalism, homeopathy, colon hydrotherapy	Defined as part of scientific practice	Disproven by modern science
Diagnostic / treatment authority	Granted fully under law	Training / competence not commensurate
Public messaging claims	Framed as science-based, evidence-based	Contradicts consensus and evidence
Board and oversight	Naturopath-only standards	Lacks critical scientific accountability
Consumer protection	No required warning / disclaimer	Public exposed to misleading claims

Despite the use of scientific terminology and regulatory structures, Connecticut law institutionally legitimizes and promotes a system that is not aligned with contemporary scientific standards, maintaining “science” status for disciplines and claims fundamentally rejected by the scientific community."

And that’s the end of the post.

Echoes of Flexner

Back in Episode 016, I’d asked Perplexity to compare my M.S. capstone to the Cullen-Snyder Framework Application #003.

The answer, in part, was:

“Both the Capstone Project (focused on Bastyr University’s Center for Natural Health) and the Cullen-Snyder Framework Application (evaluating the University of Bridgeport’s College of Naturopathic Medicine) conduct in-depth critiques of naturopathic education and practice, exposing how pseudoscientific content is embedded within institutions under the guise of evidence-based medicine.”

And the part of that comparison that relates to Flexner was:

“The recommendations made in both documents converge on several key points […including] Audit and Restructuring:

Both advocate for comprehensive audits (e.g., a ‘Flexner Report 2’ [from the Capstone] for contemporary programs) by impartial scientific bodies, recommending broad restructuring of the curriculum, clinical activities, and institutional assurances to align with standards of evidence-based healthcare.”

Here I’ll explore the Flexner context further, early in this episode, providing some indication of where this episode is going based upon Connecticut NDs’ practice data, the Cullen-Snyder Framework, modern scientific integrity, and preponderant contemporary healthcare ethics.

First, I’ll read a Perplexity summary that is a little broader comparison of the 1910 Flexner Report and the Cullen-Snyder Framework proper [v1.0].

Then, I’ll look at how Connecticut has rescinded the spirit of the 1910 standards and advancements.

The summary:

“The Cullen-Snyder framework largely extends and reframes the Flexner framework rather than contradicting it, by translating Flexner's concern with scientific integrity and institutional standards into an explicit analysis of freedom, misinformation, and institutional effects in the naturopathic context.

Shared foundations

Both frameworks treat science as a public, institutional good rather than a purely private professional matter:

• Flexner ties legitimacy to university affiliation, laboratories, and faculty-controlled teaching hospitals 

• while Cullen-Snyder builds on 'epistemic-social interdependence' and treats misrepresented knowledge systems as threats to social freedom.

Each assumes that pseudoscience or sectarian doctrine is not just 'different opinion' but structurally harmful:

• Flexner’s antisectarian filter aims to marginalize sectarian schools 

• while Cullen-Snyder’s 'science camouflage index' and 'epistemic conflation' analyze the same problem as institutional deception that undermines access to truth.

Scientific standards and epistemic integrity

Flexner’s key axes – entrance standards, basic science laboratories, clinical teaching, and rejection of sectarian doctrine – are, in Cullen-Snyder terms, an effort to minimize epistemic conflation by insisting that only experimentally grounded claims count as medicine.

Cullen-Snyder codifies this into explicit metrics (science camouflage index, institutional legitimacy score) that could be applied directly to naturopathic schools the way Flexner classified schools as fully acceptable, salvageable, or to be closed.

Institutional evaluation and legitimacy

Flexner asks whether a school is an organic part of a true university, supported by endowment, with strong labs and a faculty-controlled teaching hospital, and then assigns categorical outcomes (Group I, II, III) including closure for structurally deficient or sectarian institutions.

Cullen-Snyder’s 'institutional legitimacy score' generalizes that move: instead of only asking 'Is this a real university medical department?', it asks whether institutional recognition and privileges are proportionate to evidentiary support, especially where naturopathy is embedded in universities or state licensure structures.

From professional standards to freedom

Flexner implicitly links bad schooling to public risk and unfit practitioners, but does not theorize 'freedom'; Cullen-Snyder makes this explicit by pairing Cullen’s epistemic critique with Snyder’s 'factuality freedom' and 'positive freedom,' arguing that access to accurate information is a precondition for real autonomy.

The Cullen-Snyder 'Freedom Impact Matrix' (sovereignty, unpredictability, mobility, factuality, solidarity) recasts Flexner’s public-protection impulse: where Flexner uses licensure and closure to protect patients, Cullen-Snyder asks how naturopathic institutions affect patient autonomy, informational environment, care options, and community health.

Application to naturopathy vs sectarian schools

Flexner treats sectarian institutions (homeopathic, eclectic, naturopathic, chiropractic, etc.) as fundamentally incompatible with unified scientific medicine unless they abandon distinctive dogma; schools clinging to such doctrines are slated for marginalization or closure.

Cullen-Snyder assumes that naturopathy operates in a post-Flexner world and offers a way to audit it:

first at the level of epistemic honesty (are science-exterior claims dressed up as science?), then at the level of freedom outcomes (does the naturopathic regime enhance or erode patient sovereignty, factuality, and solidarity?).

Overall comportment

Conceptually, Cullen-Snyder is compatible with Flexner on core epistemic questions: both frameworks privilege experimentally grounded medicine, treat pseudoscientific blending as dangerous, and see institutional design as crucial.

Normatively, Cullen-Snyder adds a second axis:

even if some naturopathic structures partially pass Flexner-style institutional tests (university affiliation, formal clinics), they can still be critiqued for undermining freedom through epistemic camouflage – a dimension Flexner does not name but presupposes in his concern for public protection.”

Perplexity was then tasked with this:

“In what ways does the evidence used and determinations generated in this investigation of Connecticut naturopathy and Connecticut's naturopathy statutes / laws cut against the broad aims and successes of the 1910 Flexner Report?”

The answer:

“The Connecticut naturopathy story you’ve built is, in effect, a slow undoing of what the Flexner Report was trying to achieve.

