Encyclopedia of American Loons

Guylaine Lanctot is an anti-vaccine activist and altmed purveyor who locates herself on the more incoherently batshit end of the spectrum. She is, indeed, an MD by training, but lost her license in Quebec and subsequently relocated to Florida (hence her inclusion in this encyclopedia even though she is ostensibly Canadian) where she pushes various forms of woo. She is, however, a hero over at places such as Educateyourself and whale.to for her work, including books such as The Medical Mafia.

According to Lanctot Zionist financiers have a stranglehold over the medical establishment, and their control over the pharmaceutical industry have resulted in the medical profession’s acceptance of quack medicine (i.e. prescription drugs and vaccines) because it is profitable, even though it kills people (and took away Lanctot’s medical license): “the whole medical system is designed to make people sicker and sicker.” The book “also uncovers the truth behind vaccines, AIDS, cancer, the World Health Organization, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, and more.” Her evidence is primarily the fact that science hasn’t managed to cure cancer yet; therefore (instead of even trying to consider to what extent and why that is the case) there must be a conspiracy (you can see her spell out that point in an interview with Kenneth and Dee Burke here). Part of the reason for her troubles in Quebec was apparently the fact that she refused to pay taxes as well, so as to avoid supporting the Medical Mafia. That didn’t really fly with the courts.

Currently Lanctot provides diagnoses and treatments “with her own hands” (no fancy unnaturalmethods here), relying on her powers of intuitions and anecdotes and appeals to nature. The reason “authorities forbid alternative medicine” (which they don’t) is “because they are serving the industry, and the industry cannot make money with herbs, vitamins, and homeopathy” (which is, of course, false; altmed is an enormous and extremely profitable industry); “they cannot patent natural remedies” (also false). “That is why they [the Zionists] push synthetics. They control medicine, and that is why they are able to tell medical schools what they can and cannot teach,” rather than because, you know, the absence of evidence – Lanctot’s intuitions and anecdotes to the contrary. But the premise is the standard one: since she cannot herself be wrong, everyone else must be in a conspiracy against her. In fact, Lanctot has really expanded on the evidence thing: According to Lanctot the whole idea of scientific evidence is a conspiracy instigated by Rockefeller in 1910, the purpose of which was to eliminate the idea that one can intuit the causes of disease (which worked so well for thousands of years).

Vaccines constitute one of the main issues. According to Lanctot “vaccines are used to test biological weapons … I found that vaccines are used to spread diseases. They are used for targeted genocides,” and “we are actually changing our genetic code through vaccination. Years from now we’ll know the biggest crime against humanity was vaccination.” Huh? What’s her evidence or basis for that? Oh, that’s right. Her whale.to page, with further quotes, is here.

Diagnosis: Monstrously crazy crank and conspiracy theorist. This is definitely one MD whose medical advice sane folks wouldn’t want to get near. Dangerous.

Richard D. Land is the president, or recently retired president, of the Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, radio host of Richard Land Live! (which closed down in 2012 after several cases of plagiarism were disclosed), and executive editor of The Christian Post. He was formerly the president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, a post he held for some 25 years (and was succeeded by the apparently clinically delusional Russell Moore). And as usual, you can be pretty damn sure that an organization that contains both “ethics” and “liberty” in their name is an organization devoted to the exact opposite – their “Richard Land Distinguished Service Award,” was in 2013 awarded to none other than Tony Perkins. A rather telling example is Land’s response to the Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling, which he described as a crime against humanity and “a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror.” (He also said that since one side argued that ID was science and the other side argued that it wasn’t, the judge had no right to decide which one was right, which suggests a rather poor understanding of what judges are supposed to do.) Needless to say, Land is an unrepentant fundamentalist, advocating a fundamentalist biblical position on issues from religious liberty to the economy.

In 2001 president Bush appointed Land to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a position he had when he wrote the infamous Land letter, an open letter to President Bush by leaders of the religious right in 2002 outlining a “just war” argument in support of the subsequent military invasion of Iraq. Bush was sufficiently impressed to reappoint him twice (he served until 2011). (Indeed, Land believes that God intervened in the 2004 election to make sure Bush was elected.)

Let’s start with the scandals. In the March 31, 2012 edition of Richard Land Live!, Land accused the Obama administration and civil rights leaders of using the Trayvon Martin case to deliberately stir up racial tension and “gin up the black vote for an African-American president who is in deep, deep, deep trouble for re-election.” That earned him some criticism. (In fact, Land had lifted most of his commentary from a column by the frothingly lunatic Moonie Times contributor Jeffrey Kuhner.) Land defended himself by trying to argue that Obama started it by “turning he Trayvon Martin shooting into a national issue,” but even his Southern Baptist friends didn’t quite buy that. After the subsequent discovery of extensive plagiarism Land lost his radio show and resigned as President of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Land on social issues

Land is a signatory to the Manhattan Declaration and well-known for his bigoted lapses into hyperbole and conspiracy theories – a typical example being, perhaps, his claim that “gay activists” seek to destroy marriage in order to achieve full-blown “sexual paganization of society”. To this end homosexuals are “recruiting” children, which is a form a child abuse, all the while claiming that homosexuality is “incomprehensible” and to be blamed on the devil. (In fairness, one can see why homosexuality is incomprehensible to Land, the source of incomprehension being, of course, the density of his bigotry.) He also – as so many others dimly realizing that their other arguments are rather poor – feebly claimed that repealing DADT would “bring God’s judgment on our nation,” and tried to compare his battle against gay marriage with MLK’s fight for racial justice (which should probably be understood in light of his Trayvon Martin comments). It is still telling that Land (after comparing Obama and Democrats to Nazis) has repeatedly called for civility and appealed to decency in the debate over gay marriage. Indeed, in 2012 Land came up with what he deemed “a modest proposal” that he hoped everyone could agree on: Ban gay marriage.

