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Why has the scam become a dominant social form? Especially when it comes to health and wellness, everyone has a supplement, diet, or app that promises to change your life. Sometimes there’s no harm in trying, but unproven and dangerous claims have often traveled from the consumer arena into health politics and policy. More than a simple story of bad actors exploiting the vulnerable, these are messy case studies in trust, doubt, profit, and the politics of knowledge. In this discussion- and project-based seminar, we confront the long history of frauds, fads, controversies, and the current “post-truth” moment through the lens of ethical responsibility: while the terrain of knowledge always shifts, discerning the basis of medical and scientific claims remains essential for the lives of patients and the population. We engage with historical sources, fiction, film, scholarship, and, of course, social media to seek the material realities that shape the economy of the grift, and its consequences for our bodies, communities, and environment.