Doctoring the Truth
Welcome to Doctoring the Truth, a podcast where two dedicated audiologists dissect the world of healthcare gone rogue. Explore jaw-dropping stories of medical malfeasance, nefariousness, and shocking breaches of trust. The episodes provide deep dives that latch onto your curiosity and conscience. It's a podcast for truth-seekers craving true crime, clinical insights, and a dash of humor.
Ep 85-Nellie Bly And The Asylum Exposé That Forced Reform
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A sane woman says she’s sane and nobody believes her. That’s the chilling hinge point in Nellie Bly’s story, and it’s why her reporting still lands like a warning flare for mental health care and patient rights today.
We trace how Bly, a 23-year-old newspaper reporter, takes on an assignment that could have trapped her forever: she practices a “mad” stare, walks into a working women’s boarding house, and engineers her own commitment. From the police court to Bellevue to Blackwell’s Island, we unpack how quickly labels s...
Ep 84-Haunted Hospital: Norman Baker's Fake Cancer Cures
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A haunted hotel is scary, but a fake cancer hospital is worse. We’re taking you to the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a stunning limestone landmark that became the stage for one of the most unsettling chapters in medical fraud and American quackery. Before the ghost tours and legends, there’s the documented history of Norman Baker, a charismatic businessman and radio broadcaster who learned to manufacture attention, then sold that attention as trust.
If you care about medical misinformation, patient safety, and how miracle cures keep resurfacing, this one...
Ep 83-Resuscitation Rambo: The Horrific Actions of Nurse Niels Hogel
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A cardiac ICU is built on a simple bargain: patients can’t verify anything, so they have to trust everyone. That’s why the case of Niels Hogel hits so hard. We walk through how a nurse in northern Germany allegedly used a syringe and unprescribed heart drugs to trigger emergencies, then raced in to resuscitate his own victims so he could feel like the hero. “Resuscitation Rambo” sounds like a dark joke until you see the numbers, the patterns around his shifts, and how long it took for anyone to act decisively.
Ep 82-Mesmer's Magic Tub, Mozart's Armonica Envy, and Ben Franklin's Dinner Disaster: Old Timey Medicine at it's Fanciest
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A doctor in a lilac silk robe, a wooden tub packed with iron rods, patients linked together in a room with music, and “healing crises” that look like fainting spells. That sounds like theatre, until you realise how many smart, suffering people in the late 1700s desperately wanted relief and how convincing a carefully staged medical experience can feel.
We trace the real history behind Franz Anton Mesmer, from his formal medical training in Vienna to the moment magnets and a single patient case turn into a sweeping theory of “...
Ep 81-When Prescriptions Become A Weapon: Dr. Craig A. Spiegel
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A tire pressure alert leads to a nail in the tread, and a split second label check stops an anaphylaxis scare and then the tone shifts hard. We’re talking about the kind of betrayal that makes your stomach drop: a pediatrician accused of using the prescription pad as payment, trading controlled substances for sex acts, nude photos, and cash. The allegations span years, and the case ends with a guilty plea and a 20 year federal prison sentence.
If you care about medical ethics, patient safety, controlled substance prescribing, and the re...
Ep 80-What Little We Know About Post Partum Psychosis: Otty Sanchez and Lindsay Clancy (Part 3)
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A mother can be terrified, begging for help, and still be sent home. A mother can look organised on a video visit and still be collapsing behind the scenes. This week we close our postpartum psychosis series with two cases that force the hardest questions in maternal mental health, forensic psychiatry, and criminal responsibility.
Trigger warning: child deaths, suicide, severe mental illness, psychosis, and a brief mention of cannibalism. If this series helped you think differently about postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, warning signs, and emergency care, please subscribe, share the episode...
Ep 79-What Little We Know About Post Partum Psychosis: Dena Schlosser (Part 2)
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A calm voice, religious music in the background, and a confession that makes no emotional sense unless you understand psychosis. We trace the Dena Schlosser case in Plano, Texas, where postpartum psychiatric illness, religious language, and the criminal legal system collide, forcing a brutal question: when does a stated “belief” read like motive, and when is it evidence that reality testing has collapsed?
If you want medically grounded true crime, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find these lifesaving conversations.
