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#1122: Richard Schulze

July 16, 2014, 9:48 am
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Richard Schulze is an N.D. (short for “not a doctor”), M.H. and – according to his webpage – “one of the FOREMOST Authorities on Natural Healing and Herbal Therapy in the World” [capitalization in the original]. He has operated various clinics and “designed Natural Therapy Programs, which have assisted tens of thousands of People Worldwide to create MIRACLES and REGAIN their Health.” Yes, his webpage – worth a visit – relies primarily on persuasion by random capitalization, it seems. He is also apparently a mainstay over at whale.to, where you can read about his ability to cure almost anything or, perhaps more precisely, help patients cure everything (AIDS, colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, Alzheimer’s … you name it, Schulze cures it, without bothering with the bureaucratic process of collecting evidence that his methods have actually cured any of these things). In general, Schulze’s screeds contain woefully few references to actual evidence but apparently capitalizing key words for emphasis is supposed to make up for that. They are also replete with misunderstanding and denialism, as exemplified by his denial of the role of genes in cancer.

If his techniques are so powerful, why aren’t they more generally accepted  (“the combination of Herbalism and Naturopathy is highly effective, to put it mildly, and would kick 98% of Allopathy into touch given a level playing field”)? Ah, you didn’t need to ask, did you? “[g]iven a level playing field” is the cue. You see, the playing field isn’t level. In reality, of course, the field is made uneven by the fact that real medicine relies on evidence, accuracy, testing, truth, reason, science and reality. And if those are the criteria, then herbalism and naturopathy are at a disadvantage, given that they have none of those things on their side. Of course, that’s not how Schulze sees it. Instead, there is a conspiracy out there – “[t]o see how the Allopaths suppress the competition: the Richard Shulze page on Wikipedia was deleted by an Allopath.” Therefore he is suppressed and therefore he must be right. Here you can see him explain how he is being suppressed by the government and the FDA in their well-known war on cures. (Here is an interview with the seriously misguided Shane Ellison about that war, for those who are in a masochistic mood.)

“His work in getting the knowledge out there (giving away all the secrets of Herbalism and Naturopathy), and putting his whole body over the parapet puts him in the ‘great man’ category, and they are pretty thin on the ground, but it just shows what one man can do. No longer can Allopaths get into the pulpit and say Herbal and Naturopathic medicine is quackery without being exposed as the true quacks themselves, […] and that is purely down to him, the Truth is well out of the bottle now.” At least you can’t accuse him of modesty or shying away from gibberish.

Diagnosis: Utterly ridiculous crank with the crackpot’s delusions of grandeur. Standard fare, but these are still the kinds of delusions that can lead to some real harm in the world beyond the Internet.
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#1123: Gary Schwartz

July 17, 2014, 10:46 pm
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We’ll keep an eye on Eugene Schwartz for now – Eugene is a theosophy enthusiast and one of the big promoters of the Waldorf Education curriculum, but I have thus far been unable to ascertain the extent to which Schwartz himself buys into the esoteric bullshit that tends to permeat this branch of pedagogy. Besides, it is time for a big fish.

Gary Schwartz is definitely a big fish. Schwartz is a medium and parapsychologist, but he is also a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona and the Director of its Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health, and thus one of the most significant and influential promoters of New Age woo in the world. He is also the Corporate Director of Development of Energy Healing for the Canyon Ranch Resorts and one of the pioneers of frontier medicine, which shouldn’t really boost his credibility. In fact, Schwartz was one of the first scientists to take the offer of grant money from the NCCAM, to set up the Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science with the University of Arizona.

Schwartz is perhaps best known to the public for his book The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death (2003) (review here) cowritten with William L. Simon and with a foreword by none other than Deepak Chopra, synthesizing Schwartz’s studies, widely cited in the media, and purporting to provide evidence for an afterlife. The experiments described in the book have recieved criticism from the scientific community for being – to put it mildly – inadequately designed and using poor controls, and though Schwartz claims to know that anecdotes aren’t evidence, the book is riddled with – precisely – anecdotal evidence, the totality of which Schwartz and his coauthors seem to think make a rather compelling case for the paranormal. Ineed, the whole thing is a model of how not to apply reason and critical thinking – it even starts with anecdotes about how he helped psychic Susy Smith to contact Houdini, Smith’s mother and William James, from beyond the grave, justified by the fact that Schwartz managed to get a paper on the “experiment”, coauthored with Linda Russek, published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 1997, and one in The Noetic Journal in 1999 – neither journal is notable for a commitment to rigorous scientific methodology). But seriously, for a thorough analysis of the “experiments” reported in the book, this is the go-to resource (and this one is pretty good too – Schwartz has written a rather illuminating response to it). Here is an excellent discussion of how Schwartz’s subjectively validates the mediums he declares to have real powers (including Allison Dubois(!), though they have apparently later parted ways). And no; Schwartz, despite his efforts (in The Afterlife Experiments, for instance, he described the troubles he went through to understand the phenomenon of cold readings) to understand how cognitive biases tend to ruin everything, and in particular why research without proper controls usually yields randomly worthless results, is demonstrably unable to grasp how subjective validation or such phenomena as the Forer effect actually work.

