The current member of the Legislative Assembly for the British Columbia electoral district of Langley-Willowbrook is Ms. Jody Toor. Iâm not veering off into political punditry; Iâm writing this to clarify Toorâs courtesy title. âMs.â Toor, or âMrs.â if sheâs married. But certainly not âDr.â Toor.
Canadians may recallÌęÌęover her title last October during the election. The Hospital Employeesâ Union, which includes over 60,000 members in the Western province, even filed aÌęÌęwith the B.C. college in charge of regulating so-called complementary health professionals. She did not deserve, it argued, to refer to herself as âDoctor.â
Thatâs because she graduated from Quantum University.
Yes, you have permission to read that again. Quantum University.
Before we make our way into the quantum realm, a detour to Ms. Toorâs âclinicâ is in order, as theÌęÌęfor it abounds with weirdness. The URL identifies the clinic as Conscious Mind Labs, but you will see that the word âMindâ on the site itself has been censored by a black bar. Everywhere.
Toorâs first name has also been censored on the site, as well as her entire CV. Her face has been replaced by an image of a Pinocchio lookalike. Meanwhile, the founder and CEO of the company, Donald Gauvreau (also known asÌę), has also censored his first name and replaced his face with an AI-generated sinister clown. You may wonder if this was done in the wake of the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. According toÌę, the changes were made sometime between October 4 and November 14, preceding the killing done on December 4.
This website quirkiness, though, is only the tip of the iceberg. The university from which Ms. Toor graduated is not even a university: itâs part of a parallel system of pretend medicine influenced by quantum physics and New Age beliefs.
And this would-be university was founded by a Quebec doctor who caught flak in the 1990s for using methods that were not exactly orthodox.
Schrödingerâs diploma
Quantum University certainly has an appealingÌę. In shades of black and gold, punctuated by bright photos of smiling people in Hawaiâi, the site invites you to learn how to heal yourself and others, at your own pace, and to âtransform your passion into action.â
This welcoming hype vanishes the second you land onÌę, which is meant to bring you back to the harsh legal light of reality. The degrees it offers are not equivalent to an MD or even to a naturopathic degree, and they donât allow you to âpractice medicineâ per se. Even armed with a degree from Quantum University, you cannot examine, diagnose or treat any client for any disease, disorder, injury or condition, or do anything to them that they couldÌęŸ±ČÔłÙ±đ°ù±è°ù±đłÙÌęas such. Boxes of Cracker Jack treats used to contain useless prizes, but they didnât come with lengthy legal disclaimers, if memory serves. (You can, however, have a medical degree from a legitimate universityÌęČčČÔ»ćÌęalso get a âdegreeâ from Quantum University, in which case you would be a legitimate doctor who has also made some questionable choices.)
Quantum University is not a university. Instead, it is described as an onlineÌęÌęwhich itsÌęÌęstates is ânot accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the United States Secretary of Education.â It thus borrows the word âuniversityâ in the loosest way possible. Its diplomas appear to be pretty much worthless, so why bother acquiring them? Because a diploma can impress, especially in careers that donât require a grounding in science, like aromatherapist or homeopath.
And the desire to impress is key to Quantum Universityâs marketing strategy. Its catalog makes the point clear over and over again, bordering on satire. âEarning a PhD degree allows you to use the title âDr.â,â it reads. It âconfirms you as an authorityâ and qualifies you âto become certified by many respected and prestigious professional associations, organizations, and certification boards.â The words ârespect,â âprestige,â and ârecognitionâ are impossible to miss in the document.
Quantum University offers âdegreesâ in natural medicine, integrative medicine, and holistic health, and I looked at theÌęÌęfor their Bachelor in Holistic Health. The legitimate-looking coursesâlike âHuman Anatomy and Physiologyâ and âNutritional Scienceââare rare, while the list is overrun by nonsensical course titles. âMastering Singularity?â âThe HeartMath Experience?â âQuantum Physics and Health?â
At its core, Quantum University is about riffing on the mind-blowing ideas behind quantum physics in order to gain the prestige associated with practicing medicine.
Quantum logic
Quantum physics is real, and so is medicine. The problem arises when the two get fused together.
The early 1900s saw the emergence of quantum mechanics, a theory in physics that could start to explain the sometimes bizarre behaviour of atoms and the even smaller particles they are made of. If youâve ever heard that light behaves both like a particle and a wave, that is a concept from quantum mechanics.
