The manner in which someone presents their ideas is a decent secondary indicator. Common red flags include being evasive about what disease they're referring to, being unable to demonstrate where the mainstream theory fails, being unable to point to any good experimental evidence that even hints that the crackpot theory may be an equal or better explanation, not being able to anticipate and have a good answer for the most obvious questions raised by the crackpot theory.
The illness is chronic mercury toxicity and the treatment is chelation therapy. I know a man who reversed his dementia with chelation therapy. He's an older guy that would get lost in his own neighborhood.
Steven Fowkes, a chemist, has done a lot of work in presenting the some of the latest research regarding Alzheimer's and how it relates to mercury toxicity. A good start is his Quora answer here: https://www.quora.com/Why-havent-we-made-progress-in-a-cure-...
Some other good scientific literature is the work of Boyd Hayley with the chelator emeramide. He's in the process of getting it approved through the FDA for treatment of acute mercury toxicity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3346673/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29444690?dopt=Abstract
> It [his cure for Alzheimer's] isn't a proven reality so if you're looking for double-blind clinical studies of this you're gonna be disappointed. But if you're willing to suspend your disbelief and try something as simple as giving your family member without Alzheimer's disease something like coconut oil and B-complex vitamins and see if it works, you may be very pleased.
Suspending disbelief should not be a requirement to make a persuasive argument about a scientific subject. This guy just smacks of snake oil salesman through and through.
Perhaps this paper would be better than the videos. I posted the videos because they are easier to understand. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1471-4159...
I think mercury is a major factor in many illnesses, and the root cause of mine. I did have some serious memory issues for a while, and my ability to focus was so bad that I could not watch a TV show. There are tens of thousands discussing the same kinds of symptoms and how they disappear with chelation.
I think the source of mercury exposure, duration of exposure, intensity of exposure, where the toxicity eventually settles in the body, and genetic factors all play a role in the symptoms that an individual suffers from. That is why one toxin can cause such a wide range of illnesses. The "radium girls" who were poisoned working with radium in factories is a good example of this.
And I'm not sure why you describe Boyd Hayley's work as low quality. The man has published a huge amount of work, much of which was funded by the NIH.
Ultimately I think the highest quality evidence is the actual curing of sick people. I know my claims of being cured and of others being cured are hard to believe. If you saw first-hand the transformation we went through then you would know we are on the right track.
I'm not saying his work is necessarily low quality. I'm saying that attaching his name to work makes it less credible from the outset, because his reputation is so thoroughly tarnished be things like his anti-vax positions. Likewise for Fowkes and poor credentials and track record. If you want to convince someone whom you've already given reason to be quite skeptical, you need to be able to provide citations from experts whose Google search results are free from such obvious self-inflicted problems.