The final chapter of The Afterlife Experiments are devoted to describing the practical consequences of his research. A more accurate assessment of what the upshots would be if he were, in fact, right, can be found here, though since the upshots can easily be used to falsify his claims Schwartz tends not to see them.

Of course, Schwartz has written quite a bit on matters paranormal. A more recent example is the paper “Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Demonstrated Using a Novel Triple-Blind Protocol” (with Julie Beischel), published in Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing (2007), which is apparently quite cargo cult science journal, this one too. And yes, he flamboyantly botched the blinding process (inasmuch as it is described at all in the journal), and the methodology is so flawed that one suspects that Schwartz himself suspects that he wouldn’t achieve the results he wants if he did things properly.

But Gary Schwartz does not only believe in psychics, mediums, and life after death (and that there is scientific evidence to support these beliefs). He has also invested some efforts into New Age healing woo, in particular the field of energy medicine. In his book The Energy Healing Experiments: Science Reveals Our Natural Power to Heal (with William Simon and Richard Carmona) he attempts to explain that we all emit human energy fields, that we can sense each other’s fields, and that healers can influence these fields to heal illnesses and injury (and yes, it is based on the New Age understanding of energy as a type form of buzzing, invisible spirit stuff). And once again he believes that he has facts to back up these claims. You can see a concise assessment of his evidence here (anecdotes? Plenty. Controlled studies published in decent, peer-reviewed journals? Your guess). Schwartz has apparently also investigated the effects of Johrei (an alleged “divine energy”) and yoga on brain and heart mechanisms. You can probably guess what the results were.

Indeed, Schwartz has apparently even jumped on the Intelligent Design bandwagon with his book called The G.O.D. Experiments: How Science Is Discovering God In Everything, Including Us (2006, once again with William Simon), where he tells anyone gullible enough to read the book with an open mind that 21st-century science provides clues to G.O.D.-the “Guiding, Organizing, Designing” process animating the universe. Publisher’s Weekly writes rather diplomatically that many “will have trouble accepting Schwartz’s sophomoric ... experiments,” though I can unfortunately think of many people who won’t. And once again, Schwartz proves little else but that the phenomenon of subjective validation continues to elude him.

His other books are The Sacred Promise: How Science Is Discovering Spirit’s Collaboration with Us in Our Daily Lives (2011) – with a foreword by John Edward (!) – The Truth About Medium: Extraordinary Experiments with the real Allison DuBois of NBC’s Medium and other Remarkable Psychics (2005, also with Simon), Living Energy Universe: A Fundamental Discovery that Transforms Science and Medicine (1999, with Russek).

As mentioned in the introduction, Schwartz in fact claims to be a medium himself, having claimed for instance to contact the spirit of a 25 year old man in the bathroom of his parents’ house and attempted to charge the family 3.5 million dollars for his mediumship services. His claims were so ridiculous that evenFox New managed to expose him.

One useful thing about Gary Schwartz is worth mentioning: He is so frequently usedas an authority on matters paranormal by the media that looking for his name in an article has become a useful tool for quickly dismissing of reports of new, purportedly revolutionary findings as pure garbage.

Diagnosis: The life and work of Gary Schwartz would, come to think of it, serve as an excellent Introduction to Critical Thinking course – his commitment to biases, wishful thinking and motivated reasoning has really managed to cover virtually every systematic obstacle to figuring out the truth known to man. But that’s also probably the best thing anyone can, remotely accurately, say about Gary Schwartz, and his efforts to mainstream pseudoscience and New Age woo is overall pretty disheartening.
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#1124: Melissa Scott

July 19, 2014, 5:17 am
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Melissa Scott is the widow and heir of the now deceased Gene Scott, subject of the 80s documentary God’s Angry Man, and has mostly inherited Gene’s depravity, lack of moral character, and zeal, though she has removed much of the pseudo-history, demonology, musings about Atlantis, Herbert Armstrong stuff, aliens and so forth from Scott’s website. She is nevertheless also the current boss of the University Cathedral, best known for its radio broadcast sermons and hamfisted fundraising, though she has not managed to maintain her husband’s audiences, and his empire is currently a fundie moneymaker in serious decline – the choice of Melissa as his successor was apparently not popular with all of Gene’s fans, as shown by this not entirely sanity-anchored rant by one Steve McHenry.

There is, even in the absence of much of Gene’s incoherent New Age drivel, enough lunacy left to qualify Melissa Scott for inclusion in our Encyclopedia many times over. Indeed, the inecessant money-raising schemes should really be sufficient on their own, but Melissa Scott is also a staunch opponent of the theory of evolution – apparently “evolution is something that is easy to swallow because it’s a simple solution to a complex universe and complex people. But the fact of the matter is, if you take the time to read your Bible and study your Bible you have to come to the conclusion that it can’t be,” whereupon she offers this piece of amazing gibberish (see if you can make sense of it).

