Encyclopedia of American Loons

Donald Gary Young is a self-styled naturopath known in particular for his promotion of essential oils (also here) and his Raindrop Therapy. These are promoted for instance through his multi-level marketing company Young Living Essential Oils, and formerly his Young Life Research Clinic Institute of Natural Medicine. We have been unable to verify any background Young may have in anything having to do with medicine (he claims an MA from Bernadean University, a notorious diploma mill, and once claimed to be a graduate of “The American Institute of Physioregenerology,” which was denied by the Institute), but he has been in trouble several times for practicing without a license, and the claims he makes about medicine are, shall we say, unsubstantiated by anything but nebulous anecdotes. In fact, even some of the anecdotes are questionable – Young claims to have cured himself of paralysis with fasting and essential oils, though a brochure from 1987 attributed his recovery to “Oscillation Frequency Stimulation Infusion (O.F.S.I.)” Still woo, but not essential oils.

Young’s background in the field of altmed is a sordid affair, and is described in detail here (yes, Young is a mainstay at Quackwatch). In particular, Young used to run the Rosarita Beach Clinic in Mexico in the 1980s, with a sister clinic in California, where he offered treatment of cancer and other serious diseases, offering “the most comprehensive treatment program in alternative medicine,” including chelation, lymphatic massage, acupuncture, color and magnetic therapies, “bioelectrical medicine,” homeopathic remedies, and a vegetarian nutrition program. The clinic also offered iridology, live cell analysis, and “blood crystallization,” which he claimed could detect degenerative diseases five to eight years before they caused symptoms. Of course, those pesky skeptics and the police soon discovered that the tests always detected variations on the same kinds of ailments, and were always followed with recommendations for expensive treatments coincidentally offered by Young. Indeed, the diagnoses and recommendations were the same regardless of whether they submitted their own blood, healthy cat’s blood or chicken blood – given the difference between human blood cells and chicken blood cells it is doubtful that Young even looked at the blood, and if he did, that he had any idea what he should be looking for. Suffice to say, his advertising ended up causing him further legal trouble. And that was just the beginning. The story of Young’s unsupported claims and problems with the law is a long one.

His Young Living Essential Oils was started with his third wife (Mary Billeter Young) in Utah in 1992, with the Quack Miranda prominently displayed (the FDA seems to keep an eye on him). Ridiculous claims nevertheless abound, and despite the lack of evidence for essential oils as a healing remedy, Young tries – in addition to offering testimonials – to suggest that the supposed Egyptian and biblical use of essential oils is somehow evidence of their medicinal effectiveness. (Some of the ridiculous claims are summed up in his book Aromatherapy: The Essential Beginning.)

You can read the story of his Young Life Research Clinic Institute of Natural Medicine here. The medical staff at the clinic did in fact include board certified physicians (one Roger Belden Lewis), but also people like Sherman Johnson, who is described here. At the clinic Young offered the same range of bullshit he had earlier offered in Mexico, though the clinic disappeared in 2005 following several legal complaints. The company’s website described the clinic as moving to Ecuador, since that country’s “constitution promotes and supports natural and traditional medicine.” Right.

Still, Young is perhaps most famous for his raindrop therapy, a technique he invented (he claims to have received instructions from a Lakota medicine man, but since the person in question has denied any involvement we’ll keep his name out of it) and which involves dropping essential oils, some undiluted, along the spine and feet and massaging gently to “bring structural and electrical alignment.” He could as well has called it “balancing prana”, for that’s precisely what it is (no, “electrical alignment” makes no sense; indeed, Young seems to use “electrical field” and “etheric field” rather interchangeably). And according to Young, however, has claimed that RDT could effectively treat scoliosis by affecting toxins and viruses, which according to Young (falsely) is what causes scoliosis. Young’s own essential oils are a potential cause of toxic effects, however.

Diagnosis: Either Young has great powers in the department of self-delusion, or he is aware that the claims made on behalf of his products are, shall we say, flimsy. In any case, Young is something of a threat to human flourishing and well-being, and should be avoided.

At Daengki Spa in Koreatown, LA, you can get a 45-minute V-Herbal Therapy for $20 per, well, squat. The steam includes a mixture of herbs imported from Korea by spa manager Jin Young, and according to the spa’s website the treatment will “rid the body of toxins” and help women with menstrual cramps, bladder infections, kidney problems and fertility issues. “It is a traditional Korean health remedy,” according to their website, which may be true, but the toxins it is supposed to purge don’t exist, and the treatment has no health benefits whatsoever.

So what, precisely, is V-Herbal Therapy? V-Herbal Therapies, or chai-yok, are vaginal steam baths, and according to the shit that falls out of the mouths of Young and his associates it will reduce stress, fight infections, clear hemorrhoids, regulate menstrual cycles and aid infertility, among many other health benefits. It is magic woo, and it is supported by all the appeals to ancient Eastern wisdom you can imagine.

It’s not the only place in Southern California where you can experience this particular kind of woo. The Tikkun Holistic Spa in Santa Monica, run by Niki Han Schwarz and her husband Charles, offers a 30-minute V-Steam treatment for $50 – and they offer an identical treatment for men. According entirely to Niki herself, the treatment worked for her.

It has received the endorsed for instance of Tae-Cheong Choo, who teaches at Samra University of Oriental Medicine in LA. Samra University is, needless to say, not a learning institution. According to Choo, the treatment is effective for gynecological problems and infertility. Choo cites no evidence to back up that claim.

