Encyclopedia of American Loons

John McTernan is a (yet another) fundie pastor who spews his hatred and delusions at the Defend and Proclaim the Faith website. As fundie wingnuts with poor reasoning skills are sometimes wont to do, McTernan likes to blame – and is famous for blaming– natural disasters and events on God, who, while unwilling to intervene in the Holocaust, say, is apparently very active in punishing innocent bystanders for ~~disagreeing with McTernan~~ having the wrong views about theological matters, particularly with respect to whether homosexuals should be treated as human beings or banned and stoned in the manner of Jesus (as McTernan apparently understands Jesus).

McTernan wasn’t the only wingnut to attribute Hurricane Sandy to divine intervention. Luke Robinson, a Maryland preacher, held mayor Michael Bloomberg responsible given the latter’s support of a marriage equality measure on the ballot in that state (apparently thereby forcing God to kill some poor people in Bloomberg’s general area with a storm); Rabbi Noson Leiter, on the other hand, cited the hurricane as divine retribution for letting New York be overrun by gays. For McTernan the message was clearly that God was becoming fed up with gays infiltrating American society, and that Americans were willing to elect presidents in favor of treating gay people as humans (apparently overlooking this). "Journalist" and WND White House correspondent William Koenig observed that some of the United States’ most catastrophic storms and events have correlated closely with the nation’s God-defying attempts to divide the land of Israel (which McTernan seems to echo as well), and Rob Schenk, once again, blamed the whole thing on abortion. Despite the lack of subtlety in the vehicle for the message, its content remains unclear.

McTernan, however, apparently had a rock-solid case. According to McTernan “Hurricane Sandy is hitting 21 years to the day of the Perfect Storm of October 20, 1991. […] Twenty-one years breaks down to 7 x 3, which is a significant number with God. Three is perfection as the Godhead is three in one while seven is perfection. It appears that God gave America 21 years to repent of interfering with His prophetic plan for Israel; however, it has gotten worse under all the presidents and especially Obama. Obama is 100 percent behind the Muslim Brotherhood which has vowed to destroy Israel and take Jerusalem [citation not given]. Both candidates [Obama and Romney!] are pro-homosexual and are behind the homosexual agenda. America is under political judgment and the church does not know it!” As a preemptive strike God’s use of blunt violence seems to have misfired, but perhaps the strike was meant just as an impulsive expression of dissatisfaction or revenge?

It’s not only Sandy, though. Hurricane Katrina was similarly a message from God, as was Hurricane Isaac, which occurred seven years after Katrina – and you know where this is going: “The fact the events are seven years apart is very significant as this number is biblically important. It is the number of completion: God created the universe in seven days. The church, city and nation have not repented and the homosexual agenda is far worse than it was in 2005.” Apparently God’s aim is somewhat off, since the natural disasters in question tend to hit places not associated with the sins for which they are supposed to be divine punishment. Unless, of course, God is really punishing us for something different …

Diagnosis: Good grief. Utter nitwit.

Pretty sure this is
our guy.

This is an easy one. Ron McVan is an American white nationalist Odinist who has written several feeble books on, well, it seems to be some kind of Viking fetishism, mixed with conspiracy theories. McVan’s grand idea is that all Aryans should unite to form “a Pan Aryan World Federation of Euro-ethnic tribes” to avoid extinction. As he points out “Aryankind are now facing the total extinction of their race, culture and heritage,” and we let that happen because “[i]n our apathy we have chosen to alienate ourselves from our own kind and toss the Aryan gauntlet of world conquest into the gutter. We now cringe at the very name of our species ‘ARYAN’ [which, by the way, is not exactly time-old identity designation] and speak of it only in whispers behind closed doors [yeah, right] in dreadful anticipation that it will offend someone.” Indeed, “[o]ur backs we have turned on our ethnic gods and heroes of legend,” partially, one assumes, that just because the fact that some gods are part of a cultural heritage don’t make them any less silly, and “[w]e breed freely with other races while we murder our own Aryan children with abortion and birth control pills.”

But this is not just a natural development; oh noes, it is intentionally guided by a grand conspiracy. According to McVan, the world is controlled by the “Power Elite” who have be zealously fighting the Aryans for hundreds of years. They are Marxists: “Karl Marx the founder of Marxism was a Jew and Jews in general have a natural tendancy [sic] to gravitate towards Marxism as many Jews see the breakdown of Aryankind as the only ticket to gain their own grip on world power and control.” Yes, that’s the level at which this is pitched.

McVan collaborated for a while with one Katja Lane (formerly of the late David Lane) on 14 Words Press, a publishing company for white nationalist and Wotanist materials. They later had a falling out, however (I admit I borrowed most of this entry from that link).

Diagnosis: The dimmer they are, the more fervently they believe that they belong to some sort of chosen group, it seems, and McVan is as dim as they come. Though his ideology is fuelled by hate, McVan is probably mostly harmless.

Lewis E. Mehl-Madrona is the author of the Coyote trilogy, which discusses healing practices from Lakota, Cherokee and Cree traditions, and how they intersect with conventional medicine (“via a social constructionist model”), and a champion of all things woo that can be justified by drawing connections to what Mehl-Madrona fancies to be ancient wisdom and mystical traditions of indigenous people, regardless of whether it works or actually belongs to actual traditional practices. Instead of even trying to provide evidence he appeals to post-modernist relativism. Indeed, he has even collaborated with Larry Dossey, so it is not such a stretch to suspect that he view peer-review as another oppressive system that requires accountability and therefore takes away his opportunity to justify his beliefs by vivid imagination. It’s just so much easier and less oppressive when all claims are equally trues and no one can be held accountable for anything.

Mehl-Madrona is indeed an MD, but so is Andrew Weil – and Weil is indeed a fan of Mehl-Madrona’s work, saying in relation to his work that “[g]ood doctoring requires all the wisdom of religion, all the techniques of magic, and all the knowledge of small-m medicine to be most effective,” which is false, but sounds very tolerant (in the sense of staunchly refusing to denounce bullshit).

