The Truth About T.S. Wiley's Credentials

Inflated credentials, and especially fabricated credentials, are one of the strongest warning signs of quacks and con artists. The implicit dishonesty is a sure sign of somebody who's trying to get away with something – faking reality, hoping to fool. Hoping nobody will notice.

T.S. Wiley calls herself a scientist and a researcher. The substance of her record in the field consists of the following:

• B.A. in Anthropology, Webster University, St. Louis, 1975
• Member of the New York Academy of Sciences and American Association of Anthropologists
• Guest Investigator at Sansum Medical Research Institute
• Four published papers in scientific journals
• Various unreported projects and unpublished papers

This is not even a mediocre scientific career. This is, for someone whose academic studies ended over three decades ago, an abysmal record – if that person wishes to call herself a scientist and researcher and expects to be taken seriously.

But it's worse than an abysmal record. It is not just inflated, it is fabricated.

First, what sort of credibility do these two professional associations bestow? Surely they must count for something. Wiley cites her membership practically everywhere she goes.

T.S. Wiley's husband, Neil Raden, a business intelligence consultant, once crowed in a public forum that she was nominated to the New York Academy of Sciences “by her peers for her work in molecular biology.” There's just one problem with this claim. Anyone can join NYAS. Anyone. It's just $95 per year.

Confronted with this easily verified fact, Neil Raden still insisted, “Susie was nominated to the NYAS, by peers. You must have joined the book club. I'm looking at the letter right now announcing her election. There is also a certificate. You are mistaken.” Well, there is no NYAS book club and no election process. To be absolutely sure, we wrote to the NYAS membership department and asked if there are any forms of membership whatsoever that require credentials, invitation, or any sort of exclusivity at all. They replied that there are not. “Academy membership is open to anyone interested in science.”

And, yes, for your $95 you do get a certificate. You can even frame it.

The American Association of Anthropologists (more correctly known as the American Anthropological Association) is no different. Anyone is free to join.

What about T.S. Wiley's stint as a guest investigator?

This was a favor from Dr. Bent Formby – Wiley's scientific mentor – in 1997. “We appointed her as guest investigator at Sansum Medical Research Institute for 3 months. By doing so she became affiliated with an academic institution.... We were all very nice to her and glad to be able to support an ordinary housewife with an interest in bioscience.”

Apparently it didn't work out so well. “I was very surprised to discover how illiterate TS was in science and math. She knew absolutely nothing. She did not even know the difference between hydrogen and oxygen or the square root of a number.... She told me she never had science and math in high school.” And, “That was a great mistake because she has absolutely no knowledge about science and how a scientific laboratory with all the applied molecular techniques works.”

Formby scoffs whenever T.S. Wiley titles herself a microbiologist, cancer researcher, and the panoply of other labels. “She has not – absolutely not – any knowledge of experimental biomedical research. Has never been in my lab.”

(Today, Dr. Formby openly feels no affection whatever for T.S. Wiley. He never endorsed the protocol and in fact he opposed its last-minute inclusion in the book on ethical grounds. After he attempted to help the women suffering on the protocol by explaining the science behind their symptoms, the Wiley camp turned on him, smearing his name in public and private – a recurring pattern, incidentally.)

Still, Wiley substantiates Formby's description with her own words. Three years later, in her first book, she thanked her daughter who “spent countless hours explaining physics, chemistry and math to her old mom.”

How much credibility should we grant to the appearance of her name on a few papers, published around the same time that her daughter was explaining to her old mom the very foundations of the subjects that Wiley writes about?

In hindsight, Dr. Formby admits feeling used. “T.S. was all the time completely aware about her lack of academic credentials. That is why she needed people like me and Julie [Taguchi].”

Perhaps, with only a three-month guest pass at a research institute, and with her name on a few papers, Wiley discerned that these failed to establish her credibility as a scientist. It certainly would have been hard to market a hormone protocol prescribing fantastically extreme dosages, and sell the associated hormone product, while licensing and branding the whole operation with the name of an ordinary housewife who has an interest in bioscience.

Somewhere along the line she must have decided it was time for a full-out fabrication.

It was time for Susie Wiley to become a college graduate.

And it became part of her bio, wherever she went and on her web sites.

It's curious that neither of her books mentions this degree. She even told insiders, including Dr. Formby, that she'd never earned a degree. Suspicious, Wiley Watch inquired with Webster University. Their records confirmed that it does not exist.

On November 15, 2006, Suzanne Somers and T.S. Wiley appeared on Larry King Live to defend Somers' book and her endorsement of the Wiley Protocol. Wiley Watch contacted the producers earlier in the day to notify them, among other things, of Wiley's fabricated degree. By the next day her bio page had changed to read, “Pending B.A. in Anthropology, Webster University, 1975”.

We called the registrar's office at Webster and read this to them, exactly as worded. The registrar laughed out loud and explained what we already knew. There is no such thing as a “pending” degree. You either have one, or you don't.

Anthropologist. Cultural theorist. Medical theorist. Scientist. Medical researcher. Molecular biologist. Cancer researcher with a background in evolutionary biology. Philosopher. Health educator. Guru. These are all words that T.S. Wiley has used to describe herself.

If you say so, Ms. Wiley. If you say so.