Though much of his advice and recommendations fall into the categories common sense or useless, much of it is also potentially dangerous. The latter category encompasses his “at home” stem cell injections (Greenfield is really into stem cell injection quackery), which even received credulous coverage as a Science of Sport Ad by Sportsnet, to the consternation of anyone who actually knows anything and has a modicum of integrity. Other dangerous advice from Greenfield is the nonsense collected under his “Cancer Resources”, which includes discussions of topics like “Why You’ve Been Lied to About Cancer [yes, there is conspiracy] and What You Can Do About It” and which supplies information from famous quack David Minkoff, a promoter of bogus cancer treatments like metal detoxification and chelation. (Remember that cancer patients who seek out alternative and complementary cancer treatments are more likely to refuse conventional cancer treatment, and have a twofold greater risk of death compared to patients with no complementary medicine use.)
The useless category encompasses his magic “power bracelet”, which is ostensibly superior to all the other ridiculous power bracelets out there because it uses piezoelectricity: it contains “a piezoelectric ceramic disc [that] is pre-programmed with about 100 different sound frequencies” that “are amplified by the wave signals that emanate from motion” in order to bring your body into a “state of cohesion”. Some might wonder how ‘state of cohesion’ is operationalized for scientific testing. We don’t. Even Greenfield admits that “I know that this stuff can get a bit tricky to understand” (well … sure) but he helpfully offers some youtube videos about piezoelectricity that has nothing to do with his wristband and directs readers to a podcast with one Jeffrey Thompson called “How You Can Use Sound And Music To Change Your Brain Waves With Laser Accuracy And Achieve Huge Focus And Performance Gains”.
His podcast is otherwise a cesspool of nonsense, pseudoscience and conspiracy mongering (“Deer Placenta Smoothies, Smearing Colostrum On Your Face, How To Use A Clay Mask & Much More”) and hosts guests who are often even less concerned with reality than Greenfield himself, including anti-vaccine activists and breatharians (“Biohacking The Body With Breatharianism By Pranic Breatharian Ray Maor”), as well as former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Indeed, Greenfield is anti-vaccine himself, claiming, contrary to all evidence and reality, that “vaccines do indeed cause autism” and telling his readers preemptively not to trust the fact-checking organization Snopes. For his podcast “The Shocking Truth About Vaccinations: Everything You Need To Know About Vaccines And Your Health”, he hosted Stephanie Seneff, no less, and directed fans to her “resources” concerning the VAERs database and glyphosate delusions, as well as Suzanne Humphries’s antivaccine classic Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History.
Diagnosis: Pseudoscientific moron. And you should be really sick and tired of the large group of fools on Reddit and elsewhere who claims that “Ok, some of his stuff is dubious/crazy/nonsense but he’s got lots of good stuff as well.” No, he really doesn’t: Misinformation works best if seamlessly mixed with stuff that is close to being correct, and Greenfield is a successful purveyor at misinformation. Don’t listen to him about anything; if there is anything correct in anything he says, you’ll find it better expressed from more trustworthy sources.
Hat-tip: Sheila Kealey
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