An online feud has erupted between Dr. Cyriac Abby Philips, a liver specialist and clinician-scientist known as 'The Liver Doctor' on social media, and Sridhar Vembu, co-founder and CEO of Zoho. The controversy centres on Mr Vembu's advocacy for walking barefoot, which Dr Philips has vehemently criticised as "pseudoscience." Dr Philips also labelled the Zoho CEO A "health illiterate" for promoting this practice to his large following.
The controversy began when Sridhar Vembu shared a thread on social media about the health benefits of "grounding" or walking barefoot. He revealed that he has been practicing this habit for about a year, walking barefoot in the farms of his village, Govindapperi, in Tenkasi, Tamil Nadu. He advocated for others to try walking barefoot, claiming that making direct contact with the Earth's energy by stepping on natural surfaces like grass can have health benefits.
However, Dr Philips didn't agree with his claims, leading to a public exchange between the two. He disputed the idea of 'grounding', which proposes a link between human electrical frequencies and the Earth's, calling it an unproven concept that may even pose health risks, such as increased susceptibility to foot infections.
''Grounding or Earthing (via bare-foot walking) is a pseudoscientific practice. It has no clinically relevant benefits. There are a lot of absolutely nonsense wasteful studies on this topic that has contaminated the published literature,'' he wrote on X and shared a screenshot of Mr Vembu's post.
''Indian healthcare's biggest challenge lies not in teaching people critical-thinking skills, but in educating and training the common person how to avoid health-illiterate boomer uncles like Mr. Vembu,'' he concluded his post.
See the tweet here:
In response, Mr Vembu stood firm and advised his followers to "stay away from arrogant doctors.'' He wrote, ''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.''
The Kerala-based hepatologist responded with a scathing rebuttal, and asked Mr Vembu to "leave doctors and health workers to do what they have to do, including demystifying misinformation.'' 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" in both young and elderly people.
The feud didn't end there. Mr Vembu responded by saying that he read a a book based on "extensive research on running, in particular barefoot running" that 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 his last post, Dr Philips again called the Zoho CEO ''science-illiterate'', a ''serial misinformation offender and anti-vaxxer.''
''Mr. Vembu, the 55th richest Indian and a billionaire employing 100s of 1000s of people, called me an arrogant doctor, trying to dehumanise me in front of his circle jerking echo chamber members,'' he replied in his post.
''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.