But it isn’t just gay marriage; Land has actually recently argued that single mothers have a moral obligation to put their kids up for adoption. And here is his contribution to the War on Christmas – those who don’t celebrate it the way he likes (e.g. recognizing Santa as just another Golden Calf) are apparently damning themselves to hell.

Land vs. Science and Reason

Of course, Land is also a hardcore creationist (as evinced by his Kitzmiller v. Dover comment above), and his arguments for creationism consist of the standard creationist PRATTs (no, he displays absolutely no awareness of the science or how science works):

- A “significant majority of Americans don’t believe [in evolution],” which is a false but rather telling argument.

- “I believe in evolution within species,” but not in “Darwinian theory of origins.”

- “It takes far more faith to believe nothing became something than to believe in a Creator,” which, even if true, would have nothing to do with evolution

- “Irreducible complexity”.

- Darwin didn’t know about single-celled organisms since he did not have microscopes (false; microscopes had achieved the Rayleigh limit in the 19^th century, and Darwin wrote papers about microorganisms).

His anti-science stance is part of the background for his firm opposition to public schools in general (public school are “a lousy place for Christian kids”).

He also participated in the religious wingnut anti-environmentalist propaganda movie Resisting the Green Dragon.

There is a good Richard Land resource here.

Diagnosis: Notable for having been one of the movers and shakers in the anti-enlightenment movement whose firm stance against reason, sanity and decency, Land is hopefully somewhat neutralized by now. Still.

William Lane (not to be confused with William Lane Craig) is a rather influential promoter of pseudoscience and woo. His main idea, the one for which he is famous and the one that is the foundation for his company BeneFin, is the use of powdered shark cartilage as a cancer cure. The basic idea, which is stated explicitly in the title of two of Lane’s books, is that sharks don’t get cancer. That is, of course, false. Sharks do get cancer, even cancer of their cartilage, but as with most animals and unlike humans sharks have a tendency to die before cancer sets in. The other, equally idiotic idea, is that powdered shark cartilage taken orally could somehow prevent cancer in humans, which would be a silly inference even if his premise of sharks not getting cancer were true. (To be fair, he did base the inference on scientific considerations, but he did of course not understand any of the science he read.) It may give you salmonella, however.

In 2000 Lane was prohibited by the Federal Trade Commissionfrom claiming that “BeneFin or any other shark cartilage product prevents, treats or cures cancer,” until he has substantial evidence to support his claims – which he has, of course, completely failed to do (the president of LaneLabs, one Andrew J. Lane, whom one suspects to be related to William Lane, also received a $ 1 million fine). His response to critics is usually that people who disagree with him on the basis of reality and evidence are in a conspiracy to stifle him, the standard gambit from any purveyor of bullshit. Lane’s work has a substantial file at quackwatch, and there is a good summary here.

His idea, however, is not entirely harmless – the popularity of his “cure” has greatly contributed to endangering several shark species, which is exactly the kind of problems that similar bullshit woo is creating for tigers and rhinos in certain Asian countries.

Diagnosis: Not only a reality-challenged promoter of woo, Lane is also a substantial threat to the environment. His influence is thus rather scary.

Amy Lansky is a homeopath and author of Impossible Cure: the Promise of Homeopathy, which she promptly fails to deliver. Originally, Lansky was a computer scientist, but she transitioned to homeopathy after using it to “cure her son of Autism.” She explained it thusly: “As a scientist, I recognize that homeopathy is implausible. But I've seen it cure my son,” which is evidence that Lansky never had a clue about scientific reasoning or how evidence actually works to begin with. Her book has subsequently become a textbook used by homeopathy diploma mills, presumably exactly because of Lansky’s problem with distinguishing evidence from anecdotes based on personal experience.

Lansky has been involved in numerous activities and organizations to promote homeopathy, among most notable being her broadcasting a monthly Internet radio show on Autism One called “There's Hope With Homeopathy” – this one is notable, since it illustrates Lansky’s close ties with the anti-vaccination movement; and indeed, Lansky is a regular at antivaxx quackfest seminars – and on the executive board of the National Center for Homeopathy. She is, however, probably most famous for being one of Joe Mercola’s go-to people regarding homeopathy. Indeed, Mercola published Lansky’s article “Could this ‘forbidden’ Medicine Eliminate the Need for Drugs?” in favor of her cherished alchemist elixirs, an article so full of idiocy, lack of knowledge and understanding, fallacies, and conspiracy mongering that it at least should completely undermine any measure Mercola makes to appear respectable (though it won’t do that in the eyes of his fans, of course, and from the point of view of reality it was an impossible task to begin with).

Diagnosis: One of the most influential pushers of one of the most idiotic strains of crackpottery there is. The fact that it never goes away is pretty illuminating with respect to how hard critical thinking really is.

Wayne LaPierre is Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association and an absolutely batshit insane conspiracy theorist. The reason – or at least the reason that qualifies him for inclusion in our Encyclopedia – is not his advocacy for gun rights, or even his tortured, fallacy-filled arguments that more guns means less crime (according to LaPierre the Second Amendment is the source of all freedoms; without guns, there can be no freedom), but his completely reality-unrelated ability to see conspiracies to take away his guns everywhere around him. They’re all out to take them, you see, and have been for a long time. In 2000, for instance, LaPierre claimed that President Bill Clinton tolerated a certain amount of violence and killing to strengthen the case for gun control and to score points for his party. In the real world gun rights advocates have won pretty much all the legal and political battles (there have after all been no serious effort at gun control in Congress for the last decades), but that has not diminished the paranoia or dampened the rhetoric of LaPierre and his gang. Their warnings about how they are out to get those guns of theirs remain as dire as they have been for the last 25 years and will probably remain the same given the characteristics of the new President, Jim Porter.