In fact, for Mehl-Madrona the combination of the heritage and experience of a Native American healer with conventional medicine is not just a matter of pomo relativism; Mehl-Madrona actually seeks to replace the “reigning biomedical model with a new paradigm,” and claims that Coyote Medicine must be “taught in medical schools, practiced in clinics, and brought to all those who seek true health” (i.e. we must return to that golden age before modern medicine). His “research” includes work on various psychological conditions, issues of psychology during birthing, nutritional approaches (see this) to autism and diabetes, and the use of healing circles to improve overall health outcomes, techniques that are staple fare at Quackwatch, and for good reasons.

What about evidence? Well, Mehl-Madrona has seen things with his own eyes – he once had an American Indian spirit called White Buffalo Calf Woman heal a prostate cancer patient by rearranging “electrical patterns” in the man's brain during a sweat lodge ceremony, a prayer and purification ritual that he has performed several times for his patients (it “symbolizes a return to the womb of mother earth from which all life begins,” says Mehl-Madrona). The anecdote was not written up as a case study for peer-reviewed publication.

Since altmed is rather popular these days and Mehl-Madrona has a real degree, he has managed to get himself affiliated with plenty of otherwise serious institutions, where he treat patients with acupuncture, hypnosis, relaxation therapies, questionable massage therapies, talk therapy and EMDR, a technique in which patients use eye movement and other exercises to reprocess information stored in the nervous system. To the claim that his techniques have no scientific support, Mehl-Madrona says that “I think the danger in alternative medicine is that we confuse the effectiveness of a treatment with the effectiveness of mind-body healing.” Right. The sweat lodge ceremonies, though, ultimately got him pressured out of the University of Pittsburgh health system, at least (more here). At Stanford he was involved in research projects (called “pseudoscience” by colleagues), but refused to follow the book. (“Some of his colleagues thought that his approaches even to research were not very rigorous”).

He is currently adjunct professor of anthropology at Johnson State College in Vermont and writes a regular column for Futurehealth.org, in which he contributes his insights on alternative ways of seeing mental illness.

He has recently come under rather heavy fire from people with native American background for being a New-age therapist and “fraud” (whose claimed native background is itself questionable) who is “selling fake NDN ceremonies,” suggesting that there is some justice in the world after all.

Diagnosis: Total bullshitter who has managed to master the standard pomo gambits well enough to land him quite a bit of influence. Extremely dangerous.

James L. Melton is a Baptist pastor and author of a long series of Chick-like religious tracts (just rants, though – no illustrations) in which he elaborates upon his views of God, religion and popular culture, unfettered by such worldly constraints as reason, sanity, coherence or understanding.

A good example of Melton’s way of seeing the world is his rant against one of the most notorious threats to the world today: Santa Claus. According to Melton, “Since God's word warns us to BEWARE of tradition (Col. 2:8), we shouldn’t be surprised to find the Devil right in the middle of the world’s most celebrated holiday. Lucifer’s desire has always been to dethrone God and exalt himself (Isa. 14:12-15). He desires worship (Luke 4:7; II Ths. 2:3-4). Perhaps you’ve never thought of it, but please note how Satan robs the Lord Jesus Christ of His glory by spreading the Santa Claus tradition …” In other words, though Melton would probably say that Santa doesn’t exist, he kind of believes in Santa and Santa’s powers anyway, only that Melton’s Santa is really a bad guy (maybe along these lines). And just to emphasize: you don’t get much crazier than that. Among the ominous traits of Santa pointed out by Melton is that “[t]radition holds that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, a place ABOVE the rest of us” – yep, it’s all uphill to the North Pole, right? Just look at the Earth. Furthermore, Santa is omniscient and omnipotent (he “has the ability to carry presents to over a billion children,” and – the clincher – “Santa” is an anagram of “Satan”. If that doesn’t convince you … (Melton has not, as far as I can see, discussed the fact that among man’s favorite pets is called “dog”).

Melton is of course a creationist, claimng that “[e]volution is a RELIGIOUS CREED based upon blind faith. There is not in existence one single piece of scientific evidence which proves that man has evolved upward from animals [again, the “upward” thing; it seems that Melton has a deficient understanding of basic prepositions]. It is impossible to prove any theory of origins ‘scientifically,’ because the very essence of the scientific method is based upon OBSERVATION and EXPERIMENTATION, and no scientist has ever observed or experimented with the origin of the universe [which has little to do with evolution anyways],” thereby revealing a complete misunderstanding of the demarcations of science (hint: testability). According to Melton’s definition virtually only small parts of chemistry and medicine count as science – beliefs about the past, for instance, such as “Obama was elected president in 2008” cannot be settled by experiment and hence count as religious creed).

Indeed, Melton’s writings cover a large array of topics. Did you know that credit cards may be the mark of the Beast, and that someone may soon be going to equip all of us with a microchip, which would somehow have something to do with the rule of Satan? And just like the most extreme Baptist nutters, Melton really doesn’t like other Christian denominations. Of Catholicism, he claims that “the foundation of the Roman church is none other than the pagan mystery religion of ancient Babylon,” He also suggests that possessing a TV is unbiblical, and he didn’t like Harry Potter, feeling the need to point out that according to the Bible there are no good witches or wizards. They are all evil. In other words, Melton thinks that Harry Potter is pure fantasy, but is less able than any juvenile reader of the books in question to determine what, exactly, belongs on which side of the fact–fantasy demarcation.

Diagnosis: Melton assumes all the views of a standard crazy fundie godbotter, but tends to be even a little more extreme. A minor character, but his views on Santa suggests that he might be a good choice of character if you for some reason ever wanted to scare your kids.

