Britt Marie Hermes

Naturopathic Diaries

In 2015, Hermes started a blog, Naturopathic Diaries, Hermes argues that naturopaths are not able to recognize serious health conditions and treat according to the standard of care due to inadequate medical training.

Advocacy Hermes believes that naturopathic doctors are misrepresenting their medical competency to the public and lawmakers. That they should not be granted medical licenses, and where already licensed their scope of practice should be reduced. Naturopaths, including the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, have accused her of defamation against the naturopathic profession.

In a separate interview in 2018 she commented on one of the distinctions between naturopathic medicine and science-based medicine, stating that "When you’re going through naturopathic school, we’re told that what we’re being taught is evidence-based or science-based. These are different things. Evidence-based doesn’t mean the same thing as science-based. Homeopathy is a really good example to try to differentiate these terms. You can find evidence, even randomized controlled trials, that make it look like homeopathy might work. You pull from that body of research. You cherry-pick those studies. Now you have an evidence-based therapy. Science-based means that it’s actually plausible. Homeopathy is not science-based. It’s nonsense. It breaks the laws of physics. It’s not plausible. The argument is that we should make sure something is science-based before we even move on to studying it. It should pass the science test first".

Hermes also contributes to Science-Based Medicine, KevinMD, Science 2.0., and Forbes. As of 2016, an anonymous blog had been set up, aiming to dispute Hermes's claims, a blog that cites low-quality studies by naturopaths in defense of naturopathic practices. The lawsuit was filed in Kiel, Germany on September 17, 2017.

Australian Skeptics managed a fundraising campaign to assist Hermes in her defense. The campaign met its initial goal of A$80,000 within the first nine days. In an interview on the European Skeptics Podcast, the president of Australian Skeptics, Eran Segev, spoke positively about the fundraising campaign saying that "the skeptical community does rally behind people. We have seen this with Ken Harvey. We are seeing it again now".

On June 3, 2019, Hermes announced in Naturopathic Diaries that "On May 24, 2019, the District Court (Landgericht) of Kiel, Germany ruled against naturopathic cancer quack Colleen Huber in a defamation lawsuit she brought against me." Hermes also said that Huber could appeal until early July 2019, "which I would zealously fight". In a presentation a CSICon in Las Vegas in October, 2019, Hermes noted that the appeals deadline had passed and therefore Huber cannot sue her again for these points in Germany. The entire history of the lawsuit was described by Hermes in a 2020 article in Skeptical Inquirer.

Publications "Beware the Naturopathic Cancer Quack", Skeptical Inquirer, 2020. Publications on PubMed