Freelee's Credentials: Half-Truths & Pseudoscience.

hey what up um this video actually takes
a kind of moderate and sympathetic view of the question of whether or not freelee the banana girl is a fraud with not she's lines who were misleading the public about her credentials and it asks in an open-ended way what is the importance and significance of credentials whether that's a university education or in this case certification as a dietary expert if you're gonna make your living selling diet books and giving advice on exercise weight loss and so on um if you've been to this channel before you might or may not be surprised that I state my position on this is actually moderate it's not extreme I'm not here to kind of show that she's a fraud it's not clear to me that she's been trying to mislead the public but there is a lot of misleading and confusing information out there and I want to say I sympathize in in a very specific sense I sympathize because I myself from someone who has confusing credentials and very often I have to clarify for people I have to say explicitly look I am not fluent in the Chinese language here's my background here's how much I studied here's you know like I've lived in China but when I was living in China I was studying a completely different group of languages I was doing language research in China but not on Chinese then the other hand I have studied Chinese in a university context it's complicated I do have some credentials related to First Nations languages indigenous languages from Canada such as Korea in a Jib way however I don't have a PhD in that subject it's very easy for people to miss hear or misunderstand something you've said or something you've written even when it's meant to be very clear but starting with the the interview she gave to the Daily Mail so the Daily Mail is a major newspaper with a huge number of readers etc etc and I can't blame Frehley for this directly but it seems that one way or another the journalist was misled and the journalist says quote though freely has and some qualifications in health and nutrition she says her current diet came mostly from undertaking her own independent research quote it's mainly self study mainly my own research but I have an advanced certificate in nutrition which is completely irrelevant to how I eat now I also went to college after graduating high school and study Dietetics which it's funny error there's a grammatical error there in that sentence because my teacher was actually obese and she was teaching us about nutrition close quote um now if you read that very carefully you can sort of guess what credentials she has and what credential she doesn't have she says I went to college but she does not say that she graduated from college she does not say she has a college degree or a university degree and she seems to me to have always evaded the question of what exactly her certificate is in nutrition now I don't know where reasons we're gonna see right now how she answers the direct question here is a question she was given on YouTube and at this moment 761 people had given it a thumbs up this person asks where did you get your nutritional degree freely good question now here is her answer who she couldn't just give you a direct answer how you can see how many words this is already quote how many fat out of shape dietitians and nutritionists are out there question mark they are everywhere exclamation point ninety nine percent have no idea what they are talking about because their studies are based on industry fronted propaganda dollar signs and not the truth a piece of paper means nothing period that said I do have advanced certification in nutrition and attended Dietetics college only to pull out due to so much [ __ ] okay pause and a pause from this petitioner so she did not answer the question the question was where did you get your degree or certificate now in the English language and in organized education 21st century a certificate can mean anything and again I sympathize as a problem my own life I have a university degree in political science I have a bachelor's degree in political science and honours VA as we say in English there's Behe in political science which is not a very impressive accomplishment by any means I also have a certificate in teaching English as a second language if I ever want to work as an English teacher now what does that certificate mean it could mean everything or it could mean nothing if you're ever having a job interview in that field they have to ask you well what did you actually do in the stiff get what how a certificate like that it could have taken two months it could have taken two weeks it could have been something you ordered over the Internet hey you didn't legitimately study for at all there was no testing there was no scrutiny and no education but it could also be a really robust program that really provided with a background so I have been to job interviews where I have to specify not just where I got the certificate but also have to describe what the education consisted of now for someone in her position it does seem to me significant that she dodges this question here and she seems to have been very successful in talking to members of the press in dodging the question or in presenting the most flattering angle possible on the fact that she is a school dropout a certificate is not a BA it's not a degree it's not a textbook and again it I disagree with her she says a piece of paper means nothing a piece of paper can mean a lot it could be the certificate she claims she has it could be an excellent program it could be that if she named where it was from and described the program which includes they say how many months it is and did you actually study at that institution or did you just study at home and