Is Barbara O'Neill a medical doctor certified by the American Board of Urology, or ABU? No, that's not true: The American Board of Medical Specialties, which maintains records on medical certifications, told Lead Stories that O'Neill is not certified by the ABU. Lead Stories independently searched ABU records for "Barbara O'Neill" and a second misspelling of her name, "O'Neil," as was included in a post on Facebook. No relevant results were returned. O'Neill is a controversial naturopath who was banned from practice in Australia.
The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) published on December 13, 2024. The caption read:
π·π. π΅ππππππ π'πππππ, ππππ‘πππππ ππ¦ π‘βπ π΄πππππππ π΅ππππ ππ πππππππ¦, ππππ£ππππ ππππππ‘ππ£π π πππ’π‘ππππ πππ π’ππππππ¦ π’ππππππ¦ πππ ππππ π‘ππ‘π βππππ‘β.π»ππ πππππππβ βππππ .ππ’πππππ‘ π βππππ‘βπ¦ ππππ π‘ππ‘ππΌπππππ£π π’ππππππ¦ πππππππ‘
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Dec 16 16:57:43 2024 UTC)
The American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) is a nonprofit group that maintains professional medical certificates. In an email to Lead Stories received on December 16, 2024, Susan Morris, ABMS associate vice president of communications, told Lead Stories that there is no record "of a Dr. Barbara O'Neill being board certified by the American Board of Urology (ABU)."
Morris also confirmed there was no record of a "Barbara O'Neil."
Lead Stories searched the ABU physician verification page, a database that includes practicing urologists who are members of the American Urological Association. No results were returned for "Barbara O'Neill" or "Barbara O'Neil," as is shown below:
(Source: abu.com screenshot taken on Mon Dec 16 16:48:56 2024 UTC)
(Source: abu.com screenshot taken on Mon Dec 16 22:51:08 2024 UTC)
The ABU website database verifies board-certified urologists; if O'Neill were certified, her name would be present.
Lead Stories contacted ABU and its affiliate, the American Urological Association, for additional information involving O'Neill's purported accreditation. We will update this article accordingly when they respond.
Audio is likely AI-generated
Lead Stories ran the audio from the video on Facebook through the University of Buffalo's Deep-Fake-O-Meter, an AI detection tool. The results showed us that there was a very high likelihood that the audio was AI-generated, as shown below:
(Source: Zinc.cse.buffalo.edu screenshot taken on Mon Dec 16 17:53:18 2024 UTC)
A September 2019 statement from the Health Care Complaints Commissions in Australia called O'Neill "an unregistered practitioner" who "makes dubious and dangerous health claims regarding infant nutrition, causes and treatment of cancer, antibiotics and vaccinations that are not evidence based or supported by mainstream medicine."
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Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Barbara O'Neill are here.