It doesn’t repeal Flexner’s reforms outright, but it opens a side door that walks around them.

1. Flexner: tie licensure to rigorous, science‑based medical education

Flexner’s central project was to:

• Close low‑standard, sectarian schools.

• Make scientific, university‑based education the gatekeeper to medical licensure. 

• Use state boards to ensure that a 'doctor' meant someone trained in physiology, biochemistry, and evidence‑oriented clinical work.

Connecticut’s naturopathy regime does the opposite in a parallel lane:

• It creates a second, lower standard for 'physician'‑like practice, keyed to CNME‑accredited naturopathic schools whose curricula embed homeopathy, vitalism, detox, and other science‑exterior content.

• Statute then declares this entire bundle to be 'science' ('the science, art and practice of healing by natural methods') and grants broad diagnostic scope and a 'naturopathic physician' identity.

• The AMA’s recent impact statement to the Connecticut Senate is blunt: 'The naturopathic education is not a medical education,' and ND pharmacology training is not adequate for prescribing.

In Flexner’s terms, Connecticut has re‑legalized a class of sectarian, non‑Flexnerian practitioners as quasi‑physicians, undercutting the idea that licensure is the badge of rigorous scientific training.

2. Flexner: strengthen state boards as scientific gatekeepers

Flexner attacked early 20th‑century state boards for:

• Being captured, political, and inconsistent.

• Allowing poorly trained practitioners to pass as doctors.

• Failing to 'protect its issues against either debasement or infringement.'

Your Connecticut findings show a reprise of that failure:

• The naturopathic board and licensure system validate diplomas from naturopathic schools whose underlying philosophy is explicitly non‑biomedical in key areas, yet use titles and marketing that imply parity with MD / DO training.

• The board operates largely as a guild regulator, not an external scientific gatekeeper, and the Department of Public Health and AG have not used their tools to bring naturopathic claims into alignment with modern evidence.

• This returns the state to precisely the pattern Flexner condemned: boards protecting sectarian standards under the color of law, rather than enforcing a unified scientific threshold.

3. Flexner: close or marginalize unscientific medical schools and doctrines

The post‑Flexner decades saw:

• Closure or marginalization of homeopathic, eclectic, and other sectarian medical schools.

• Consolidation of the biomedical model as the gold standard of medical training and practice.

Connecticut’s naturopathy framework:

• Re‑elevates homeopathy and vitalism – two of Flexner’s primary targets for marginalization – by embedding them in state‑recognized education (CNME schools) and granting their graduates physician‑like licensure.

• Treats naturopathy as a separate but parallel 'medical' track, instead of as an historical curiosity or fringe belief system.

• Through statute, insurance participation, and hospital integration, restores social and institutional credibility to doctrines Flexner’s reforms were meant to push out of medicine.

In other words, what Flexner tried to accomplish by closing sectarian schools, Connecticut has partially undone by re‑branding and relicensing a sectarian curriculum as 'naturopathic medicine.'

4. Flexner: raise ethical and professional standards alongside science

Later analyses of Flexner emphasize his impact on:

• Professionalism and ethics in physician training.

• The expectation that doctors will be truthful about what they know and don’t know, and that practice is updated with research.

Your Connecticut evidence points in the opposite direction:

• ND practice commonly blurs evidence‑based care with belief‑based modalities (homeopathy, craniosacral therapy, energy medicine, unvalidated functional tests) without clear disclosure of evidentiary status.

• Titles and branding ('naturopathic physician,' 'integrative primary care,' 'functional medicine doctor') misrepresent both scope and evidentiary footing, degrading informed consent.

• Financial conflicts (test‑driven supplement sales, high‑margin unvalidated panels) are routine, yet cloaked in medical language and licensure, weakening the ethical distinction Flexner wanted between scientific medicine and commercial nostrum peddling.

Ethically, this looks less like a Flexnerian profession and more like the pre‑Flexner world of proprietary schools and nostrum dealers, now wearing white coats and CPT codes.

5. Flexner’s state‑science compact vs. Connecticut’s tolerance of pseudoscience

Flexner’s deeper legacy is a compact: states grant physicians monopoly privileges in exchange for:

• Enforcing rigorous scientific education standards.

• Using licensure and boards to protect the public from quackery.

Connecticut’s naturopathy context breaches that compact:

• The legislature has extended medical‑style privileges (diagnosis, treatment, physician titles, institutional platforming) to a profession whose training and doctrine fail Flexnerian tests, while continuing to treat that regime as normal health regulation.

• Regulators and courts have, in practice, tolerated and normalized unproven and disproven health‑related claims (in the sense described by contemporary analyses of state handling of contested claims).

• The result is a dual system: one Flexner‑compliant lane (MD / DO), one lane that systematically circumvents Flexner’s standards under the same public health umbrella.

In sum

The evidence and determinations in your Connecticut naturopathy investigation show a state that:

• Relaxes the linkage between scientific education and licensure that Flexner worked to harden.

• Re‑legitimizes sectarian, low‑evidence doctrines Flexner helped push out of mainstream medicine.

• Weakens the gatekeeping role of boards and public‑health authorities that Flexner saw as essential to protecting the public.

• Erodes the ethical and epistemic expectations that being a 'doctor' should mean commitment to modern scientific standards, honest disclosure, and restraint from unproven claims.

In that sense, Connecticut’s naturopathy regime is not just a side issue; it is a localized reversal of the Flexner settlement:

a return to parallel, state‑blessed 'medical' systems where belief can be licensed as science, and where the hard‑won consolidation of evidence‑based medicine is quietly diluted from within.”

Now, just in case my broad, inclusive, tolerant but most importantly nonerosive and nontransgressive remediation of the Connecticut naturopathy context gets missed or lost in process due to the verbal quantity of this Episode – and I think those remediations in sum are a heck of a lot more holistic or wholistic than Connecticut’s sectarian purveyors’ fake and shallow, erosive and transgressive holistic / wholistic postures – let me restate the overview of the eleventh Follow-Up question from that section:

“Connecticut can protect positive freedom, scientific integrity, freedom of belief, fair commerce, and care standards without banning belief‑based practices, by structurally separating science from pseudoscience and tightening how licensed care is represented.