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Ep 78-What Little We Know About Post Partum Psychosis: Andrea Yates (Part 1)
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A mother who just gave birth can look “fine” in a short conversation and still be slipping into a psychiatric emergency by nightfall. That gap between what others see and what she is actually experiencing is where postpartum psychosis becomes so dangerous, and where shame and silence can turn a treatable crisis into a catastrophe.
We walk through what postpartum psychosis really is: an acute childbirth-triggered illness often linked to the bipolar spectrum, with early signs like severe insomnia, agitation, racing thoughts, unusual energy, rapid mood shifts, and escalating confusion. We also...
Ep 77-The House Of Horrors Clinic: Dr. Kermit Gosnell
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A clinic door can feel like safety, especially when you’re scared, short on money, and out of options. But what happens when the “respectable” name on the sign is just a costume, and the system meant to protect patients stops looking closely?
We tell the story of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and the Women’s Medical Society in West Philadelphia, using the confirmed criminal case and the court record to stay grounded in what was proven and what was alleged. We talk through the conditions investigators described when law enforcement finally entered...
Ep 76-Nonconsensual Studies: Dr. Halikas and Marginalization of a Hmong Community
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A patient walks into a hospital for help with opioid withdrawal, accepts a medication offered by a doctor, and later learns that dose was part of an experiment. That single shift, from treatment to research, is where trust can break for good.
This story forces a bigger conversation about clinical research ethics, vulnerable populations, interpreters, and the power dynamics inside detox units. We explore how the sponsor-investigator role concentrates responsibility, how an IRB (institutional review board) is supposed to function as a barrier between scientific ambition and human rights, and why t...
Ep 75-In the Trenches with Marybeth: Near Death By Boxcutter
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He walks into triage at 3 AM with his girlfriend, dressed for a night out, calm as can be, and says he just needs stitches. Then we lift the paper towel and see the kind of injury that makes your stomach drop: a box cutter laceration to the neck with the carotid artery visibly pulsing inside the wound. If you’ve ever wondered how close to disaster a “simple cut” can be, this story answers it in unforgettable detail (with a clear trigger warning for graphic injury descriptions).
If this story sticks...
Ep 74-The Surgeon Who Fooled The World: Paolo Macchiarini (Part 2)
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A surgeon can save your life, but a story can steal your judgment. We pick up the Paolo Macchiarini saga with the part that sounds too wild to be true: an award-winning NBC producer, Benita Alexander, falls for the “super surgeon” while making a documentary on regenerative medicine, only to discover a maze of lies that includes world-leader name-dropping and a wedding he claims the Pope will officiate. When the Vatican issues a blunt denial, the romance cracks, and the bigger question lands hard: if he can fabricate a life this easily, what else...
Ep 73-The Killer Surgeon with a Plastic Windpipe: Paolo Macchiarini (Part 1)
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A plastic windpipe. A world-famous surgeon. One of the most prestigious medical institutions on earth. What could possibly go wrong when hope, headlines, and reputation move faster than evidence? We’re in Stockholm at Karolinska University Hospital, where Paolo Macchiarini convinces patients and the public that he has created a “synthetic organ” transplant that can save lives and change medicine forever.Â
If you care about medical ethics, patient safety, whistleblower protection, and why “prestige” is not the same as proof, this story will stick with you. Subscribe, share the episode wit...
Ep 72-Guinea-Pigging Geezer: An Unethical U of M Psychiatrist
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A psychiatrist with a résumé full of prestige gets ordered to sit in on a medical ethics class. That single detail sent us down one of the most unsettling Minnesota medical board stories we’ve ever read, and it forced us to ask how clinical trial oversight can fail the very people it’s supposed to protect.
This isn’t just a story about one doctor. It’s a story about systems: pharmaceutical company payments that continue after discipline, FDA inspection limits, and the uncomfortable reality that “oversight” often arrives...
Ep 71-Fentanyl On The Night Shift
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A single syringe can hold a hard truth: in an ICU, the difference between mercy and harm can come down to dose, intent, and whether anyone has the power to stop what’s happening. We start with a stormy night and a very real tornado scare, then step into Mount Carmel West Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where families keep vigil under fluorescent lights and trust a confident physician to guide them through the worst moment of their lives.
If this story challenges you, share it with someone who cares about pa...
