Dana Ullman

Gregory Dana Ullman, MPH is a tireless and hard-working advocate of homeopathy. Ullman holds a Master of Public Health degree from Berkeley and never goes out in public without "MPH" appended to his name, though this is not a medical qualification, but a qualification to become an administrator. He has no actual qualifications in either medicine or alternative medicine, and will happily point out that he was arrested for practising medicine without a license. Under the terms of a plea bargain (of sorts), he is required to sign a contract with all his patients explaining to them that he is not a medical doctor.

Trolling for compliments (of homeopathy)
Ullman has a lengthy history of roving the Internet to defend and promote his woo. This not only includes promoting homeopathetic products everywhere he can, but also trolling and harassing websites that are critical or even, in Wikipedia's case, listing criticisms of him. This especially includes Internet forum pages and blogs that are skeptical of homeopathy in general, and his works and involvement in homeopathy in particular. Ullman often relies on an argumentum ad populum approach, claiming that because random historical celebrities use it, homeopathy works.

He's well-known for suddenly showing up in the comments of blogs that mention homeopathy in order to give long-winded spiels about how homeopathy really works. Despite evidently having far too much free time, he is well-respected amongst his fellow cranks, with regular articles at the Huffington Post, book recommendations from the Talk-Show Queen Oprah, through various published books, and the occasional article in woo-promoting journals. He has also attempted to promote himself and homeopathy on Wikipedia, Citizendium, and many other Internet forums.

Crazy claims
Homeopathy in itself harms only the user's wallet, given that homeopathic remedies contain nothing but inert ingredients such as water, sugar or a tiny amount of alcohol. But what Ullman advocates for is often dangerous. Consider the following quote.

That could kill you. Sure, there's a footnote in there claiming he's "primarily" talking about over-the-counter drugs, and says that while you should stop your prescription drugs too, consider doing it with your doctor's help. However, the article also says:

...which sure sounds more like he's talking about prescription drugs.

Ullman also buys into the extreme homeopathic claims of "suppression", which basically states that if a non-homeopathic drug cures a symptom, then you're screwed. Why?

The random bolding is in the original. He goes on to state, still randomly bolding his text, that:

As if regular homeopathy wasn't quackery enough!

Tactics
Dana Ullman edited for a time on Wikipedia, where, unlike his normal fields of debate, everything he says was kept and cannot be dumped down a memory hole. This allows for a detailed analysis of his bizarre and, sometimes, hilarious tactics. An even more lengthy (but very pedantic) analysis can be found elsewhere.

Cherry picking
Using cherry picking tactics is certainly not specific to Ullman - every pseudoscience peddler in existence uses it. However, Ullman had his own very special twist on it: when Wikipedians would block his attempts on the main homeopathic article, he began targeting articles on substances that happened to be used in homeopathy, and would use insignificant, positive studies involving those substances as an excuse for huge rants about how wonderful homeopathy supposedly is. Conversely, if someone tried to add one of the major studies that showed homeopathy doesn't work, say, Shang et al?

Obscure sources are the best sources
One of the biggest challenges to countering Ullman is his use of a collection of obscure sources, many of which are not online in any form. Thus, debating the validity of a study you can't read is much harder, and Ullman will use this to his advantage to bamboozle anyone who doesn't go to extreme lengths to check his claims.

The Wikipedia article on "Arsenicum album", a supposedly popular homeopathic "treatment," had originally been created as a piece of pure promotional puffery, with such hilarious and bizarre statements as "Peppermint (or other mint products), coffee (or other products containing caffeine), and alcohol may reduce the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies, and should be avoided when using arsenicum album." (So, what, they work worse than placebo if taken with those?) - but more rational editors had gotten it down to a reasonable - though very short - article until Ullman arrived.

Then Ullman arrived and, armed with a study by J. C. Cazin et al., which he planned to convert into a positive article about Arsenicum album — the wonderful remedy that can help you.

Ullman was very upset when people tried to keep him from using this wonderful source. In a section he entitled "An important study was deleted", he wrote about how "it was published in one of the leading journals in toxicology," and continued to praise the importance of the journal over and over.

So, Ullman, we're having a little trouble finding this leading journal. Can you help us?

Oh, really. But what would you say if Hesperian pointed out that "Thomson Scientific's Journal Citation Reports lists 76 journals in the "toxicology" category. It doesn't list journals entitled "Human Toxicology", nor "Human and Veterinary Toxicology", but it does list a journal named "Veterinary and Human Toxicology". When listed in order of impact factor, H&VT ranks 68th out of 76 journals"?