Diagnosis: It is hard to believe that these people are acting in good faith, and the treatment they endorse is based on delusions and bullshit, through and through. And no, it isn’t just innocent stupidity. The people in question are part of a large horde of shitheads who make a living out of preying on the stupid, gullible or desperate. Shame.

A.k.a. Tray Caladan

Doug Yurchey (or Tray Caladan – pretty sure they’re the same person) writes for the blog at world-mysteries.com, a website devoted to claiming that mysteries easily explained by science are unexplainable, that History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series consist of actual documentaries (and just the tip of the iceberg of what there is to discover), and pretty much supporting any piece of pseudo-history, pseudo-archaeology, conspiracy theory and woo known to mankind. Of course, the people at the website are just “exploring” alternative theories, but you know. A recurring topic on the blog is the existence of out-of-place artifacts and the purported existence of advanced civilizations before any of the known civilizations, as well as UFOs. It is for instance, inconceivable to some of these people that ordinary humans could have built all those ancient constructions such as the pyramids – despite the notable lack of sophisticated engineering that went into said constructions – and Yurchey has suggested that “the ancient constructions were done with anti-gravity … powerful lasers and super-computers.” Instead of, you know, workers forced to pile stones on top of each other in what are, architectonically, essentially big heaps of rock.

And the usual story is that brave maverick scientists have learned the hard way that disagreeing with the majority and finding out new things – which is how scientists get to develop careers in the real world – that don’t fit with established dogma or government interests are persecuted rather than, you know, wrong and usually prevented from publishing or obtaining research grants because they are amazing crackpots with no science background or understanding of science and no workable ideas whatsoever. According to world-mysteries there is, in fact, something of a skeptical inquisition going on; the powers that be require evidenceand experiments, which is very oppressive to pseudo-scientists who just want to make things up (the website’s Rochus Boerner cites cold fusion and objections to relativity by obscure crackpot internet bloggers who prefer ether theories as examples of such oppression; that none of the people cited have any experiments to back up their claims won’t ruin a good conspiracy theory for Boerner).

Anyways, Doug Yurchey is one of their recurring writers, and he seems to be able to meet the website’s standards for “expertise” on a lot of topics. He has written extensively about the Philadelphia Experiment, the Moon Landing hoax (and the murder of Stanley Kubrick, who directed the movie documentation of the moon landing). Among his more recent articles, this one is rather priceless: yes, Yurchey (or Caladan) argues that … “the colorful characters and strange events Tolkien gave the world in his epics were NOT figments of his wild imagination; they were REAL!” That’s right. In TheLord of the Rings, Tolkien is really writing up the real history of the world that he had discovered in ancient Finnish texts, and which had been suppressed by the powers that be (Yurchey seems to have the idea from Jay Weidner, whom we have encountered before), though the story really involved aliens and archons … archons? Oh, yeah – those. “Do the RINGS (and its Lord) really refer to Saturn’s rings?” asks Yurchey, and we all know what answer he wants to give. At least we have plenty of evidence for trolls and orcs; “ancient bones of human-like creatures from a range of 9 feet to over 50 feet have been unearthed, often.” But they have been suppressed by the powerful archaeological elite. Yurchey doesn’t try to explain why.

And not only are The Lord of the Rings real. The Hunger Gamesare real as well; the films “show the unaware public a theatrical play or representation of what has been actually occurring in secret enclaves.” His evidence? “Why wouldn’t the real elite that run the planet just LOVE the Hunger Games? New World Order obviously financed the series. Examine posters for film #2 ‘Catching Fire.’” You see there is a sun in one of them; and fire. “These are all Illuminati themes.”

Of course, Yurchey is only one among many who have contributed to the website. Among recent articles here, for instance, you can read Will Hart trying to claim that the 2012 prophecies are, in fact, still basically correct. In 2014. And here, one Dan Green tries to connect remote viewing to psychic intuition with what he considers to be empirical evidence (hint: it is not empirical evidence). Meanwhile, the title of William John Meegan’s article “Astrology’s Universal Paradigm” doesn’t need any further explanation. And Leonardo Rubino’s “scientific” paper “Numbers are not questionable: the sound of the universe” purports to show that “the Universe is a sound of a given frequency.” It did, apparently, not pass the peer review in serious astronomy journals, which is further evidence for oppression and conspiracy.

Diagnosis: So there you go. Some would perhaps argue that there are some important distinctions in basic critical thinking that Yurchey and his associates sometimes have trouble drawing properly. And come to think of it: Yes, indeed, could there be? We’re just asking questions.

Ravi Zacharias (full name Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias) is an Indian-born, Canadian-American evangelical apologist, founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, as well as an author of numerous books of bigoted vapidity. Zacharias grounds his fundamentalism on the kind of fallacious bullshit such people appeal to, and is – like most of them – pathologically unable to see the errors of his ways. In essence, he seems to believe that a fundamentalist Christian worldview is necessary to ground claims about the origin of being (being oblivious to the fact that Goddidit doesn’t explain anything), life, morality, and destiny – in short, the reason to think God exists is because Zacharias wants him to. In particular, not knowing anything at all about the history of moral philosophy, Zacharias is adamant that “naturalists have no explanation for humanity’s moral framework.” Indeed, Zacharias maintains that while every major religion makes exclusive claims about truth, the Christian faith is unique in its ability to answer all four of the above-mentioned questions (no, Zacharias can’t give youthe answers; they’re mysterious and know only to God, dontchaknow).

