Discontentment with the massive violations of the influential Dutch Prime Minister's (Johan Rudolf Thorbecke) health laws led to the foundation of the Dutch Society Against Quackery, in 1880. Within a few years, the Society had more than 1,100 members. Initially, quackery mostly consisted of the unauthorized practice of medicine and the peddling of industrially manufactured ''secret remedies.'' Since the 50s however, the energy of the society focused mainly on magnetizers, especially after they gained support from the field of parapsychology, lay manipulators of the back and herb doctors. The most important object of the society since 1980 has been the fight against the so-called alternative medicine, of which Chinese acupuncture, homeopathy, manipulative therapy, anthroposophical medicine, and naturopathy are prominent targets. Despite numerous costly lawsuits, the society still survives and is probably the oldest as well as the largest of its kind in the world.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 19 August 2026.
All research outputs
#7,451,942
of 22,783,848 outputs
Outputs from Evaluation & the Health Professions
#129
of 328 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#48,356
of 165,724 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Evaluation & the Health Professions
#4
of 6 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,783,848 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 44th percentile – i.e., 44% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 328 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 8.5. This one is in the 37th percentile – i.e., 37% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 165,724 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 21st percentile – i.e., 21% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 6 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 2 of them.
