Baseless Claims and Pseudoscience in Health and Wellness: A Call to Action for the Sports, Exercise, and Nutrition-Science Community

• Published in: Sports medicine (Auckland) 2023, Vol.53 (1), p.1-5
• Main Authors: Tiller, Nicholas B., Sullivan, John P., Ekkekakis, Panteleimon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Athletic Performance; Clinical medicine; Current Opinion; Diet; Dietary Supplements; Ethics; Exercise; False information; Humans; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Nutrition; Physical fitness; Pseudoscience; Public health; Reputations; Science; Scientists; Social networks; Sports Medicine
• ISSN: 0112-1642; 1179-2035
• DOI: 10.1007/s40279-022-01702-2

The global health and wellness industry has an estimated value of US$4 trillion. Profits derive from heath club memberships, exercise classes, diets, supplements, alternative ‘therapies’, and thousands of other products and services that are purported to improve health, recovery, and/or sports performance. The industry has expanded at an alarming rate, far outstripping the capacity of federal bodies to regulate the market and protect consumer interests. As a result, many products are sold on baseless or exaggerated claims, feigned scientific legitimacy, and questionable evidence of safety and efficacy. This article is a consciousness raiser. Herein, the implications of the mismatch between extraordinary health and performance claims and the unextraordinary scientific evidence are discussed. Specifically, we explore how pseudo science and so-called ‘quick fix’ interventions undermine initiatives aimed at evoking long-term behavior change, impede the ongoing pursuit of sports performance, and lead to serious downstream consequences for clinical practice. Moreover, pseudo science in health and wellness, if left unchecked and unchallenged, may have profound implications for the reputation of exercise science as a discipline. This is a call to action to unify exercise scientists around the world to more proactively challenge baseless claims and pseudo science in the commercial health and wellness industry. Furthermore, we must shoulder the burden of ensuring that the next generation of exercise scientists are sufficiently skilled to distinguish science from pseudo science, and information from mis- and disinformation. Better population health, sports performance, and the very reputation of the discipline may depend on it.