Diagnosis: Though compared to the batshit, lunatic ravings of her husband, Melissa Scott’s brand of evangelicism seems rather middle of the road, she is still a batshit crazy fundie. Fortunately Gene’s empire seems to be rapidly crumbling, but there is still some punches against civilization and sanity left in it. Continue to maintain a safe distance.
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#1125: Peter Dale Scott

July 19, 2014, 5:22 am
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Peter Dale Scott is a batshit insane conspiracy theorist; that is, he rejects the label “conspiracy theory”, of course, going instead for “deep politics”, a branch of pseudoscience for which he may claim to be the proud founder. Scott is also a former English professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former diplomat (he is Canadian, though his career in the US arguably qualifies him for inclusion in our Encyclopedia). That doesn’t confer much authority on the subject matter of deep politics, and it is telling that his “research” is published in book-length monologues from non-academic publishers rather than in peer-reviewed journals.

Though he avoids the standard references to organized shadow groups such as the Illuminati, Scott maintains that a large number of terrorist acts and assassinations (including JFK and Anders Breivik) are inside jobs; perhaps not fully, consciously and carefully planned and organized from the top – there is no unified group at said top – but inside jobs nonetheless (he has, though, thus far, as far as I can tell, refrained from proclaiming 9/11 an inside job, though it was, it seems, a result of deep politics – there are some comments on his book on the issue here). Despite the absence of a powerful, single, unified conspiracy, Scott’s theories nevertheless relies on“secret” decisions made by “small cabals” of persons within our (public) governmental institutions, for the deliberate purpose of replacing the “public” dimension. Evidence that these are inside jobs or that such evil, secret plots exist? Well, governments have been involved in lots of shit over the years, so it is not impossible that they could have organized these things as well. “But,” you might object, “could hypothetically have does not imply did.” Ah, yes, but you see, officially Scott is really Just Asking Questions (he just tends to forget sometimes). Besides, he can point to nefarious government schemes at some times in some places in the past (mostly Italian fascists, in fact) – so he has the resources to mingle his narratives with actually documented claims. And when you selectively look at the evidence gathered at various conspiracy sites and fail to distinguish an untested hypothesis from a fact, it all fits. It is worth pointing out that Scott has no background in critical thinking or scientific reasoning, nor does he display any interest in how psychological biases work.

I really don’t wish to link to much of Scott’s drivel, though as a typical example I can give you his “9/11, the JFK Assassination, and the Oklahoma City Bombing as a Strategy of Tension” (here). As usual, he mixes the reasonably well-documented claims about governments being involved in organized crime (and as usual, the examples are from Italy), to claim that at least the following were false flag operations by shady government cabals: JFK, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the 1993 first World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and 9/11 or at least “the subsequent false flag anthrax attacks of 2001”. Because these are structurally similar to the other examples and because governments used these events to implement new laws; no, the distinction between using an event for political gain – and it is in most cases pretty unclear what these gains might have been – and deliberately planning and carrying out that event, is not one Scott is overly concerned with. Nor is he very concerned with accuracy or avoiding question-begging (“all of these events were blamed on marginal left-wing elements, but in fact involved elements inside America’s covert intelligence agencies, along with their shadowy underworld connections”).

Diagnosis: Scott is, in fact, among the most influential conspiracy theorists out there, and by mixing his batshit, evidence-free musings with long, more or less accurate explanations of actual, historical events he manages sometimes to create an illusion of carefulness and sensitivity to evidence. But really, there is little to distinguish his claims from those made by your standard whale.to mainstay (and Scott is, in fact, one of those himself). 
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#1126: Shirley Scott

July 19, 2014, 10:40 pm
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Shirley Scott is a clairvoyant, a medium and an “animal communicator” offering spiritual readings and counselings to the Walla Walla area. You can see her on youtube talking about animals and the afterlife here. She has even written books. Religion vs. Spirituality, One Psychic’s point of view was apparently, by one reader, described as taking “the ‘woo-woo’ out of what being psychic really means,” which really makes one wonder what the comparison class might have been. How old are We“talks about how old our souls are and where we might have come from. It talks about the Universe and the laws that run it and us.” It is all made up, of course – or “intuited”, as they say, a popular way of getting the answers you want to stuff you don’t know anything about – but is probably comfy and appropriately fluffy for her audiences. Her CD Telepathy and Animal Communication will give you the basics for starting “to communicate with your pets and other animals by giving you tools to practice so you will begin having better conversations with your pets and understanding what they want from you.” The tools have not been tested on animals. Or anything else.

Diagnosis: Nothing distinguishes Scott from other online clairvoyance services, and I think she was noticed for inclusion through an Amazon recommendation. But she definitely fills the bill quite nicely.
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#1127: Wesley Scroggins & Melissa DuVall

July 20, 2014, 11:25 pm
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Wesley Scroggins is apparently an associate professor of management at Missouri State University. In 2010 Scroggins wrote an article called “Filthy books demeaning to Republic education”, in which he claimed that L.H. Anderson’s Speak, Slaughterhouse Five and S. Ockler’s Twenty Boy Summershould be banned because Scroggins is a deranged hater they “expose children to immorality,” and at least be removed from the high school English curriculum. And because of Scroggins’s complaint the school board in Republic, Missouri, did indeed vote to ban the latter two books from the school library. Said Board Member Melissa DuVall: “We are not going to make everybody happy – and rarely do we […] What we have to be proud of is we took a complaint, we took is seriously and we gave it due diligence.” In other words, DuVall is possibly as intellectually unqualified for her position as it is possible to be. At least the actions of Scroggins and the school board generated some noise. Still.

