"Salacious but iffy?"

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In the Washington Post recently, Michael Miller covered the life and death of James Jeffrey Bradstreet, a doctor with controversial ideas about causes and treatments of autism ("Anti-vaccine doctor behind ‘dangerous’ autism therapy found dead. Family cries foul.". 6/29/2015). The treatments Bradstreet favored included intravenous secretin, "intravenous immunogloblin" [sic],  chelation therapy, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, and stem cell therapy.

The reader who sent me the link noticed a strange word choice in the article:

But as the National Enquirer coverage suggests, some of these treatments were salacious but scientifically iffy.

It's clear that salacious (glossed by M-W as "arousing or appealing to sexual desire or imagination; lecherous, lustful") doesn't belong here. It must be a malapropism or perhaps a cupertino for some more appropriate adjective. But which?

My correspondent suggested salutary ("producing a beneficial effect; promoting health"), but I'm skeptical, since the article includes quotations from a medical school dean and the FDA to the effects that some of Bradstreet's preferred theraputic techniques are "dangerous and without any benefit" and "can lead to serious and life-threatening outcomes".

Along the same lines as her suggestion might be salubrious ("making good health possible or likely"), which is only three characters away from salacious, and might have been mistyped of misspelled in a way that would make it as close to salacious as to salubrious. And salacious is about four time more frequent than salubrious, making a cupertino more likely. But salubrious has the same problem as salutary: the treatments are said to be dangerous, not healthful.

Ideas?

Update — I like various commenters' suggestion that the original word might have been something like  sexy (in a figurative sense), changed to salacious by injudicious thesaurusizing on the part of the author or an apprentice copy editor.



37 Comments

  1. Sili said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 6:35 am

    I suspect "salacious" is original bur of course wrong. I think they're trying to convey the idea of the 'treatments' being spectacular, fancy, sciencey, appealing to those who don't know better.

  2. Dick Margulis said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 6:41 am

    Here's one idea: "quotations from a medical school dean and the FDA to the effects that some of Bradstreet's preferred theraputic [sic] techniques are 'dangerous and without any benefit' is not the same as saying that there is a consensus of medical opinion that all of his preferred techniques are "dangerous and without benefit." Many respectable, mainstream physicians disagree with one another and with the FDA about all sorts of things.

    So it's possible that many physicians would agree that one or more of those techniques is salubrious (even if ineffective for the particular condition he was trying to treat), despite the opinions quoted in the article. This would support the cupertino hypothesis.

  3. Leo T said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 6:43 am

    Perhaps they meant salacious as a synonym of "sexy". As in, these were all cutting-edge, pushing-the-envelope, "sexy" treatments.

  4. mollymooly said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 6:46 am

    Maybe "sensational(ist)" ? It doesn't really contrast with "scientifically iffy", so "salacious but" would have the wrong conjunction as well as the wrong adjective.

    I think "as the National Enquirer coverage suggests" means "as seems likely given that the story was covered by the National Enquirer" rather than "as is suggested in the National Enquirer article".

  5. nic said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 6:54 am

    My first thought is they meant the treatments were intriguing and newsworthy in a lowest-common-denominator kind of way – the same sense as conveyed by the phrase 'salacious details' in the context of celebrity gossip, for example.

  6. Flex said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 6:56 am

    I don't know that it is a malapropism or cupertino.

    It is possible that Miller really meant that Bradstreet's treatments were strongly appealing to his patients, as strong as sexual desire. (And from what I've read of alt-medicine, patients often become enamored with their treatment.)

    Possibly what he intended to convey was that the treatments proposed by Bradstreet were sexy in the sense of very appealing. Yet, for some reason, wanted to avoid using that word (it didn't sound professional enough?).

    Of course, salacious doesn't have the same alternative meaning as sexy. If he did mean it in the sense I suspect, he chose the wrong word.

  7. other one spoon said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 7:01 am

    Wonder if it might instead be a case of overly zealous thesaurus use. If the meaning intended was something like "appealing" or "tempting", given the M-W definition, it seems like "salacious" might be something you could land on that way.

