The Healthfraud Discussion List
The Healthfraud List provides a forum for discussing health frauds, quackery, and unscientific health matters. It is very active, with more than 400 members and about 50 postings per day.
Cosponsors
- Scottsoft Research, which donates the computers and technical support. Headed by Scott Ballantyne, its staff does unix and networking consulting.
- Quackwatch, Inc.
Listmaster
- Quackwatch board chairman Stephen Barrett, MD, monitors the discussions and enforces the list's policies when necessary.
Policies
- The list is primarily for participants in the everyday struggle against quackery, but others are welcome as guests.
- If the volume of messages becomes uncomfortably large, guests may be asked to post no more than two messages per day.
- Healthfraud is an "unmoderated" list. However, if a discussion or argument becomes nonproductive, the participants will be advised to continue their discussion privately.
- To post to the list, it is necessary to subscribe. Once you are subscribed, messages sent to the list will automatically be forwarded to the whole mailing list.
- Messages that insult other list members or indicate that the poster is antagonistic to the aims and purposes of our antiquackery network will trigger a warning, temporary exclusion, or permanent exclusion from the list.
- Messages should be sent in plain text. The list cannot receive attachments and may garble messages sent in HTML format.
- Remember that the list is public and that messages are archived and therefore potentially accessible to search engines.
Netiquette Suggestions
- Messages should be as brief as possible for meaningful discussion.
- When responding to a message, begin by stating who said it and remove all words not needed to understand the chain of thought. Do not routinely copy the previous message in its entirety. For formatting tips, see Dan's Mail Format Site.
- Messages like "I agree" or "Thank you" that have no relevant content should be sent privately and not posted to the list.
- If the poster's full name is not included in the poster's email address, it should be placed at the end of the message.
How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe
- To subscribe, send an empty message to healthfraud-subscribe@lists.quackwatch.com
- You will receive a reply with instructions you should keep for reference.
- To unsubscribe, send an empty message to healthfraud-unsubscribe@lists.quackwatch.com
- To change addresses, unsubscribe from your old address and subscribe from our new one.
Archives
- Previous messages can be retrieved by email by following instructions obtained from healthfraud-help@lists.quackwatch.com
- Messages dating back to December 1997 can be viewed at http://www.ssr.com by using the navigation line [<<-][<-][->][->>] at the bottom of the page.
This page was revised on March 30, 2007.