Diagnosis: Haters gonna hate, and Scroggins is a hater. DuVall, on the other hand, seems primarily to be merely helplessly incompetent.
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#1128: Alan Sears

July 23, 2014, 1:43 am
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Alan E. Sears used to be the Staff Executive Director of the Meese Commission (and federal prosecutor in Meese’s Justice Department during the reign of Reagan), whose role was to investigate pornography in the United States in the 1980s. Currently Sears is the president, CEO, and general counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund and a columnist at Townhall. His parting of ways with the Meese Commission is itself quite legendary: In 1986 Sears he sent a letter from the Commission over his own signature to thousands of retailers warning them, in an attempt to intimidate them into not selling Playboy and Penthouse, that they might be publically identified as pornography dealers, with the result that more than 17,000 retailers stopped carrying the magazines. The Meese Commission was promptly sued, of course, Sears’s actions found to be quite astoundingly inappropriate, and the Commission forced to retract the letter. Sears, who apparently has some trouble distinguishing his official duties from his personal agenda, quit the Department of Justice in disgust (no, not over his own actions – he’s not that kind of guy).

The Alliance Defense Fund (apparently now the Alliance Defending Freedom, though everything else remains the same, of course) is a wealthy rightwing legal group committed to fighting the War on Christmas, defending Christians’ (though only Christians) perceived rights to violate the Establishment Clause (and, of course, defending the poor, persecuted Christians who are criticized for doing so), combatting pornography (Patrick Trueman misunderstands issues here), gays, sex education, the Internet, and what they take to be leftist judicial activism (any legal decision they don’t like – a typical rant by Matt Bowman is discussed here), and fighting for their own, Orwellian interpretation of the separation of church and state – they’re a sort of twisted, wingnut parody of the ACLU, in other words. They are also funding “education” projects.

Sears also writes for the WND, for instance about gay marriage. You can discerns his ability to maintain a grasp on reality in this attempt to argue against gay marriage by analogy. (Hint: the analogy is poor. Indeed, the analogy is poor enough that it would have qualified Sears for an entry in our Enclyclopedia if he’d done nothing else.) But Sears has also written The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today. Why is it a threat? “Because no compromise is possible with the agenda, and those who advocate the agenda want to not only stop all disagreement – they want to punish anyone who does. It’s a form of totalitarianism.” Projection much? Also “Garden of Eden [shows that marriage] predates any human instititution.” Seriously. And this madman (still unsure? Check out this) once had an important government position. As CEO of the ADF Sears has also called for a “National Day to Pray for Marriage”, even releasing their own Prayer Guideto help ensure that the prayers are as efficacious as possible.

Diagnosis: Zealous and cognitively deficient bigot. A common condition, of course, but Sears does wield quite a bit more influence than most. Dangerous.
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#1129: Ralph Seelke

July 25, 2014, 9:14 am
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Creationism is littered with fake experts and people with expertise in fields irrelevant to the study of evolution. Ralph Seelke is one of few exceptions. Seelke is Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Wisconsin, Superior, and has even published in relevant fields (though nothing, of course, that challenges evolution). He is nevertheless a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, on the board of the pseudoscientific think tank known as the Biologic Institute, and on the board of editors of their pseudojournal Bio-Complexity. Indeed, given the scarcity of people with a comparable background among creationists, Seelke is quite a bit of a celebrity among his fellow denialists, and frequently called upon as an expert. He testified for instance in the Kansas Evolution Hearings and was, with Stephen Meyer and Charles Garner, selected by the Texas Board of Education for their review panel for educational materials in 2008 (also here and here).

Seelke is perhaps most famous for being the coauthor of Explore Evolution, a 2007 piece of propaganda put out by the Discovery Institute to replace Of Pandas and People as part of their wedge strategy, in which the idea was to push the concept of teaching the “strengths and weaknesses” when teaching evolution in public schools. (The Wikipedia page for the book is here; the valuable Explore Evolution Exposed website is here; a brief, succinct review can be found here). The book is not to be confused with the NSF educational program of the same name, and the creationist book title is likely to have been chosen to engender confusion. There is a good review of the books and the Discotute agenda here.

Diagnosis: He has the formal training, but evidently lacks the expertise. Seelke may not be the loudest of the pseudoscientists employed by the Discotute, but given his formal credentials he is, in fact, one of the more dangerous.
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#1130: Chris Sevier

July 27, 2014, 5:14 pm
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We refused to include Phil Robertson in this Encyclopedia, but we can’t overlook Chris Sevier. Sevier apparently claims to attend the same church as Robertson and filed a lawsuit against the A&E network, GLAAD and President Obama when Robertson was suspended for bigoted comments in December 2013. Sevier put together a 91-paged complaint quoting Scripture about the sins of homosexuality and emphasizing that “[w]e live in a Christian nation, ‘Jack.’” The complaint in particular claims that A&E’s suspension of Robertson is going to have a chilling effect on other churchgoers when it comes to preaching what he believes is the word of God – in fact, this is precisely why he claims to have standing in the case. Obama was named since he is in league with A&E to “further a pro-gay agenda” (which means that Obama is named simply for having his political views). The complaint also included a series of pictures, the legal purpose of which is nebulous.