  8. Ray said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 7:04 am

    solacious? (affording solace. [obsolete] )

  9. Keith said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 7:08 am

    I wonder if the writer wanted to convey an idea of something like 'superficially appealing' came up with the word salacious…

  10. Jens Fiederer said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 7:12 am

    Perhaps some variant of salary for the financial angle?

  11. Alan Jacobs said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 7:23 am

    My guess is that a dictionary suggested it as a synonym for "provocative," and the author wasn't aware that "salacious" applies to only one of the senses of "provocative."

  12. Alan Jacobs said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 7:25 am

    (Of course, even then it would be the use or advocacy of the treatments that would be provocative, not the treatments themselves.)

  13. Karl said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 8:21 am

    What about "specious"? It still reeks of a word learned imperfectly from a hard-word list or a thesaurus, but it more or less fits the sense of "superficially attractive," which as Keith says pretty much seems to fit the context. And its obsolete meaning of "showy" might come even closer to the intended meaning.

  14. Kimberly Oger said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 8:27 am

    How about "audacious"? If the author (or somebody else) was typing from hand-written notes, it's plausible that "aud" might look like "sal". Also, the meaning fits the context.

  15. Victor Mair said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 9:17 am

    Efficacious.

  16. Adrian Bailey said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 9:22 am

    Probably solacious.

  17. mollymooly said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 9:30 am

    @Keith:

    I wonder if the writer wanted to convey an idea of something like 'superficially appealing' came up with the word salacious…

    "seductive"?

  18. Shadow-Slider said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 9:34 am

    He could of meant seductive rather the salacious.

  19. Jerry Friedman said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 9:56 am

    I agree with the people who think it was a misguided attempt to find a word in the "sexy" or "tempting" range. Maybe "salacious but iffy" could have been replaced by "meretricious".

  20. Jacob said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 10:44 am

    Salient?

  21. Victor Mair said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 11:52 am

    "Efficacious" has the virtue of constituting a head-rhyme with "iffy". And, while the treatment may be effective, that does not mean it is healthful or beneficial.

    As to how someone could get from "efficacious" to "salacious", it might be the result of transcribing / typing from a dictated (into a recording device) draft.

  22. elizabeth yew said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 11:53 am

    fallacious would be more like it, though it means changing the "but "to "and."

  23. DM said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 12:02 pm

    I think maybe it should be sensationalist, as in intended to promote excitement and grab headlines. "Intended to get attention, but scientifically iffy" makes sense to me.

  24. Ginger Yellow said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 12:02 pm

    My first thought is they meant the treatments were intriguing and newsworthy in a lowest-common-denominator kind of way – the same sense as conveyed by the phrase 'salacious details' in the context of celebrity gossip, for example.

    Agreed. I don't think salaciousness is limited to sex, in journalese.Or rather, if you're a tabloid hammer, everything looks like a sex nail. So to speak.

  25. Johannes said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 12:06 pm

    Perhaps the writer had in mind 'sagacious'. Although it's generally used of people rather than things, a couple of the words commonly used to define it, viz. 'insightful' or 'far-sighted', seem to fit the context quite well.

  26. Johannes said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 12:38 pm

    In fact I was a little hasty: 'sagacious' does come up readily enough on google describing words such as 'idea', 'policy', 'choice' etc., so describing treatments as 'sagacious' seems much less of a stretch that I initially thought.

  27. Blythe said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 1:43 pm

    I believe your suggestion, "salubrious", makes sense, given its greater similarity to "salacious". My reasoning that the writer inadvertently used the latter word, and meant the former (or something like it), is based on the preceding paragraph of the article. It is a quote from Bradstreet's blog, and seems to report that the National Enquirer published an article that was at least partially sympathetic to him, his treatments of his son, and their seemingly effective outcome.

    I've tried to find the original article by searching for "Bradstreet" on the National Enquirer website, but no luck. Bradstreet's blog post is from February 2012, so I assume the article appeared before then.

