‘Apple Cider Vinegar’ features competing quacks

Everyone’s an expert now. You can tell because they “do their own research,” and consult other leading “experts” on the Internet!

And everyone’s a skeptic. That is to say, everyone is skeptical of everything. They’re skeptical in ways that can infuriate old school “scientific skeptics.” As facts are increasingly seen as whatever anyone thinks they are, and logical conclusions are whatever you feel like believing, debunking scams and falsehoods might seem impossible, because simply showing people the truth doesn’t often cause them to rethink their falsehoods. Hoaxers and conspiracists have taken on the argumentative stance, vocabulary, and claims to rationality and expertise that were once the hallmark of scientific skepticism.

But there can also be conflict within the community of science deniers, who never need to grapple with any data, as illustrated by the current miniseries Apple Cider Vinegar, currently airing on Netflix. The show dramatizes the career of the real-life Belle Gibson, an Australian woman who, in 2012, developed a large Instagram following by falsely claiming she had serious brain cancer, but had decided to reject conventional treatment in favor of her own combination of health foods, meditation, and New-Age retreats. She went on to say this had, somehow, successfully beaten back the cancer.

At the same time, a health-food quackery rival, “Milla Blake” (based on Jessica Ainscough), who actually does have cancer, also rejects conventional treatment in favor of a fad diet. As Blake’s condition worsens, she begins to resent Gibson’s public success and determines to “destroy” her. This rivalry sets up an interesting dichotomy in Apple Cider Vinegar, between two types of sciencey-sounding, anti-medicine influencers: the outright fake who simply peddles snake oil, and the sincere seeker who’s desperate to find something that will work, but has soured on conventional medicine for her own reasons.

Both these characters appear certain of the validity of their chosen treatments. Blake has scoured the medical literature and angrily spits journal references at the doctors who advocate their harsh but proven, conventional treatment. Her oncologist points out that Blake’s literature references are weak or deprecated; the “Hirsch Institute” where she plans to be treated is grounded in homeopathy, the ne plus ultra of quackery. Gibson, meanwhile, has the problem of promoting her own New Age medical worldview without letting anyone know her disease is a lie. Her determination is that of the con artist shucking and jiving to pull in an audience that’s willing to believe.

Blake is tragically wrong, but she believes in her fake cures, motivated by her strong distrust of institutional medicine, and the horror of having her arm amputated. “From now on I’m going to stop thinking with my head and start feeling with my body,” she says. “Because I know that cutting off my arm is wrong, like I know chemotherapy is wrong. I have to find the right way.” Gibson doesn’t have to interrogate her own beliefs, and simply has to create a façade of veracity around them. The followers, the book, the Apple app deals, and the over 1 million Australian dollars she took in were too much to pass up. To her, the payoff justified the risk.

What’s interesting (and dismaying) is the nearly-identical arguments and “evidence” both characters in Apple Cider Vinegar offer for the non-scientific treatments they advocate. Gibson “feels” what she knows is right. “I’ve learned to seek out and value what’s raw and what’s honest,” she says. Blake’s Hirsch Institute explains, “[The AMA believes] only their medicine can cure cancer … People cure themselves all the time when we are in harmony with the natural world.” They’re alike in their contempt for scientific medicine, which they both regard as false and dishonest.

Scientific skepticism and the “skepticism” of  these two conspiracy theorists and alternative-belief adherents are now superficially identical. Both cite data derived from their own preferred sources. Both are aghast at the hardheadedness of the other, when it’s so obvious that their own ontological and procedural approach is best. And neither can be convinced to accept the other’s data, let alone logic, because the very idea of data has been divided into competing camps.

In Apple Cider Vinegar, Gibson and Blake both reject conventional science, but conflict with each other in their incompatible alternative views because, on their grounds of evidence and belief, there’s no way to resolve their disagreements as to which herbs and enemas are best. But the answer clearly cannot come from the traditional scientific method, because they are in firm agreement that it’s inapplicable to the factual questions they prefer to resolve with their feelings and natural harmonies. Science can’t convince them otherwise, because they each believe (or at least maintain) that their approach is science, and actual science is not science, because it too conflicts with their feelings.

So cynical rejectionism has become scientific skepticism, because any belief is science, and skepticism —of anything — is thereby scientific. It’s difficult to know how to advocate for truth when the standard of objective confirmability has been claimed as the standard of personal feeling and preference.

Every February, to help celebrate Darwin Day, the Science section of AIPT cranks up the critical thinking for SKEPTICISM MONTH! Skepticism is an approach to evaluating claims that emphasizes evidence and applies the tools of science.

AIPT Science is co-presented by AIPT and the New York City Skeptics.