Of course, Sevier did not have standing, nor did he state any cognizable legal claim. The complaint was certainly not helped by the fact that he quoted scripture rather than legal precedents either. But Sevier is not the kind of guy who would be deterred by the fact that he has no case – he has earlier sued an impressive number of people and organizations, including Bill O’Reilly, CBS, Facebook and, in particular, Apple because his Macbook allowed him to access porn on the Internet, turning him into an addict and ruining his marriage (a very interesting case; in fact, Sevier also sued for the right to marry said Macbook in an attempt to prove the absurdity of gay marriage, brilliantly failing to recognize the “consent” part of marriages). He has also been arrested for stalking a country singer.

Diagnosis: Total moron, though one suspects that his complaints may have won him some sympathy in certain quarters.
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#1131: Malik Zulu Shabazz

July 28, 2014, 3:34 am
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a.k.a. Paris Lewis (original name)

Barry Setterfield is a proponent of the idea of c-decay, an idea that, despite Setterfield’s best efforts to make it untestable, has been shown to be false – not that Setterfield is very likely to change his mind for that reason. But Setterfield is Australian, and must yield the entry to someone even crazier – the inimitable Malik Zulu Shabazz. Shabazz is the chairman of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) and Black Lawyers for Justice, and a black supremacist and ardent anti-semite.

Indeed, Shabazz is on the record as one of the most vehemently anti-semitic bigots in the US today. And by combining anti-semitic bigotry with poor reasoning skills, he arrives – as so many others – at the idea of the International Jewish Conspiracy. The Jews are at least responsible for killing Nat Turner, controlling the Federal Reserve, controlling athletes and entertainers, executing 9/11 (that was actually the European Jews, who “have America under control, lock stock and barrel, the media, foreign policy”), being in charge of the Atlantic Slave Trade and being involved in a black Holocaust.

The solution? Well, Shabazz has called on people to murder Jews: “Kill every goddamn Zionist in Israel! Goddamn little babies, goddamn old ladies! Blow up Zionist supermarkets!” He also looks forward to the “white man’s demise”. There is a list of Shabazz’s claims in his own words here, and a report from a conference held by NBP and an organization called “Muslims for Truth and Justice” here; the crazy is rather … unbridled.

Shabazz has also palled around with the even somewhat obscure Imam Mohammad al-Asi, who seems to think that 9/11 was directly organized by Ariel Sharon – the claim is backed up by imagination (“[w]hy were people on Wall Street, why were those people frantically selling airline and insurance shares in the days before September 11?” is interesting as a reason for instance because it just assumes that Wall Street is controlled straight from Israel), including the idea that Sharon “was supposed to come to the U.S. on September 11, and he didn’t make his appearance here … . Did he know something the rest of us didn’t know?” Except, of course, that the idea that he was supposed to come is pure imagination and it is unclear why Sharon would even have planned to make that visit at that date if he also planned 9/11. But you know. Another lunatic Imam associated with the aforementioned conference was Abdul Alim Musa of the Masjid al Islam (and senior member of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought), who joined Shabazz and Al-Asi in concluding that “Zionists in Hollywood, the Zionists in New York, and the Zionists in D.C. […] collaborate” to “oppress Blacks and Muslims.” Shabazz is also a fan of Ghaddafi, which takes a bit of a twisted personality or a helluva lot of conspiracy theory.

Shabazz’s organization is, contrary to their own claims, relatively small, and its influence is questionable (though they tend to make headlines and garner the occasional support from high-profile figures), but it is apparently beloved by Fox News, who has invited Shabazz a dozen times to make various hosts (especially Hannity) look brave and heroic and reasonable for standing up for Jewish and white people.

Several wingnuts have claimed that Shabazz has visited the White House and is a friend of Barack Obama (but of course), which is rather easily falsified; besides, Shabazz hates Obama since Obama represents the whites.

Diagnosis: Hateful bigot and absolutely abysmally insane. Watch out for this one.
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#1132: Sophia Shafquat

July 29, 2014, 4:03 am
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A.k.a. Sofia/Monica Smallstorm

Sofia Shafquat is another ridiculous Internet cult-celebrity of the Nancy Lieder type. She made her name for her movie “9/11 Mysteries Part 1: Demolition”, a truther pseudo-documentary intended to be the first installment in a series of three. Though it apparently looked convincing to many of those already committed to trutherism and uninterested in applying any kind of critical approach to claims purportedly supporting claims they are already committed to, Shafquat’s flick received some criticism when it was discovered that she had a edited the footage, erasing sounds and adding her own background noises, in particular explosions before and after the towers fell. Apparently she also got sued for copyright infringement by the guy who had taken the footage used in the movie. Shafquat subsequently disappeared from the web for a while in 2009.