Now, imminent gun-confiscation is a relatively familiar rightwing conspiracy theory; it is part of the agenda of the New World Order crackdown that is lurking right behind the next corner, whether it is the US government or their secret partners in conspiracy, the UN, and the goal is to make people powerless to … well, it is not entirely clear. In any case, LaPierre, though he is often counted as a mainstream figure within the conservative movement, is wholly on board and has even done his own part to promote the conspiracy in his book The Global War on Your Guns: Inside the UN Plan To Destroy the Bill of Right. The fact that LaPierre, despite his conspiracy leanings, remains a mainstream figure in the conservative movement is of course just further evidence that the movement is mainstreaming crazy. In fact, LaPierre has a history of organizing letter-writing campaigns against the UN to counter their perceived (by LaPierre) attempts to restrict good ol’ Americans’ right to arms (in the real world the measures LaPierre are talking about are measures to limit illegal weapon trade to terrorists and criminal groups, but to LaPierre that is just a foil to … take away his guns).

Of course, Obama is another enemy of the movement, since he is also, according to LaPierre, working hard to take away LaPierre’s guns through various measures that don’t say anything remotely close to what LaPierre thinks they say, and which Obama has tabled anyways. Indeed, the fact that Obama has made no move toward gun restriction is – according to the rather paranoid LaPierre– itself evidence that Obama is out to ban guns: “It’s all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and destroy the Second Amendment in our country,” says LaPierre and offers a pretty illustrative example how conspiracy theories actually work: absence of evidence for a conspiracy is evidence that the conspiracy exists, since it just means that the conspirators are trying to hide it. Splendid.

LaPierre has, in fairness, tried to emphasize that it’s not a matter of paranoia; it’s just a natural response to how liberals deliberately keep the borders open to Mexicans and other al Qaeda terrorists and criminals “whose jobs are murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping.” He has also forcefully argued against the creation of a national firearm database on the grounds that it will be hacked by the Chinese or handed over to Mexico (presumably by our traitorous president). Here is his take on school shootings, and here is the infinetly even more lunatic Larry Pratt following up on LaPierre’s assessment by claiming that the solution to school shootings is more spanking. There is an illuminating article on the NRA and its allies here (it's interesting how out-of-touch NRA's hysterical leaders are with the majority of the organization's members).

Diagnosis: Hysterically paranoid and reality-challenged wingnut conspiracy theorist, who often makes Alex Jones look almost reasonable. LaPierre nevertheless has quite a lot of influence, something that ought to scare anyone.

Daniel Lapin is a rabbi, author, public speaker, head of the American Alliance of Jews and Christians, founder of the Pacific Jewish Center in Venice, California, former head of Toward Tradition, the Commonwealth Loan Company and the Cascadia Business Institute, former partner of Jack Abramoff, television host, and batshit rabidly insane. His nemesis in life is, apparently, godlessness, and he has identified godless folk as “parasites” and claims to be able to give a field guide to atheist parasites, just so you can avoid them (hint: they are, according to Lapin, easily recognized by their filthy habits, such as writing or teaching math). In particular, secular fundamentalism is, according to Lapin, due to the influence of Baal.

The godless are also liberal: Concerning the Occupy Wall Street movement (Lapin propagates his own version of the Prosperity Gospel), Lapin said that those protesting Wall Street – not the Wall Street bankers who triggered the financial crisis – are “barbarians” who want to “obliterate” civilization, bemoaning the fact (or delusion) that “the spiritual heirs of Bach and Beethoven” at Harvard University “are now banging bongo drums” and that “degeneracy” dominates the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. That kind of guy. As for the prosperity gospel, Lapin is the author of Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money, which he has promoted (among other things) on the program run by his fellow Abramoff associate Benny Hinn, and Boost Your Income! Three Spiritual Steps to Success. His methodology is more or less equivalent to that promoted in The Secret.

Another atheist conspiracy, according to Lapin, is environmentalism: the whole purpose of the environmental movement is apparently to do away with Genesis 1-3, or so he told a rather sympathetic James Dobson. The atheist methods are really rather subservise; as Lapin told David Barton (they’re really charmingly stupid and insane together, with Barton’s historical revisionism and Lapin claiming that staying single leads to tyranny); major sources of evil godlessness, for instance, is caring about our pets – there is, apparently, just a few steps from caring about pet animals to anti-human ideologies such as Nazism – and feminism. With Lapin being the idiot he is, lots of things lead to Nazism, in particular the “twisted and diseased pathology” of liberalism.

In the end, though, the real culprit to blame for the fall of Western civilization is the pill. According to Lapin, women who use the birth-control pill ruined masculinity and “created the possibility of perpetual male adolescence,” which went on to wreck traditional American values; so instead of attacking epiphenomena such as gay rights or pornography, Lapin has put a concentrated effort into fighting contraception. He is also a central battle commander in the imaginary war on Christmas.

Here is a short snippet on Lapin’s Hebrew numerology.

Diagnosis: A truly and utterly repugnant and malicious person – and, of course, he is the pal of many central political figures (from James Dobson and Karl Rove to Tom DeLay). Extremely dangerous.

