A Weekend with Bill Nye, Peter Hotez, Michael Mann, & Skeptics
Different subjects. One playbook. From organic food to vaccine denialism, the same ecosystem profits from fear, identity, and distrust.
It’s been awhile since my last newsletter. Trust me, I’m aware.
I’ve opened a blank document at least a dozen times over the past month, started writing, and closed it again. Now I’ve got a whole collection of half-written drafts about important health disinformation topics I desperately want to finish.
Part of it has been simple reality: work has been incredibly busy, life has been busy, and, frankly, I’ve been exhausted and burnt out.
But the longer I went without writing, the more I found myself avoiding it because I felt guilty for not writing as often as I wanted to. And ironically, it’s not like I have nothing to write about — my notes app on my phone will prove otherwise.
In fact, it’s the opposite. The deluge of pseudoscience and anti-science rhetoric being legitimized by people and institutions that should know better has only accelerated.
About two and a half weeks ago, I was at CSICon. If you’re not familiar, it’s the annual conference of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the organization that publishes Skeptical Inquirer Magazine. It was the 50th anniversary and it was a great time. If you’ve never attended, put it on your list. Bonus, next year it’s in Philly—my stomping grounds.
I left CSICon with way too many ideas, a notebook full of future newsletter topics, and renewed enthusiasm to tackle dangerous policies and rhetoric that are tangibly hurting all of us.
I’ve spent the past couple of weeks deciding how to “restart” my newsletter, but I guess my talk at CSICon is as good a place as any, so here we go…
CSICon is unique because it's one of the few conferences where genuinely cross-disciplinary conversations happen. It’s a place where biomedical scientists, journalists, psychologists, educators, even magicians and former conspiracy theorists are all in the same room. This year, I spent time with Peter Hotez and Michael Mann, met Bill Nye [the Science Guy], reconnected with friends and colleagues, and listened to fantastic talks from friends and colleagues like Dan Wilson, Nick Tiller, Rina Raphael, and Katie Suleta.
On the surface, our topics were seemingly unrelated. Peter Hotez discussed the players in vaccine misinformation. Michael Mann focused on climate misinformation. Nick Tiller and Rina Raphael explored how the wellness industry has transformed wellness into an identity and an incredibly lucrative business.
But the reality is we were all describing the same phenomenon from different angles. These aren’t disconnected controversies. They’re all part of the same lucrative ecosystem that monetizes fear, exploits identity, erodes trust, and borrows credibility whenever it can.
My talk, Sanitizing Snake Oil Harms Public Health, focused on one deceptively simple question: how do unsupported ideas become mainstream? The answer isn’t that the evidence gets better:
Unsupported ideas don’t become mainstream because the evidence improves. They become mainstream because they borrow credibility from trusted messengers: health professionals, medical organizations, and perceived experts.
Organic food marketing, vaccine denialism, cancer pseudoscience, climate denial, wellness culture, and conspiracy theories may look different, but they're all built on the same strategy. More importantly, they're supported by the same organizations, influencers, and commercial interests that profit from spreading disinformation.
I used three case studies to illustrate the central theme of my talk: that anti-science and health misinformation follows the same playbook.
First, create fear.
Your food is toxic.
Chemotherapy is poison.
Vaccines contain toxins.
Then undermine trust.
Doctors won’t tell you.
Scientists are captured.
Regulators are compromised.
Next, sell an identity.
You’re asking questions.
You know your body.
You’ve discovered what “they” don’t want you to know.
Then, sell the product.
The supplement.
The detox protocol.
The organic food.
The expensive health test.
The alternative cancer ‘treatment’.
Finally, borrow credibility from perceived experts and trusted institutions. The final step is the least often challenged, but arguably the most damaging, because this is where fringe ideas stop looking fringe and become normalized.
At the center of this is what I call institutional laundering. It’s when medical professional organizations repeat, endorse, and amplify the false marketing premises of anti-science movements. Those ideas gain legitimacy they never earned—not because the evidence changed, but because these messengers give them credibility. The consequence is that institutions whose primary responsibility is to protect public health inadvertently become vehicles for misinformation.
One of the more egregious examples is the American Academy of Pediatrics amplifying anti-GMO and organic product misinformation through its official policies and patient-facing guidance.
The AAP’s policy acknowledges that organic foods don’t provide any clinically meaningful health benefits, yet encourages parents to choose organic foods to “reduce pesticide exposure.” This reinforces the organic industry's central marketing narrative: that pesticide residues on conventionally grown produce pose a meaningful health risk. They do not. That claim is not supported by toxicology, exposure science, or clinical evidence.
Organic Is the Wellness Industry of Agriculture
The organic farming and food industry is based on clean-food ideology, chemophobia, and the fantasy that “natural” is a scientific argument. It is born from the same wellness industry that sells detoxes, “clean” eating, supplements, and anti-chemical fearmongering, wrapped in conspiracy-lined distrust of scientific institutions and regulation.
Instead of encouraging the roughly 90% of Americans who don't eat enough fruits and vegetables to eat more produce—regardless of how it's grown—the AAP reinforces unfounded fears about pesticide residues. The result is backward: we discourage consumption of safe, affordable produce instead of addressing the real public health problem: that people aren't eating enough fruits and vegetables.
More concerning is the AAP’s patient-facing information about foods containing genetically engineered (GMO) ingredients. Despite overwhelming scientific consensus and the positions of the FDA, EPA, USDA, the National Academies, the World Health Organization, and virtually every scientific body that has evaluated the evidence, the AAP tells parents that “some GMO foods may pose health risks.” It doesn’t say they do. It says they may. That single sentence manufactures uncertainty where the scientific evidence provides none.
