‘Health-ignorant boomer uncle’: Liver Doctor spars with Zoho CEO over barefoot walking

Two giants of social media — from different fields of science — have faced off on X over the benefits of walking barefoot.

One of them is hepatologist Dr Cyriac Abby Philips, popularly known as The Liver Doctor on social media, who is known to give frequent health advice to his 274,500 followers on X and bust myths. He is not new to controversies and once ran into legal trouble with Himalaya Wellness after slamming its flagship product Liv.52 and alternative medicine companies and products in general.

The other one is Sridhar Vembu, co-founder and CEO of software company Zoho headquartered in Chennai. The online battle started when Vembu advocated the benefits of walking barefoot — also known as “grounding” or “earthing”.

“Health-illiterate boomer uncle”

Dr Philips shared a screenshot of Vembu’s post and slammed it as a “pseudoscientific practice” that can cause foot infection and not give any of the claimed benefits. He also labelled the Zoho CEO a “health-illiterate boomer uncle” for promoting such practices among his huge group of followers.

The 56-year-old Vembu, with a following of 269,600, was understandably incensed. He advised his followers to “stay away from arrogant doctors” as the “best health tip” he could give.

“The best doctors I know are all uniformly humble because they know just how extremely complex the human body is and how much the body and mind are intertwined. They also know accepted medical wisdom keeps changing so they keep an open mind. And great doctors don’t do stupid name-calling about people they don’t know,” Vembu posted.

“Peddling pseudoscience”

The 42-year-old Kerala-based Dr Philips, however, did not stop. He responded with more sarcasm, asked Vembu to not post content he had “no idea about” and “leave doctors and health workers to do what they have to do, including demystifying misinformation”.

“Health illiterates like you, peddling pseudoscience to your large followers are increasing workload on practicing doctors like me [who are exhaustingly trying to improve public health education], by adding more fuel to the misinformation fire that is already lit high by other health influenzas across this country,” he wrote.

He also shared a research paper published by the National Library of Medicine which stated that “walking with minimalist shoes appeared to be associated with better gait performance than walking barefoot”.

“Stay away from arrogant doctors”

However, Vembu responded with the link to a book called Born to Run by Christopher McDougall based on “extensive research on running, in particular barefoot running”. He added that the book prompted him to ditch shoes.

“I ditched shoes, which I already hated, after reading that book. Now I am mostly barefoot except when I travel. There is a fair amount of evidence presented in that book. Once again: stay away from arrogant doctors,” he wrote.

In another post, he once again highlighted Dr Philips’s “arrogance”. “I am a ‘science illiterate’ who has a PhD in Electrical Engineering and know how to read a research paper and also know that most published papers are bogus. The body is a bio electrical system. This idea of grounding is at least scientifically plausible. That is why I said ‘I do It, try it for yourself’ — I stand by it.”

“Serial misinformation offender”

However, there was no stopping Dr Philips, who once again called the Zoho CEO “science-illiterate”, a “serial misinformation offender and anti-vaxxer”.

“Mr. Sridhar Vembu, a science-illiterate with a PhD in electrical engineering from Princeton University is proof that education does not equate to intelligence or rationalism,” he ranted.

“Instead of correcting himself or showing me the contrary, Mr. Vembu, the 55th richest Indian and a billionaire providing employment to 100s of 1000s of people, called me an arrogant doctor, trying to dehumanise me in front of his circle jerking echo chamber members,” he went on.

“Don’t be like Mr. Vembu. Don’t be ignorant. Arrogant and ignorant. Be open to correcting mistakes. I do it and have done it many times. I am a doctor. I live to defend public health unlike some Princeton billionaires who look forward to misinforming many,” he concluded.