And Zacharias is a creationist. In particular, Zacharias claims that evolution is incompatible with the second law of thermodynamics (no, he doesn’t understand either, but when has that ever been an obstacle to people like him?), and he expresses skepticism of the fossil record. Indeed, according to Zacharias, Darwin himself warned against accepting his view, saying in The Descent of Man that “if his naturalistic framework were to take hold, he said, unprecedented violence would be the future for humanity.” We’ll join in challenging anyone to find anything resembling that claim in The Descent of Man. Not that Zacharias will care. He fancies himself a buddy with Jesus, and as such rules against lying don’t apply to him.

Zacharias is also a signatory to the Manhattan Declaration calling on Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox to engage in civil disobedience with regard to laws which the declaration claims would force them to accept abortion, same-sex marriage or other matters that go against their religious consciences. In other words, the morality he thinks he can ground in religion is not one that measures the moral worth of an action in terms of goodness, decency, autonomy, integrity, justice, benevolence or liberty. Who would have thought.

Diagnosis: The guy actually has a seriously significant international influence, yet is nothing but your standard, fundie, anti-science fool and bigot.

Oh, the state representatives, again. Bill Zedler is a Texas state representative (R-District 96), and he is, at least for our purposes, most famous for being the sponsor of various creationist bills, including House Bill 2454 (introduced in 2011), which – if it had been enacted – would have ensured that “[a]n institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member’s or student’s conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms,” and HB 285 (in 2013), with a similar (identical) purpose. The contents of both bills were borrowed straight from the Discovery Institute’s bogus Academic Freedom campaigns. Zedler is of course himself a creationist, being very impressed by Hoyle’s fallacy and failing utterly to grasp that the mechanism of evolution is not “random chance”. The WND was at least a staunch supporter of Zedler’s bills.

In general, Zedler, who otherwise serves on the Advisory Board of the Arlington Pregnancy Center (not a center for health advice) and has been an Elder at Park Springs Bible Church, is a reliable vote for the religious right agenda, including anti-gay legislation. He has himself proposed legislation (failed) requiring that doctors report to the state information on patients who suffer from complications due to abortions (hard to justify on other grounds than as an attempt to intimidate), and a 2007 bill that would establish so-called “covenant” marriages under state law. Although such unions would be voluntary, license fees for covenant marriages would cost less than those for traditional marriages. Couples in a covenant marriage would be prohibited from terminating that marriage unless, after counseling, both parties agreed – such marriages are, in other words, not intended to help victims of abusive relationships. Zedler has also proposed requiring a license for strippers (must be visibly displayed while dancing), and to defund LGBT resource centers on college campuses in the state, alleging that they promote and support “high risk behavior for AIDS, HIV, Hepatitis B, and any sexually transmitted disease” (he lost that one, though).

Diagnosis: Typical fundamentalist idiot, engaging in the typical fundamentalist fight against freedom, civilization and truth based on all the usual delusions, misconceptions and tortured attempts to redescribe the battle as being about something else than it is actually about since he dimly, deep down seems to realize that it really is about combatting decency, civilization and freedom.

Now, this is a tricky one. John Zerzan is an anarcho-primitivist political philosopher. The basis for his political philosophy seems to be a relentless commitment to a fallacious appeal to nature, with results that are patently absurd and crazy, but nevertheless sort of consistent with his basic premise – hence, it is, we admit, a bit unclear whether he in fact qualifies as a loon by our standards.

In any case, Zerzan’s early career seems to have involved joining up with progressively more sharply leftward groups, every time eventually rejecting them as having settled for a compromise with something he understood to be inherently oppressive and thus abominable. Zerzan’s writings are critical of all of civilization, which he deems oppressive by nature; instead, Zerzan seems to praise the life of hunter-gatherers (in the abstract, that is), mixed with the archetype of the noble savage, and has promptly argued that all of humanity needs to regress to that point in order to rid themselves of oppressive mechanisms and corruption (Murray Bookchin has pointed out that Zerzan’s view of hunter-gatherer societies are “flawed, selective and often patronisingly racist”). Given what Zerzan counts as oppressive mechanisms, it is unclear why regressing to this stage would help, and it takes quite some mental effort to convince oneself that such a society would, in fact, be a better one (maybe that's not the point). But then again, Zerzan’s views on oppression and his suggested solutions probably strike many as rather parallel to Ayn Rand’s views on liberty, and Rand still seems to count quite a few followers in the US.

Zerzan has accordingly objected to tool-making (inclined planes seem to the most advanced technology he is fully comfortable with), art, language, math and the very concept of time itself, as he believes they deviate from his primal ideal and are hence a source of alienation and oppression. He has also claimed that telepathy is the proper way to communicate, though it is unclear what practical advice he draws from that. The argument for desiring this state, and for distinguishing oppressive from non-oppressive engagement with one’s surroundings is, however, that Zerzan thinks it is natural, and hence that humans are somehow “meant” to live thereby.

A fine example of Zerzan’s outlook is found in his criticism of Star Trek: “What Star Trek has to convey about technology is probably its most insidious contribution to domination ... Always at home in a sterile container in which they represent society, the crew could not be more cut off from the natural world. In fact, as the highest development in the mastery and manipualtion of nature, Star Trek is really saying that nature no longer exists.” To go from these observation to a negative assessment you’d need, once again, a rather blatant appeal to nature, as well as a rather Platonic conception of “natural”.

Zerzan is apparently friends (to a measure, anyway) with Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and actually approves of his multiple homicides (or at least, the motivation of self-defense against civilization’s encroachment.) Kaczynski, on his side, seems to think that Zerzan’s ideas are stupid.