make phone calls and send in your homework by email it was a so-called distance learning or was it a real program where you wrote exams and used textbooks and attended classes you know we don't know but obviously the fact that she refuses to talk about it makes us think it is not so it is not so legitimate all right so I continue the quotation here which is really her justification for her lack of credentials and not really answering the question about what credential she has quote who in their right mind would teach students to serve a chunk of meat and carton of milk to cardiovascular patients post-op crazy [ __ ] exclamation point the very quote foods close quote that put them in the hospital to start with exclamation point even though I have a conventional quote education close quote in mainstream nutrition it's useless period my credentials are how I look and feel effortlessly and the results I help others get with no drugs no calorie restriction no killing close quote now there were quite a few things here you could sort of philosophize about yeah here's the isolated example of well some people tell somebody with a heart attack to drink milk okay here's another example freely some people claim that you shouldn't eat garlic because garlic contains a neurotoxin that's freelee the banana girl you claimed that for years and I think lately that's a rare example of something you stopped saying and stop writing about I I wonder if you've gone through and deleted all the mentions of it from your website I found one less time I googled your claim that garlic contains a neurotoxin no it doesn't and you didn't learn that in school and you didn't learn that from a science textbook and he also didn't learn the type of procedural attitudes to check something like that before you claim it now some of your pseudo-scientific claims freely are cited to sources but you never learned how to tell the difference between a good source and a bad source so just now I was looking at your web so freely and your current claims on garlic where you no longer just say oh it contains a neurotoxin therefore don't eat it what a great scientific discovery but instead you are citing a website which is both non scientific and non rational which is a raw food enthusiasts website that makes a completely irrational poetic argument that people should not eat garlic because garlic is not a food and the line of reasoning here is actually that a true food is something you can eat as a mono meal the whole line of reasoning there is just farcical not every argument needs to be based on science if we're gonna have a debate about the morality of the Vietnam War science it may not play a very important role in that if we're gonna have a debate about the morality of them veganism of vivisection of ecology of polluting rivers science science could play a very important role could play a major role if that's your view of the world or it could be a very minor role or it might not be scientific at all however there are still questions of rationality of what not you're saying something intelligent reasonable and useful even if the criterion for you're saying it's not scientific and freely I have to say I disagree with you I don't think a piece of paper means nothing I think you are crucially lacking the skills even when you cite sources when you cite articles to back up your arguments it's my problem is not that you don't cite peer-reviewed scientific research that's useful for some things and not others but even given that I'm open-minded about there being more than one type of information relevant to these things I see you citing information that is to use a word that's already appeared here [ __ ] and I don't think you yourself freely are aware of the difference between a reliable and an unreliable source when you make these arguments I think you're someone who sincerely believed for many years that garlic contains neurotoxins and you had apparently no way to verify that or check it or to counter what are basically just stupid rumors on the Internet within the raw food vegan community and so on there's a broader philosophical question here of what is the value of a university education but actually freelee the banana girl you are someone who in many ways gives it a chilling reminder of just how important it is to have a solid foundation educationally speaking in the basics like how to write a footnote how to check a footnote how to see if a source is reliable and so on and freely mentions here the isolated problem of studies based on industry funded propaganda yes that is one problem yes when the dairy industry pays for something that makes the dairy industry look good that is a problem I can give you another example of a problem people who don't know what they're talking about spreading the completely unscientific notion that garlic contains a neurotoxin disgust okay it wasn't industry propaganda that is the origin of that the idea that human being should not eat garlic because garlic cannot be consumed as a mono meal I know how about parsley you ever sat down ain't nothing but parsley for a monomial parsley is very good for your health but no it's not a monomial there are a lot of vegetables where if you eat too much of them they can cause you problems either of digestion or of basically overdosing on very healthy vitamins and so on you know Brazil nuts you can eat too many Brazil nuts and get seriously ill doesn't mean Brazil nuts are evil just ridiculous fundamentally stupid and freely you you built your career on it so no I I think freely I think a piece of paper doesn't mean nothing I think you were asked directly where you got your piece of paper and you have lied or at least dodged the question you failed to do what I already described myself doing people often misunderstand