What quantum mechanics excels at describing is the behaviour of the smallest building blocks of our universeââquantum,â after all, means a small parcel of energyâbut where it so far has failed to find much traction is in describing the behaviour of very big things: plants, planets and, importantly, people. But the strangeness of the quantum world has been very seductive to fans of New Age spirituality. Its wave functions, uncertainty principles, and quantum entanglements echo the magic of New Age beliefs, but because they are scientific in nature, they provide a rational bridge to these beliefs. They seem to legitimize them. Hence, you can transplant ideas from quantum physics into medicine to vindicate unorthodox beliefs in energy healing and hope the graft takes. Thatâs what Paul Drouin did.
According to theÌęÌęof theÌęCollĂšge des mĂ©decins du QuĂ©bec,ÌęDrouin was initially licensed as a medical doctor in 1975 but in the 1990s wasÌęÌęof having committed âacts derogatory to the honour and dignity of the medical profession.â Specifically, the accusation signalled his use of diagnostic techniques that were unscientific, such as live blood analysis, in order to test for parasites, heavy metal poisoning, and adrenal stress (diagnoses which we now recognize as being commonly abused by practitioners of so-called alternative medicine). The disciplinary board imposed on Drouin fees and a temporary suspension of his medical license.
DrouinÌęÌęhe faced âskepticism and criticism from peers within the conventional medical communityâ for his unconventional approach, so in 2002 he founded Quantum University, which is 100% online and consists in reading textbooks and viewing videos. Because his institution is not a real university and doesnât teach real medicine, he is free to do and say as he pleases, and he can surround himself with a faculty that likewise uses quantum mechanics to legitimize eccentric beliefs about the human body.
Said faculty includes Amit Goswami, an actual physicist who explains God as the universeâsÌęÌęand who has published books calledÌęThe Quantum Brain, Physics of the Soul,ÌęandÌęQuantum Economics.ÌęThereâs Bruce Lipton, an actual biologist who wrongfully claims that stress is responsible forÌę, including heart disease, cancer and diabetes, and who says that thoughts can change reality, so you canÌęÌęthrough positive thinking. And thereâs Rupert Sheldrake, an actual biochemist, who studies the supernatural and formulated his ownÌę.
What these men all have in common is that they are former scientists who veered away from the guardrails of academia so they could spout crank ideas in an unchecked environment. Within the confines of a university, you cannot easily manufacture weird hypotheses and teach them to people as if they were facts. They must be demonstrated and properly referenced. But at Quantum University, it seems you can teach just about anything. This is not how science works. Open-mindedness is essential to the scientific process, yes, but without rigour, experimentations and constant peer review, brain farts are just brain farts.
The Internet has certainly facilitated the growth and sustenance of an alternative ecosystem in which people who felt restricted by science can thrive and teach their crackpot theories. We see predatory journals that will publish anything for a fee; diploma mills which reward just about anyone with a legitimate-looking degree; careers in alternative medicine that donât require an accurate understanding of disease; even boards that legitimize pseudoscientific fields like integrative medicine. Quantum University is part of that ecosystem. Just read this line from one of itsÌę: âa groundbreaking synergy emerges as Vacuum Engineering (Ark Crystal) meets Consciousness Acupuncture and what I refer to as the Omega Point Technique.â None of this belongs in a medical textbook, and itâs not because doctors are close-minded.
Which brings us back to the title of âDoctor,â which is not as straightforward as it looks. âDoctorâ can refer to a medical doctor or, for example, to a doctor of chemistry if you have a doctorate degree in that field. But interestingly enough, not in Quebec French, where Ph.D. holders are referred to as âMr.â or âMs.â or âMrs.â And an honorary doctorate does not give you the license to call yourself âDoctor,â althoughÌę.
But graduating from Quantum University, as Jody Toor did? That should not qualify you for using the title âDoctor.â If memorizing a New Age spiritualistâs lectures on âharvesting subtle energyâ as part of a non-university grants you the title of âDoctor,â then Iâm afraid the celebrated word has become as meaningless as the notions taught at Quantum University.
Take-home message:
- A Canadian politician named Jody Toor was using the title âDoctorâ because she graduated from Quantum University
- Quantum University is not a university; its diplomas are not recognized by science-based professions; and its graduates are not allowed to practice medicine or perform any act that could be interpreted as such
- Quantum University tries to apply real concepts from quantum mechanics, a theory which helps explain how atoms and their building blocks behave, to medicine and in the process ends up teaching pseudoscientific principles