Ep 70-The Essential Oil Myth Machine: D Gary Young
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A tiny bottle can carry a huge promise, especially when it is wrapped in “natural” language, a charismatic founder story, and a sales network that feels like community. We take a hard look at Young Living Essential Oils and founder D. Gary Young, separating what is documented in reporting, regulatory actions, and court records from the mythology that helped power a billion-dollar wellness brand.
If you care about evidence-based medicine, consumer protection, essential oil marketing, and how wellness misinformation spreads, hit play. Subscribe, share with a friend who gets pitc...
Ep 69-Genital Mutilation Disguised as Love Surgery
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A surgeon tells you everything went fine then you spend years in pain, ashamed, and confused because the truth never made it into your chart. We dig into the case of Dr James Burt of Dayton, Ohio, the physician behind “love surgery,” a set of experimental genital procedures he performed on thousands of women, often without informed consent. The details are as horrifying as they are important.
We walk through how Burt sold his theory, how he used authority and taboo to isolate patients, and how institutions that should have protected wome...
Ep 68-The Church of Bleach
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A “miracle cure” gets whispered about at an autism conference, and the rabbit hole opens fast. We follow the bizarre rise of Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), a two-part chemical kit that produces chlorine dioxide, and how it’s been promoted as a treatment for everything from malaria to autism to COVID-19. The shocking part is not just the claim, it’s how normal it can look at first: concerned parents trading tips, meticulous logs, Facebook groups filled with testimonials, and a community that feels supportive and almost scientific on the surface.
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Ep 67-In the Trenches with Marybeth: Keep Your Wits
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A masked team storms the classroom, guns drawn, and within seconds everyone is zip tied, hooded, and ordered face-first to a wall. It’s “only” training, but your body doesn’t know that and Nurse Mary Beth Beseke proves how fast fear can wipe out logic.
Subscribe or follow, share this with someone who needs it, and if our stories help you, please download, rate, and review. What part of the hostage drill or heart attack warning stuck with you most?
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Ep 66-A Partridge for Lunch (Part2 John Bodkins Adams)
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He pockets morphine during a police search, shrugs off forged prescriptions with “God’s forgiveness,” and still claims it’s impossible to accuse a doctor. We follow the case of Dr John Bodkin Adams in 1950s Eastbourne as Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad steps into a town where the police leadership is tangled up with the suspect, and the paper trail points to a chilling pattern: dangerous drugs, suspicious cremations, and an uncanny number of patients leaving money and valuables in their wills.
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Ep 65-The Doctor Who Inherited The Dead
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A beloved doctor who prays at the bedside, shows up in the middle of the night, and somehow keeps ending up in his patients’ wills. That is the unsettling setup behind our deep dive into Dr John Bodkin Adams, the Eastbourne GP later suspected of sending scores of wealthy patients into comas that looked like strokes but reeked of narcotics.
If you like true crime with medical ethics, forensic red flags, and practical health education, hit subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave us a rating and review so...
Ep 64-Lucy Letby (Part 3) When Doubt Meets A Verdict and Introducing Mary Beth
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A verdict can be final in court and still deserve careful re-testing in public life, especially when the case depends on complex medicine most jurors can only access through experts. We’re back for the third and final part of our Lucy Letby series, and we’re focusing on what happens after conviction: the questions that keep surfacing about expert evidence, hospital failures, and whether the legal story fully matches the scientific one.Â
If you care about justice, patient safety, and how courts handle medical uncertainty, this conversation is for you. Subsc...
Ep 64-Lucy Letby And the High Stakes of Doubt (Part 3)
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A guilty verdict can end a trial, but it does not always end the hardest question: is the conviction safe? We close out our three-part series on Lucy Letby by stepping away from the tidy courtroom narrative and into the uncertainty that has grown after the headlines settled. Letby remains legally convicted, and we keep the babies and their families at the centre of this story, but we also take seriously the idea that justice is protected by testing convictions, not by refusing to question them.
We also break down what...
Ep 63-Lucy Letby (Part Two) When Medicine Meets Reasonable Doubt
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A case can feel settled in court and still feel unsettled in science. We take on Part 2 of the Lucy Letby story by walking through what the jury heard, what the Court of Appeal later weighed, and why so many clinicians, statisticians, journalists, and legal observers keep arguing about what the evidence can truly prove.
We unpack how investigators tried to reconstruct events inside a neonatal intensive care unit where babies are medically fragile and sudden deterioration can have many causes. We explain the prosecution’s “bigger picture” approach: alleged methods like a...