The [section's] table focuses on detailed, system‑level remedies.”

Invoking Flexner in 2026 and Operationalizing ‘Sectarian’

via the AANMC and NUNM

The Flexner Report is, obviously, quite old.

116 years old!

It carries with it the issues and context of American society of its time, including critiques of its contribution to structural racism.

In retrospect, Perplexity offers this summary while acknowledging such critiques:

“Overall contemporary view.

For healthcare education and patient / consumer protection, the Flexner ideal of science anchored, tightly regulated training remains broadly necessary and central.

At the same time, many Flexner era assumptions about curriculum design and who gets to be a physician are treated as historically important but now insufficient and, in important respects, unjust, requiring active correction rather than simple reverence.”

The use of the term sectarian is, I believe, quite antiquated, too.

Sectarian in recent decades appears more so in areas of warfare and intolerance.

In the contemporary healthcare context, according to this ChatGPT task “Is the term sectarian as used within healthcare and medicine to typify non-scientific-based worldviews / models / doctrines / systems / paradigms a contemporary term with active scholarship?” we're told:

“’Sectarian’ in the specific sense of characterizing non-scientific health worldviews or systems is not a well-established or widely used technical term in contemporary healthcare and medical scholarship.

In evidence-based medicine (EBM), public health, clinical research, and health policy, scholars avoid the term ‘sectarian’ due to its normative and value-laden connotations.

Instead they use terms such as:

• Pseudoscience / Pseudoscientific practice

• Non-evidence-based practice

• Unproven / Unsupported by rigorous evidence

• Alternative medicine / Complementary and integrative medicine (with qualifiers)

• Quackery / Quack treatments (in historical / critical discourse)

• Health misinformation / Disinformation (when discussing societal effects).

These are descriptive and operationalizable categories linked to standards of evidence, clinical trial results, regulatory frameworks, or epistemic norms.

They are prevalent in leading journals and textbooks because they map to research paradigms that can be empirically interrogated.

‘Sectarian’ itself does not appear in major MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) or indexing schemas to categorize health systems or beliefs.

It is rare as a descriptor in biomedical databases for classifying systems of thought in health.”

'Sectarian' as a term has for quite a long time been in this podcast's introductory language.

Where it most matters, in my mind regarding my naturopathy experiences, is how the University of Bridgeport had and still to this day does used / uses the label of "non-sectarian" within its institutional marketing language.

So that's current, and obviously it has a place historically speaking too in terms of America's healthcare factions particularly as they took shape in the 1800s.

Incidentally, I will always contradict a contemporary label upon modern mainstream conventional medicine as "allopathic" because that label itself is from the sectarian system homeopathy and it is false in contemporary respects.

I have in the past called that a reverse sectarian accusation.

As mentioned earlier, 'component synonyms' of certain overlapping footprints that serve to define or contextualize sectarian are:

"pseudoscience / pseudoscientific practice, non-evidence-based practice, unproven / unsupported by rigorous evidence,  alternative medicine / complementary and integrative medicine (with qualifiers), quackery / quack treatments [...] health misinformation / disinformation."

And therein, I don't think sectarian is a useless term.

It is a broad term in need of contextualization.

Like "horrible."

To get to what someone has regarded as horrible, one would have to pursue questions like:

"In what way is that horrible?"

Because like sectarian, the parameters within the broad swathe would need to be defined.

And of course, sauce for the goose:

naturopathy uses the term 'natural' which is quite meaningless in a definitive sense.

An interesting question to Perplexity for the sectarian context is:

"Can you list what these 'component synonyms' have in common in terms of scientific integrity, belief, risk / harm, and the need for transparency in their commerce?"

And the answer was:

"Shared features across the components.

Across pseudoscience, non–evidence-based practice, unproven / unsupported, alternative / complementary medicine (with qualifiers), quackery, and health misinformation / disinformation, the common threads can be framed along [your] four axes:

Scientific integrity

• Weak or absent empirical support: Claims are not grounded in high-quality, reproducible evidence (e.g., well‑designed RCTs, systematic reviews, robust observational data). 

• Methodological shortcuts: Use of anecdote, uncontrolled case series, cherry‑picked studies, or surrogate outcomes in place of rigorous methods. 

• Resistance to falsification: Doctrines or mechanisms are framed so they cannot be meaningfully tested or refuted, or negative results are dismissed rather than integrated.

Belief

• Primacy of prior commitment: Adherents often accept the practice as true or effective before evidence is established, and belief is maintained despite contrary data.

• Epistemic insulation: Communities may privilege authority, tradition, or charismatic leaders over critical appraisal, peer review, or consensus standards. 

• Narrative over data: Personal testimonials, emotionally compelling stories, and identity‑defining narratives frequently substitute for or override empirical evaluation.

Risk and harm

• Direct clinical risk: Delayed, refused [oops, I say refuted], or interrupted effective care; use of ineffective or unsafe interventions; interactions with conventional treatments are often poorly characterized.

• Opportunity cost: Time, money, and attention are diverted from interventions with demonstrated benefit, including preventive care.

• Systemic and informational harms: Erosion of trust in science, regulators, and evidence‑based medicine; amplification of health misinformation that can scale harms (e.g., reduced vaccination uptake).

Need for transparency in commerce

• Clear disclosure of evidentiary status: Marketing should plainly state when claims are unproven, speculative, or based only on low‑level evidence, avoiding implication of established efficacy.

• Honest risk communication: Known risks, uncertainties, and plausible mechanisms of harm should be disclosed, not minimized or obscured.

• Avoidance of deceptive framing: No implying regulatory endorsement, scientific consensus, or clinical equivalence where none exists; avoid using “integrative,” “natural,” or similar labels to bypass critical scrutiny.

• Accountability structures: Claims and practices should be subject to independent review, complaint mechanisms, and enforceable standards against false or misleading health representations."