Diagnosis: It is, however, a bit unclear whether Zerzan really qualifies – he sometimes seems to have a relatively clear idea of what following his ideas would lead to, and though his goal is … idiosyncratic, that’s not sufficient to make one a loon in our sense. The prevalence of fallacious appeals to nature, on the other hand, bolsters his application pretty strongly.

A.k.a. Frederick von Ness (apparently original name)

Tony Zirkle got some attention when he was a candidate in the Republican primary for Congress in Indiana’s 2. district in 2008. He had tried to run before for as well, in 2006, when he won 30% of the vote (and said he was going to run again in 2010, but after he was disbarred that didn’t really pan out; his license to practice law was suspended for multiple instances and types of misconduct). Policy-wise, Zirkle is probably most familiar for his plan to separate African-Americans and white Americans into different states within the Union, but he also received some attention for his campaigns against “Jewish-run pornography.” According to Zirkle, “[w]e now have a small army of male black porn stars that are sifting through five, ten, fifteen thousand women ... One man can now genocide the wombs of thousands of women,” infecting them with sexually transmitted diseases that leave them barren (STDs are, in fact, a Jewish conspiracy to carry out genocide against white women). This, by the way, is just scratching the surface of the crazy in his campaign.

He suddenly received national attention in 2008 whenhe addressed a party in Chicago that had been convened to celebrate the 119. anniversary of Hitler’s birthday, where he was photographed in front of a giant picture of Hitler, flanked by swastikas, and with a “Happy Birthday” sign on the front of the table. Zirkle did indeed try to defend himself afterwards, first by claiming that the participants were not Nazis, but in fact National Socialists. After someone pointed out that there was a problem with this line of defense, he rather tried arguing that he was just “bringing the Gospel to them,” and that people should praise him for trying to educate the hate out of them. But darn if that defense turned out to be rather unsuccessful as well.

Diagnosis: After being caught at that Hitler event, Zirkle’s popularity took a hit. He got 16% of the vote in the 2008 Republican Congressional primary.

Mike Zovath, a graduate of Bob Jones University, is Senior Vice President of Answers in Genesis, and, together with Ken Ham and Mark Looy, the cofounder of that organization. It is, in other words, hard to deny Zovath an entry. Still, Zovath seems to be more heavily involved in the organizational and practical aspects of the organization than in the, uh, “research” part. That doesn’t make him less of a loon, but it does mean that Zovath tends to be the guy who talks to the media regarding events the Creation Museum or the development of the Ark Encounter without going too much into the lunacy that motivates them, and who tries to talk away rather obvious concerns regarding the Ark encounter, for instance with regard to waste management. When confronted with the fact that, even on a conservative estimate, Noah and his crew had to “deal with 12 million tons of waste every day,” and asked how he thought they would have dealt with it, Zovath sagely concluded “Very, very carefully I think,” admitting that “I’m not sure how they did that.”

The Ark project is important to Zovath: “We want to present the ark as a plausible event in history,” he says (i.e. to push nonsense to the credulous). “And that if that piece of biblical history is true then Jesus Christ’s coming to earth and giving his life as a payment for our sins is equally true.”

Diagnosis: Not one of the intellectual strategists of the loonie movement, Zovath is nevertheless an important figure, and abundantly deserves an entry.

Henry Zuill is Professor emeritus at Union College (Nebraska), a Seventh Day Adventist college whose science and mathematical division states, among other things, that it “… concentrates on helping students to know God as the Creator while providing plenty of practical experience.” That may not sound particularly scientific to you, and indeed, it isn’t. Zuill apparently does have a biology degree (from Loma Linda University), but he is also signatory to the CMI listof scientists alive today who accept the biblical account of creation, as well as to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. Zuill may otherwise be relatively lowkey, but writes articles for various religious organization – and no, he does not seem to have done any scientific research at least for the last 30 years, which is no surprise given the antipathy he apparently harbors toward that enterprise. He is also affiliated with Answers in Genesis, it seems.

Among his main objections to evolution is that, according to him, evolution cannot explain the emergence of ecology. It is a bit unclear what precisely he has in mind, but it seems to be a rather blatant application of a teleological fallacy.

Diagnosis: Lowkey madman, and a perfect way to round up round two of our encyclopedia with an appropriately feeble whimper.

Well, we've been through the alphabet twice. But we have still managed to overlook some pretty significant lunatics. We have no entry on Harry Jackson, or Kevin Swanson, Buster Wilson, Gina Miller or Judith Reisman. And other wingnuts have risen to prominence too late for us to notice them when we passed their place in the alphabet - Jim Garrow is an obvious example.

Among peddlers of woo and pseudoscience the most striking omission is perhaps Vani Hari, the Food Babe, who also rose to fame too late for us, but Brian Berman, Kelly Brogan and Bob Sears are some relatively significant omissions as well. A round 3 would inevitably encompass plenty of less well-known figures, but there are enough big fish left to justify doing it, we think.

Some commenters have suggested broadening our view. We agree that a Canadian edition would be worth doing sometime in the future (after all, we've already cheated our way to some Canadians, such as Denyse O'Leary, in addition to several Canadian-Americans, including Rosalie Bertell and Ravi Zacharias), and British and Australian lists are also worth considering (again, we've already covered a few). We have also considered the suggestion that we go global, but we find it hard to provide reliable coverage of loons who primarily do their lunacy in languages we are unable to read; it'll have to wait, at least, though at least a Scandinavian or perhaps German edition may be worth considering.