Bob Larson is a sensationalist fundamentalist best known for his talk radio show “Talk-Back With Bob Larson” during the 1980s and 1990s, a major promoter of the “Satanic ritual abuse” and “Satanic Panic” conspiracy scares in the 1980s, and, more recently, as an exorcist. (He is of course also a creationist.)

Larson started his career as an anti-rock evangelist in the 1960s, writing plenty of books on the topic (including Rock & Roll: The Devil's Diversion and Hippies, Hindus, and Rock & Roll; writing such numbers of books quickly is apparently rather easy when you don’t have to worry about fact checking or any measure of alignment between claim and reality). The musical campaigns continued into the 1980s with incoherent, raging rants against i Mötley Crüe, the Dead Kennedys, and Fleetwood Mac. An important element of his campaigns was his own experience as a rock band member prior to being saved, though he tends to exaggerate the commercial success of his band (a kind of Pat Boone copy that played at high schools and local venues).

The rise of the Satanic Panic in the 1980s provided Larson with new material for multiple books trying to counter the welling tide of Satanism and New Age ideas (The Seduction of America's Youth and Straight Answers on the New Age, as well as two novels ghost-written by his assistants, Dead Air and Abaddon, concerned with Satanic ritual abuse). In the 90s he would expand his range of attacks to all sorts of groups, including witches, homosexuals, and mormons (a recurring target), and, as before, his radio programs would consist of him often furiously yelling at guests (and begging for money) and trying to convert them until at least one caller would declare having been saved for Jesus (his debate with the Church of Satan is discussed here). Rather obviously, the show quickly became a target for prank callers, which Larson interpreted as a concerted Satanist conspiratorial effort at shutting down his ministry.

His foray into exorcism has given him international fame (e.g. here). In the 1990s he started performing on-the-air exorcisms of victim callers, during which he would spend 20 or 30 minutes with the caller demanding “in the name of Jesus” for the “demon” to leave. For this purpose he also adopted a new theme: “DWJD: Do What Jesus Did,” which essentially seems to be sending as much money as possible to Bob Larson.

His talk show was eventually cancelled in 2001 amid multiple allegations of financial mismanagement and affairs with female staffers. Larson is currently the pastor of the “Spiritual Freedom Church” in Scottsdale, Arizona, but continues to focus on exorcisms and “deliverance” from “demonic possession” and “multiple personality disorder”, through which he retains some fame (here is Larson exorcising the demon of homosexuality – curiously, all of Larson’s patients appear to have watched The Exorcist more than once). In 2008 Larson’s failure to recognize that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not a documentary shot in real time even landed him his own reality TV show on the Sci-Fi channel: The Real Exorcist. Showing that he has entered the modern age, Larson has also developed an online test: for only $9.95 you can take the test (here), and find out if you’re possessed by a demon or not.

His daughter, Brynne, has taken up the family business through Teen Girl Exorcism Squad (“Three Arizona Girls Claim to Cast Out Demons” – the interview in the link is heartily recommended). They’re currentlyberating and abusing mentally ill people in the name of Jesus, and trying to get a reality-TV show as well. Here is a report on their tour of England, where they ranted about Harry Potter books and sexually transmitted demons.

Diagnosis: Legendarily deranged. His influence is admittedly rather limited, but his methods should be of some concern given that it targets people with real mental illnesses.

John Lamb Lash is an author and scholar of comparative mythology – except that he seems to be unclear about the “myth” part of his field of study, with rather silly results. Among his primary research topics is Pagan Gnostics, and he has “documented” that the Gnostics discovered mind-manipulating Extraterrestrials who has played a key role in an ancient and still ongoing agenda of mind control against humankind, for instance through “archons”. With Michael Salla Lash has argued that Alzheimer’s is a side effect of these mind-manipulating extraterrestrials interfering with human cognitive functions through archons (discussed here). Apparently the archon idea has caught on quite a bit, and for something truly incoherent you could do worse (or better) than looking it up on the website Alien Dreaming (“Beyond the Tyranny of Beliefs”), where you will also find a more detailed version of the Gnostic history of alien intrusion.

Lash explains the archons himself here. Apparently archons are inorganic beings that live on other planets and also noetic forces that intrude subliminally on the human mind; they are psycho-spiritual parasites – if that sounds incoherent, Lash is happy to assert that their ontological status is dual, as if that explained it. Furthermore, and this is best put in Lash’s own words, “the Archons are alien forces that act through authoritarian systems, including belief-systems, in ways that cause human beings to turn against their innate potential and violate the symbiosis of nature. LIVE spelled backwards is EVIL, but the Archons are not evil in the sense that they possess autonomous powers of destruction.” Indeed. That clears it all up. Apparently “metaphysics” means being able to utter whatever you want in terms of semi-grammatical sentences, and then commit yourself to believing them afterwards.

Among Lash’s numerous books are The Seeker's Handbook: The Complete Guide to Spiritual Pathfinding, Quest for the Zodiac and Not in His Image.

Disagnosis: To be perfectly honest, one may easily come to suspect that Lash is just having fun with delusional cranks; yet if he is, he is at least doing an awfully convincing job. He is, in any case, probably pretty harmless.

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson run The Bioscience Resource Project, a “public interest organization that has provided independent research and analysis in the agriculture-related biosciences since 2006.” Their website, Independent Science News, provides “news and critical comment on topics where food, agriculture, and biotechnology impact human health and the environment.” That sounds OK, thus far. Unfortunately, Latham and Wilson – although both have research backgrounds – are notorious crackpots, which should be suggested already by the “Independent” inflection in the name of their outlet. Officially the website “links to science news on the web, from both traditional and alternative media sources.” Guess whether they picked up on the infamous (and shoddy) Seralini study? And guess whether they immediately went into conspiracy theory mode? “Seralini and colleagues are just the latest in a series of researchers whose findings have triggered orchestrated campaigns of harassment” – yup; the fact that most professionals in the field reject the study (and that it was eventually retracted) is not because of the evident shoddiness of the research and subsequent sensationalism capitalizing on widespread and unfounded fears concerning GMOs, but because there is an organized witch hunt going on, as shown by that eminent form of reasoning known as the “shill gambit”.