Let me be unequivocal: there is no credible evidence that foods containing ingredients from approved genetically engineered crops pose a health risk to consumers. None. Suggesting otherwise creates uncertainty where the evidence doesn’t support it. Genetically engineered crops have enabled farming practices that reduce pesticide use while improving crop productivity.
And yet, the leading pediatric medical professional organization in the US has decided to ignore the scientific consensus (pediatricians are not experts in agriculture, molecular biology, toxicology, etc) and foment fear among parents.
The factual, science-based message should be: Organic is a marketing designation, not a health claim. It reinforces health inequity and chemophobia. It doesn’t improve health outcomes, is not pesticide-free, and is not a badge of scientific literacy. We should be encouraging people to eat more produce, not scaring them away from more affordable (and absolutely safe) options.
The multi-billion dollar organic product industry doesn’t simply encourage people to buy a different kind of produce. It tells the public that natural is inherently safer than synthetic and that modern agricultural science cannot be trusted. When organizations like the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Moms Across America, and Children’s Health Defense convince trusted messengers to repeat their marketing narratives, misinformation becomes far easier to normalize.
Trust in science dies when health professionals spread disinformation and refuse to correct mistakes
The American Academy of Pediatrics is legitimizing pseudoscience that is undermining food safety, genetic technologies, and critical agricultural practices.
The pattern doesn’t stop with the AAP. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has directed patients to Environmental Working Group resources and described organic food as being “grown without pesticides”—a statement that is simply false. It also promotes chemophobic messaging about "reducing toxic exposures" during pregnancy—a population the wellness industry aggressively targets. ACOG has an opportunity to educate patients about real risk during pregnancy. Instead, it reinforces narratives that ignore the basic principles of toxicology and risk assessment.
These organizations aren’t fringe. They’re leading medical professional organizations that create clinical treatment guidelines and should be educating the public. That’s why this matters.
Pseudoscience doesn’t become mainstream because evidence to support it improves. It becomes mainstream because respected institutions repeat, soften, or legitimize marketing narratives without applying the same evidentiary standards they do in other areas of science and medicine. Once that happens, the public doesn’t perceive those ideas as marketing or advocacy. They view them as medical guidance.
When a wellness influencer questions GMOs, most people recognize they’re hearing an opinion. When one of the most trusted pediatric organizations in the world suggests that genetically engineered foods “may pose health risks,” that statement carries institutional weight. It doesn’t reflect uncertainty—it creates it.
More importantly, scientists become less able to recommend these organizations as trusted sources of health information. This is one of the reasons institutional laundering is so harmful. When organizations like the AAP get vaccines right—and they overwhelmingly do—but simultaneously promote unsupported narratives about organic food or genetically engineered crops, they undermine their own credibility. We shouldn’t have to tell the public, “Trust the AAP on vaccines, but ignore what they say about GMOs.” Credibility doesn’t work that way.
This is how unsupported ideas become respectable. Not because the evidence changed. Because the messenger did.
But this is also the step too many scientists, health professionals, science communicators, and journalists overlook. Misinformation becomes mainstream when trusted institutions soften the distinction between evidence and speculation:
“Buy organic if you can afford it.”
“There’s no harm in trying.”
“More research is needed.”
“Everyone should decide for themselves.”
These statements might come from a place of empathy, diplomacy, or a desire to respect autonomy. But communication research shows us that when experts present unequal evidence as though both sides deserve equal weight, the public doesn’t hear nuance. They hear uncertainty. And uncertainty is where pseudoscience propagates.
This was the common thread running through nearly every conversation I had at CSICon. Peter Hotez was describing it in the anti-vaccine movement. Michael Mann showed its effect in climate science. Nick Tiller and Rina Raphael explored it in wellness culture. I drew the through-line between the organic industry, anti-vaccine rhetoric, and cancer pseudoscience. We all got there through different disciplines, but we were talking about the same problem.
The good news is that I’ve finally decided to stop avoiding the blank page. Over the next several weeks, I’ll expand on the ideas from my talk and the conversations that followed it. We'll dig into why the organic industry is often a gateway into the wellness movement, how "wellness" became an identity, why false balance continues to undermine public understanding of science, and what scientists, healthcare professionals, and medical organizations can do to communicate with empathy without legitimizing unsupported claims.
Neutrality isn’t neutral when it comes to anti-science misinformation.
Sanitizing snake oil doesn’t protect patients.
It protects snake oil salesmen.
So, consider this the end of my unintended hiatus.
Evidence-based science communication has never mattered more.
Between vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, the normalization of pseudoscience by public figures, and the growing willingness of respected institutions to soften scientific consensus, there's a lot of work to do. I'm grateful you're here for it.
Stay skeptical,
Andrea
“ImmunoLogic” is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:
It bears repeating, "when experts present unequal evidence as though both sides deserve equal weight, the public doesn’t hear nuance. They hear uncertainty. And uncertainty is where pseudoscience propagates".
I am disappointed to read the AAP & ACOG have not been less ambiguous. Parents & expecting mothers have many challenges to ensure they are the best guardians of their unborn & infants, etc without the confusion & guilt of what foods to fed their children.
JJF Phm 🇨🇦
Thank you for the article. As a curious person I search for credible information, and it can be a daunting task!!