Michael Menkin may be the go-to person if you want to learn how to protect yourself from the evil aliens who are terrorizing humanity. On his website you can for instance learn how you can build protective headgear to prevent thought screening and abduction by said aliens. That’s right. Menkin builds, wears, and teaches you how to make … tinfoil hats. No less. According to Menkin it is a huge success with “[o]nly one failure since 1998” (we’d actually really like to know). Testimonial from a satisfied customer: “Since trying Michael Menkin’s Helmet, I have not been bothered by alien mind control. Now my thoughts are my own. I have achieved meaningful work and am contributing to society.”

The helmets are supposed to scramble alien attempts at telepathic control, though it is unclear whether Menkin has taken the latest research on the issue into account. The website also offers “abduction flowcharts for information linking alien abductions with the autism epidemic,” which is indeed a flowchart – it draws an arrow between “[parents] with altered genome from aliens” to “normal children, autistic and asperger children, [and] possibly children with Down’s syndrom”, and an arrow from this to “global breakdown of human genome.” Of course, it offers no data or explanation of the mechanisms purportedly involved – just the arrows. As a substitute for evidence, he offers a link to “drawings[!] of sick hybrid babies” on his other website, aliensandchildren.org, where there are, indeed, drawings – that is, drawings made by children of people, which Menkin identifies as drawings of human-alien hybrids (just look at them – real humans don’t look like those figures drawn by four-year olds!).

Yes, the topic of his other site is alien abductions of children, whom Menkin sometimes manages to help by equipping them with his thought screen helmets that they can wear to school until they’re grown-ups. There’s also an interview with David Jacobs, whom we have encountered before.

Menkin seems to be currently planning for the big final event, when the aliens will come and abduct all the children they are currently experimenting with once more. Like Jesus.

Diagnosis: Finally, after some 900-odd loons! There had to be someone like Menkin out there, and there is – a serious, explicit advocate for the tinfoil hat. His websites alone justify the whole of Internet.

Lee Mercer Jr. was a 2008 candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the US. To understand his platform one might first need to understand some facts about his background, and we’ll give it in his own words since his unconventional grammar makes a little hard to determine exactly what those main points are: “Since my high school graduation in 1969,” Mercer says, “I developed myself to my own academic interest to be a Collegiate Professional.” The next important event occurred in 1992, when “[t]he State of Texas installed an intelligence hotwire in me at the United States Army Military Intelligence Academy Camp Bullis San Antonio, Texas.” Therefore “[a]s a part of my continuing eduaction, I am making my presidential campaign part of my ROTC Intelligence Academics to record the learnings, doings, and examples of the United States Government as a government consultant, community developer, and financial planner appointed by the United States Federal Congress to record my biography in the United States Government Presidential Election for 2008 from Electronic Surveillance to develop records on the United States Government Presidential Campaign because I am on an academic intelligence hotwire that can not be unhooked by anyone.” Which might raise some questions about his motivations for becoming president, but it is not entirely clear.

As for his campaign platform (his campaign website is here), the most important element seems to be “The United States Federal Congress has encouraged me to want to become President of the United States so that I can do what the President of the United States of America is supposed to do and complete the federal and military government biography and autobiography in development in Eye Spy Community-Military Intelligence (All Three) Business and Commerce Intelligence Education across the board National and International.” Right; but also “[t]o prove that you need to pay the American Citizens before I die,” and “[t]o prove that every person in the United States and world is hooked up on an Eye Spy Community-Military Intelligence (All Three) Electronic surveillance hot-wires approved by the United States Congress for the U.S. Government Electronic Surveillance of every citizen in America for government intelligence circumstances will equal to the United States Government's Technocracy.” And, for the clincher, “To prove the United States of America has two Governments and they are Government #1 and Government #2 and I own Government # 1 ...”

In short, what he seems to be up to is thinking that he is really a robot and needs to take over the government as part of his program. In fact, everyone is controlled by the mind control program that created him. That’s why you should vote for him. Also, it is supposed to be payback time, it seems.

He has already announced that he will be running again in 2016.

Diagnosis: Didn’t make much headway in the nomination process, which is a pity since America obviously needs The Man who will “[p]rove I have solved every crime in the world as it happens from zero to start to finish for every crime done in Business and Commerce Intelligence National and International.”

Thomas Metzger was the American founder of the White Aryan Resistance, and previously a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan for California – where he started Klan Border Watch – and a minister in the Christian Identity Movement (though he has later held a variety of religious positions). He has advocated murdering innocent blacks, for which he has been sued and lost. As a result he seems to be partially neutralized at the moment.

During his Ku Klux Klan days Metzger held strictly extreme-right views. When switching from the Klan to White Aryan Resistance, however, he shifted toward the extreme revolutionary left, and has praised the former Soviet Union as a “white workers state,” published cartoons attacking American conservatives for cheering for black U.S. athletes over white Soviet Bloc athletes in the Olympics, and proclaimed support for unions and for the hard green group Earth First! (Though in the two last cases it seems to have been because they were fighting against companies who happened to be owned by Jews.) Any political position Metzger has advocated has, however, been strictly racist, however, and his support for political positions or organizations seems to be strictly contingent on racism. He did, however, win a 1980 Democratic primary for U.S. Congress, though he lost 87% to 13% in the general election, after which he started advocating a “lone wolf” strategy, advising white racists against joining established groups. He tried to run again as an independent in 2010 in Indiana, but made little headway.

In his TV show “Race and Reason” from the 1980s he managed to bring together an otherwise ideologically diverse group over the common cause of racism, including the Klan, Aryan Nation, the racist wing of Asatru, Posse Comitatus members, and even Nation of Islam members.

Diagnosis: Seriously? The founder of White Aryan Resistance? Make up whatever you want as long as it questions his mental powers and character.

Marina Michaels is a “psychic, a conscious channeler, a medium”, blogger and “natural healer” (meaning that “people can just be around me, and they will receive healing energies”), who is, apparently, “very close to Jesus and Mary.” She is also an intuitive: “I can look at people (even in photographs) and just know what they are about,” which the rest of us would suspect is somewhat self-fulfilling (prejudice and a good does of confirmation bias do the rest). Michaels runs the website thelighthouseonline.com, and it is at least so full of pastel love and fluffy friendliness that it is almost worth a visit (at least she used to run it – might look like she has left it behind).