In fact, Latham and Wilson are something close to DNA denialists – that is, they reject the idea that genes can be the common causes of illnesses and disease; that is: genes play no role whatsoever, not only smaller role than expected. In short, Latham and Wilson call for a paradigm shift. Their contentions have of course been rejected by most people familiar with the topics, but moreover, their arguments contain such cherry-picking and deliberate distortion of the existing literature that it is hard to avoid drawing a parallel to the Intelligent Design movement. More here.

Diagnosis: Although they are not as obviously dishonest as the ID people, Latham & Wilson’s anti-science work shows frightening similarities, and deserves to be smacked down as soon and thoroughly as possible – hence the inclusion in our Encyclopedia.

Gene Latimer is one of the central pushers of tachyon products and practices in the US. That’s right. Tachyon energy. According to his website, Tachyon energy products, Latimer has “clearly entered a new phase of accelerated healing and transformation, unlike any other so far. […] I attribute a major role to my incorporation of Tachyon-based products and practices into my life. I am now living in a radically different electromagnetic field environment that appears to be harmonizing the chaotic impact of electrical Alternating Current on the life forms in my house. I seem to be literally changing my body from the inside out, bringing my glands, organs, and skeletal structure to a whole new level of health and vitality. The Subtle Organizing Energy Field (SOEF) of my body, as well as the smaller SOEFs of my internal systems, are being recharged, their energetic deficiencies replenished and balanced – which leads to the revitalization and balancing of my physical and energetic structures.” Anyone bet that he has the faintest clue what he’s talking about? Well, neither does his target group, and Latimer offers to teach you how “specific ways of optimizing health and powerfully boosting the immune system, rejuvenation & ‘youthing’, electromagnetic field protection, pain management and the acceleration of expanding consciousness.” Indeed. And if you actually pay money for that kind of stuff, you deserve an entry in the Encyclopedia as well.

In the real world there is of course no evidence that tachyon energy exists, though woomeisters like Latimer, relying on the new age conception of energy are of course talking about good old vitalism, chi, and so on, by any other name. Tachyon energy bears no discernible relation to the hypothetical tachyon particles in physics, but nevertheless makes ridiculous new age crackpottery sound more scientific if you are completely ignorant.

Diagnosis: Batshit out of touch with anything resembling reality, and devoid of any kind of ability to connect his ideas and imagination to what really happens. Probably harmless.

Karen Lawson is the Program Director for the Health Coaching track, Center for Spirituality & Healing at the University of Minnesota, homeopath, faculty advisor for the IHEAL at the University, and “board-certified in family medicine and holistic medicine.” Indeed, she used to be president of the American Holistic Medical Association and is former medical director of the Institute for Mind, Body and Spirit at St. Mary’s Mercy Medical Center, Grand Rapids. We’re talking some serious woo here, in other words, and yes, she is affiliated with the University of Minnesota – the Center for Spirituality and Healing is the university’s own institution, where people can go and get advice on all sorts of medical ideas that do not work and have no association with reality whatsoever (they have at least two other homeopaths there, Paula Jelinek and Jacob Mirman – which is notable, since officially the center expresses some qualms about homeopathy, which after all is among the silliest forms of bullshit out there). Lawson has her own entry here.

Diagnosis: The trend for universities to get affiliated with spiritual quackery and pseudoscience does not seem to be going in the right direction. A really ugly affair.

Robert Lazar is a UFO crank, and even among UFO cranks he is considered something of a loose cannon and a double-edged sword. The main benefit of partnering up with Lazar is that he runs United Nuclear, one of few chemical supply houses that still supply unrestricted chemicals to amateur chemists and probably your best shot if you wish to try your hand at building your own nuclear bomb.

On the other hand, Lazar is known to have some troubles with things like reality and accuracy. In particular, he claims qualifications as a scientist and engineer and has alleged that he worked with extraterrestrial technology at Area 51. According to himself, Sector Four of Area 51 serves as a hidden military location for the study and research of extraterrestrial spacecraft using reverse engineering. Lazar clams he saw nine different discs there and has provided detailed information on their mode of propulsion and other technical details. As his Wikipedia article laconically puts it, “Lazar's credibility has been challenged”, in particular after it was discovered that “schools he was supposed to have attended had no record of him, while others in the scientific community had no memory of ever meeting him.” His supporters, of course, argue that Lazar’s credentials and history have been sabotaged to facilitate the very questions of credibility his critics have emphasized.

A rather obvious source of doubt when it comes to Lazar’s credibility is of course recognizing that Lazar’s scientific claims, which he had elaborated on in his description of the alien spacecraft, are bullshit, particularly its propulsion systems and use of Ununpentium, or Element 115, and that, as Dr. David L. Morgan puts it, “Mr. Lazar on many occasions demonstrates an obvious lack of understanding of current physical theories.” The S4 Area 51 that Lazar talks about is pinched from the infamous Majestic 12 documents, which are obviously bogus.

Lazar claims that he was given introductory briefings describing the historical involvement by extraterrestrial beings with this planet for the past 100,000 years. The beings originate from the Zeta Reticuli 1 & 2 star system and are therefore referred to as Zeta Reticulans, popularly called ‘greys’.