Run through ChatGPT, this summary sentence resulted for those 'component synonyms':

"A patterned divergence from the norms of scientific self-correction, combined with elevated potential for clinical, financial, and informational harm, and insufficient transparency about uncertainty in commercial contexts."

And a 'sectarian as belief' question generated this answer with Perplexity:

"Any belief system becomes sectarian when it functions as a self‑insulating subculture whose norms, authorities, and narratives override external standards of evaluation, dialogue, or cooperation, and where divergence is treated as disloyalty rather than legitimate disagreement."

And as I think I show quite bountifully in this episode, that sentence is a good run-down of sectarian medicine both now and of the past.

Naturopathillogical comes to mind, too, in this ironic sense:

I've often spoken about an important inducement for my decision to go the naturopathy school route was the AANP Alliance's claims of "science-based primary care doctor" and "not a belief system."

So I posed this to Perplexity:

"When an area claims 'this is not a belief system' but has all the attributes of sectarian medicine as listed above and speaks of 'mind, body, spirit' and vital forces responsible for health and disease, is this a contradiction?"

The answer:

"Yes, that is a contradiction in the ordinary conceptual sense, even if it is rhetorically convenient for the system making the claim.

Why it is contradictory

• Talk of “mind, body, spirit” and “vital forces” is explicitly framed in many traditions as belief in a non‑material principle or energy that animates life and explains health and disease (vitalism).

• Vitalism is routinely described — even by its proponents — as a doctrine or belief that life and healing are governed by an immaterial vital force beyond physical and chemical processes, which is precisely a belief‑system claim about how the world works.

• When a practice uses such doctrines to organize its understanding of illness, guide treatment, select authorities, and draw boundaries from “biomedicine,” it is functioning as a sectarian medical system in the broad sense we discussed (a bounded, identity‑defining framework with its own internal rules and authorities).

Why denial of “belief system” status matters

• Denying that this is a belief system while relying on unverifiable vital forces and spiritual causation obscures the epistemic status of the claims, making them appear observational or scientific when they are, in fact, doctrinal.

• This denial also undercuts transparency: users cannot clearly distinguish between empirically testable propositions and metaphysical or spiritual commitments that are held on faith or tradition, which is especially problematic in health‑care commerce and regulation.

So when an area of “sectarian medicine” centers concepts like vital force, mind‑body‑spirit unity, and non‑physical energies, but simultaneously asserts “this is not a belief system,” it is making a self‑contradictory claim about its own nature."

How natural for naturopathy.

With all that in mind -- particularly as regards the dangers of obscurantism and the liberating aspects of clarification -- I’m happy to update or revitalize Flexner with both an injection of positive freedom and contemporary language.

Now here’s an interesting task to Perplexity along those lines:

“In the sense of 1910's Flexner Report and its ‘rejection of sectarian doctrine’ context, what can be determined from the attached PDF ‘AANMC on Naturopathy’ as 'are' 'as not' sectarian doctrine? As a key to understanding naturopathy's often coded essential commitments and epistemic footprint / claims with greatest transparency, consider the attached PDF ‘NUNM Principles’ foremost in weight in terms of naturopathy's granular self-definition.”

The PDFs involved are live 2026 online documents.

The AANMC PDF was comprised of:

• p. 001 - a table of contents 

• pp. 002-005 – AANMC ‘What is” web page

• p. 006 – AANMC ‘Principles’ web page

• pp. 007-010 – AANMC ‘Therapeutic order’ web page

• p. 011 – AANMC ‘Oath’ web page

• pp. 012-088 – AANMC ‘Core Entrustables’ web document.

And the NUNM PDF was NUNM's long-standing naturopathy definition.

The answer:

“Viewed through Flexner’s 1910 lens of ‘rejection of sectarian doctrine,’ the two documents together show that naturopathy’s core self‑definition is explicitly sectarian in structure and content, even when wrapped in scientific language.

1. Flexner’s ‘sectarian doctrine’ test

Flexner objected to medical systems that:

• Begin from fixed doctrines (vital forces, metaphysical principles) rather than empirical biology.

• Treat these doctrines as organizing truths for education, diagnosis, and therapy.

Both documents say naturopathic medicine ‘is defined by principles rather than by treatment options’ and that these principles are ‘the distinguishing marks of the profession,’ which already marks it as doctrine‑first, not evidence‑first.

2. NUNM’s principles: explicit vitalist doctrine

Taking NUNM’s six principles as your 'decoder key' makes the sectarian nature very clear.

• ‘The healing power of nature – vis medicatrix naturae’ teaches that the body’s healing is ‘ordered and intelligent’ and that ‘nature heals through the response of the life force,’ which is a vital‑force metaphysic, not a testable physiological mechanism.

• Symptoms are re‑described as ‘expressions of the life force attempting to heal itself,’ and [the] suppression of symptoms is framed as inherently suspect; this is a doctrinal reinterpretation of pathology, not an empirical claim.

• Causes of disease are said to exist on ‘physical, mental-emotional, and spiritual’ levels and must be evaluated on ‘all levels,’ again elevating non‑empirical domains to causal parity with biology.

Taken together, these are sectarian commitments: a specific philosophy of ‘life force,’ symptom meaning, and spiritual causation that structures practice independent of (and sometimes against) biomedical evidence.

3. AANMC’s ‘principles’ and Therapeutic Order: doctrine driving practice

The AANMC document makes those same principles the official foundation of the profession.

• It states that naturopathic medicine is ‘defined by principles rather than by treatment options,’ and that ND practice is ‘planted firmly in the assumption’ that one must stimulate ‘the body’s inherent ability to heal.’ This locks in vis medicatrix as a guiding assumption, not a hypothesis.

• The Therapeutic Order is ‘based on the idea that the human body possesses an inherent drive to heal itself’ and explicitly invokes the ‘vital force’ or ‘life force’ as the operative agency, to be stimulated by modalities like homeopathy, hydrotherapy, acupuncture, and botanical medicine.

• The seven‑step order (remove obstacles, stimulate self‑healing, strengthen systems, etc.) is presented as a universal hierarchy organizing all care, rather than a contingent clinical algorithm derived from comparative evidence.

