Encyclopedia of American Loons : #1422: Kelly Brogan
Dr. Kelly Brogan was educated at Cornell and MIT, so one would think she ought to know a thing or two about methods for aligning beliefs to reality. Well, clearly Cornell and MIT need to do something somewhat differently, for Brogan has managed to delude herself into a pretty impressive array of ridiculous denialist and pseudoscienfic beliefs and conspiracy theories, and she has shown a remarkable inability to read scientific literature or evaluate hypotheses. You can read her articles on Sayer Ji’s abysmally insane website GreenMedInfo, as well as on her own website, where she claims to be practicing “holistic women’s health psychiatry,” for some examples. Oh, yes, Brogan has embraced a whole range of woo, including homeopathy, acupuncture, antivaccine views, anti-GMO views, functional medicine and pretty much every kind of medical nonsense you’ll ever encounter.
Given that she has some (nominal) background in topics related to science, she is dimly aware of the value of using scientific studies to support her views. But managing to find a single scientific study that could be twisted into looking like it supports your view isn’t enough to make those views respectable, and Brogan’s writings constitute some spectacular examples of how a professional denialist can dishonestly twist and distort and cherrypick real (as well as less respectable) studies to seem to support her cherished, otherwise non-evidence based views. What she does to an extent know how to do, is to mask her own unscientific rants in the format of something resembling real, serious writing (to those who don’t know better). Take a look, for instance, at her writings about the HPV vaccine (or here).