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In January, Natural News shared a big story on Facebook: A federal scientist had affirmed Donald Trump’s belief that vaccines cause autism.

According to this researcher, the government had supposedly suppressed study data showing that African-American boys had a “340 percent increased risk for autism” after being vaccinated. “Despite being cast to the lunatic fringe by the mainstream media for his remarks,” the article said, the scientist “has confirmed Trump’s suspicions.”

The claim was false — but the story was an enduring hit. Since it was first published in November 2015, the link has popped up in alternative-health and anti-vaccine communities with names like “Vaccination Information Network” and “Healing ADHD & Asperger’s Without Hurting.” It’s been shared by Trump supporters, fan account for the hacking group Anonymous, the conspiracy theory subreddit, and a former X Factor contestant on Twitter. All told, it’s garnered more than 141,000 likes, shares, and (overwhelmingly positive) comments on Facebook, according to the social media–tracking tool CrowdTangle. Meanwhile, a Time story that poked holes in the claim got 3,300.

Now anyone on Facebook can take their snake oil straight to the masses.

Welcome to the vast universe of self-built social media empires devoted to spreading false, misleading, and polarizing science and health news — sometimes further and wider than the real information. Here, climate change is a government-sponsored hoax, fluoridated water is poisonous, cannabis can cure cancer, and airplanes are constantly spraying pesticides and biological waste into the air. Genetically modified food is destroying humanity and the planet. Vaccines are experimental, autism-causing injections forced on innocent babies. We can’t trust anything that we eat, drink, breathe, or medicate with, nor rely on physicians and public health agencies to act in our best interests. Between the organic recipes and menacing stock images of syringes and pills, a clear theme emerges: Everything is rigged — by doctors, Big Pharma, Monsanto, the FDA — and the mainstream media isn’t telling us. (Also, there’s usually a link to buy vitamins.) This messaging reflects a new, uniquely conspiratorial strain of libertarianism that hijacks deeply intimate issues — your body, your health, your children’s health. It shares magnificently.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (center) is joined by Robert DeNiro (right) to discuss his $100,000 challenge.

World Mercury Project / Youtube / Via youtube.com

Indeed, gone are the days when these types of stories would struggle for traction in a media landscape dominated by a few television networks, newspapers, and radio stations. Now anyone on Facebook can take their snake oil straight to the masses — and their message is reverberating in the highest levels of government. Vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who says he’s in touch with Trump about a “vaccine safety commission,” recently announced $100,000 “challenge” to prove their safety. Andrew Wakefield, who helped start the anti-vaccine movement with a fraudulent 1998 study that linked vaccines to autism, showed up at an inaugural ball. The president has called climate change a “hoax” and appointed skeptic to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Pseudoscience is closer than ever to the mainstream.

Perhaps the loudest voice in the anti-science news ecosystem is Mike Adams, a Texas software engineer turned media mogul who claims he cured himself of “chronic back pain, high cholesterol, depression, hypoglycemia, and borderline type-2 diabetes” through holistic medicine and a regimented diet. The transformation inspired him in 2003 to found the empire now known as Natural News (tagline: “The world’s top news source on natural health”).

Since then, Adams — who dubs himself “The Health Ranger” in keeping with his straight-talking, living-off-the-earth persona — has churned out every imaginable conspiracy theory about medicine, wellness, food, and the environment, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that refutes his claims. (Adams denied multiple interview requests through an assistant.) In addition to Natural News — which has a staff of 20, a built-in social network, and a blog network — Adams claims to run more than 100 websites, including a search engine that separates “independent” from “mainstream” news, holistic medicine and wellness sites, and “alternative news” sites. He runs an herbal supplement store (and peddles its products in Natural News articles), a newsletter, a podcast, a comic strip, and a nonprofit dedicated to sharing “lifesaving knowledge for enhanced nutrition and food self-reliance.”

Mike Adams, Natural News founder

TheHealthRanger / Via youtube.com

He has a lab that conducts “forensic investigations” of food, which Natural News then covers; one claiming to have discovered low levels of heavy metals in organic food made it onto The Dr. Oz Show in 2014. He’s recorded rap songs about GMOs, written books and e-books (How to Halt Diabetes in 25 Days), and published an “independent, peer-reviewed” scientific journal that, aside from one article with his byline, consists of summaries of Natural News stories. He has more than 112,000 Twitter followers, 34,000 Pinterest followers, and 131,000 YouTube subscribers. He tells advertisers that NaturalNews.com has 6 million unique visitors a month, but according to the analytics firm comScore, the average is closer to 1.6 million.

