*PS* Re: Court Demands Quackbusters Pay $491k -

Thanks for the update on Barrett.

A few weeks ago I was trying to nail down the allegations surrounding the status of his medical license. It seems that many of the people who have now jumped on the anti-quackbuster bandwaggon have done so with allegations that he had been practicing and or witnessing without a license. I'm not being a critic of these people, but it would be nice if they could be a bit more specific about the licenses they claimed he did not have. For instance, the wiki folks immediately expound upon Barrett's career as a retired, revered pyschiatrist. Meanwhile, the license verification they provide mentions nothing about him being licensed as a psychiatrist.

Below are some tidbits of what I found, but do not know if this particular license was at issue with his various lawsuits and fraudulently made expert testimony. The good folks at wiki even helped me find this info. They were so good that they even provided their own reference material that indicates they (wiki) confirmed as recently as 7/18/2007 that Barrett had a valid license in good standing. See the references to his license (Medical Physical Surgeon), granted in 1958, due to expire in 2008, was last reviewed in 1992.

See Reference # 2 way down at the bottom of Wiki's mini encylopedia expounding the virtues of Stephen Barrett

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Barrett

Confirmation by Pennsylvania Department of State

Link to Penn Dept of State License Status

A few parting questions. Does anyone wonder at all about the regulators given the job to review medical licenses when it can be shown they have gone 16 years (apparently) without having reviewed the status of a license of a person who has been involved in much medical litigation and fraudulent medical expert testimony the past 10 years? Does anyone know - what does active-retired status mean, exactly?

PS - here is a nugget of references excerpted from wiki's dossier on barrett:

Sources that mention Stephen Barrett's Quackwatch as a credible or reliable source for consumer information include website reviews,^{[27][28][29][30][31]} government agencies,^[32][33] various journals^{[34][35][36][37][38]} including The Lancet peer-reviewed medical journal^[39] and some libraries.^{[40][41][42][43][44][45]}