She is primarily known (if at all) for her musings on the Osireion, which in Michaels’s mind is obviously related to Atlantis (for more info on the Atlantis-Osireion connection, here’s Gary Fletcher). Despite complete scholarly consensus that construction of monumental stone architecture in Egypt did not occur before the early 3rd millennium BCE, Michaels immediately intuited that the structure was much older and connected to something that patently never existed – according to geologists, according to Michaels (but not actually according to geologists), the structure is at least 18000 years old. It isn’t, but such are the faith-based ways of New Age cargo-cult research. Damned be the use of evidence if fluffy ramblings give you spiritual answers much closer to your heart.

Though she admits to not knowing a lot “about the rise of that early human civilization – I have neither seen it psychically, nor have I read anything that rang true. Rudolph Steiner wrote of it in his book called The Submerged Continents of Atlantis and Lemuria: their History and Civilization, being chapters from the Akashic Records(published in 1911 by the Theosophical Society), but although I have read it, much of it did not ring as truth on the physical plane” (what a glittering example of critical thinking!), Michaels nevertheless provides lengthy treatments on the origin and location of Atlantis. Her evidence is – she admits herself – psychic intuition, or “imagination,” as it is more usually called. She also knows why and how it went under, and what we can learn from it: “the point of the destruction of Atlantis” was “to give all souls on earth a chance to evolve as spiritual beings so that they will be ready to advance to the next level of spiritual freedom.” Not even Yoda could have figured out that one (except, maybe, in the Prequels).

Diagnosis: The plush and pillow version of religious fanaticism; what Jerry Falwell would have been like if his mind had been filled with love and furry animals. Reality is still far, far away.

Johanna Michaelsen is (or was) one of the movers and shakers behind the Satanic panic trend that was all the rage among parents, fundies and the delusional in the 80s and early 90s. Indeed, the “former Satanists” who achieved something resembling superstardom in certain religious communities, in particular Lauren Stratford, could hardly have got there without Michaelsen. Michaelsen was herself a former New Ager who, after being reborn, devoted her life to fight all things New Age and all “non-traditional religions,” for all the wrong reasons, and she seems to have cared not one whit about the (utter lack of) plausibility or corroboration with regard to her “ex-Satanist” clients.

Michaelsen has in fact spread a fair share of paranoid bullshit herself about the paranormal, New Age silliness and Halloween herself. She has claimed that school shootings should be blamed on teenagers toying with the occult and rock music (blaming in particular Rammstein for the Columbine massacre), and warned that Satanists are grooming our children for a reign of terror in the immediate future by brainwashing them with Halloween. Her book Like Lambs to the Slaughter is hence a guide for parents, telling them how to prevent the occult from encroaching on their children’s souls, such as warning against letting kids watch The Smurfs. John Beardsley of rapidnet.com liked it, but was critical of Michaelsen’s sometimes acceptance of terminology from psychology and psychiatry, which in Beardsley’s view is unbiblical. You can read a longer expose of Michaelsen and her antics here.

As mentioned, Michaelsen never really rejected her previous New Age beliefs; indeed, she explicitly still claims the stuff she professed early on were correct, only that she had been deceived by Satan into thinking them innocent or even angelic rather than demonic. The stuff in question includes occult practices such as yoga and meditation, as well as influencing others through psi and summoning Jesus and other dead people during sessions.

Michaelsen was a close associate of Hal Lindsey – indeed, Johanna’s younger sister Kim was Hal Lindsey’s third wife. Johanna herself was married to Randolph (Randy) Michaelsen, currently pastor of King’s Harbor Church in Torrance. Lindsey even wrote the foreword for Johanna’s first book, The Beautiful Side of Evil, which “documented” her “occult” experiences and subsequent lapse into fundamentalist Christianity. Due to her background and connections, she was thus well poised to launch her significant contribution to the Satanic panic by mentoring Lauren Stratford. Michaelsen lost some of her clout when she fell out with Lindsey in the early 90s. Stratford, on her side, and after her story was exposed as fake, went on to change her name and start a new career as a fake holocaust survivor. It didn’t really end very well for her.

Diagnosis: Utterly, unhingedly, raving mad. And, exasperatingly, she has demonstrably had a bit of influence. Should make you weep for mankind or something.

David Mihalovic is an ND, which stands for “naturopathic doctor” or, more appropriately, “not a doctor”. According to himself he “specializes in vaccine research.” It is, however, unclear where that research is published – there are no hits on Pubmed, for instance – though he does write propaganda for the anti-vaccine website Medical Voices Vaccine Information Center. And the methodology appears to be, primarily, googling anti-vaccine sites for PRATTs. His “publication” “9 Questions That Stump Every Pro-Vaccine Advocate and Their Claims,” has subsequently made its rounds in the more unhinged parts of the loonosphere (and as a joke on the more serious ones). The nine questions are answered here (as well as here). And they are really easy to answer if you try. But Mihalovic and his ilk doesn’t. For instance, the very first question is “Could you please provide one double-blind, placebo-controlled study that can prove the safety and effectiveness of vaccines?” for which a quick search on PubMed yields hundreds. Pubmed, by the way, yields no double-blinded, placebo-controlled study that can prove the safety and effectiveness of naturopathic medicine. But I guess evidence is just required for claims Mihalovic disagrees with, and accountability is a standard that applies to people that don’t accept his claims, not to himself. When sciencebasedmedicine.org quickly and easily responded to the questions, Medical Voices’s Nick Haas responded with a challenge to a live debate, since live debates are better mediums for rhetorical tactics and gish gallops.

Diagnosis: Stock denialist who apparently fails to realize that thoroughly refuted claims don’t constitute good reasons. A minor figure, but a cogwheel in the machinery of anti-civilization nonetheless.