Gerald E. Aardsma is a young earth creationist and fundamentalist, though he does, in fact, have a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of Toronto. Currently, Aardsma is a “chronologist”. Apparently, he is concerned with “dating methods such as radiocarbon,” which “play an important role in the construction of historical chronologies.” His background in physics, and his “specialization in radioisotopic dating methods” (not actually substantiated on the website) provide him with the tools needed to “critically evaluate secular dates and their relationship to biblical chronology.” To do so, he applies ”both scientific and biblical data,” and you sort of see where this is going; when you don’t like the science, appeal to the authority of revelation. Most of his efforts are accordingly devoted to refuting dating methods that suggest that the Earth is older than the 6000 or so years (actually, Aardsma admits that it has to be somewhat more than 6000) suggested in the Bible. Needless to say, secular bias prevents him from publishing these results in serious journals; instead, he runs, with his wife Helen, his own publishing company, Aardsma Research & Publishing.

To accommodate a literal Biblical interpretation Aardsma does of course have to revert to divine intervention, and he happily employs a version of the Omphalos hypothesis whenever needed. To account for the geological record, for instance, Aardsma tries to argue that events after creation have changed the “virtual history” we now see, from a contemporary vantage point, including the fossils. In his own words: “Creation with Appearance of Age runs into a theological snag with things like fossils of fish with other smaller fish in their stomachs: ‘Do you mean that God chose to paint, of all things, a facade of SUFFERING and DEATH onto the creation when He gave it this arbitrary appearance of age at the time of creation?’ The virtual history paradigm recognizes simply that all creation type miracles entail a virtual history, so the Fall, with its creation type miracles (by which the nature of the creation was changed – ‘subjected to futility’) carried with it its own (fallen) virtual history, which is the virtual history we now see. We do not see the original utopian pre-Fall creation with its (presumably utopian) virtual history.” Special pleading, anyone?

Aardsma has also done some work for the Institute of Creation Research to counter geocentrists, i.e. Biblical Astronomers who point out that a literal interpretation of the Bible requires geocentrism. Can’t have those if ICR is ever going to be recognized as a serious, scientific enterprise, can we?

Diagnosis: Cargo cult science doesn’t come more pseudo- than the efforts of Gerald Aardsma. A stellar example of how dogmatism ruins everything and turns an otherwise apparently intelligent guy into a raging crackpot.

Richard Abanes is a bestselling and award-winning writer and journalist, specializing on socio-religious issues, cults, the occult, world religions, the entertainment industry, and pop culture. He has written or co-written some twenty books on these topics, starting with Prophets of the Apocalypse: David Koresh and Other American Messiah, many of which have been bestsellers and widely read. Indeed, Abanes has managed to establish for himself quite an authority on cults and religious madmen, and he often seems reasonable (though some have noted his attacks on the Mormon church as being motivated not only by recognizing the crazy of that group).

In reality, Abanes is himself a batshit fundie, who has weighed in heavily on the “religious debates over the Harry Potter series”. In “Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace Behind the Magick,” Abanes elaborates on the Satanic threat the books pose to American children. Interestingly, however, and as opposed to other vocal Harry Potter critics such as Bryan Small, Abanes distinguished sharply between the Harry Potter series and the fantasy works of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: “One of the easiest ways to know whether a fantasy book or film has real world magick in it is to just ask a simple question, ‘Can my child find information in a library or bookstore that will enable them to replicate what they are seeing in the film or the book?’ If you go to The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings what you see is story magic and imagination, it is not real. You can’t replicate it. But if you go to something like Harry Potter, you can find references to astrology, clairvoyance, and numerology. It takes seconds to go into a bookstore or library and get books on that and start investigating it, researching it, and doing it.” In other words, the distinction is that “Harry Potter contains elements of real magic, unlike the more fantasy-based powers employed in Lord of the Rings or Narnia.”

And that, readers, is the kind of observation that gives you an entry in the Encyclopedia of American Loons.

Diagnosis: Good grief. His writings on cults seem often lucid, but there is that matter of seeing the speck in your neighbor’s eye and so on.

David Abel is Director of The Gene Emergence Project, and works in/founded/directs the Department of ProtoBioCybernetics and ProtoBioSemiotics at the Origin of Life Science Foundation, Inc.. Since it sounds rather prestigious, here is the Foundation. It’s a creationist … well, mostly a webpage, apparently, as well as Abel’s suburban home (which accordingly houses at least both the Department of ProtoBioCybernetics and the Department ofProtoBioSemiotics). Impressive are also the thirty or so “peer-reviewed publications” he lists on his site; any cursory look will, however, make you wonder about the venues (most are in a book edited by himself). Attempting to boost one’s credentials without, you know, doing any work is a rather well-known tactic among crackpots, especially those crackpots who are deep down dimly aware that they are, indeed, crackpots. The Institute also hosts (or hosted) a Hovind-like million-dollar prize for “proposing a highly plausible natural-process mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life.” To win, however, you would first have had to get your suggestion through a “house review”.

Abel did, however, get a paper published in the journal Life, which has a story of shoddy referee routines. The paper, “Is Life Unique”, is a long-winded argument by assertion for the conclusion Abel wishes to draw, with no hypothesis, evidence, observation or experiment, but plenty of novel acronyms. In the paper Abel is apparently seeking the origin of life through pseudoscience and misunderstandings, dressed up in fancy-sounding terminology. According to Abel, all the (well, his) evidence suggests that “Molecular biology itself is programmed, algorithmically processed, and purposefully regulated …” However, as a true acolyte of the Intelligent Design movement, Abel refuses to (officially) speculate about who the programmer may be. So he is not really looking for the origin of life.