With regard to the quality of Shafquat’s investigations, it is perhaps worth quoting her: “Right, people want me to be absolutely precise. Umm, I say that the demolition wave is moving faster than gravity itself. It is making the path for the demolition, which is falling at free fall speed. Virtual free fall speed. Again it is hard to determine how long did it take for the towers to fall visually, and I know there is seismic data that pegs it, you know, a little more accurately. Regardless, I tell people, these buildings fell in 10 seconds, they’re 110 stories. Now let’s just use our mouth to demonstrate this. If a pancake collapse can be described as ‘clunkity clunk’. How many times can you say that in 10 seconds? And if one floor is ‘clunkity clunk clunkity clunk’ you cannot say that 110 times in 10 seconds. So let’s even give it the benefit of the doubt, let’s just take off the ‘clunk’. Let’s just say ‘clunkity’. You can’t say that in 10 seconds, 110 times.” No, it’s not a parody. There were idiots nodding sagely in agreement with this kind of reasoning.

Around 2013 Shafquat reappeared, however; this time as an “expert” on chemtrails, as well as engaging in Sandy Hook conspiracies – her powerpoint presentation “Unraveling Sandy Hook in 2, 3, 4 and 5 Dimensions” is apparently on youtube. Not particularly surprising, really – even back in her truther days, she would market Holocaust denial material on her website.

Diagnosis: Worthy of comparison with legendary Internet kooks such as Nancy Lieder, Nancy Luft and Gene Ray himself. No, really: This is kook gold.
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#1133: G. Thomas Sharp

July 30, 2014, 2:17 am
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G. Thomas Sharp is a grand old man of creationism. That is, Sharp is hardly a central authority, but he has been in the game doing his small contributions to damage awfully long. Even back in the sixties Sharp, at that time already an experienced “science educator” and pastor in Alabama, started researching what he perceived as the roots of the staggering domestic problems in the lives of his church members and students, culminating – in 1985 – in his three-volume Science According to Moses. The books “revealed” that Darwinian evolutionism has lead to the downfall of the Bible (creation in particular) as the foundation of America’s worldview, thus giving apparent “scientific” sanction to the moral decline of society, and therefore promoting the need for “a return to our Biblical foundation (Genesis 1-11) in complete faith and practice”. Sharp formed the Creation Truth Foundation, Inc. in 1989 to do precisely that. As of 2009, at least, he was still touring with his sideshow through the Bible Belt, giving presentations such as “The Truth About Dinosaurs”, “A Thousand Years in a Day: The Mount St. Helens Catastrophe”, “Radiometric Dating” (actually, he seems to leave that to one Charles Jackson), and “Evolution: The Greatest Deception of All Time”. Here is a summary of his presentation on dinosaurs. The reviewer was not impressed.

Sharp’s main points seem to be that if death was in the world before humans (Adam) existed, then humans were not responsible for the Fall, and thus Christ’s sacrifice is meaningless. “Liberal social engineers” and “the uncircumcised philistines of Hollywood” (his words) deliberately use dinosaurs as candy to lead children away from Christ into the windowless van of secular humanism; and “never, ever take a scientist’s word, no matter how many degrees or studies he has, over the word of God.” Why, pray, don’t scientists pay proper attention to tour-de-force arguments like these?

Diagnosis: There is no point in bothering trying to refute delusional morons like Sharp, who won’t hesitate to argue in bad faith if it serves his overall point (Jesus). But at least I hope we can help civilization by exposing him, if only just a little. 
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#1134: Cindy Sheehan

July 31, 2014, 2:51 am
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There may be plenty of good things to say about Cindy Sheehan. As an antiwar activist (her son was killed by enemy action during the Iraq War) she has attracted national and international attention, especially for her 2005 extended antiwar protest at a makeshift camp outside Bush’s Texas ranch, and she has been a passionate critic of American foreign policy – actions and stances that have drawn the support of plenty of people we admire.

However, critical thinking is clearly not her strong suit. In 2007 Sheehan began expressing sympathy for the truther movement, and in 2010 she came out as a confirmed truther: “I think it [9-11] was an inside job, I just don’t know how far inside it went. […] Was it CIA? Was it whoever? Whoever, um, it had to be an inside job. There’s like no way they could have done that, just like the one on December 25th. There’s no way that guy could have done it without some kind of help, and we know he got help. Who was (crosstalk) that nice-dressed man that got him through that these people witnessed, got him through security?” Subsequently, she has appeared at several truther events with people like Dylan Avery, Jon Gold, Richard Gage and others, thereby amply undermining any efforts for good she may previously have been involved in – and indeed: The result of her rebranding has precisely been not to draw people to the truther cause, but instead to make people distance themselvesfrom her previous causes.

And downwards it spirals. In the 2012 presidential election Sheehan ran as the vice-presidential candidate for Roseanne Barr’s Peace and Freedom Party. The same year she traveled to the Bohemian Grove to protest against their annual meeting together with Mark Dice and Alex Jones, who thinks the meetings are Satanic rituals. She has recently lent her voice to anti-GMO protests as well, but fortunately few seem to care anymore.

Diagnosis: A sad, sad tale.
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#1135: Donna Sheehan & Paul Reffell

August 1, 2014, 2:16 am
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Global Orgasm is apparently a semi-annual event and takes place everywhere in the world on December 22. It’s for everyone. Why should you participate? “To effect positive change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible instantaneous surge of human biological, mental and spiritual energy.” Well, as far as New Age mumbo-jumbo goes, I suppose Donna Sheehan and Paul Reffell, the people who came up with the idea, have an even more positive outlook than most. Their reasoning, however, seems to be that orgasms are fine things, therefore it must be able to change the world by interacting with its underlying metaphysical fabric.