This is exactly what Flexner meant by sectarian: a philosophical template that determines what counts as legitimate diagnosis and treatment, prior to and insulated from outcome data.

Sidebar [post-recording]:

In relation to the mention of 'prior', I was reminded of my polarity of a priori / a posteriori as used in 2006's document "Prophets Facing Backward..." which I've mentioned as the root of the 'epistemic conflation' aspect of my subsequent work including the CSF.

A quick ChatGPT interrogation of the above sentence that includes "what Flexner meant by sectarian" resulted in, in part, this answer regarding the differences between what science and what sectarianism does in terms of the a priori / assumptions:

"Where the divergence becomes decisive. The difference is not merely degree — it’s categorical at the level of epistemic governance.

Revisability vs. insulation.

• Science (legitimate a priori use)

•  A priori frameworks are:

•  corrigible [correctable]
•  defeasible [revisable]
•  subordinate to empirical adjudication

•  Sectarian template (as described)

•  A priori framework is:

•  fixed
•  self-validating
•  empirically insulated

This converts the a priori from a heuristic scaffold into a dogmatic constraint."

Close sidebar.

4. Coded commitments under “modern science” branding

At the same time, AANMC stresses ‘rigors of modern science,’ ‘evidence‑informed therapies,’ and collaboration with ‘leading research institutions.’

• Yet the same pages insist that naturopathy ‘celebrates the healing power of nature,’ ‘honors the body’s innate wisdom to heal,’ and is ‘defined by principles’ that are taken as given.

• The Therapeutic Order description explicitly centers ‘vis medicatrix naturae,’ ‘vital force,’ and the inherent drive to heal, and assigns to NDs the role of stimulating that quasi‑mystical agency.

So the epistemic footprint is hybrid: empirical methods are selectively welcomed, but only within the interpretive frame of vitalism and principle‑driven doctrine.

That is, modern science is treated as an adjunct to a pre‑committed worldview, not as the final arbiter of what is true or discarded.

5. What is not sectarian in Flexner’s sense

There are elements that are not inherently sectarian:

• Emphasis on prevention, lifestyle, and social determinants of health.

• The idea of “doctor as teacher” and collaborative care.

• Using less invasive therapies when they are safe and effective.

Those themes are compatible with and widely embraced in Flexner‑descended medicine today.

The sectarianism lies not in caring about prevention or holism, but in anchoring them to non‑testable doctrines of life force, symptom meaning, and spiritual causation, then making those doctrines constitutive of the profession.

6. Determination in Flexner terms

Putting it together:

• NUNM’s principles state a vitalist, multi‑level (including spiritual) causal theory and a teleological view of symptoms as core truths. 

• AANMC then elevates that package into the defining basis of education, licensure‑linked competencies, and clinical decision hierarchies, while branding it as ‘rigorous’ and ‘evidence‑informed.’

In Flexner’s vocabulary, that is a sectarian medical system: practice and curriculum organized around a fixed, metaphysical doctrine that coexists uneasily with, and sometimes overrides, empirical science.

The documents make those essential commitments unusually transparent; they simply relabel them as ‘principles’ and ‘therapeutic order’ rather than ‘sectarian creed’.”

And that is a nice overview, again acknowledging the antiquity of 'the sectarian' from Flexner's time and the need to place it in modern language – to be more granular about what it contains.

Obviously, I feel it has a place:

I placed it – sectarian – after all within the version 2.0 logo for this podcast as:

"factuality and freedom [...as opposed to] deceit and sectarian capture." 

Naturopathy, Flexner, and Undoing Evidence-Based Medicine

So, in relation to Flexner, within the naturopathy context, I was reminded of a letter to the journal of the Canadian Association of Naturopathic Doctors from 2021.

It is titled “Reply to Comment on ‘Evidence-Based Practice Attitudes, Skills, and Usage Among Canadian Naturopathic Doctors: A Summary of the Evidence and Directions for the Future” by:

ND Aucoin -- a CCNM ND graduate and CCNM “Senior Research Fellow” who, on her own naturopathic definition page, does not transparently communicate naturopathy’s inherent vitalism, merely stating regarding the principles

• “6. Support the healing power of the body, by recognizing and removing obstacles to the body's inherent self-healing process […] one of the unique guiding principles of naturopathic medical practice is ‘vis medicatrix naturae’, Latin for ‘the healing power of nature’ […] the healing process […] this self-healing ability […] the natural healing processes […] the body’s natural ability to heal” – all coded vitalism;

ND Cooley -- a CCNM ND graduate and CCNM’s present “director of research”;

and University of South Australia PhD Leach – who, though not attributed from what I can tell within the article, has a “diploma of applied science (naturopathy), which he earned from the SA College of Natural & Traditional Medicine between 1997 and 1999” according to LinkedIn Australia [verified].

So, for purposes here, ND Leach.

The article states:

"While the roots of EBP [evidence based practice] originate in the medical world, we do not believe that EBP is incompatible with naturopathic practice, nor that it is in absolute discord with a vitalistic world view or the scientific world view that comes across in Flexner’s words.

We believe that it is possible to take the beneficial aspects of EBP to improve the patient experience, such as continually reassessing current practices and striving for clinical improvement.

While an over-reliance on scientific evidence could potentially result in care that is inconsistent with naturopathic philosophy, it is not necessarily predetermined.

In fact, we are convinced that it is indeed possible to incorporate the best available scientific evidence with other sources of evidence in a way that is consistent with naturopathic philosophy and principles."

I had Perplexity run this task upon that quote in reference to that article:

"In light of the Connecticut naturopathy context, what are the weaknesses or failures of the position posed or maintained?"

We're told:

"The quoted passage fails on its own terms once you put it next to what naturopathy actually is in Connecticut and what EBP actually demands [...] the quoted position tries to domesticate 'evidence‑based practice' inside an unchanged vitalist framework.

In the Connecticut naturopathy context, where the doctrine and the data are often directly at odds, this amounts to redefining EBP so that it can never require abandoning core naturopathic beliefs – precisely the opposite of what Flexner‑style scientific medicine, and genuine evidence‑based practice, demand."

