Quack Quack: The Threat of Pseudoscience

Let the one and only Dr. Joe battle pseudoscience and cast a life preserver out to all those drowning in a sea of misinformation

"Ultimately, the author successfully demonstrates how claims should be queried and analyzed before they are accepted." -- Library Journal

We are in a crisis. A tsunami of misinformation and disinformation is threatening to engulf evidence-based science. While quackery -- loosely defined as the spread of false "knowledge," often accompanied by various versions of "snake oil" -- is not a novel phenomenon, it has never posed as great a threat to public health as today. COVID-19 has unleashed an unprecedented flurry of destructive information that has fueled vaccine hesitancy and has steered people toward unproven therapies. Conspiracy theorists have served up a distasteful menu of twisted facts that create distrust in science.

In Quack Quack, Dr. Joe Schwarcz, who has been battling flimflam for decades, focuses on the deluge of anecdotes, cherry-picked data, pseudoscientific nonsense, and seductive baseless health claims that undermine efforts to educate the public about evidence-based science. The wide scope of the topics drawn from past and present aims to cast a life preserver to people drowning in a sea of misinformation.


About the Author

Dr. Joe Schwarcz is the director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, which has the mission of separating sense from nonsense. He hosts a radio show, appears on television, writes a regular newspaper column, and has authored 18 bestsellers. Dr. Joe is also an amateur magician and lives in Montreal, QC.