“The intent is that the participants concentrate any thoughts during and after orgasm on peace. The combination of high-energy orgasmic energy combined with mindful intention may have a much greater effect than previous mass meditations and prayers.” At least it probably doesn’t have much less effect. “The goal is to add so much concentrated and high-energy positive input into the energy field of the Earth that it will reduce the current dangerous levels of aggression and violence throughout the world.” Yeah, it’s a nice goal, but since wishful thinking is the guiding inference rule, and the premises are incoherent rubbish … well, let’s just point out that violence still exist.

According to Sheehan and Reffell The Global Consciousness Project (also here) in Princeton, New Jersey, apparently runs [not anymore] a “network of Random Event Generators around the world which record changes in their randomness during global events. The results show that human consciousness can be measured to have a global effect on matter and energy during widely-watched events such as the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, large antiwar protests, natural catastrophes, acts of war and mass meditations. Concentrated consciousness has measurable effects.” They don’t link to the evidence, but “[o]ur minds influence Matter and Quantum Energy fields” – yes, it is quantum; it just had to be quantum – “so by concentrating our thoughts during and after The Big O on peace and partnership, the combination of high orgasmic energy combined with mindful intention for peace could reduce global levels of violence, hatred and fear,” which doesn’t even remotely follow even granting the ridiculous premise. But Sheehan and Reffell are utterly unable to distinguish such nebulous musings from evidence- and reason-based inferences, and will probably remain that way.

Diagnosis: At least one hopes they enjoy themselves. It would be so much sadder if they didn’t. 
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#1136: Martin Sheen

August 4, 2014, 4:37 am
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A.k.a. Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez;

We’ve sort of refused to give an entry to Charlie Sheen, since he doesn’t appear to be the right kind of crazy. But his father, Martin Sheen, is a different matter. Martin’s crazy seems to be far more … systematic, for lack of a better word. Martin Sheen has a long career as an activist, having allegedly been arrested some 66 times for protesting and acts of civil disobedience, and seems, indeed, to be rather unselective in the kinds of causes to which he will lend his voice. In particular, Sheen has come out as a troofer; indeed, he was supposed to feature in the movie September Morn (together with e.g. Woody Harrelson and Ed Asner), a fictionalized account of 9/11 written by Howard Cohen and directed by BJ Davis, but the project seems to have run into some problems (apart from the obvious ones). According to Martin, he started “asking questions” about the official story after having discussed the matter with his son Charlie. No, seriously.

It seems like he is also a fan of homeopathy.

Diagnosis: Well, it’s really just another celebrity being dense – but since many are more than willing to give such celebrities a microphone to rant incoherently (mental acuity was not the reason they became celebrities in the first place) about matters on which they have no expertise or insight, someone like Sheen may actually have some influence.
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#1137: Lou Sheldon

August 7, 2014, 1:33 am
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Being chairman of something called the Traditional Values Coalition is asking for an entry in any respectable encyclopedia of loons. And as chairman for this organization Louis P. Sheldon speaks and writes, as expected, primarily about social issues such as abortion, religious liberty, and public acceptance of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and does so with precisely the level of acumen, insight and humanity you would expect. The Traditional Values Coalition, which claims to be the largest non-denominational grassroots church lobby in America, is listed as a hate group by the SPLC, and Sheldon was an associate of Jack Abramoff, but he nevertheless manages to sustain an impressive media presence (despite creeping out even Tucker Carlson: “You want to know what the single biggest problem facing inner-city black neighborhoods is?” asked Sheldon: “Homosexuality,” he answered).

Insofar as Sheldon’s arguments and stances are so typical we won’t be bothered to cover them in too much detail, but for a representative sample you may for instance look at his attempt to argue that Glee is working to “desensitize Americans to the genuine risks of the homosexual agenda” (in an article called “The Plan for a Gay (Domi) Nation”) – indeed, America is in danger because gay people on television are portrayed as too nice; “Rome fell because of its immorality,” says Sheldon (completely untrue, of course), and likewise “moral anarchy will pull down any kind of a republican government, and that’s where we're headed if we don't turn things around.”

And predictably: The fact that he is sometimes rightfully criticized for his views is taken as proof not only that he is being persecuted, but that Christians are being persecuted in the US (gays, of course, cannot be Christians, according to Sheldon). A similar, illustrative example of his way of thinking is his organization’s (and other “pro-Family” organizations’, though only Sheldon himself showed up) efforts to overturn the Fair Education Act in California and his call to“take back our courts from the anti-God left” after the courts found that the Constitution doesn’t support making Sheldon’s hate-based opinions into law. There’s a good resource on Sheldon’s anti-gay views here.

Sheldon is also a hardcore creationist. In the 90s, for instance, he was heavily involved in campaigning for ruining public education in California, complaining about an “overemphasis on the study of evolution in the school curriculum, underplaying the role of religion in the formation of the U.S.,” paying “insufficient attention to the value of sexual abstinence” and “the glorification of gay lifestyles” in California schools. At least according to himself, his group was successful in persuading the state board to dilute references to evolution in state textbooks. “The important thing in our view is that the Earth was not created by evolution but by God,” said Sheldon. Apparently the existing evidence for evolution is persecution of Sheldon and those who agree with him.

