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His Quackwatch Web site has a whimsical title, but don't let that fool you. Stephen Barrett, M.D., a retired psychiatrist, cares not a whit about amusing anybody. Rather, he is an indefatigable medical troubleshooter and B.S. detector who wants to tell the truth, as he sees it, about consumer health issues. As for the Web site which gets more than 1,000 hits a day, its self-described purpose is "to combat health-related frauds, myths, fads, and fallacies."
Barrett, who works out of his 1500-square-foot basement home-office in Allentown, Pa., has the credentials to prove both his intellectual weight and workaholic disposition. The co-author/editor of 45 books, including Health Schemes, Scams, and Frauds (Consumer Reports Books), and Chemical Sensitivity: The Truth About Environmental Illness (Prometheus, 1998), he received an FDA Commissioner's Special Citation Award for fighting nutrition quackery in 1984, and two years later was awarded honorary membership in the American Dietetic Association.
Raised in New York City, Barrett received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University, an M.D. from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and did his psychiatric residency at Temple University in Philadelphia. Married to Judith Nevyas Barrett, a physician, and the father of three (Daniel, Deborah, and Benjamin), he practiced psychiatry for 35 years. "In the late '60s, I began taking an interest in health frauds," says Barrett, 65. "As time went on, I began cutting down on my practice to pursue my hobby. Eventually, I just shut my door." In 1993 he began pursuing his avocation full time.