Betty Miller is behind the website Bibleresources.org (a front for Christ Unlimited Ministries), where she offers daily devotionals based on the Proverbs. One can perhaps guess where she stands on some current issues, and as so many people of her kind she is positively obsessed with sex. In Miller’s opinion pornography should for instance not be protected by the First Amendment because it is Satan’s speak, and Satan is not protected by the Constitution – pornography is a “perversion of free speech,” and speech Miller doesn’t fancy should of course not be protected by the First Amendment.

But Miller’s diagnosis of her perceived moral downfall of society goes deeper: it’s the fault of women not dressing properly. By failing to cover themselves properly, they are tempting men to commit immoral acts. So clearly the women are to blame. The answer to these woes? Pray, and read the material published by Focus on the Family. Tattoos are a sin as well, since tattoos have witchcraft roots (“Witchcraft involvement can,” for instance, “cause UFO manifestations”). And her views on masturbation are based on, well, not facts, at least.

Such views are staple fare for elderly religious fundamentalists, of course. Real lunacy is revealed e.g. when Miller starts talking about child psychology: “Some children are born under a curse and have demons that cause their erratic behavior,” says Miller, and she chastises parents for failing to recognize the true source of the child’s erratic behavior. Damned be those evil psychologists who says otherwise. Her solution is, as usual, prayer. Demons are behind school shootings as well– demons, and “evil rock music”. And computer games. And comic books. And, of course, the obvious one: teaching evolution.

In short, everything that is different from when Miller grew up. Today people are for instance practicing the black witchcraft of yoga, and “[y]oga is not a trifling jest if we consider that any misunderstanding in the practice of yoga can mean death or insanity,” and that if the breath is “prematurely exhausted, there is immediate danger of death for the yogi […] Blackouts, strange trance states, or insanity are listed from even ‘the slightest mistake …’ of practicing yoga.” Indeed.

But the main cause of the downfall of the Western World, and for school shootings, is of course the fact that schools can no longer force children to participate in prayer. It is always prayer. Prayer solves everything. And when it doesn’t, it just means that the person behind the prayer is still under the attack or influence of demons and consequently didn’t pray hard enough.

Diagnosis: Old, fundamentalist ranter. There is nothing in her rants that is less than typical – none of the examples given will probably shock anyone by their originality or unusualness. But that’s the point. Lunacy is a pretty mainstream affair, and Miller is definitely a loon. She seems also to carry a certain amount of influence.

A.k.a. Judge: David-Wynn: Miller (what he prefers to be called)

David Wynn Miller is a Milwaukee-based tax-avoidance activist affiliated with the Sovereign Citizen Movement, who claims exemption from income tax liability on various pseudolegal grounds, in particular a lack of jurisdictional applicability. He is the originator of an incoherent ideology that invokes a supposedly mathematically-based variation of the English language (no, not Montague grammar). That is, Miller believes that inserting punctuation into one's name changes one’s legal status (a rather common pseudolaw practice). Specifically, in what might be termed the most idiotic use-mention fallacy ever committed, he believes that this turns a person into a “prepositional phrase”, as opposed to a citizen, and thus exempts one from having to pay income taxes.

Apparently the government is also seeking to control the population by controlling grammar. Turning yourself into a prepositional phrase is a way to escape. Or so it seems. Getting a clear idea about what Miller thinks is somewhat tricky; sample quote from his website: “FOR THE FORMS OF OUR PUNCTUATIONS ARE WITH THE CLAIM OF THE USE: FULL-COLON=POSITION-LODIO-FACTS, HYPHEN=COMPOUND-FACTS =KNOWN, PERIOD=END-THOUGHT, COMMA-PAUSE, AND LOCATION-TILDES WITH THE MEANINGS AND USES OF THE COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE FULL-COLON OF THE POSITION-LODIAL-FACT-PHRASE WITH THE FACT/KNOWN-TERM OF THE POSITIONAL-LODIO-FACT-PHRASE AND WITH THE VOID OF THE NOM-DE-GUERRE = DEAD-PERSON”. Precisely. In fairness, though, the thought he sought to express in that passage can probably not be put much more sensibly in any other way. Miller refers to his syntax as QUANTUM-LANGUAGE-PARSE-SYNTAX-GRAMMAR and asserts that it constitutes “correct sentence structure communication syntax,” and that his language is “for the stopping-claims of the Theft, Cheating, Fraud, Slavery and War.”

His career seems to consist of appearing in courts around the world on behalf of others, claiming to be a judge (“plenipotentiary judge”) eligible to practice anywhere on the planet. In the courts he asserts things such as that the dots between the words of the motto on the New South Wales coat of arms in a court mean the court has no jurisdiction. His success rate in court is rather modest. So is the success rate of others who have tried to use his syntax in court; for instance:

- In 1998 Miller assisted Illinois resident George Johnson in his legal defense against child molestation charges; Johnson was convicted and returned to prison in 1999.

- In 2001, Paul and Myrna Schuck unsuccessfully used Miller’s language during a tax-evasion trial in Calgary; they were later sentenced to jail after claiming postage affixed to their clothing and signed by them made them legally equivalent to royalty.

- In 2002, Miller was profiled when Milwaukee-based accountant Steven Allen Magritz was jailed after engaging what authorities called “paper terrorism,” or filing large numbers of legal claims against perceived enemies, as part of the sovereign citizen anti-government movement, and partially influenced by Miller’s belief that people don't need to pay taxes if they can “prove that money is a verb;” Magritz failed to do that, and was convicted in 2003.

- The same year Wisconsin residents Janice K. Logan and Jason Zellmer (Miller’s cousin) were convicted of “simulating legal process” by filing documents which purported to be legal documents from the jurisdiction of the “Unity States of the World,” an idea they got from Miller; Miller testified at the trial, remarking for instance that the genesis of Truth-language was when he “turned Hawaii into a verb,” and showed “how a preposition is needed to certify a noun.”