Ep 62-Lucy Letby (Part One) and a Swiss Cheese Smuggler
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A neonatal unit is supposed to be the safest room in a hospital and yet this story begins with a run of collapses that staff couldn’t make sense of. We’re finally digging into Part 1 of the Lucy Letby case, starting where so many explanations actually begin: an ordinary life, a conventional nursing path, and a workplace where sudden deterioration is terrifyingly possible even when nobody is doing anything wrong. Trigger warnings apply for infant deaths, neonatal medical crises, murder allegations, and hospital failures.Â
If you want Part 2 with the arres...
Ep 61-Twelve Deaths in Thirteen Days: A Nursing Home Death Spike
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Five people are reported murdered in their beds at 3 a.m. and the scene makes no sense. No broken windows. No forced entry. No masked intruder. Just a nursing home hallway, a butcher knife, and a night-shift supervisor with a wound that looks more staged than survived. We walk through the North Horizon Healthcare Center case and the 1984 timeline that still feels unreal: twelve deaths in thirteen days in a 50-bed facility, many tied to insulin overdose and at least one to manual strangulation.
If you care about patient...
Ep 60-Never Never Land: Rhode Island Hospital's Decade of Surgical Scandals
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A hospital can have world-class branding and still be dangerously broken where it counts. We’re heading to Rhode Island Hospital, a major teaching hospital tied to Brown University, to follow a decade-plus trail of “never events” like wrong-site surgery, wrong-patient procedures, and failures so basic they sound unreal until you see the record.
If you care about patient safety, hospital accountability, and how healthcare systems fail, this one will stick with you. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show and jo...
Ep 59- Beware the Ice Pick: The Lobotomy Era
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An ice pick through the eye socket. Ten minutes of “surgery.” A taxi ride home. That’s not an urban legend, it’s a documented moment in the history of lobotomy, and it captures the sick casualness that let psychosurgery become mainstream.
If you care about medical ethics, informed consent, disability rights, or how mental health treatment gets shaped by social pressure, this conversation will stick with you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves medical history, and leave a review with your take: where do you see “manageability over care” show...
Ep 58-Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: A Funeral Home Horror Story
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They thought they were holding their loved one one last time, then they learned the urn held concrete. We’re walking through the Return to Nature Funeral Home scandal in Colorado, where investigators say nearly 190 bodies were left to decompose in a Penrose building while grieving families were told cremations and burials were complete. It’s one of those true crime stories that doesn’t just horrify you, it makes you re-check what you assume is regulated, inspected, and safe in the funeral industry.
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Ep 57-Organ Donation Disasters
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The scariest part of modern medicine isn’t always the unknown, it’s the moment you realize the system can build momentum before certainty feels complete. We’re talking about organ donation disasters and near misses that force one brutal question: how do we know someone is truly dead when organ procurement is on the clock? Using the reported case of TJ Hoover in Kentucky, we trace how a single story can crack public trust, especially when families say they saw signs of life and later reporting suggests professionals inside the process had concer...
Ep 56-Notorious Nurse: The Murders of Jolly Jane
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A cheerful bedside smile is supposed to mean safety. That’s why the case of Jane Toppin, nicknamed “Jolly Jane,” still hits like a gut punch more than a century later. We walk through how a Boston woman born Honora Kelly could become one of America’s earliest notorious female serial killers while working as a nurse, using charm as cover and exploiting the gaps of late-1800s medical oversight.
We trace her early life through poverty, loss, institutionalization, and being indentured as a child in the Toppin home where she’s even giv...
Ep 55-Inside The Psychopath Test: Power, Labels, And The Cost Of Certainty (Part 2)
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A checklist that claims to measure danger. A hospital that tried to manufacture empathy with LSD and isolation. A courtroom that treats a number like destiny. We dive into the strange power of labels by tracing the psychopathy story from Oak Ridge’s “total encounter capsule” to Robert Hare’s PCL-R and the very real ways scores still steer sentencing, parole, and civil commitment.
We unpack the seductive clarity of risk tools—and the trouble that follows when dimensional traits are forced into binary verdicts. Tony’s story from a UK high-securit...