Facebook, though, has been undeniably effective at getting the word out. Adams is involved with a handful of pages, including GMO Dangers (over 296,000 likes), but the most popular by far is Natural News, which went from about 22,000 Facebook fans in early 2010 to more than 2.1 million likes in March 2017. The account — which is peppered with charming photos of organic blackberries and cute farm animals alongside questions about Barack Obama’s “fake” birth certificate and “doubts” about the September 11 attacks — has enjoyed many blockbusters. “Global warming data FAKED by government to fit climate change fictions,” story from 2014, garnered more than 114,000 likes, shares, and comments. There were 200,000 for the “five biggest lies about Ebola being pushed by government and mass media.” “Why flu shots are the greatest fraud in medical history”: 140,000. “EVERYTHING IS RIGGED,” 36-item list that started with “the entire mainstream media” and ended with “the origin of the universe (the official narrative is a laughable fairy tale)”: 63,000. When Chipotle was struggling with E. coli contamination in 2015, Adams insisted that the biotech industry was orchestrating “bioterrorism attacks” on the fast-food chain in retaliation for using non-genetically modified ingredients. His theory was liked, commented on, and shared 127,000 times, including by comedian D.L. Hughley.

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D.L. Hughley shares a Natural News article about Chipotle on Facebook in 2015.

Facebook: RealDLHughley

And sometimes, Natural News travels further on Facebook than mainstream media outlets. As Ebola spread across West Africa in the summer and fall of 2014, health and law-enforcement agencies warned of companies selling unproven solutions and therapies. A USA Today story about the scams racked up only roughly 220 likes, comments, and shares, while The Guardian’s had just over 950. Natural News, meanwhile, wrote that health authorities were ignoring the so-called cure nanosilver because it “is an obvious threat to pharmaceutical interests,” and causing “thousands of needless deaths.” It got over 32,000.

“Maximally divisive, maximally paranoid, violent” — that’s how Steven Novella, an assistant professor of neurology at Yale School of Medicine, describes Adams. “He tells readers, ‘Don’t tell anybody, trust me and my pseudoscience, it’s all a big giant conspiracy.’”

“He tells readers, ‘Don’t tell anybody, trust me and my pseudoscience, it’s all a big giant conspiracy.’”

In 2014, Adams ventured into particularly dangerous territory when he called for website that named reporters and scientists who were “Monsanto collaborators,” and declared that the public was obligated “to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.” MonsantoCollaborators.org soon went live with a swastika logo; it shut down after the FBI was notified. (Adams denied being involved with the website.)

You could call Natural News the InfoWars of health. In fact, Adams frequently used to guest-host and appear on that show, where he ranted about everything from the pharmaceutical industry’s “secret global eugenics agenda” to how swine flu was “hoax.”

But Adams sees himself less in InfoWars operator Alex Jones than in the president of the United States. “[I]ndividuals like Donald Trump and the Health Ranger (that’s me) have a reputation for kicking ass, speaking out and fighting for truth, even in the face of organized, systemic suppression of that truth,” he wrote in 2015 about the then-candidate. “That’s why I deeply understand why Donald Trump is so popular: He’s the warrior who’s willing to take on the establishment that everybody knows is crooked and corrupt.”

Mike Adams joins host Alex Jones on InfoWars.

The Alex Jones Channel / Youtube / Via youtube.com

Natural News is far from the only source of anti-science “news.” Vani Hari, known as “The Food Babe,” has gotten more than a million shares, comments, and likes on a story — “Monsanto Is Scrambling To Bury This Breaking Story – Don’t Let This Go Unshared!” — that reported high levels of supposedly cancer-causing herbicide in food items. (After BuzzFeed News asked Hari to respond to Snopes’ debunk, she published a rebuttal titled “Do You Trust Snopes? You Won’t After Reading This,” in which she argued that the site’s assessment was “manipulated” by the biotech industry.)

Healthy Holistic Living got 70,000 likes, comments, and shares on (since deleted) list of studies “proving GM foods are destroying our health,” even though hundreds of studies have found no such evidence. And YourNewsWire racked up 645,000 likes, comments, and shares on a report that 30,000 scientists had signed petition that declared man-made climate change a hoax. (Snopes deemed this “misleading.” Asked to comment, YourNewsWire’s editor-in-chief wrote: “Snopes, who like to embezzle money on prostitutes and hire pot smokers to try and trash anything right of socialism, are no more able to fact-check than Buzzfeed are able to produce a listicle outlining the 10 ways they don’t suck ass.”)

Via yournewswire.com

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