- In 2008, Rita Makekau was convicted of eight counts of assault and one count of domestic abuse for injuring five children in her care with hammers and knives; she challenged her child abuse conviction in 2009 by claiming her sovereignty group, Hawaiian Kingdom Government, declared her innocent, and Miller said he is the group’s spokesperson and is a “plenipotentiary judge, ambassador and postmaster.”

Miller claims to have 1 billion adherents worldwide, and has claimed that Bill Clinton and the entire Supreme Court of the United States were his students. He does have some adherents, however, and his ideas have been linked to the delusions of Jared Loughner (though Miller claims that Loughner must have been brainwashed by the Air Force).

The SPL has a profile of Miller here.

Diagnosis: Among the most incoherently insane people in the US. And that doesn’t prevent him from having several followers. Tells you something, methinks.

Dianne Miller runs the website http://www.leviticus11.com/, where she offers a version of the Jesus diet; that is, “Health and Strength Products” based on “Chapter 11 of Leviticus (the Dietary Laws of the Mosaic Code) of the Old Testament or the Torah. That chapter tells us which animals are clean and which are unclean and that you should not eat unclean animals. This is a rule given to us to maintain good health.” I don’t recommend going there for health or dietary advice, to put things diplomatically.

The website contains mostly New Age bullshit and pseudoscience, though. For instance, Miller pushes the fear of Electro-Magnetic Fields – “(v]irtually all research on the serious health effects of man-made EMF” has apparently shown seriously adverse health effects of long-term exposure to EMF. It is notable, I suppose, that she doesn’t give any references; by “research” she apparently means conclusions made somewhere on the University of Google. Fortunately, you can apparently use Q-links (“a breakthrough technological marriage of Eastern and Western approaches to stress and imbalance” based on “biofields”) and various plastic junk to protect yourself. “Many scientists, particularly in Eastern medicine, believe the kind of energies the Q-Link helps to regulate control the whole system of blood circulation and affect the sound functioning of the entire body,” says Miller, blatantly flaunting her lack of understanding of the distinction between science and pseudo-religious woo.

You can also obtain books (hardly more reliable) and advice on “alternative energy” by Mike Brown (presumably the guy behind the 1974 book The Strength of Samson: How To Attain It aimed at bodybuilders) and read about the miracles “Desiccated Argentine beef liver has done” for Lauren Laughlin, “a licensed massage therapist and marathon runner.” But you probably shouldn’t if you care about spending your time wisely.

Diagnosis: Completely at loss, and so helplessly ignorant that it is hard to suspect fraud.

Among the unifying features of cranks, be they creationists, altmed promoters, global warming denialists or other pseudoscientists, is a shared hatred for the peer review system. After all, the peer review system is an important – not infallible, but very effective – mechanism for distinguishing claims that are actually justified by evidence from claims that are the result of psychological bias, motivated reasoning and an imagination unfettered by accountability or reason.

Donald W. Miller, jr. is a surgeon at the University of Washington who once published research in respectable venues before he gave up evidence in favor of the personal experience and biases that are the basis of all altmed, and aligned himself with the HIV denialists and the antivaxx crowd. He is most famous for his article – widely cited on denialist websites – “The Government Grant System: Inhibitor of Truth and Innovation?”, which, needless to say, did not appear in any peer reviewed, respectable journal. The article presents Miller’s conspiracy theory regarding the peer review grant system – since Miller actually knows the system to an extent, and knows some terminology, it may on first glance look convincing to outsiders. It is not convincing, however, and Miller gives up the game with assertions such as “the human-caused global warming paradigm is most likely false”, citing none other than Soon & Baliunas, before attempting to show that the grant and system is rotten because it hasn’t contributed to the establishment of the idea Miller favors, namely HIV denialism. And since Miller cannot possibly be wrong, there has to be a conspiracy against his view; the same conspiracy that has caused his ally Peter Duesberg to lose any shred of credibility.

In his “Censorship and Show Trials on Vaccines and AIDS,” he adds Andy Wakefield. According to Miller “Peter Duesberg and Andrew Wakefield are two tenacious, brave men. They struggle against the medical-government-pharmaceutical complex’s efforts to disenfranchise them, and they have to endure a withering barrage of ad hominem attacks […] One hopes that in the not too distant future both of these truths will pass through Schopenhauer’s third stage and become accepted as self-evident.” Of course the fact that all of science points in the other direction doesn’t budge him – it simply gives him the Galileo Gambit,

Miller’s recent publication record consists to a large extent of HIV “dissident” tracts published at the LewRockwell.com (not a source of trustworthy information), global warming denialism, anti-fluoridation rants, and antivaccination ramblings. His article “On Evidence, Medical and Legal” (with U.K. lawyer Clifford Miller) was published in the pseudojournal JPandS. In the article, Miller & Miller argued for the superiority of legal standards of proof over evidence-based standards of evidence, causation, efficacy and practice generally accepted in medicine and science, implying that a single case study should be sufficient to prove causation of harm – and, by extension, legal liability – in cases involving many thousands of claimants with widely varying circumstances and documentation. That is, since rigorous methodology and careful investigation (where biases are accounted for) tend to come to conclusions opposite Miller’s, careful investigation and rigorous methodology have to go.

He also provides dietary advice, which is discussed here. No wonder Miller doesn’t like peer review.

Diagnosis: It is hard to imagine taking denialism and bias much farther than Miller – if science, evidence and accountability show that you are wrong, then science, evidence and accountability have to go. Of course, there are many people like Miller out there, but Miller is noteworthy for being rather explicit about his methodological commitments.

Neil Z. Miller is a “medical research journalist”, “health pioneer”, “independent researcher” (yes, that means exactly what you think it means) and Director of the Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute, an anti-vaccine organization listed here (and Miller has a long history in various altmed and antivaxx organizations). Gary S. Goldman is an “independent computer scientist” affiliated with WAVE – World Association for Vaccine Education, another anti-vaxx organization, and President and Founder of Medical Veritas, a rabidly anti-vaccine “journal” (listed here) that is into HIV/AIDS denialism as well, having published dubious “reanalyses” of autopsy results of victims of AIDS. Neither Miller nor Goldman have any qualifications that would lead one to think that they have any special expertise in epidemiology, vaccines, or science. But they have google and are not afraid to use it.