Here are the details:

"The weaknesses fall into a few tight buckets.

1. Category error about what EBP is

EBP isn’t 'beneficial aspects we can cherry‑pick,' it’s a discipline of deference to the best available evidence about benefits and harms.

• The authors reduce EBP to 'continually reassessing current practices' and 'striving for clinical improvement,' which are generic quality‑improvement slogans, not EBP as understood in medicine.

• In the Connecticut reports, core naturopathic modalities (homeopathy, detoxes, 'adrenal fatigue,' many unvalidated tests) repeatedly fail basic evidentiary and mechanistic tests; a serious EBP posture would require dropping them, not just 'reassessing' while continuing use.

In other words, their version of EBP is already pre‑edited so that it cannot threaten naturopathic doctrine.

2. Built‑in veto for vitalism over evidence

They explicitly warn that 'over‑reliance on scientific evidence could potentially result in care that is inconsistent with naturopathic philosophy,' and treat that as a problem to avoid.

• That line concedes that unfiltered scientific evidence and naturopathic philosophy can diverge, but then makes preservation of the philosophy the constraint.

• In Connecticut, this is exactly what you see: when evidence undermines core naturopathic ideas (e.g., homeopathy, 'vis medicatrix naturae' as causal agent), the philosophy is insulated and the evidence selectively integrated around it.

That is the opposite of EBP: doctrine is allowed to overrule data.

3. 'Other sources of evidence' as a Trojan horse

They say it is possible to incorporate 'the best available scientific evidence with other sources of evidence' in a way that stays consistent with naturopathic principles.

• In practice, those 'other sources' in naturopathy include vitalist axioms, practitioner intuition, and testimonial‑based 'clinical experience.'

• In the Connecticut naturopathy context, those sources are routinely used to sustain practices that have little or no credible empirical support and to neutralize contrary data; they are not being used as tiebreakers among comparably supported options.

So the 'other sources of evidence' language functions as a standing loophole that lets low‑quality or non‑empirical inputs dominate when science is inconvenient.

4. Flexner and 'vitalistic world view' are not reconcilable in the way claimed

The authors assert that EBP is 'not in absolute discord with a vitalistic world view or the scientific world view that comes across in Flexner’s words.'

• Flexner’s project was precisely to expel sectarian, vitalist doctrines from the definition of licensed medicine and tie practice to laboratory‑based science.

• Connecticut’s naturopathy regime is a clear example of rolling that back: a vitalist, principle‑defined system is given physician‑like status and statutory blessing despite its doctrinal core. Your reports show that when Flexner‑style science and naturopathic vitalism collide, the latter is not surrendered; it is rhetorically rebranded and legally protected.

So claiming harmony between Flexner’s 'scientific world view' and vitalism in this context is historically and conceptually revisionist.

5. Self‑report vs actual practice

The letter leans on survey data that NDs’ self‑reported EBP use is 'moderately high' and higher than in other CAM professions.

• Self‑reports of attitudes and reading habits do not repair the underlying mismatch between many naturopathic modalities and the minimal evidentiary standards applied in medicine.

• In Connecticut, your documentation shows NDs using homeopathy, unvalidated tests, and vaccine‑undermining rhetoric while also citing papers and guidelines when convenient – exactly the pattern of pseudoscientific 'evidence‑dressing' described in the literature.

So the claimed EBP engagement is largely cosmetic in light of how practice actually looks.

6. Asymmetry of risk and responsibility

The authors worry about EBP leading to care 'inconsistent with naturopathic philosophy,' but they do not acknowledge the patient‑safety and public‑health costs of subordinating evidence to that philosophy.

• In the Connecticut context, those costs include delayed diagnosis, inappropriate replacements for vaccination and proven therapies, financial exploitation via unvalidated tests, and [an] erosion of public‑health messaging.

• An evidence‑based stance worthy of the name has to treat those harms as central; here, the priority is clearly preserving naturopathic identity, not protecting patients from low‑value or harmful interventions.

That is a failure of both EBP and professional ethics."

I did a follow-up question:

"Could this be seen as an apologetic based on flawed logic for a belief system, as opposed to research?"

The answer:

"Yes.

In this context it functions much more like an apologetic for a belief system than like a research‑grounded argument.

It starts from the non‑negotiable truth of naturopathic vitalism ('naturopathic philosophy and principles') and then argues that EBP can be adjusted so it doesn’t threaten that core.

That is the structure of a theological or sectarian apologetic, not of open‑ended [oops, I say 'open-minded'] inquiry.

It treats 'over‑reliance on scientific evidence' as a danger because it might conflict with the philosophy, instead of treating conflict as a signal that the philosophy may need revision or abandonment.

That inverts the logic of evidence‑based practice and aligns with protecting belief rather than testing it.

It invokes 'other sources of evidence' without specifying clear, publicly testable standards for when those override high‑quality empirical data, which is a classic way to insulate doctrine from falsification while appearing pro‑science.

So while the letter cites survey research about ND attitudes and skills, the quoted passage itself is best read as normative, defensive reasoning aimed at preserving a pre‑set worldview – an apologetic – rather than as a research‑driven conclusion that would allow core naturopathic commitments to be overturned if the evidence demanded it."

Oh such tangled webs...

It is tough to cut through them.

Them weasel words of woo -- a reference to Dr. Atwood.

DPH WTF

Speaking of where I’m going in this episode with this 2026 study, and having just talked about a very important historical context – Flexner – a more recent historical context specific to Connecticut is the DPH's 2017 report on naturopathy.

And this is a rather rare naturopathy-critical collection of opinions from Connecticut healthcare stakeholders.

It is titled “Report to the General Assembly - A Report Based on the Committee on the Practice of Naturopathy Convened Pursuant to Special Act 16-3”.

And I’ll provide the link to portal.ct.gov and I have pushed that also into archive.org.

Now, I’m not going to ‘only’ beat up on Connecticut’s DPH and this report.

