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FOR the past decade, Timothy Caulfield, a professor of health law in Alberta, Canada, has been waging war on pseudoscience. He has written books on and about our uncritical relationship to medicine, most famously in

, and now on television, too. Each episode of his series delves into the ways people are trying to live longer or look younger, either through alternative therapies like cupping or by following out-there trends like and unproven stem cell treatments.

While it is easy to poke fun at those who believe in pseudoscience, Caulfield seeks, through his TV show, books and academic research, to understand why unlikely therapies and scientific-sounding products are so alluring. Pseudoscience is a health threat, he points out, and it is time we took it seriously.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness advice on her Goop website inspired your book Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? Have her fans taken you to task?

Yes. But I try to engage with people and I rarely block anyone. One anti-vaccination campaigner sends me emails twice a day. I know that I’m never going to change her mind, just like I’m not going to change the minds of people who believe conspiracy theories about fluoride. But it is important to hear the arguments, even the extreme ones, so that you can counter them.

You criticise alternative health practices that many would say are harmless. Why go after them?

Why am I wasting my time on this juice cleanse, say, or those silly crystal shoes that are supposed to help align my energy? Well, because these things add to the erosion of critical thinking. If you are willing to believe one little bit of magic, it becomes easier to believe the next little bit of magic.

“We looked at unproven stem cell therapies. In almost every case, a doctor was involved”

If someone believes in a homeopathic remedy for a cold, they may also come to believe in homeopathic vaccines. If a juice cleanse pushes misinformation about nutrition, it creates noise around the topic and makes it more difficult for us all to do the simple things to live a healthy lifestyle – like eating lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and proteins.

For your TV series you have had vitamin injections and have been to a “lymphatic enhancement therapist” who moved fluorescent wands across your skin. You are critical of these therapies but you have also interviewed people who believe in them. Did anyone you talked to for the show feel tricked?

We only had one complaint, which surprised me as it came from someone I had found to be really thoughtful.

We didn’t want Cheating Death to be a “gotcha” show. We aren’t out to humiliate people. We wanted to ask people why they pursued these therapies. Many realise these treatments probably don’t work, but they want to see someone who takes time with them and listens to them. When they go to see a regular doctor, they are given hardly more than a few seconds. And sometimes a therapy just feels good. I tried reflexology and it felt fantastic. Many factors drive people to these therapies, and if you say “You’re stupid and this doesn’t work”, you’re just polarising the debate.

Your show goes after therapies that make a virtue of having nothing to do with conventional medicine, as well as trends that claim to be rooted in the sort of traditional medical research that develops stem-cell therapies. Can you really hit both targets at once?

The gap between conventional and alternative medicine is being eroded. Some conventional health providers are also pushing unproven cancer and anti-ageing therapies. on an academic study of unproven stem cell therapies and, in almost every case, a medical doctor was involved in their promotion. That is really frustrating. Doctors have an obligation to make it clear to their patients what is tested science and what is experimental. They have a regulatory regime and licensing bodies to monitor them and intervene where required, but it isn’t happening.

Why do you reserve your sharpest criticism for celebrities?

When I first started doing this, people thought pop culture was a trivial corner of the whole misinformation landscape. Over the past five years, however, we have begun to realise that celebrity endorsement and opinion has a huge impact. Some celebrities say the most absurd things, things that are genuinely harmful: think of actor Jenny McCarthy’s claim that her son’s autism was caused by vaccination. Gwyneth Paltrow has pushed unhealthy diet advice and bee therapy. That last practice has actually resulted in some people having anaphylactic reactions. When you say bras or Wi-Fi cause cancer, you are implying that people are somehow to blame for their own diseases, which is wrong and pretty hurtful, too.

“Misinformation creates noise around a topic and makes it more difficult for us to do the right things”

Do you think pseudoscience is on the rise?

Yes, and a booming wellness industry is busy spreading it. Also on the rise – many studies show this – is popular confusion and a lack of confidence in public institutions. That combination is terrible. Recently, noted that the spread of misinformation about vaccines is one of the top 10 public health risks in the world. I don’t know of any other time when misinformation was tagged as a public health threat.

Have scientists played a role in the misinformation and confusion?

I do think the scientific community deserves some blame, because of the way it sometimes allows its own work to be hyped. Stem cells, precision medicine, the microbiome, nanotechnology: talking up the results of genuine research to attract media attention gives people the idea that miraculous benefits are just around the corner. Celebrities and alternative practitioners exploit this expectation to sell bunk.

What can the scientific community do to win back the public’s trust?

I think we have to engage with the public. When we hear somebody using scientific language inaccurately, we should speak up, in the news and on social media. There is a growing recognition by funding agencies and by universities that public engagement is important, and if that is the case then they need to give greater resources to the scientists who are doing it well.

Is the message getting through?

It is tough, because scientists are trained to be careful. You hear naturopaths talking constantly about quantum physics in the most inaccurate way, but you can imagine a scientist saying: “I don’t know if quantum physics applies to naturopathy in this context because I haven’t seen the data.” That is one of the reasons the battle is tough. People who push bunk speak with certainty.