Plaintiff Vanessa Buss brought a disability accommodation claim against her former employer Defendant PeaceHealth.
Buss offered the report of Dr. Colleen Huber, a naturopathic doctor, to support her assertion that PeaceHealth could have accommodated her by offering ivermectin as COVID-19 prophylaxis.
PeaceHealth filed a motion to exclude Huber’s testimony because she is unqualified “to render the opinions in her declaration” and because her opinions are not “relevant and reliable under Daubert and Rule 702.”
Naturopathic Medicine Expert Witness
Dr. Colleen Huber has been practicing naturopathic medicine for about 18 years. She graduated from Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe. Huber treated patients who showed signs and/ or symptoms of COVID-19 illness during the peak COVID years.
In April 2021, she authored a book on early COVID-19 treatments titled The Defeat of COVID: 500+ Medical Studies Show What Works and What Doesn’t.
Discussion by the Court
1. Huber is not Qualified to Offer Expert Scientific Opinion
The Court held that Huber is not qualified to offer expert scientific opinion on the hospital management of COVID-19 because she lacked the knowledge, experience, training, and education to offer expert scientific opinion on the hospital management of COVID-19 during a pandemic. Huber is trained and has practiced as a naturopathic physician.
Though she may be qualified to offer expert testimony on matters within her naturopathic training and practice, she lacked allopathic medical education and training in immunology, epidemiology, and infectious diseases.
Huber also did not have relevant training in biostatistics, epidemiology, or a related field that would qualify her to conduct or interpret meta-analyses, literature reviews, or clinical studies.
Further, Huber’s license to practice naturopathic medicine was revoked for “unprofessional conduct” in October 2022 by the Arizona Naturopathic Physicians Medical Board.
The Board found that Huber was treating cancer patients with intravenous solutions (“IVs”) that contained “bicarb and other nutrients” and had failed to properly chart patient visits, including patient symptoms, clinical findings, treatment details, IV ingredients, and “the dosage or strength amounts.” The Board also found that Huber refused to properly chart patient visits even after being required to attend a medical education course in recordkeeping, failed to obtain patient consent to receive the IVs, and refused to disclose the IV ingredients to patients and to the Board.
2. Huber’s Opinion is Not Reliable
Even if Huber were qualified to provide expert scientific opinion on the hospital management of COVID-19 during a pandemic, her opinion that ivermectin is an effective alternative to COVID-19 vaccination is not reliable.
a. Clinical Experience
It should be noted that Huber failed to disclose important details about her clinical experience including the exact number of patients she treated, patient demographics, pre-treatment patient information, a protocol including the ivermectin dose used, post-treatment patient information, and whether she used a control group.
PeaceHealth’s rebuttal expert contended that Huber’s clinical report is “anecdotal evidence that should not be relied on to prove or disprove the efficacy of ivermectin in the treatment or prophylaxis of COVID-19 infection.”
Huber did not supply the missing details or documentation of her clinical experience and, for that reason, failed to rebut the characterization of her clinical report as anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is not a reliable basis for an expert scientific opinion.
b. Ivermectin Studies
Second, Huber stated that her opinion is also based on the ivermectin studies that she cited in her report, the ivermectin studies in her self-published book, and the “hundreds of published studies” that she herself has written. But the studies to which she refers are severely flawed, and the studies she authored were not published in a peer-reviewed scientific or medical journal.
In her report, Huber repeatedly cited a “meta-analysis” of ivermectin studies—presumably the same meta-analysis and studies she cites in her book—that she claimed showed that ivermectin is an effective COVID-19 treatment and prophylaxis. However, the “meta-analysis” is a website that lists more than 100 ivermectin studies.
Huber’s report also named three specific studies as the basis for her opinion that ivermectin is effective COVID-19 treatment and prophylaxis. The Court reviewed the studies and found them to be fatally flawed.
Finally, Huber stated that she has published “hundreds” of peer-reviewed studies, including studies that show that ivermectin is an effective COVID-19 treatment and prophylactic. Of the five COVID-19 articles listed on her CV, purportedly peer reviewed, all were published in an online entity titled Primary Doctor Medical Journal (“PDMJ”), an entity that Huber helped create. She registered, owns and operates the PDMJ website.
PeaceHealth contended that “Huber has designed a web of alternative sources and organizations to provide an appearance of legitimacy without peer review and without disclosing her conflicts of interest,” and that “PDMJ is essentially a blog, dressed up to mimic the look of a peer-reviewed journal.” At deposition, Huber refused to identify any other PDMJ founders or reviewers and declined to explain how its “peer review” process works.
c. Methodology
Plaintiff contended that “Huber makes the perfect expert witness for this case because she literally wrote the book on treatments for COVID” and “is one of the leading experts in the world on early treatments for COVID, including ivermectin.”
The Court noted that Huber failed to examine and rebut the peer-reviewed scientific studies that constitute the medical consensus that ivermectin is not an effective COVID-19 treatment or prophylactic. A minority opinion is not necessarily unreliable, but here Huber failed to provide a sufficient factual basis for her opinion, and she failed to rebut or distinguish the medical consensus.
In sum, Huber’s opinion that PeaceHealth could have accommodated Plaintiff with ivermectin is not reliable. Huber based her opinion on insufficient facts or data—anecdotal clinical experience and studies that either do not support her opinion or were not properly peer reviewed.
Held
Tthe Court concluded that Dr. Colleen Huber’s testimony is not admissible under Daubert and Rule 702 and excludes her testimony in its entirety.
Key Takeaway
Where not based on independent research, expert testimony must be supported by objective, verifiable evidence that it rests on scientifically valid principles, such as peer review and publication in a reputable scientific journal.
And Huber cherry-picked facts and data to support a pre-determined conclusion. Cherry-picking facts and data, as Huber has done, undermines principles of the scientific method and is a quintessential example of applying methodologies (valid or otherwise) in an unreliable fashion.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Buss V. PeaceHealth |
| Docket Number: | 6:23cv1128 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Oregon |
| Order Date: | May 07, 2026 |
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