It was authored by then DPH Commissioner Pino – MD MPH – and it stated regarding naturopathy, and this is a summary via ChatGPT:

[Note: And I think one can tell that this Report by DPH didn't do what so obviously should have been done: survey the NDs practice pages within the state...as I have done this 2026.  That may have been a deliberate nerfing.]

"

Domain	Critical Point	Summary of Argument
Science / Evidence-Based Medicine	[Naturopathy's] Lack of rigorous scientific foundation	Critics argue naturopathic education includes modalities rooted in historical or traditional practices rather than modern biomedical science, and that some treatments lack strong empirical validation.
Clinical Competence / Training	[Naturopaths have] Insufficient clinical training compared with MD / DO pathways	Concerns were raised that naturopathic clinical hours and residency requirements are substantially lower than those required for physicians, potentially affecting diagnostic and prescribing competence.
Patient Safety / Public Health	Risk from expanded prescriptive authority	Testimony warned that granting broader prescribing privileges could expose patients to harm if practitioners lack pharmacological depth equivalent to medical doctors.
Pharmacology	Limited drug-interaction knowledge	Critics suggested naturopathic curricula may not provide adequate preparation to manage complex medication regimens or recognize contraindications.
Professional Standards	Absence of standardized residency	Unlike conventional medicine, residencies for naturopaths are not uniformly required, raising questions about readiness for independent practice.
Ethics / Informed Consent	Potential for patients to misunderstand evidence level	Some opponents argued patients may assume therapies are scientifically validated when supporting evidence is weak or mixed.
Regulatory Integrity	Scope expansion without commensurate oversight	Critics contended that expanding scope (e.g., prescribing) without parallel regulatory safeguards could strain state oversight mechanisms.
Healthcare System Impact	Fragmentation of care	There were concerns that parallel treatment paradigms could complicate coordination with conventional providers and create inconsistent standards of care.
Comparative Effectiveness / Cost	Questionable value relative to established care	Opponents implied that therapies lacking strong evidence may generate costs without demonstrable outcome benefits.

"

Well, at least they got some points on the board.

Obviously, there are deeper sources, a deeper etiology for the Connecticut regime, beyond DPH.

I think of DPH as the foot soldiers, the manifestation, the pawns.

There is a General, too, in the capacity of attorney.

And of course, there’s those who fix the processes and boundaries of the game, the lawmakers and the judiciary – in sum, gaming the system.

The shape of things is determined at that level, and the DPH to a large extent is just poured into that container.

And I think it is abusive, overall, and vile.

Ur-vile [As in Donaldson's demons].

When Perplexity is asked:

“In what ways does all this naturopathy context in Connecticut that has been determined run contrary to the Connecticut Department of Public Health's mandate?”

The answer is: 

“Connecticut’s naturopathy regime, as you’ve mapped it, cuts against the Department of Public Health’s mandate on all three of DPH’s core legs: assuring healthy conditions, preventing disease / injury, and promoting equal enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health.

1. Assuring conditions in which people can be healthy

DPH frames its role as creating conditions for genuine health, with accurate information and quality‑controlled services.

• The naturopathy framework licenses and normalizes high‑camouflage, low‑evidence practices (homeopathy, detox, energy medicine, unvalidated 'functional' testing) under a statutory label of 'science,' which degrades the informational environment people rely on to stay healthy. 

• By allowing NDs to function as de facto primary care and integrative specialists without evidence‑anchored scope limits, the state builds structural confusion into the health‑care landscape, not healthy conditions.

2. Preventing disease, injury, and disability

DPH’s mission explicitly includes prevention of disease, injury, and disability.

• Your Connecticut reports document NDs:

•  Undermining vaccination and standard screening.

• Diverting oncology, autoimmune, infectious‑disease, and pediatric cases into low‑evidence pathways.

• Using unvalidated diagnostics (IgG tests, thermography as breast screening, bioenergetic devices) that can delay real diagnosis and treatment.

• These patterns increase preventable morbidity and risk of serious injury or disability, directly contradicting a prevention mission that should favor guideline‑based, evidence‑anchored pathways.

3. Promoting equal enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health

DPH also commits to “promoting the equal enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health.”

• The naturopathy regime creates a two‑tier system under one regulatory umbrella:

• Patients who land in evidence‑based MD / DO care get the benefit of modern standards.

• Patients who, often for reasons of cost, distrust, or targeted marketing, land in naturopathic care get a lower, more speculative standard presented as equivalent.

• Because naturopathic practice heavily targets vulnerable groups (parents of autistic children, 'chronic‑Lyme' patients, complex‑chronic sufferers), the burdens fall disproportionately on those least able to absorb harm, which violates the 'equal enjoyment' aspect of DPH’s mandate.

4. DPH’s role as source of accurate, up‑to‑date health information

DPH describes itself as a source of accurate, up‑to‑date health information used to monitor health status, set priorities, and evaluate initiatives, and as a regulator focused on health outcomes.

• Continuing to license naturopathy as 'science,' and to treat naturopathic claims as a normal part of the licensed provider universe, injects institutionalized misinformation into the very system DPH is supposed to make more accurate.

• The department has shown it can be skeptical – e.g., issuing an unfavorable report on ND prescribing privileges in 2017 [the report I just covered] – but the broader naturopathic framework and marketing environment remain largely uncorrected.

5. Oversight authority vs. naturopathy practice reality

Recent legislation actually expands DPH’s enforcement reach over licensed institutions and health‑care entities, underscoring its role in ensuring compliance with public‑health statutes and quality standards.

• Against that backdrop, a naturopathy ecosystem that:

• Promotes unvalidated diagnostics and therapies.

• Undercuts public‑health norms.

• Exploits information asymmetries and financial vulnerability.

• stands in sharp tension with DPH’s statutory responsibility as a regulator 'focused on health outcomes.'

Taken together, your analysis shows that the Connecticut naturopathy context is not just loosely misaligned with DPH’s mission; it systematically pulls in the opposite direction – toward misinformation, preventable harm, unequal standards of care, and institutional confusion about what counts as real health protection.”