You sure about that? What journal was it in again?

...Guess what, Dana? Every single one of those supposed name changes is wrong! The journal was originally Human Toxicology, and changed its name to Human and Experimental Toxicology, a name it retains to this day. And it's a decidedly low impact journal (Journal eigenfactor: 0.0028658, Article Influence: 0.24856).

So, on what basis were you saying this journal — which you don't know the name of — was a leading journal in its field?

Guess what else, Dana? Human Toxicology has a very special section in it which you didn't bother to mention. Let's let the publishers tell us about it:

...So, you found a crappy study published in a journal that gives over one article an issue to some crackpot theory? Good job!

Anyone else have déjà vu here?
Like all the best trolls, having lost an argument doesn't mean things are over. Just wait a week or so and bring it up all over again! If you're lucky, people will let you start the whole discussion from scratch. If not, claim they're clearly biased and stonewalling, because they refuse to discuss the issue (again).

For three and a half months in early 2008, the Wikipedia article on Potassium dichromate was taken over by endless discussions of whether or not a general article on a chemical substance should promote homeopathy. Ullman and a couple of lackeys said "Yes!", everyone else disagreed. Ullman first tried to add it to the article on 15 January several times — and, when the discussion after that went against him, he just claimed victory and added it again anyway. Soon after that was reverted, the administrators stepped in to say that no one could edit the page for a little bit.

Ullman bided his time, and attempted to restart the discussion from scratch on 30 January. Nobody was very impressed with this. But Ullman knew what to do: Wait until April, point out that one of the editors who disagreed with him had been blocked, and thus the discussion needed to be done again without him.

At this point, the words:

...began appearing on the page over and over again, like some sort of madness mantra.

And so, Ullman makes his final stand for Truth, Justice, and the American Homeopathic way: State the same argument yet again, and when people still refuse to discuss it, claim everyone ELSE is stonewalling.

It was about that point that Ullman was banned from Wikipedia for a year.

You agree with me! Really you do!
Ullman loves quote mining. Indeed, his book, The Homeopathic Revolution: Famous People and Cultural Heroes Who Chose Homeopathy is largely based around this, using such wonderful examples as Charles Darwin, who wrote "in Homœopathy common sense and common observation come into play, and both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinitesimal doses have any effect whatever." ...Wait, bad example. Let me check that... Oh, um, evidently, we're supposed to ignore Darwin attacking homeopathy, because Darwin was too afraid to ever tell anyone he actually supported it. Quote mining the deceased is, as evidenced by frequent misrepresentations of Darwin, commonplace &mdash; yet Ullman takes this further by actually quote mining the very people he's debating with.

Ullman's ability to find agreement where none exists is demonstrated in the discussion that took place in relation to Wikipedia's article on potassium dichromate. This story began with Ullman wishing to include a pilot study that purported to show support for homeopathy. In response to allegations that he was pushing the study, he accused a detractor of bullying in order to suppress a study for which the consensus was that it should be included in the article, and commented that the study had already previously been included in the article for several weeks. He rounded off his post with the comment "Just in the past week or so, Scientizzle recommended that we reference it."

The only time the study was included in the article was during an edit war sparked by Ullman's repeated attempts to insert the study in to the article. Scientizzle, a Wikipedia editor, was understandably surprised to hear of his alleged support for Ullman's efforts. Scientizzle responded with a link to the diffs (a record of edits made) and suggested that Ullman may have misread his criticism as glowing support for its inclusion. Ignoring or missing Scientizzle's corrections, Ullman replied to another editor &mdash; once again claiming Scientizzle to be in support of Ullman's position. Scientizzle responding &mdash; asking Ullman if he'd read his earlier post?

Ullman at that point issued another batch of allegations of bullying before providing a quote of Scientizzle's that did indeed suggest support for Ullman's position &mdash; but only after the quote had been suitably edited by Ullman. Both versions of the quote are reproduced here:

Saying that the study could be briefly mentioned on a different page specifically dedicated to homeopathy, not in the article on a chemical Ullman wants to use it in doesn't support Ullman's argument, so it had to change. Ullman's "tendentious editing" led to the discussion being closed and archived. Ullman was called to task by another editor for his "tendentious editing" and the conversation closed and archived.

