Science vs. Scare Tactics: Are "chemicals" killing us all?
Your weekend watch: me vs. Aly Cohen's "clean living" crusade on Dr. Mike's The Checkup Podcast
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Thank you all for your kind messages regarding my stepdad’s death. It’s been a particularly rough couple of weeks, which is why you haven’t heard from me here as often. I’m still doing science communication — I just gave the keynote at the Excipient World Congress, actually. Once I have time, I have lots to write about.
But with the arrangements that have to be taken care of, moving his stuff out of his apartment (I finished this week with help from some friends, a moving company I hired, and a storage unit), and my full-time job, my time and energy is low. I am glad that his cat Smokey has been officially adopted by my friend Paul and his other cat, Toby.
But it’s Friday. And Friday means: movie night.
You could catch up on your Netflix watchlist, OR —
you could watch me fact-check wellness influencer Aly Cohen’s fear-laden claims:
hormones and parabens, glyphosate myths, vaccine overload myths, and the "organic means chemical-free" lie.
It’s a predictable pattern: a physician claims they’re helping their patients (and the public) navigate the world of “toxic chemical exposures” — by selling a book, wellness products, unproven detoxes, & useless (potentially dangerous) lifestyle modifications.
Aly Cohen is promoting her upcoming book DETOXIFY: The Everyday Toxins Harming Your Immune System and How to Defend Against Them.
I read it so you don’t have to. The problem? She doesn’t actually understand the immune system, chemistry or toxicology principles, or have data to support the claims she is selling.
She pretends she cares about your health, but instead crafts an emotional narrative less about actually improving health and more about profiting off disinformation.
Aly Cohen claims to be a “triple Board-certified” physician, but peek behind the curtain and see: two of those credentials are not legitimate. One is a self-proclaimed “environmental health expert,” the other is an “integrative medicine” title.
The one she does have is rheumatology, a specialty focusing on rheumatological disorders (those of connective tissues, which can include specific autoimmune disorders). She is not a scientist. Her career has veered into pseudoscience. She calls herself “immunologically trained,” and thus, equipped to write about the topics she does. In her book, she even fabricates the phrase “immune-disrupting chemicals.”
Cohen’s tactics are old hat, screaming about “toxic chemicals” to sell fear. Mike and his team asked me to help tackle the claims in her upcoming book (which Aly was shocked to learn I actually read—and cited during this discussion):
Her repeated misuse of basic chemical and toxicological principles
Her lack of basic chemistry and immunology understanding
The appeal to nature fallacy
Her cherry-picking of flawed or outdated studies
Her overuse of anecdotes and emotional appeals
Pretending that correlation is causation
Her disregard for regulatory science and dose-response realities
Her fear-first messaging around everyday products, while promoting DIY “alternatives” that can be incredibly dangerous.
If you’ve got 2 and a half hours and a low tolerance for anti-science bullshit, here are your new Friday night plans.
Real science is more than vibes and a medical degree.
Me and Mike fact-check the “everything is toxic” narrative, the false claim that “synthetic chemicals” are inherently bad and natural ones are inherently good, and how scientific studies and empirical evidence actually work. We cover topics from vaccines, autism, food ingredients, glyphosate, organic farming, parabens, and more.
It’s a full-length disinformation dissection—streaming on YouTube with your favorite immunologist.
This isn’t just fact-checking the same falsehoods: it’s about people who weaponize credentials to cause harm.
Aly repeatedly relies on her medical degree and emotional appeals to try to claim authority. Having a medical degree doesn’t make someone an expert in environmental toxicology, regulatory science, or risk assessment.
Aly is another example of an physician who uses their medical degree to propagate pseudoscience (a la Mehmet Oz, Mark Hyman, Marty Makary, Jay Bhattacharya, Casey Means (that one is not even a physician), Vinay Prasad, etc). Even credible physicians are not the same as scientists: they both have distinct training and expertise.
This fear-based messaging creates guilt for parents, distrust in food safety, vaccines, and biomedical therapies. And it works — that’s why the wellness industry is so profitable.
Why? Because by framing everything as a “toxic exposure,” you convince people that they’re not safe. And by doing that, these influencers create their captive audience — and their customer base.
I hope this is an entertaining and informative watch! But in the end, the reason I agreed to this discussion is that:
Wellness influencers who weaponize basic science concepts aren’t just wrong—they're actively harmful to public health.
For some newsletters I’ve written and additional resources on topics discussed:
You can find a myriad of scientific references, meta-analyses, RCTs, and expert consensus reports on my website here: https://www.immunologic.org/references
Now, more than ever, we all must join in the fight for science.
Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.
More science education, less disinformation.
- 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:
Dr. Andrea Love continues to be a vital voice pushing back against the tidal wave of wellness pseudoscience. Her evidence-based breakdown of Aly Cohen’s claims and the broader disinformation ecosystem shows how fear, false authority, and cherry-picked data are used to manipulate public opinion. This kind of myth-busting is crucial as we face rising vaccine hesitancy, misinformation about food safety, and dangerous “detox” fads.
I really appreciate Dr. Love’s work, not just for the clarity and accuracy of her science but for the courage it takes to call out credentialed pseudoscience directly. She doesn’t flinch and she doesn’t water it down. If you care about real science, not just vibes and vague credentials, her work is essential reading.
You make such a good point when you highlight “emotional” or emotionally-charged language. If we pay attention to language, we will notice ways in which it can be used manipulatively - to subtly imply that fiction is fact, to get people riled up enough that they will respond out of fear or anger, not rational thinking. I also continue to be struck by the belief that anyone in a field knows everything about that field. If I need open heart surgery, I’m pretty sure I won’t ask an orthopedist, for instance. Influencers who claim to know it all are dangerous. Hard stop.