Ep 54-From Checklists To Chaos: Psychopathy, Oak Ridge, And The Mask Of Sanity (Part One)
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A bright green room. No clocks. No privacy. And a radical promise: strip away the mask and rebuild empathy from the inside out. We follow that promise from a cryptic book that landed in mailboxes worldwide to the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) and then into Oak Ridge’s notorious Total Encounter Capsule—where encounter therapy, humiliation, and even LSD tried to force transformation. The footage looked convincing; the results, years later, were devastating. When “healing” teaches people to mimic remorse, are we improving safety or upgrading manipulation?
This story isn’t tidy, and that’s...
Ep 53-Sedation, Secrets, And The Dark Web: Exposing A Predator In A Dental Clinic
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A patient under anesthesia is supposed to be safe. What we uncovered is what happens when that safety is only assumed. We dig into the case of Cody Alan Stolfa, a dental assistant in Stillwater, Oklahoma, who pled guilty to 33 felonies for sexually assaulting sedated patients—crimes revealed not by a complaint, but by a dark‑web video that set off a digital breadcrumb trail. It’s a story about power, access, and how easily abuse hides in the gaps of outpatient care.
From there, we widen the lens. We talk victim...
Ep 52-Fertility Fraud and Bringing a Gun to a Family Reunion
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A phone buzzes, a DNA app refreshes, and a life story tilts. We follow the chain reaction from a single “close relative” match to a web of half-siblings who piece together the sordid truth. What starts as an ancestry curiosity becomes a reckoning with consent, identity, and the limits of the law.
We also zoom out to the legal and medical landscape. Why did prosecutors reach for obstruction instead of charging the underlying deception? How did advocacy push Indiana to create one of the first fertility fraud statutes, with criminal penalties and...
Ep 51-Burned By Belief: The Truth About Ear Candling
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A candle crackles, a brown residue appears, and someone swears their sinuses feel clear. It looks convincing—until you test the physics, check the anatomy, and tally the injuries. We pull back the curtain on ear candling with an audiologist’s eye: what the cones are made of, how they’re used, the sweeping claims from “wax removal” to “brain detox,” and the simple reason the residue you see isn’t coming from your ear. We trace the marketing myth of ancient origins, the Hopi tribe’s explicit rejection, and why a modern wellness product w...
Ep 50-Stem Cell Scams and Our Anniversary!
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Hope is powerful—but in the wrong hands, it becomes a sales tactic. We’re celebrating one year together by pulling back the curtain on stem cell scams: how slick marketing borrows the language of science, why “FDA registered” is not the same as FDA approved, and where vulnerable patients get hurt most—from cash-only clinics to medical tourism that ends in sepsis or even blindness.
Why do smart people fall for this? Because these schemes weaponize urgency, testimonials, and the feeling of being unseen by the system. We offer practical safeguards...
Ep 49-AZ Stands for CrAZy! The Disturbing Case of a Slasher Surgeon
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A trusted OB carved his initials into a new mother’s abdomen—and the room stayed silent. That chilling moment became a case study in how personal trust, professional boundaries, and institutional oversight can all fail at once. We walk through Liana Geds’ experience, the legal strategy that separated malpractice from battery, and the bizarre Pick’s disease defense used to argue away intent. The outcome? A plea to second-degree assault, light institutional fines, and a five-year licensing bar that raises more questions than it answers.
If you care about patient safety...
Ep 48-Pretty Poison: The Shocking Truth About Skin Whitening Creams, plus Weather Pants Reveal
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A face cream that blinds a mother. A washing machine that spreads mercury vapor to kids’ bedding. The story unfolds from two devastating cases and pulls back the curtain on a larger problem: toxic skin lightening products hiding in plain sight, fueled by colorism and weak enforcement, and sold with claims that work fast enough to silence doubt. We unpack how mercury suppresses melanin, bioaccumulates in the brain and kidneys, and contaminates homes through laundry and air—often without appearing on any label.
The heart of the episode is both urgent and...
Ep 47-Fatal Mismatch: A Transplant Tragedy
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A teenage girl crosses a border for a chance at life—and loses it to a mistake so basic it should have been impossible. We dive into the case of Jesica Santillán, the 17-year-old who received an incompatible heart-lung transplant, and trace how a single missed safeguard exposed cracks across donor services, hospital protocols, and communication chains. This isn’t a story about rare complications or experimental risk; it’s about the simplest check in medicine—blood type matching—and how failing it changed transplant safety nationwide.
If the episode...
