Who says science documentaries shouldn’t be dumbed down? Kathy Sykes has argued that there is room for everyone, whether they want to educate, entertain or inform. While a range of presenting styles would be welcome, The ‘Darwin Was Wrong’ example begs the question: What about those who want to misinform? Could a relaxed attitude to science programming produce more outlets for scare stories? Do we really need another Tonight With Trevor MacDonald?

The producers of The Living Matrix also realised that the science documentary can be more than just a platform for scientists to voice well-thought-out arguments based on credible evidence. Using their film as a PR tool they helped their quacks to quack louder, and in doing so they may have started a trend.

Light of Hope: Help for Children with Autism is the latest in the genre. The press release makes it sound like a refreshing take, with no mention of vaccines, antibiotics or “toxins”. Promising a more positive look at the condition, there is not a shadow to be seen.

So what is their “whole new way of thinking about autism”? The trailer gets off to a promising start as it covers possible causes of autism: 17 seconds in we get the caption “It’s 2009 and science has no real answers”, followed by “doctors should not be afraid to keep asking the questions”. Great! They’re avoiding crowd-pleasing mentions of vaccines and looking for the real cause…

…so where does this lead? You’ve probably noticed the whacking great spoiler above. The man in the still image is of course Andrew Wakefield. He pops up at 0.45 to skirt around the MMR issue and divert attention to his work in gastroenterology. As this segment follows an appearance by Jeff Bradstreet, noted advocate of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, Wakefield’s backpedaling does not seem particularly effective here.

YouTube’s choice of still preview image is unfortunate for a trailer produced for a skeptical audience. The other videos on the YouTube channel reveal more telling insights, and you don’t have to look very far to find them- 25 seconds into ‘Segment 1‘, to be precise.

The quacks mentioned here are following the lead of news agencies and PR firms, distributing their own prepackaged news footage. Finding The Words has been backed by some of quackery’s biggest stars, not to mention sponsorship dollars. A bigger budget won’t make a message any truer, and neither will any number of heart-wrenching case studies, for all the drama they add.

Don’t expect to see Evidence-Based Medicine: The Movie anytime soon.