Did psychologist Jordan Peterson endorse a book called "The Herbal Tablets"? No, that's not true: An online analysis tool found with 97 percent confidence that the audio was generated by AI. The audio track was dubbed over a video clip from Peterson's recent appearance on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast. A search of the original podcast transcript does not contain the words found in this fake promotional audio track.
The edited video appears in a reel (archived here) on Facebook by DoctorTruth.Teachings on August 9, 2024. The post was captioned:
Link in comments for the ebook!
#naturalremedies #healthyfood #diet #food #healthylifestyle #naturalhealing #alkalinediet #alkalinevegan
is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
This
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Aug 14 15:25:03 2024 UTC)
The post caption says the link to the ebook was in the comments -- that link goes to a linktree where the top link does go to a sales page for the book in question at doctortruth.shop. That website has a mission statement "to provide herbal medicines and continue the Dr. Sebi legacy."
Alfredo Bowman, known as Dr. Sebi, was a controversial self-trained herbalist and not a medical doctor. He died in 2016.
The promotional video shows food images and clips of Peterson seated in front of a dark red curtain. He is wearing a unique suit jacket with printed fabric and a contrasting black lapel. A reverse image search for the screenshot above returns several YouTube clips that all come from one Joe Rogan podcast. A search on YouTube for Peterson and Rogan brings up episode #2180 of the "Joe Rogan Experience" (pictured below) that was posted on July 25, 2024.
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Wed Aug 14 18:24:24 2024 UTC)
The fast-paced dubbed audio track on the reel on Facebook features a voice that says:
Now don't eat pork, God doesn't want you to eat it, nor crabs. Don't use bleach, don't eat popcorn, don't eat KFC, don't drink subway, don't eat donuts, don't drink broccoli, don't eat corn cause all these foods are extremely toxic to the body and so that's why it's very important to read the Herbal Tablets and if you get your hands on that book consider yourself lucky.
Lead Stories searched the transcript of the two-hour 36-minute-long Rogan podcast for key phrases and words from the promotion -- "The Herbal Tablets," crabs, bleach, KFC, donuts, corn and toxic -- and none of these terms are present. Peterson did not say these words anywhere in the final cut of this podcast episode.
The analysis tools at TrueMedia.org (currently in Beta testing) determined that this video shows substantial evidence of manipulation (pictured below) It found with 97 percent confidence that the audio was generated by AI, and found with 84 percent confidence that there was substantial evidence of facial manipulation (full report here).
(Image source: truemedia.org screenshot taken on Wed Aug 14 22:19:34 2024 UTC)
A section of Peterson's website jordanbpeterson.com is dedicated to book sales. Four of the books are his own, but there is also a section of "Recommended Literature," which is grouped by topic and uses Amazon Affiliate links pointing to each book's sales page at amazon.com. The book "The Herbal Tablets" is not among the recommended books at jordanbpeterson.com. A search on Amazon for "The Herbal Tablets" also returned no results.
Lead Stories reached out by email to Peterson's press contact and will update this article when a response is received.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims associated with the names of Jordan Peterson and Dr. Sebi can be found here and here.
