Quick Check: Is Robert Young a Reliable Source?

This article is part of a column rumor detectorClick here for other texts.

Reader Luke Regal sent us this message:

good morning,

I want to tell you about a new source of rumors that seems to be active on social networks. These are analyzes that could have been done by a particular doctor to prove the presence of various minerals, parasites, etc. In the composition of vaccines against Covid.

This information is currently reflected on the Odyssey website which hosts the Law Movement.

One of the first verification steps he recommends rumor detector is to verify the source. Let’s start with this “Dr. Robert Young”. who is he?

Obviously, “Young” is a fairly common nickname in English, but a Google search with the words “Robert Young”, “COVID” and “pandemic”, you’ll find come out immediately Article by our fellow France 24 fact-checkers, as of January 2021. They analyzed a video in which Young claimed that Bill Gates said, in 2019, that 3 billion people should be wiped out (In factBill Gates he did not talk Not to reduce the world’s population, but to slow population growth). We also learn that Robert Young presents himself as a nature healer, an experience not particularly relevant to talking about vaccination.

in english, Robert Young + epidemic where Robert Young Vaccine + It gives us more information: Wikipedia page He tells us, for example, that in 2016, in the United States, he was convicted of illegally practicing medicine: he was promoting an unrecognized treatment for cancer, and one of his “patients” died. Trial too allowed to learn That he bought his Ph.D. from an unaccredited “school” in Alabama – which was printing fake diplomas on demand, for a fee.

These last details are interesting, we can take a look at his biography on his personal website: He says he received his BA, MA (in Nutrition) and Ph.D. (in Biochemistry) from Comprehensive American College in Birmingham, which has been named since 1997. Clayton College of Natural Health. The school seems to have given real lessons, as in 2010 it was the subject of a class action lawsuit by students who considered themselves deluded. the case It was settled in 2012The college was ordered to pay $2.31 million in compensation to former students.

In any case, Young is not a “doctor”, neither in medicine nor in physical therapy, and even his biography, on his site, presents him rather as a nutritionist. Before the epidemic, his name was mainly associated with books and articles on alternative medicine, which is also not relevant expertise on the topic that interested Locke.

Young was also arrested in 1995 and 2001 in Utah for illegally practicing medicine. And it was convicted again In 2018, in California, to pay $105 million in compensation to one of his victims.

In short, in terms of credibility, this is questionable, to say the least.

His personal website declares that Young is “widely recognized as one of the world’s greatest research scientists”. We could not find any facts to support this assertion.

the site QuackWatchwho dedicates himself to expelling charlatans, It was noted among other things Early in 2017, Dr. Robert Bradford of the Bradford Research Institute, with whom Young claimed he studied “medical microbiology” in the 1980s, purchased his degrees and was not a doctor either.

We can also analyze videos sent by Luke. But given the large number of authoritative sources on COVID and given Robert Young’s dangerous journey, it would be best to refer to fact-checking texts published in recent months on the vaccines and graphene hypothesis (see box below).

However, another quick search reveals that “Odysee” is a platform where anyone, like YouTube, can create an account and upload their videos. As explained in the Community Guidelines, the authors of the posts are responsible for the content: in other words, there is no editorial or third party verification on this site. But Odyssey was eligible in february and others May 2021Far-right publishing platform. So be careful.