The Chiropractic Board of Australia should be sacked because of its failure to take action against members making false and potentially dangerous health claims, an article in the Medical Journal of Australia argues.

Some chiropractors were falsely claiming to be able to treat people, including babies, for non-musculoskeletal diseases such as asthma, ear infections and pneumonia, the lead author of the paper, Dr Ken Harvey, said.

Others were promoting regular chiropractic care for pregnant women, claiming it could shorten labour and prevent caesarean sections, despite there being no good evidence that chiropractic treatment could do so.

Harvey, an adjunct associate professor with the department of preventive medicine at Monash University, wrote that he had submitted 10 complaints involving 38 chiropractors and 69 of their advertisements to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) last year.

The advertisements were in breach of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act of 2009, as well as the Chiropractic Board of Australia’s guidelines for advertising regulated health services, Harvey wrote.

“We have now reviewed all the websites we complained about four months ago,” the paper, co-authored by Mal Vickers from the Victorian branch of the Australian Skeptics, says.

“Of the 10 clinics involved, only one removed all the claims alleged to breach the national law. Another took down the website complained about, but the chiropractor concerned then made similar claims on another website. Of 69 claims alleged non-compliant with the national law, 43 [62%] currently remain non-compliant.”

Other websites non-compliant with national regulations had been found since then Harvey said, and five years had passed since the Chiropractic Board of Australia told its members to ensure their websites met legal requirements.

In 2013, it was reported that a baby’s neck had been broken by a chiropractor, and that the Chiropractic Board of Australia closed the case without reporting it to the public. (The findings of an Ahpra-commissioned report into the case, and how it became public, have been disputed.)

The board and Ahpra had failed to protect the public, Harvey told Guardian Australia.

“The chiropractic profession is split between those members who support evidence-based practice, and those who are involved in the more pseudoscientific and false aspects of the profession,” he said.

“The board being sacked and reconstituted with new blood committed to getting rid of the non evidence-based stuff, and to reforming the profession, is the only way forward.”

Guardian Australia has contacted Ahpra, which supports the Chiropractic Board of Australia, for comment.

The chief executive of the Consumers Health Forum, Leanne Wells, said the paper raised serious questions about the performance of the Australian Chiropratic Board and Ahpra.

It was time for health regulators to “end the farce surrounding chiropractors’ extravagant and spurious claims,” she said.

“It is no laughing matter that the agencies purportedly established to protect consumers have shown, by their absence of effective action, little sign of putting patient interests first, the prime reason for their existence,” she said.

“The promotion of unproven therapies over several years begs the question about whether it is time for federal and state governments to intervene and reconstitute the regulatory oversight of chiropractors.”

The national president of Chiropractic Australia, Rod Bonello, said the Chiropractic Board of Australia did not handle advertising breaches, which were referred to and investigated by Ahpra.

He agreed with Harvey that Ahpra needed to do more to prevent false advertising about chiropractic treatments.

“When chiropractors depart unethical and irresponsible information, it is a disappointment, but it is in no way unique to chiropractors and is something that is a problem in all areas of health care,” Bonello said.