Quote

This skill is no accident. Around the time Mercola began to sell products on his site, he also began to study marketing. “I read a lot of books, took a lot of courses, and started understanding the process of how to communicate information effectively.”

Among the tricks he learned was how to grab readers’ attention—the notion, for example, that “80 percent of the effectiveness of an article is based on the headline.” He also learned the power of provocation. “I would find articles that supported one position and [say] why I disagreed. I didn’t hold back, and people seemed to like that. I didn’t realize at the time that was a useful marketing principle.”

In the opinion of David Gorski, a doctor who runs a site similar to Barrett’s (ScienceBasedMedicine.org), the problem is that Mercola either vastly exaggerates preliminary research or cherry-picks studies that bolster his point of view. Gorski believes that Mercola also ignores data that prove him wrong or pushes far beyond what is scientifically sound, using scare tactics to make his point.

Some of the articles on Mercola’s site, Barrett and others say, seem to be as much about selling the wide array of products offered there—from Melatonin Sleep Support Spray ($21.94 for three 0.85-ounce bottles) to Organic Sea Buckthorn Anti-Aging Serum ($22 for one ounce)—as about trying to inform. (Your tampon “may be a ticking time bomb,” he tells site visitors—but you can buy his “worry-free” organic cotton tampons for the discounted price of $7.99 for 16.) Steven Salzberg, a prominent biologist, professor, and researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, calls Mercola “the 21st-century equivalent of a snake-oil salesman.”