Apparently his “publications” has made him something of a favorite of the Discovery Institute; at least an impressive percentage of their list of publications supporting Intelligent Design consists of papers by Abel, thus also evincing the utter bankruptcy of that Institute’s scientific efforts. Abel is also apparently associated with the Guelph creationists.

Diagnosis: Very, very typical ultracrackpot who will, we predict, ultimately hurt the Discotute creationist campaigns more than he’ll help it.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist, author, and media personality, who tends to appear on such intellectually enlightening shows as The Tyra Banks Show and Glenn Beck as an expert on psychoanalysis. He even writes for Fox News’ blog devoted to health matters, where he tends to make claims that go against all evidence when it serves a particular political point, and runs a self-empowerment community based around his book Living the Truth. Though his credentials are fine, his psychiatric analyses of famous individuals or talk-show guests on the basis of thirty-second interviews or news headlines have not been recognized as methodologically sound by any psychiatrist with any integrity.

For instance, when analyzing Jiverly Voong, who went on a mass shooting spree in Binghamton, for the Glenn Beck Show, Ablow produced this piece of exasperating bullshit. The Chris Lane murder, on the other hand, he blamed on facebook and abortion laws because, well, because Ablow doesn’t like abortion. And after the 2012 vice-presidential debate Ablow delivered such a crackpot medical analysis of Vice President Biden’s debate performance that even the Fox & Friends hosts had to call him out; based on criteria even the hosts recognized as medically spurious Ablow claimed Biden should be examined for dementia.

A telling piece of psychoanalysis was embedded in his advice for President Obama: “The president needs to look at himself and say, ‘Do I have prejudice that I wasn’t even aware of, perhaps, towards white people?’” He also claimed thatObama is waging psychological warfare. How? Because Obama admitted that America has made mistakes in foreign policy, and that admission was apparently intended to demoralize the country. “Barack Obama does not have the will of the American people, Americanism, in his soul,” says Ablow: “He wants out of America, my friend. Trust me.” Ah, those prejudices one isn’t even aware of! And then there are Obama’s insidious tricks: In 2014 Ablow could declare that the FIFA world cup is something “Obama is using […] to distract attention.” He didn’t mention from what. Nor did he seem aware that Obama was not involved in arranging the world cup.

On Fox News Ablow has also claimed that Newt Gingrich’s infidelity and open marriage policy could make him a superior president, just because.

As with rightwing cranks in general Ablow is deeply concerned with gender issues (as in this). Thus, he has urged parents not to let their children watch Chaz Bono on “Dancing with the stars,” ostensibly because he is very concerned for the children. It’s hard not to suspect that he isn’t really thinking of the children. Maybe he was when he suggested that sex education is “a Trojan horse inside the schools”, and by receiving such education “they’re going to start talking about threesomes, and they’re going to be talking about everything that’s okay.” He didn’t actually explain whose Trojan horse it was, but you can all guess, I suppose.

More recently, he has demanded a surgeon general’s warning on the internet, especially on discussions of things Ablow perceives as dangerous. “The Surgeon General has been a no-show on Facebook. […] Where is the Surgeon General?” asks Ablow, suggesting a scandalous level of neglect to rival Benghazi. Though perhaps not quite as scandalous as the "fact" that Obama welcomes ebola to the US because his “affinities” are with Africa and he “may literally believe we should suffer along with less fortunate nations.” That’s right. Obama is in a conspiracy against the US. Why did people elect him? According to Ablow’s professional opinion people have been suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome after 9/11 and therefore elected someone “who has names very similar to two of our archenemies, Osama, well, Obama. And Hussein.”

Diagnosis: Pseudoscience is never more potent than when it comes backed with real credentials. Ablow’s credentials are real. But we tentatively suggest that you should beware of taking advice from him regarding anything resembling psychology or anything else for that matter.

Accornero

The guy behind this, uh, fascinating site does not appear to be American, so we’ll leave him alone – we’re not running out of American loons anytime soon. Harry Accornero and Susan DeLemus are both former Republican members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 2010 until being defeated in 2012 for very, very good reasons.

Both Accornero (Laconia) and DeLemus (Rochester) are birthers, and apparently fans of “Birther Queen” Orly Taitz. So when Taitz appeared before the New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission in 2011 to call for the removal of President Obama from the state’s presidential ballot, she was vocally supported by Accornero, who referenced the “overwhelming” evidence against Obama being a natural born citizen (no he didn’t provide it). When Taitz’s complaint was unanimously dismissed, Accornero went ballistic and stormed out while calling out to the commission: “Why don’t you rip up the Constitution and throw it out?” and “you all should be accused of treason, and we’ll get people to do that.” DeLemus, meanwhile, repeatedly berated Assistant Attorney General Matt Mavrogeorge for his decision. In the end Mavrogeorge and Assistant Secretary of State Karen Ladd had to lock themselves in an office “out of [apparently justified] fear for their safety due to the aggressive behavior of the crowd that included several legislators.” Footage here.

DeLemus

In fact, Taitz’s complaint was joined by a total of nine New Hampshire representatives; in addition to Accornero and DeLemus these were:

- Laurence Rappaport (R, Colebrook), a staunch birther since the beginning, who is apparently still serving as a representative.

- Carol Vita (R, Middleton), now retired.

- Lucien Vita (R, Middleton), another hardcore birther and sponsor of this; now retired.

- Laurie Pettengill (R-Glen), now out.

- Al Baldasaro (R-Londonderry), a fanatic conspiracy theorist, still serving by 2014.