At least Michael Salla is a fan. So, apparently, is the History Channel, who uncritically accepts Lazar’s claims to be a Nuclear Physicist.

Diagnosis: There is reason to think that Lazar believes his own stories, which is diagnosis enough.

Jennifer LeClaire is news editor of Charisma Magazine, and a stock fundie moronic wingnut who reacts exactly the way you’d predict to reality, truth and evidence. So, for instance, California’s relatively recent law preventing pseudo-scientific sexual orientation conversion therapy from being used on minors did not gone over well with her (or the other usual suspects for that matter, as shown here, here, here, here, or here). LeClaire even believes that California may decide to “outlaw the Bible” as the next step, mostly because she has some pretty fundamental problems perceiving relevant distinctions and connections. LeClaire, of course, believes that homosexuality is caused by demonic “spirit of immorality” that “enters in through some sort of abuse and the lies of the enemy,” Satan. Accordingly, “sexual orientation change efforts can help set the captives free […] That’s why the enemy saw to it that California, a state with a high gay population rate, bans such therapy.” Indeed.

LeClaire has also warned us about books that feature openly gay superheroes, since “the rise of gay superheroes [is] just another example of the spirit of immorality waging war on young souls.” That is, “the industry is planting seeds in young minds” of “the spirit of sexual immorality,” and she asks readers to “pray for the people behind the industries that are pumping out anti-Christ content laced with immorality and idolatry of all kinds.” A gay Spiderman, for instance, could potentially deceive a whole generation. Indeed, she emphasizes, there really isa gay agenda out there, and “it’s working overtime to send millions to Hell”. That is, she really thinks that gay marriage is Satan’s ploy to ban straight marriage, and accordingly that this is what gay activists are really after.

Her reaction to criticism is the usual one. After trying to argue that gay football players are an attempt to turn kids gay (she later modified it by saying there might be a “saving grace” to coming out as gay: it gives you the opportunity to become ex-gay), she received some criticism. LeClaire, however, pathologically unable to draw relevant distinctions as she is, reacted by howling “persecution” (yes, the response is always attempts to poison the well – you didn’t expect her to try to give an argument, did you?) “The gay agenda swarmed around me like a shark that smelled blood,” said LeClaire, claiming that she was bullied (they disagreed with her; clearly that’s religious persecution) and complaining about “the evil that the gay agenda unleashed against me,” just for “[t]elling the truth. God’s truth is love,” but can apparently look a lot like bigoted hatred. Oh, but the gays aren’t even the worst – there are also atheists, who are actively trying to “tear down all things Christian in the public square,” and “woo born-again Bible believers to the dark side.” Pure Satanism, in other words.

And to emphasize, LeClaire is not just your standard bigot. LeClaire is incoherently insane, in the manner of Cindy Jacobs, and appears to believe that she actually physically engages with demons and their black witchcraft out to get her for her faith, just like in the documentary The Exorcist.

Charisma Magazine is a monthly magazine aimed at Pentecostals and other fundies, and based on the Word-Faith movement, charismatic revivalism, and other contemporary streams of charismatic Christianity such as the Toronto Blessing, International House of Prayer, and the Apostolic-Prophetic movement. It is run by one Stephen Strang, its current editor-in-chief is Marcus Yoars, and it regularly features columns by Joyce Meyer and Don Colbert. Here is a discussion of Charisma magazine’s article on how demon rape makes you gay (they don’t say whether their investigations are properly randomized and double-blinded).

Diagnosis: Yet another unhinged fundie addlehead, and there’s plenty more where she comes from. Doesn’t make her less objectionable, however, and her influence – while probably limited – is certainly not beneficial to anything.

Laura Lee runs the talkshow Conversation for Exploration, where she and her guests get confused by and present insane theories about “unsolved mysteries” easily explained by science. And yes, she seems to be fascinated by virtually every single, ridiculous branch of pseudoscience, crackpottery and conspiracy theory – in particular, she is fond of faintly racist notions of ancient “wisdom” found in lost and foreign cultures – “[a]s we awake from the Western society's cultural amnesia,” says Lee, we may come to adopt some bullshit about which Lee thinks these ancient cultures knew the secrets, which they surely didn’t. You can find a selection of her musings here.

And of course, no such concept could be complete without woo. And Lee delivers. Here she promotes Sandra Ann Taylor’s Quantum Success: The Astounding Science of Wealth and Happiness, i.e. The Secret all over again. “[Taylor]’s formula for abundant living is actually based in the principles of quantum physics, and you can actually tap in to these powerful forces to make your dreams come true.” No, it is not based on quantum physics, Lee, and no, you cannot tap into quantum physics to make your dream come true. And it is not Lee’s only foray into quantum woo. She has also promoted e.g. our old friend Gregg Braden and his ridiculous quantum holograms, and written some astoundingly silly, ignorant drivel on the issue.

Diagnosis: Truly a nexus of wrong and ignorance, Lee continues to bring crankery and stupid to the world under the pretense of open-minded investigations. Her influence is probably limited, but she is awfully silly.

We’ll put Tenther Mike Lee on the loonwatch for the moment. There is no way around Robert T. Lee, on the other hand. Lee is an unapologetically extremist theocrat who runs The Society for the Practical Establishment and Perpetuation of the TEN COMMANDMENTS, a website promoting the creation of a government based on a literal interpretation of the Old Testament law and the Ten Commandments: “Only the Creator of the heavens and the earth to whom all mankind are responsible can properly govern them; and He has graciously given them His most wise, noble, righteous and perfect moral Laws by which all people are responsible to perfectly conform in thought word and deed – in every detail of their lives,” says Lee. It is unclear whether he has actually read the Old Testament. Then again, maybe he has; he does in any case not come across as a good guide to politics, reality or sanity.