Together they have actually managed to publish a paper or two in obscure journals, where they completely misunderstand data in favor of their cherished hypotheses. In “Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?” they “found” that nations requiring the most vaccines tend to have the worst infant mortality rates, and their cherry-picking of data and speculation needed to reach that conclusion are rather painful – quite simply yet another poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly analyzed study that is poorly done exactly because it needs to be in order to show what the authors want it to show, namely that vaccines cause autism, a hypothesis so thoroughly falsified as any in the history of science. The study was of course praised in the venues you’d suspect, and where the assessment of the methodology used in the study is determined by whether it supports the conclusions the praiser wants it to show. Indeed, it was even praised at NaturalNews in a long post written by … Miller himself.

The journal Human & Experimental Toxicology is not a journal to trust in general. In fact, they published Miller & Goldman’s next article article, “Relative trends in hospitalizations and mortality among infants by the number of vaccine doses and age, based on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), 1990-2010,” as well. And yes, Miller and Goldman decided to go dumpster-diving in the VAERS database for spurious correlations, which of course they wouldfind given the nature of that database. They still had to botch the methodology to support the conclusions they wanted to support. A little bit later Goldman returned to dumpster dive on his own, utterly failing to grasp the nature of the VAERS database, and got “Comparison of VAERS fetal-loss reports during three consecutive influenza seasons: Was there a synergistic fetal toxicity associated with the two-vaccine 2009/2010 season?” out of it, published in the same journal as before. The answer to Goldman’s question is “no”, though Goldman reached a somewhat different answer.

Miller is also the author of several books with titles like Vaccine Roulette: Gambling With Your Child’s Life, and Immunization Theory vs Reality: Expose on Vaccinations, and Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective. Together with Mayer Eisenstein he wrote Make an Informed Vaccine Decision for the Health of Your Child, a book you should avoid if you want to make an informed decision about anything (it even admits as much: “this book tends to find fault with vaccines, therefore readers are advised to balance the data presented here with data presented by ‘official’ sources of vaccine information”). It is primarily a list of standard antivaxx topes, and is reviewed here.

Goldman has written books with such promising titles as The Chickenpox Vaccine: A New Epidemic of Disease and Corruption.

Diagnosis: A stellar example of cargo-cult science in action – though since many readers may have certain difficulties discerning junk science from real science Miller and Goldman and their efforts pose a serious threat to civilization.

Russ Miller is a young earth creationist and intelligent design advocate, as well as founder of the Creation, Evolution and Science Ministries. Miller indicates that he is well educated, pointing out that he has over 165 college credits, but does not mention a degree or exactly where and what he studied. It seems relatively safe to say that his studies failed to involve any serious science, and if it did Miller failed to grasp it.

He has hosted several creationist seminars, presenting to the audience his views why evolution is not scientific. His arguments consist almost exclusively of PRATTs, many of them originating with Kent Hovind, and are supposed to establish that dinosaurs co-existed with humans in the Garden of Eden.

Diagnosis: “But there is absolutely nothing new or original in this entry,” some readers will say. Exactly. There is absolutely nothing new or original in this entry.

A.k.a. The Junkman

Steve Milloy is a science commentator for Fox News, former scholar (or whatever you may call it) at the Cato Institute, current adjunct at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the founder of junkscience.com. His science education is rather patchy, and it shows. Milloy is a consistent denialist regarding the risk of secondhand smoke (he is a member of the astroturf group The Advancement of Sound Science Center) and anthropogenic global warming. Milloy popularized the term “junk science,” but used it to refer not only to junk science, but to any fact that didn’t suit him. According to Milloy, junk science is “faulty scientific data and analysis used to advance special and, often, hidden agendas.” His book and blog Green Hell shows that it is exactly what it sounds like it would be, namely conspiracy theories.

Milloy has offered $125,000 to anyone who could disprove the claim that manmade emissions of greenhouse gases do not discernibly, significantly, and predictably cause increases in global surface and tropospheric temperatures along with associated stratospheric cooling, and that the benefits equal or exceed the costs of any increases in global temperature caused by manmade greenhouse gas emissions between the present time and the year 2100, when all global social, economic and environmental effects are considered. The prize was offered in the spirit of Kent Hovind, ensuring that no one won even if they (e.g. here) satisfied the criteria by any reasonable standards.

His book and blog Green Hell (full title Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them) contains the usual strawmen (environmentalists are jut out to control your life and how many children you are allowed to have) and quote-mining.

There’s a good Milloy resource here, and a good, brief comment on the junkscience website here.

Diagnosis: Though not a shrill and incoherent as many – Milloy even has some good science on his page – he is still a denialist, and a denialist for political reasons (he is rather explicit about that). He is also rather influential, so he definitely needs an entry in our Encyclopedia.

Rev. Gene Mills is the president of the Louisiana Family Forum, which promotes precisely the “family values” you’d expect from an organization with “family” in its name. Mills, who is part of Louisiana Governor Jindal’s “brain trust,” was also a central figure in the attempt to get creationism into Louisiana textbooks in 2009-10. When that effort didn’t quite turn out to be particularly successful (despite initial success) Mills complained that “[t]extbook purchasers have scored another monopolized victory;” i.e. that textbook publishers who publish real textbooks with science in them have been given an advantage in the science textbook market over religious and political organizations that publish religiously motivated science denialism. Life is hard.