The Wikipedia motto of "Assume Good Faith" means to assume I'm right
Dana Ullman likes to use rules to his own ends. For instance, Wikipedia has a policy of that is basically the sensible rule that, unless there's evidence otherwise, presume everyone is trying to help the project. It helps protect newbies, who might not realise the need to source facts, or might not realise the need to balance the presentation of all sides of a genuinely controversial issue, and encourages people to work together and discuss things before calling for outside help.

Ullman decided to have a... unique take on this. There's far too many examples to quote them all, but here's a sample:

"Assume good faith" apparently now means "Assume I'm right". But if you don't assume he's right, will he assume good faith?

Nope!

Right to Reply is awesome
For anyone not aware, if a scientific journal publishes something critical of you or your work, you'll often have a "right to reply": send them a letter, follow a few guidelines as to length and content, and they'll publish whatever you say.

For example, the FASEB Journal included an editorial entitled "Homeopathy: Holmes, Hogwarts, and the Prince of Wales" in their September 1, 2006 issue which briefly mentioned him.

Ullman got a right to reply out of that, and spent it cherry-picking studies and ranting about how homeopathy really works because... well, evidently because "[e]xperts in material sciences" say it does. So there! Weissman, the editor-in-chief of the journal, and author of the article Ullman was replying to, was not impressed. Now, let's see how he uses that published right to reply letter elsewhere:

Wow. So, if a major scientific journal attacks you, you can now claim the glory of that journal for your pathetic little right to reply piece? And said piece means you're now right and so everyone has to let you do unashamed promotion of bullshit on Wikipedia? I need to get attacked in a scientific journal sometime!

The memory of a goldfish
After being banned for a year, Ullman decided to join in a discussion on a Cochrane review which had recently been withdrawn. As people were directly linking to the study (thus missing the withdrawal page), it was quoted with helpful bolding of the relevant bits. Emphasis original:

Ullman responded to this, saying "We all seem to be a tad confused on the meaning of this "withdrawal," though the review is still listed at their website..." and goes on to pedantically say that Wikipedia should quote anything positive said in the review anyway, as he always did.

Two days later, in the same thread, he scrolled past the bit that pointed out the word "Withdrawal" in bold, and wrote:

Evidently, he cannot find evidence when he's been given the link, and had it quoted to him slightly further up the page.

Smarm and condescension
Ullman is not particularly pleasant to talk to. See every single quote of that smug bastard already provided.

The inevitable conclusion.
Unsurprisingly, he is now banned from any discussion of homeopathy on Wikipedia - in perpetuity.

The evitable conclusion
After Ullman was banned from Wikipedia in 2008, Larry Sanger himself invited Ullman to edit on Citizendium, and gave him the special "editor" rights that allowed him to take over their coverage of homeopathy. This move convinced many that Citizendium was not a project to be taken seriously. Citizendium has lost most of its contributors and its traffic rank has dropped off the lowest values on Alexa's charts.

Can he really believe all the crap he spouts?
Cognitive dissonance is the psychological term for the rationalizations and behaviours which allow one to avoid the self-esteem damaging effects of being wrong. All of Ullman's actions appear to be consistent with this: ignoring anything inconvenient, an unshakable belief he and homeopathy are always right, and his regular habit of rapidly forgetting anything that would be inconvenient to remember. In short, it seems he does indeed believe everything he says - at least at the time - because he doesn't believe he can be wrong.

As we see with the tweet at left, despite Dana having invoked quantum in defence of homeopathy many times, he states that "quantum theory IS woo-woo". Now look who he's tweeting at: Professor Brian Cox OBE and Professor Jim Al-Khalili OBE, both professors of physics at British universities and specialists in particle physics. There is no evidence that Dana has even a passing acquaintance with physics, just a real talent for hubris.

The (D)Ullman Law
Because of his strange, irrational arguments, and his tendency to make a complete ass out of himself in the most pompous, self-satisfied manner possible, Kimball Atwood created the "Dull-man Law", an Internet law (in the vein of Godwin's Law) which says that in any discussion involving science or medicine, being Dana Ullman loses you the argument immediately…and gets you laughed out of the room.

Influence
Dana Ullman's influence on society is hard to measure. But, his illogical tactics and beliefs about the magical powers of homeopathy can be interpreted in one way only by anyone with a thread of rationality: a public health menace. His ideas are widely reproduced by alt-med proponents. Even the renowned naturopathy flagship woo-niveristy, Bastyr, uses his material to teach its naturopathic students. In a pediatrics course taught at Bastyr in 2010, Ullman's Homeopathy for Children and Infants was on the course syllabus.