- Moe Villeneuve (R-Bedford), now retired.

- William Tobin (R-Sanbornton), apparently retired.

Accornero also received some attention after sending an email to every New Hampshire state representative stating that President Obama “has crossed the line, and under Article III section 3 of our Constitution is guilty of treason by giving aid and comfort to the enemy and attempting to overthrow our government from within.” That is, he was “formally asking you to bring a commission of treason against Mr. Barack Husain [sic] Obama.” Why? Because of the Obama administration’s perceived lax enforcement of immigration laws. Which probably doesn’t qualify as “treason” in any legal sense, even if the charge had ben correct. Though he claims to have the Constitution on his side, he doesn’t seem to have read it.

Both Accornero and DeLemus (and most of the other representatitves mentioned) have voted in favor of overriding the Governor’s veto of a bill that would allow parents to object to any school curriculum for any reason, and in favor of diverting taxpayer money to private and religious schools. But that should come as little surprise by now.

After leaving the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Accornero has continued his mission: “Who are the Obamas? I for one do not believe the Obama’s are a real family. Are the Obamas married? Is Michelle really a Michelle or a Michael? Are the girls really their daughters? Why is Obama’s records sealed? Why doesn’t anyone remember him from college? Why is there no original birth certificate? Where are his old girlfriends or boyfriends? People, this is a totally made up family.”

Diagnosis: Ragingly insane conspiracy theorists and mad people, and there are apparently enough delusional nitwits in New Hampshire to entrust nine of them (often repeatedly) with political power instead of offering them the help they desperately need.

Judith Acosta is, at least according to her biography at Huffington Post, “a licensed psychotherapist, classical homeopath, and crisis counselor in private practice.” She advocates what she calls “verbal first aid,” the content of which is rather nebulous, and the clinical support for which is, well, rather nebulous as well. We should perhaps refrain from speculating what her interest in classical homeopathy means for her psychotherapy or verbal first aid.

Acosta’s evidence for homeopathy is anecdotal. Indeed, in her article “A personal case for homeopathy”, which she penned for Huffpo, she seems to think that personal testimony is sufficient to establish the powers of woo. It is not. In fact, her whole bio seems to be a story of having a disease and letting it run its course without any (efficacious) intervention whatsoever, and then claiming that magickdidit. We agree with Acosta, however, when she says that her personal stories “will help you to understand what classical homeopathy can do and why some people are so passionate about it.” Indeed, they do, and more so than Acosta seems to think.

Apparently Huffpo was sufficiently impressed by Acosta’s anecdote that they let her write a follow-up, which also included argument for homeopathy by metaphor: “We look for a remedy that most closely matches the totality of that pathology’s song. When we give it to the patient, the remedy cancels the disease. A song for a song. Like cures like.” How could clinical studies even begin to compete? At least she admits that proponents more conventional medicine fail to let themselves be impressed by such metaphors; apparently that is a criticism – the poetry of homeopathy apparently makes homeopathy so much more individualized and personal in a manner that the cold, hard facts on which conventional medicine is built cannot.

Diagnosis: Woo. And how can reality and evidence even begin to compete with the allure of poetic imagination? Acosta may be a minor figure in the grand scheme of things, but Huffpo has given her a platform to spread her silly.

Christopher Adamo writes for Renew America (that’s Alan Keyes’s outlet), and he writes precisely what you’d think people associated with Alan Keyes’s outlet would write – for instance that gay rights, reproductive rights and public schools are ruining America and eviscerating morality. According to Adamo “the whole liberal advocacy of abortion and ‘gay rights’ has never been about elevating human dignity, but about collapsing the nation’s cultural and moral foundation,” and “the entire same-sex ‘marriage’ movement has as its ultimate purpose the destruction of traditional marriage, which would erode and diminish its historical role as a staunch mooring of civilization.” Yes, if you disagree with something, the people behind the views you disagree with always have an evil agenda. To bolster the claim, he argues that public schools are a government conspiracy to make people dependent on government, that abortion is simply about making money, and that Occupy Wall Street is hypocritical because it is destroying the environment with its “filth and squalor”. Meanwhile our Constitutional freedom from religion is jeopardized by the "bogus" separation of church and state promoted Marxists who want a more "Darwinian" system. That kind of guy.

Diagnosis: Yeah, that kind of guy. Our Encyclopedia is already filled with them, and Chris Adamo is, frankly, small fish. But he is still that kind of guy, and that kind of guy deserves to be exposed for their combination of stupidity and bigotry.

Christina Adams is the author of the memoir A Real Boy: A True Story of Autism, Early Intervention and Recovery (about her son’s apparent recovery, and yes: Adams blames her son’s autism on the vaccines) and a promoter of all sorts of woo and pseudoscience to treat autism. She is, accordingly, rather popular as a speaker at anti-vaccine and pseudoscience conferences and as a writer for anti-vaccine and pseudoscience newsletters and websites. For the autism biomed quackery magazine The Autism File, Adams wrote “Got [Camel] Milk” (promptly endorsed by Age of Autism, of course), which proposed camel milk as a treatment for autism. Her evidence of efficacy? “Nomads in Algeria have long said, ‘Water is the soul, milk is the life.’” Not convinced yet? Well, Adams also cites the endorsement of the method by one Dr. Reuven Yagil, a veteran Israeli camel expert who apparently first described the use of camel milk to treat autism. Yagil says that “autism is not a brain affliction but an autoimmune dis- ease afflicting primarily the intestines,” which is, of course, not true (it was Wakefield’s hypothesis), but bullshit of the kind that gets traction in certain crank communities. Yagil also points out that in some book about the Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud it is claimed that camel milk was given by God to cure all illnesses and poverty. And that’s pretty much as far as his evidence for the efficacy of camel milk goes. It seems to have convinced Christina Adams. It’s woo, it’s exotic, and it’s new (and ancient at the same time). What more evidence would she want?