  28. Jen said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 2:31 pm

    I was expecting you to be commenting on 'iffy' in formal-ish writing – I'm another for the salacious-intended-to-mean-something-like-seductive camp

  29. Jenny Davidson said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 6:31 pm

    I agree that "efficacious" was almost certainly the word that was intended. Otherwise it would have to be the sensible but unlikely formulation "not insalubrious"!

  30. Jenny Davidson said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 6:32 pm

    (But yes – a thesaurus might well have given someone "salubrious" as a synonym for "not bad for the health"…)

  31. Eric P Smith said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 7:40 pm

    I'd go with @Jacob's "salient".

  32. Auntturtle said,

    July 6, 2015 @ 7:43 pm

    It was almost surely meant to be "efficacious," because (1) it rhymes and (2) "efficacious treatment" is such a stock phrase.

  33. Zizoz said,

    July 7, 2015 @ 1:02 am

    I understood it in the same way as nic and Ginger Yellow. I don't think it is a cupertino or a malapropism, nor the result of thesaurus use.

  34. GH said,

    July 7, 2015 @ 7:15 am

    Yes, along with Leo T, nic, Flex, Jerry Friedman, et al., I think the intended meaning here is somewhere in the range "sexy, provocative, seductive" (generalized from sex to any kind of lizard-brain appeal), which the writer attributes to the word "salacious" from terms like "salacious gossip."

    None of the proposed malapropisms or cupertinos look very plausible to me, either the leap from the intended word to the one used, or the alleged intended meaning. If it were "efficacious," the article would be saying the treatments actually worked, which seems completely out of line with the message of the article. (The rest of the paragraph goes on to say, "(A 2012 study, for instance, found “no evidence that single or multiple dose intravenous secretin is effective” for treating autism.) Bradstreet also wrote about including his son in an intravenous immunogloblin (IVIG) trial that “made a huge difference.” But another study found IVIG only helped 10 percent of patients and “should be undertaken only with great caution.”)

    If we ignore "salacious" completely, isn't it clear that the most likely idea to fill this slot in the sentence is that the treatments were superficially exciting, or seemed plausible to laypeople?

  35. Bob Edgar said,

    July 8, 2015 @ 4:14 am

    Assuming efficacious was meant and replacing efficacious with effective in the original text it seems to parse quite well (at least for me).

    "But as the National Enquirer coverage suggests, some of these treatments were salacious but scientifically iffy."

    "But as the National Enquirer coverage suggests, some of these treatments were effective but scientifically iffy."

    Some of the treatments seemed to work although they weren't science based. Works for me.
    Notice that the National Enquirer is being explicitly credited for this and not the author.

  36. GH said,

    July 8, 2015 @ 6:09 am

    But that claim would be non sequitur, because the article hasn't provided any details from the Enquirer that would suggest any such thing. The sentence follows on from this paragraph (a letter from Bradstreet to his son):

    Ultimately, secretin ( a simple hormone) give IV made a huge difference in that problem. It was an immediate change and even got you the attention of Bernie Rimland and the National Enquirer. Your response to secretin made you an immediate hit with about 10 million readers of the Enquirer and neither your nor my life has been the same since.

    In that context, I don't think the article is using the National Enquirer as a source for saying the treatments were effective. Rather, I think it's saying that the very fact that they got such coverage in a tabloid that is a byword for sensationalism* indicates that the treatments were exactly that ("salacious").

    * From Wikipedia: "In 1953, Pope revamped the format [of the Enquirer] from a broadsheet to a sensationalist tabloid focusing on sex and violence. The paper's editorial content became so salacious that Griffin was forced by the Mayor to resign from the city's Board of Higher Education in 1954." (Emphasis added)

    This would even help explain how this word came to be used, since it is one commonly associated with the newspaper in question.

  37. Kimberly Oger said,

    July 8, 2015 @ 9:12 am

    I don't see how "efficacious" fits the meaning, particularly in light of the rest of the paragraph:
    "(A 2012 study, for instance, found 'no evidence that single or multiple dose intravenous secretin is effective' for treating autism.)"; "But another study found IVIG only helped 10 percent of patients".

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