what my credentials are whether it's because they think I'm fluent in in Chinese or they think I'm fluent in Cree or they make up something in their own head oh I've studied so many languages of a poly Cambodian Lau and I have to sit there and say look this is my education this is the type of research I've done this is how much I know these different languages it's not easy to explain but yeah it's important to be honest and transparent you guys like to use the word transparent and forthcoming and set the record straight even when journalists get it wrong I I had an interview with a journalist from Lomond a very famous newspaper in France and the guy quoted me incited me and he I remember that guy who guarded me as if I were famous he kind of regarded me with stars in his eyes I found a bit hilarious because my life is both rather humble and rather boring but yeah it was easy for different newspapers several times they've cited me as an expert in Cambodia or an expert in whatever it's convenient for them to say I'm an expert in for that one article I've been cited I've had there was a newspaper in Scandinavia I forget where Sweden or Norway it was expert there that called me an anthropologist I have never described myself as an anthropologist that's what that newspaper journalist said about me and for a little while I had to tell people no actually I'm not an anthropologist but some people think that I am it happens and freely you are not being transparent or anything else here now there's something else we can philosophize a boat at some depth her claim that my credentials are my body to quote her directly quote my credentials or how I look and feel close quote now you know I think there's really a big lesson here for vegans you can google any given supermodel a lot of them have diets a lot of them are pushing diet books you're never gonna be the best looking person in the world good-looking people are never gonna be hard to find I'm sorry but this just opens the door to a madhouse 99% of good-looking people are not vegan 99.9 percent the world is crowded with models and actresses and singers who eat meat or who drink milk or whatever and a lot of them when they get asked why are you so beautiful talk about their diets and that's been going on since print media was first invented you can find interviews from the 1920s with you know famous actors and singers and so on talking about you know their crazy diet ideas and it has just never never been acceptable to say this guy knows what he's talking about because he's handsome or this woman knows what she's talking about because she's beautiful and finally freely if your credentials are your body how you look and feel effortlessly well then what about the fact that your body is fake because you paid a surgeon to cut open your breasts and put saline and plastic inside and I do not count having face fake breasts as how you look and feel effortless I don't think that's a legit credential and I think that could be put to anyone who made similar claims most of the media I am exposed to is is related to hip hop related to rap music in that subculture and there were a lot of good-looking women in that industry some of whom you know also have a diet book or also of an exercise plan and they always have to be clear about what plastic surgery they've had because if they're giving advice but the reality is they've had liposuction or fake breasts or augmentation to their bum or other parts of their body there's a lot of that going on and no I I don't think it's legit you know you guys talk about this stuff yourselves you don't think it's legit for somebody using steroids to give diet advice and so on if your body that you claim as your credential because you have no real credentials if your body is what you claim gives you credence gives you authority then it really is a pretty profound problem that your body is fake and in fact your illusion of being simultaneously very skinny and very curvy you're the illusion of femininity you're projecting in fact that's a product of that evil beauty industry that you rant again it's it's that conspiracy of scientists who you know design and carried out breast augmentation surgery you know come on you won't eat a mango that was raised with pesticides but you'll pay for a surgeon to put plastic inside a cavity in your chest so you can look curvier than you are when the reality is if you didn't have that breast augmentation you would look scrawny and you probably would not have those photographs published in that newspaper and wouldn't have all this attention and really her her whole life would be different without that surgery um and I'm not hating on her my point is not really to point the finger here but I've got to say when I was putting together one of my former videos I had a digression on the fact that freelee and durianrider do not have the credentials whereas several other people in the game do there are medical doctors who talk about vegan diet health and exercise I was just asking why would you trust them why would you choose to trust these people instead of people who have credentials and at that time when I fact checked it I found all this conflicting and unclear information freely about how you you know have a certificate of some kind how you studied at university to some extent the reality is you're a dropout and you're being dishonest about exactly what your certificate is where it comes from and what you learned and anyone who clicks through to the footnote of your crazy claims such as you know garlic contains a neurotoxin nobody should he Girt there is real reason to regard what you say with scrutiny and the way your body looks or if people find you attractive that is not enough of a credential to do what you've been doing soon my aunt an aunt