He is apparently also a beneficiary of the philanthropic efforts of Howard Ahmanson, but James Hartline, interestingly, does not seem to be a fan. Sheldon also claims to have known that Ted Haggard was gay before the familiar scandal, but decided to cover it up because maintaining political momentum was more important than truth (yes, he actually said that, but will probably never realize that he did). And, not the least, he is the father of Andrea Lafferty.

Diagnosis: Sheldon is still one of the big religiously motivated haters and anti-civilization activists in the US. Batshit insane, and extremely dangerous.
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#1138: Bruce Shelton

August 9, 2014, 4:27 am
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Bruce Shelton is a physician (a real one). But he is also a former Arizona homeopathic board chairman and one of the most active (and worrying) lobbyists for gettingstate boards to recognize quackery. Remember the Arizona homeopathic board? Yes, they were the ones who exonerated Gabriel Cousens for malpractice in 2001 – anything to avoid doing harm to a cherished form of quackery, I suppose (people, on the other hand ...). Shelton is also a signatory to the International Medical Council on Vaccination’s list of, well, people who question the safety and efficacy of vaccines, since denialism, anti-science zeal, and lack of understanding of scientific methods or critical thinking rarely restrict themselves to isolated topics. He is currently affiliated with the Valley Integrative Physicians in Arizona.

Apparently Shelton thinks a good justification for believing in the efficacy of crazy woo such as homeopathy is that these have been practiced for a long time, often “hundreds of years”. Like alchemy. And bloodletting. Words fail.

Diagnosis: Not the loudest or most obviously incoherent promoter of woo out there, Shelton is nevertheless among the more influential. Seeing his name in any context should raise a red flag for anyone. 
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#1139: Daniel Shenton

August 10, 2014, 2:04 am
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Yes, there are still people believing that the earth is flat, and they do have an organization, founded by one Samuel Shenton in the 1950s. Daniel Shenton is the current president (and he is, curiously, apparently not even related to Samuel). According to Shenton, it is not gravity that pins us to the ground but the rapid upward motion of a disc-shaped planet (that Newtonian thing about constant motion seems to have escaped him), and you can indeed fall over the edges. He also uses a GPS when riding his motorcycle, apparently.

Of course, to accept a flat earth cosmology you have to accept some conspiracies, and Shenton is happy to grant for instance that the moonlandings were faked. Apparently the idea that motivates him is Zeteticism, which according to Shenton “emphasises experience and reason over the ‘trusting acceptance of dogma’,” and the earth feelsflat to him. Actually, it doesn’t really, but whatever. Apparently the evidence that convinced him was Thomas Dolby’s 1984 album The Flat Earth.

In fact, Shenton comes across as a rather curious case. He has no problem with evolution, and he does think there is good evidence for man-made climate change; he was accordingly deeply offended when Obama compared global warming denialists to flat earthers.

Diagnosis: It is, to be honest, a bit unclear how deeply committed Shenton is to his idea, and it is hard to imagine his society having any lasting, detrimental effect on civilization. Indeed, one may compellingly argue that they provide a good and helpful illustration of how denialism works, and how silly it actually is.
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#1140: Frank Sherwin

August 12, 2014, 2:19 am
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Frank J. Sherwin III is a research associate, “Senior Lecturer” at, and “Science Writer” for the Institute for Creation Research, sometimes coauthoring with Brian Thomas for the ICR newsletter Acts and Facts. Apparently he has a master’s degree in zoology, which is not (apparently) quite sufficient to confer any authority on his rejection of virtually his whole area of expertise.

He has also published in Answers in Genesis’s house journal Answers, including “Louis Pasteur’s Views on Creation, Evolution, and the Genesis of Germs”, with Alan L. Gillen (which, one wonders, is supposed to show exactly what?) and “A Possible Function of Entamoeba histolytica in the Creation Model”, which contains absolutely no research (“the Scriptures teach” doesn’t count) but plenty of conjecturing concerning a micro-organism before and after the Fall. Sherwin is, however, perhaps most famous for taking the Cambrian explosion to be one of the “four irrefutable arguments” against evolution – not that he ever pauses to consider what biologists actually have to say about it.

According to his sister Elisabeth, Sherwin is a creationist because he is “irritated by the arrogance of evolutionists who claim to have all the answers,” which sounds like a pretty lame reason; also, “the world view of a person who thinks they came from bacteria is likely to be substantially different from the world view of someone who thinks they were created in God’s image,” which is not a particularly well-considered reason either.

Diagnosis: Pretty much your standard fare among creationists. Because of Despite the complete absence of actual research (or critical thinking) efforts, Sherwin nevertheless remains a figure of authority in the creationist movement.
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We're back

August 31, 2014, 7:55 am
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We apologize for dropping off the face of the Internet for a while, but due to moving (to Gerald Allen territory) things have been a bit crazy lately. Can't promise that updates will be quite as frequent as they used to be, but we'll try.
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