[Misalignment]

Speaking of misalignment, how about concerning the greatest of all values, a misalignment with freedom?

Returning to the cover letter for a moment that began this part of Episode 017, I'd asked this question to the CT Public Health Committee:

"But what kind of science is composed of discarded medievalisms, pseudoscientific and sectarian approaches, and opaque commitments and therein lacks the most essential aspects of science: being self-testing and self-correcting, testable, transparent, and rigorous?"

And I'd mentioned the "civic."

My interest is what I'll call, for this episode, 'the uncivic naturopathic sectic unfreedom situation'.

Google's Gemini stated, regarding the civic and the opposite of:

"The civic and the uncivic are primarily differentiated by their orientation toward the community, with civic actions promoting the common good and public welfare, while uncivic (or antisocial) behaviors are marked by a lack of regard for others, selfishness, or a violation of social and legal norms.

Civic behavior is rooted in responsibility, empathy, and respect, whereas uncivic behavior is often characterized by hostility, rudeness, and disruption of social cohesion."

Social cohesion brings to mind the 'from out of many, one' governance motto of this [supposed] democracy.

And in terms of trajectory, I'm thinking of how far these here United States have to go in the sense, or rather in many senses, of "a more perfect union."

Here, particularly, I'm considering the factuality needed for a democracy to be.

As Tim Snyder states, "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom."

And in a and more granular sense, he has stated:

"Without truth, we don't have trust. Without trust, we don't have the rule of law. Without the rule of law, we don't have democracy."

But we do then, without facts, have the rule of sect, rule by law, the uncivic.

As opposed to union, rule of law, and the common good and public welfare.

In the sense of a glue binding the 'us' of union together, I think this is the broadest question that can be asked.

And this was one of the last questions asked of Perplexity within the Connecticut naturopathy context threads, so it may indicate and intimate the direction that the rest of the Episode will take, in part:

"Particularly a) from the point of view of an affected Connecticut citizen and b) as regards the State of Connecticut in behavior [passive and active, supportive and undermining, affirming and degrading etc.]: how does the Connecticut naturopathy context relate to the overall ideal of 'we the people'?"

The answer:

"For an affected Connecticut citizen, the naturopathy regime functions much more as a breach of 'we the people' than as its expression;

for the State, it represents a pattern of selectively serving some people’s preferences and guild interests at the expense of the people’s shared interest in honesty, safety, and clarity."

Hear, hear.

The answer goes on:

"a) From the citizen’s point of view

1. Informed self‑government is undermined

“We the people” presumes citizens can make knowing, voluntary choices about their lives and health.

The Connecticut naturopathy context presents naturopathy as “modernized,” “primary care,” and “evidence‑informed” while leaving its vitalist, low‑evidence core intact, and while expanding scope (diagnosis, labs, prospective prescribing).

This dulls citizens’ ability to tell science from sect, and makes democratic consent about health policy less informed.

2. Equal protection and fairness are compromised

Licensed naturopathy offers a lower evidentiary standard under the same regulatory umbrella as MD / DO care, so two citizens walking through different doors receive radically different quality while both see state seals and 'physician' language.

Those who are anxious, chronically ill, or distrustful of mainstream medicine are most likely to end up in the naturopathic lane, bearing more of the risk of misdiagnosis, delay, and financial loss – contrary to the egalitarian spirit of 'we the people.'

3. Trust in public institutions is traded away

Citizens reasonably infer that what the state licenses, calls 'physician,' and allows to expand scope has passed a meaningful truth and safety filter.

When naturopathy’s 'modernization' is driven by profession claims the state does not independently substantiate, and when evidence of weak efficacy or harm surfaces (e.g., enforcement actions, false‑claims settlements) only later, trust in the state’s gatekeeping erodes.

b) The State of Connecticut’s behavior relative to 'we the people'

1. Active affirmation of a sectarian model as if it were public medicine

Through legislation (scope expansion, pending prescribing bills) and Chapter 373 licensure, the State actively confers official status on a vitalist, principle‑defined practice as a medical 'profession,' and describes expansions as 'progress' and 'modernization.'

This is not value‑neutral pluralism; it is state endorsement that blurs the line between empirically grounded care and sectarian doctrine, against the spirit of evidence‑anchored beneficence and non‑maleficence described in ethical frameworks for CAM policy.

2. Passive acquiescence where protection is expected

'We the people' implies that when the state sees systematic risks – misleading claims, weak evidence, conflicts of interest – it will tighten guardrails, not simply codify existing practice.

Instead, Connecticut has often treated naturopathic scope expansions as technical adjustments driven by 'consumer choice' and access rhetoric, without first demanding practice reform, outcome data, or stronger transparency; this is a passive failure of the protective role the public has commissioned.

3. Mixed signals that degrade civic and epistemic integrity

On one hand, Connecticut invests in evidence‑based public health, data‑driven quality reforms, and consumer‑protection law [I'd also add that the Connecticut public college system invests in scientific integrity and intellectual integrity]; on the other, it opens a large exception for a licensed sector whose beliefs and methods are 'not consistent with conventional medicine' and 'not supported by scientific evidence.'

For 'we the people,' this double standard communicates that truth and rigor are negotiable when enough organized pressure is applied, weakening the civic norm that public policy should track the best available knowledge.

Net relationship to the ideal

In terms of rigor and honesty, the naturopathy context pulls away from 'we the people,' because the people are not given a clear, undistorted picture of what is being endorsed in their name.

In terms of protection and fairness, it creates a two‑track system that looks equal in law but is unequal in evidentiary quality and risk.

In terms of democratic self‑respect, it signals that organized belief and commerce can secure state blessing even where the standards the people apply elsewhere in health care would say 'no.'

So for an affected Connecticut citizen who takes 'we the people' seriously, the naturopathy regime is best seen not as an expression of that ideal, but as a localized betrayal of it – a place where the state’s actions and inactions depart from the obligations that phrase is supposed to carry."

Next up in this Episode 017 is the Polished Report as Episode 017b.

This has been the Naturocrit Podcast.

Thank you for boldly listening.