Dale Bayard was a member of the committee that rejected the creationist proposal (representing Lafayette and southwest Louisiana), due to no effort from him, and he and was not happy with the results. “Can you just swear on a stack of Bibles and bet your life [that evolution is correct]?” Bayard asked, and since scientists say “no” to that (for obvious reasons), Bayard continues: “Well then why do we print a textbook that says that [what exactly]? Why can’t we provide the children with textbooks that provide objective educational methods to look at what’s out there? Must we go out and do the research ourselves? We’re going to spend $72 million with a textbook company, and they’re not going to swear this is accurate? They don’t even want to put a disclaimer in their textbook.” I don’t think you need much critical thinking education to recognize some shortcomings of Bayard’s reasoning.

Mills, on his side, hasn’t given up his wish to get creationism taught in Louisiana schools. He was one of the major backers of Jindal’s expansive private school voucher program, and endorsed Jindal’s plan to exempt private schools receiving vouchers from participating “in the state testing and accountability program imposed on traditional and charter public schools.” That is, private schools receiving vouchers under the program, the vast majority of which are ~~Taliban-style training camps~~religious schools, of course, will free from the requirement to have their students pass state exams to advance to the next grade level. Among the voucher schools, many accordingly teach “bible-based math” and creationism, using for instance the Loch Ness Monster as proof that evolution must be bunk, all with taxpayer funding.

Mills has indeed been clear that the voucher program will increase student exposure to “religious material” and “release the Word of God” to children. And who do you think (Mills thinks) is opposing his efforts, you wonder, in the form of the “teachers unions and the government bureaucrats”? Satan of course. “There is no doubt it’s going to have its impact,” said Mills, and “that’s why the Enemy is kicking back. He realizes what’s going to happen when all of the sudden these kids come into a knowledge unlike their former secular humanist seminary, they are being rooted and grounded in foundational and fundamental, timeless principles that can change a person’s eternity.”

Mills is close enough to the governor that he even prayed over Jindal at his organization’s Christmas Gala, like any science text committee member would do.

Diagnosis: Staunch Taliban fundamentalists, who have taken a valiant stand against those nefarious secularists who are trying to use truth to brainwash our children with reality.

Oh, please. No, we cannot be bothered to provide too much of an entry on this one. Jack Minor is a former pastor and currently “journalist” for the WND. For the WND he contributes the same kind of tripe as the rest of the WND bunch contributes. So for instance, when the courts rule, in accordance with law in most US states, that a business that offers its services to the public cannot discriminate based on numerous factors, including homosexuality, Minor interprets that as ruling that “‘gay rights’ trump 1. Amendment.” Since it’s obviously a direct attack on religion (and notice the use of quotation marks). Yeah, that kind of guy. And not only do such rulings constitute a direct attack on Jesus himself, according to Minor “‘gay’ laws set stage for pedophilia ‘rights’.” Again those quotation marks? Well, Minor quotes Linda Harvey, who has suggested that gays don’t exist (but nevertheless are dangerous). And it is easy to suspect that the quotation marks around ‘rights’ may signify the view that rights that contradict the Old Testament (like religious freedom) are somehow inconceivable. The rest of Minor is to a large extent a series of distortions, on a variety of topics. Just like the rest of them.

Diagnosis: Typical stuff. Bigoted and stupid, but typical.

Ruth Minshull apparently started off as a writer of scientology books, though her books seem to have been taken off the scientology approved literature list sometime in the 1980s. Some say it was because the books represented dissenting opinions. The fact that Minshull is currently promoted primarily by whale.to suggests that her rants might have been a little too batshit even for scientology – and because she “realized” that Ron Hubbard “used to work in the CIA mind control department,” though that realization seems to have come to her only after she had been kicked out. You can read her 1972 book How To Choose Your Peoplehere, which expanded upon Hubbard’s views on sexuality and is essentially an anti-gay screed.

It is in fact a bit hard to discern exactly what she is claiming, but it evidently has something to do with “levels of consciousness”, as represented by the emotional tone scale of scientology, though Minshull does claim that scientology is entirely untrustworthy on the matter. It may also have something to do with how “The Monarch victims of today are the tail end of centuries of efforts by the Kaballists, Freemasons, and the Illuminati adepts to completely control other human beings,” but that quote may or may not attempt to illuminate independent matters (the unusual grammar doesn’t add to clarity).

To sample her positions (capitalization removed): “The spiritual foundation for programming laid by the programmers are the generational spirits which are laid in the womb & introduced to the child when verbal as the child’s ‘friend’ & ‘spirit guide’. A clan’s guiding spirit is also called a totem. The keepers or guardians protect the spirits within an illuminati system. There will be one alter which knows all the demons which have been layered in. From the age of five, the child’s cult parts will be taught the genealogical histories of their spirit guides. At the age of 12, some candidates for Amer. tribal chiefs had to wait in the wild for their totem to guide them. They must remain in the forest until their guiding spirit appears. This is why the illuminati study the Xibalian mysteries written in the Popol Vuh.” And so it goes. There appears to be … things going on there.

She has also written on how “[s]ugar is a favourite poison to destabilize a nation” in a piece titled “The Deliberate Use of Refined Sugar to Assist Degenerative Disease”. At least the latter article is sufficiently grammatical to contain items that qualify as claims. The idea that claims should be backed up by reason and evidence would have been the next level, but Minshull doesn’t seem to be planning on going there quite yet.

Diagnosis: Crazy old lady. Really. Doesn’t seem to have very much influence, and her idiosyncratic approach to grammar doesn’t really raise the probability that she’ll ever get any.

#936: John McTernan

#937: Ron McVan

#938: Lewis Mehl-Madrona

#939: James L. Melton

#940: Michael Menkin

#941: Lee Mercer

#942: Tom Metzger

#943: Marina Michaels

#944: Johanna Michaelsen

#945: David Mihalovic

#946: Betty Miller

#947: David Wynn Miller

#948: Dianne Miller

#949: Donald W. Miller

#950: Neil Z. Miller & Gary S. Goldman

#951: Russ Miller

#952: Steve Milloy

#953: Gene Mills & Dale Bayard

#954: Jack Minor

#955: Ruth Minshull