Lee’s ideas include the notion that the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights are “heathen” documents, the Founding Fathers were inspired by Satan, and democracy is damnable and wrong – in other words, Lee takes the Gary North rather than the David Barton revisionist approach to the Constitution, and – honorably enough – does not attempt to rewrite it so that the Founding Fathers come out looking like dominionists coincidentally agreeing with him. He does claim, however, that the government should put people to death for offenses such as picking up sticks on the Sabbath, eating shrimp, not being a virgin on your wedding night (if you're a girl), being gay, not honoring your parents, being an atheist, Muslim, Jew, or anyone who isn’t a “true Christian”. His views on abortion are also notable; abortion is wrong, but murdering your child for talking back to you is ok. Furthermore, we need to reject democracy in favor of theocracy apparently since Jesus was born in a theocracy (which, by the way, is historically utterly wrong). Moreover, atheism is “written” by Satan, and is really the denial of the existence of God while at the same time knowing that God exists.

Diagnosis: Complete madman and barely coherent. The whole thing could be a poe, of course, but it probably isn’t. Probably harmless, however.

Kim Lehman is a Republican National Committee member, former leader of the Iowa Right To Life Committee and associated with The John Paul II Stem Cell Research Institute, and one of relatively few high-ranking Republicans who has supported the popular belief among certain groups of voters that Obama is a Muslim. Apparently, according to Lehman, Obama has told Muslims that he is one of them, referring to an August 2010 Cairo speech in which Obama did say the exact opposite – but opposite, the same, reality, opinion … they’re all the same, and if Lehman wants to believe that Obama is a Muslim despite the evidence, then he must be a Muslim: “The way he was approaching that speech was, 'Hey I’m one of you. I’m with you.' He didn't have to say that ... but he did,” Lehman tried to argue. She also claimed that Politico was being paid by the Obama administration to hide the truth.

Later Lehman called for revolution in response to the California Proposition 8 ruling, with an appositely incoherent rant.

She did not take a new term as RNC member in 2012, but there is nothing to suggest that she’s grown less crazy.

Diagnosis: Lehman, as so many delusional wingnuts, brings a fine mix of the crazy, the stupid, and the dishonest to the table. Her influence is probably relatively limited by now, but it’s dangerous to dismiss her completely.

Paul LePage is the Republican governor of Maine since 2011, and quite clearly not entirely well hinged. He is, perhaps, most famous for a somewhat shady past and his behavior toward journalists who attempt to inquire into some of the more legally questionable parts of his past, and for his attempts to remove the ban on Bisphenol A, dismissing its health risks by claiming, without support, that there “hasn’t been any science that identifies that there is a problem,” and adding: “The only thing that I've heard is if you take a plastic bottle and put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards ... and we don't want that.” Of course, dismissals of e.g. environmental concerns on the grounds of not having the faintest clue about what he is talking about are staple fare for LePage. Blasting global warming as a “scam,” LePage has promised to lay waste to the state's environmental regulations in general – though the fact that he made a fool of himself nationally in the Bisphenol A case has made him quiet down a little.

It was, for instance, LePage’s tea party supporters who changed the Maine Republican party platform to include calls to discard “political correctness”, “investigate collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth” (the mind boggles), “repeal and prohibit participation in any effort to establish a one world government”, and return to “Austrian-style economics”. To underscore his commitment to wingnuttery one of the first things LePage announced as governor was a decision to rename conference halls previously named after central labor rights persons and artwork depicting them in anything but a negative light.

The clincher with respect to inclusion criteria, however, is – as one would expect from someone like Le Page – his religious nuttery and attempts to get religion into education. He is, for instance, in favor of teaching creationism in public schools, and has attempted to allow public funds to go to religious schools – though the latter proposal was defeated in the Legislature due to its rather obvious Constitutional problems.

At least he seems to view himself as committed to the cause of anti-racism. In that respect he has voiced grave (and incoherent and loud) concerns about the ~~delusion~~ contention that Obama hates white people.

Diagnosis: Another batshit fundie denialist who has been given a position of power. Sad, scary, and completely unsurprising.

A.k.a. Edward Grendon

Lawrence LeShan is a psychologist (with a professional research record) and a grand old man of spiritual woo, parapsychology and mysticism. He is for instance author of the best-selling How to Meditate (1974). He is also a science fiction writer under the pseudonym Edward Grendon.

LeShan is by some distance most famous for his extensive research (primarily “research”) into the field of parapsychology. In his books The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicistand Alternate Realities he investigated what he perceived to be similarities between quantum mechanics and mystical thought; the fact that he didn’t understand the former particularly well, and had no evidence for (and hence just bias to rely on for) the latter, ensured that he achieved some serious idiocy. In World of the Paranormal: The Next Frontier, LeShan kicked it up a couple more notches, ending up claiming that psychic abilities such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition can be explained using quantum theory, which they could not even if they were real, which they aren’t.

While popular in the New Thought movement (because he has a real degree and they cannot find many real physicists or people who actually understand quantum mechanics to support their nonsense), LeShan’s ideas have met with little acceptance among those who care for reality and truth, but that might go without saying.

In the 1980s, he shifted his focus to the psychotherapy of cancer support, producing such tomes of sheer drivel as Holistic Health: How to Understand and Use the Revolution in Medicine. His ideas for cancer support have awarded him a prominent place on Quackwatch. The core point, based exclusively on anecdotes, is that patients with advanced, metastatic disease can sometimes undergo tumor regression and increase the length and quality of their lives under his psychotherapeutic regimen by identifying their creative potential and self-healing abilities. As a supplement, apparently, LeShan suggests employing what he terms the Blue Water Technique.

