Dr. Joe Schwarcz giving a presentation for the Trafalgar School for Girls.
Photo Credit : Image open to public access
Dr. Joe Schwarcz.
Photo Credit : McGill Office for Science and Society
Dr. Joe speaking at the Library of Cote-Saint-Luc.
Photo Credit : Cote-Saint-Luc Library
1948 -
Dr. Joe Schwarcz
Dr. Joseph A. Schwarcz is the current and founding director of the McGill Centre for Science and Society, and a well-known debunker of bad science.
Born in Sopron, Hungary, Dr. Joe, as he is affectionately known, was fascinated by magic as a child, and saw its potential early on to both deceive and to teach. He received his PhD in Chemistry from McGill, where he still works. Dedicated to debunking popular, and often costly, chemical and medical fallacies, Schwarcz has become known as the leading quackbuster.
In 2011, the McGill Office for Science and Society received a $5.5 million grant from Lorne Trottier to continue Schwarcz’s debunking work, considered one of the largest single donations to a scientific cause in Canada. Trottier refers to Schwarcz as the “Carl Sagan of Canada.”
Schwarcz currently serves as Co-Chair of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Nutrition Forum and Chair of the Editorial Board of Canadian Chemical News. He has published over a dozen books, writes a weekly newspaper column, hosts a radio show and frequently holds public consultations and lectures. He has attacked the purported medical value of acai berries, coffee enemas as cancer cures, detoxification and beauty products. He even attacked McDonald’s nutritional claims.
Among his awards are the Royal Society of Canada’s McNeil Award and the American Chemical Society’s prestigious Grady Stack Award, the Royal Canadian Institute’s Sanford Fleming Medal, the Society of Chemical Industry’s Purvis Award and the Chemical Institute of Canada’s Montreal Medal. He is also involved with the American Chemical Society, the Institute of Food Technologies, and the JGH Cancer Prevention Centre.