Diagnosis: A real piece of work. LeShan is of course a crazy crackpot, and when such crackpots achieve the level of influence of LeShan, the results are indistinguishable from evil.

The inclusion criterion for gaining an entry in this Encyclopedia is being a loon– evil or fraud, for instance, won’t do, even if such behavior may occasionally be hard to distinguish from lunacy (especially since these qualities are not mutually exclusive). But I strongly suspect we’ll have to give Matthew Lesko a pass if we stick to those criteria.

Frederick "Fred" A. Leuchter, Jr. is a no-brainer, however. Leuchter is an alleged expert in execution technology (though he has no training in the various sciences), manufacturer of electric chairs, and author of forensic Holocaust denial material. Indeed, Leuchter is responsible for most of the forensic quasi-research commonly cited as evidence by Holocaust denialists. In 1988 Leuchter was hired by Holocaust denial celebrity (but Canadian) Ernst Zündel to investigate whether the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps could have been used for mass extermination, and concluded – in the infamous The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek Poland– that they could not have been. Of course, Leuchter has – to emphasize yet again – no relevant scientific background for making the claim, but that, of course, is generally not a barrier when you have a good conspiracy theory. The report had a non-negligible impact on his career, and in 1999 he became the subject of the Errol Morris documentary “Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.”. A succinct criticism of his report can be found here (also here).

In other words, following his report Leuchter became something of a bigshot in the Holocaust denial community, and the fact that his conclusions have been rather thoroughly refuted doesn’t prevent him from repeating them or the conspiracy theories that inevitably comes with Holocaust denial. Leuchter has, predictably, blamed criticism of his work on an “international cabal... those who have unjustly attacked me and violated my rights... the Klarsfelds, Shapiros, and Kahns of the world.”

Even his work related to capital punishment is rather controversial. He has been arraigned for fraudulently practicing engineering, and criticized for running a “death row shakedown scheme”: if a state didn't purchase Leuchter's services (i.e. if they chose different techniques, or different contractors for the instruments), he would testify at the last minute for the condemned man that the state’s death chamber might malfunction, and his testimony on execution related matters have been deemed “unreliable” by courts. Again, of course, his loss of credibility is, according to Leuchter, the result of a conspiracy.

Diagnosis: Maybe there is hope, but probably not for Leuchter, who is irrevocably mired in self-aggrandizing delusions and lack of analytic skills. His influence has been substantial, and continues to be frightening.

Douglas Levesque is the founder and head of the Bible Nation Society, a fundamentalist Michigan-based group of theocratic loonies. Levesque is probably most famous for being an influential voice in the “Obama-is-the-antichrist” movement, and in a 2010 video, Levesque offered what he apparently believes is evidence that Obama might be it – or at least anti-Christian, or Antichrist-ish. Levesque asserted that Obama “twist[s] the word of God” and “the Antichrist Quotient goes up above and beyond for someone who would so blatantly attack the word of God.” He added that“[t]his man offends me, this man offends my God,” which is, I think, supposed to be an inference.

He followed the “argument” with an impressively incoherent mess of conspiracy theories, including some gibberish on the alleged evils of environmentalism, the one-world ambitions of the U.N. as predicted in the book of Revelations, and the connection between the Israel-Palestine peace process and the end-times date of December 21, 2012, observing in the process that Obama’s motorcade vehicle is called “the Beast,” that Barack “means thunder and lightning,” and that the name of his then-Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, means “lightning, God with us.” Readers would presumably have predicted that it had to end up with birtherism, and Levesque delivers – with some bonus materials: “Why doesn’t Obama answer the questions about his citizenship? Why doesn’t he answer questions about his faith? Why doesn’t he answer the questions about his bisexuality, his homosexuality, his drug use?” It is, apparently, “[b]ecause he has a mouth speaking great lying things.” Ah, yes; that’s why. And that’s apparently what passes for “argument” in the Bible Nation Society of Michigan. Weep, ye infidels.

The Bible Nation Society’s main claim to notability, apart from Levesque’s garbled lunacy, has been their attempts to urge Congress to pass a resolution celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible, a project for which they have managed to garner quite a bit of support. In 2010, for instance, Alabama Republican Robert Aderholt and West Virginia Democrat Nick Rahall introduced a Congressional Resolution designed to express the body’s “gratitude” for the “influence” the KJV has had on “countless families, individuals, and institutions in the United States,” based partly on the lobbying of Levesque’s group (at least according to the group’s spokesperson Jason Georges).

Diagnosis: Pretty unhinged madman, and the kind of extreme, incoherent, rambling cultist who in any reasonable society would not have any influence over anyone whatsoever. Instead, Levesque seems to have plenty of it, which is a travesty.

#856: Guylaine Lanctot

#857: Richard Land

#858: William Lane

#859: Amy Lansky

#860: Wayne LaPierre

#861: Daniel Lapin

#862: Bob Larson

#863: John Lash

#864: Jonathan Latham & Allison Wilson

#865: Gene Latimer

#866: Karen Lawson, Jacob Mirman, and the University of Minnesota Center for Spirituality & Healing

#867: Robert Lazar

#868: Jennifer LeClaire

#869: Laura Lee

#870: Robert T. Lee

#871: Kim Lehman

#872: Paul LePage

#873: Lawrence LeShan

#874: Fred Leuchter

#875: Douglas Levesque