Indeed, camel milk is not only good for autism; it seems, as all good woo, to be more or less a cure-all, including all sorts of infections, anemia, diabetes, allergies, autism, Crohn’s disease, asthma, erectile dysfunction, and even cancer (but Big Science presumably doesn’t want you to know). At least it’s so remarkable that Adams’s talk at the autism quackfest Autism One was called “Practical Magic: The Benefits and Realities of Camel Milk Therapy for ASD.”

Diagnosis: More woo, and this one suggests that some are honestly starting to run out of ideas when it comes to novel forms of alternative treatments. Adams is probably not deliberately trying to fool anyone, however; she’s just abysmally gullible in her encounters with shiny anecdotes and exotic magic.

Contessa Adams is a Christian speaker, author of a book called Consequences,and director of the Love in Action Ministries. Apparently she used to be a stripper, but was saved and is currently engaged in battling the demons that once led her into sin, or something. At least her book and ministry are devoted to exposing one of Satan’s darkest secrets – sexual demons. These spiritual rapists, Adams says, often prey on people by performing sexual acts through nightmares and erotic dreams. Literally. The two most identifiable sexual demons are, according to Adams, the incubus, which is a male sexual demon that traditionally assaults women, and the succubus, which is a female sexual demon that assaults men. Sometimes they also lure people into homosexual behavior.

And there, according to Adams, you have for the cause of homosexuality. It’s demons who make you gay – not just by possessing you, but by actually having sex with you. And they are really good in bed, so you’ll quickly get addicted; the only way back is apparently exorcism.

That’s approximately how she herself became a stripper. According to Adams, Satan claimed her from birth by using a well-known witch as her midwife. “[My] mother admits that she was voodooed or hexed, as it were. One could easily say that from my birth I was raised by a hexed, voodooed or a demon-possessed woman,” and many of her relatives were occultists, so through her upbringing she was constantly performing ungodly magic and voodoo. Even today, after escaping the clutches of demons into fundamentalist Christianity, she is regularly targeted by witches and warlocks – Satan is enraged at her, since “I’ve embarrassed hell” by coming to favor Jesus over stripping. Her story is … rather colorful, and she does apparently not feel any need to back up the elements that bear uncanny resemblances to scenes from Hollywood action- and horror blockbusters.

Charisma magazine swallowed her story whole, and Adams’s metaphysics was backed up by people like Joseph Thompson, associate pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, who claimed to have ministered to more than 100 people who have suffered sexual attacks by a demonic spirit.

Diagnosis: Yes, there really are people like this running around. Their influence is rather obviously limited, but they are probably capable of causing real harm to the real people who, for various reasons, may have come to trust them.

That said, we have to admit that we've had trouble finding any information about Adams that doesn't ultimately refer back to the Charisma Magazine article. Cannot completely rule out the possibility that Charisma has been hoaxed or are being liberal with their interpretation.

Though he has claimed to be a research scientist at Argonne National Labortory, Hunter Haviland Adams is, in fact, an industrial-hygiene technician (who “does no research on any topic at Argonne”) and whose highest degree appears to be a high school diploma (he calls himself "Professor"). Yet Adams has somehow managed to become a central figure in the pseudo-science and pseudo-history version of Afrocentricism (and just to be clear: we are not trying to bash Afrocentrism in general; we are calling out the pseudoscience that has sometimes been promoted in the name of Afrocentrism).

When the Portland, Oregon, school district published the African-American Baseline Essays in 1987, a set of six essays to be read by all teachers and the contents of which were supposed to be infused into the teaching of various subjects, Adams got to write The Science Baseline Essay(“African and African-American Contributions to Science and Technology”), a complete and utter display of sheer lunacy and imagination. The essay contains a mass of ridiculous claims supported by little or no evidence. It argues for the existence of the paranormal, advocates the use of religion as a part of the scientific paradigm, draws no distinction between information drawn from popular magazines, vanity press books, and the scientific literature, is riddled with unattributed and inaccurate quotations, and contains a a number of references to the existence and scientific validity of the paranormal in the context of its use by the ancient Egyptians. According to Adams, the ancient Egyptians were black and their culture ancestral to African-Americans. They also flew around in gliders and were the inventors of most of modern science, in particular the use of the zodiac and “astropsychological treatises,” which Adams implies is science. Furthermore, the ancient Egyptians were “famous as masters of psi, precognition, psychokinesis, remote viewing and other undeveloped human capabilities.” His essay does indeed claim that there is a distinction between magic, which is not scientific, and “psychoenergetics,” which supposedly is, but gives no basis to distinguish one from the other, rather defining psychoenergetics as the “multidisciplinary study of the interface and interaction of human consciousness with energy and matter.” Indeed, according to Adams Egyptian professional psi engineers, hekau, were able to use these forces efficaciously, and – for good measure – claims that that psi has been researched and demonstrated in controlled laboratory and field experiments today.

And, to repeat: The essay, endorsed by the school board, was aimed at grade-school teachers (who, by the way, are not themselves not necessarily particularly scientifically literate) to help raise scientific literacy among African-American students. Though widely distributed, the essay will of course do no such thing – indeed, according to Adams, African-American students should apparently replace the scientific method with an ancient Egyptian religious outlook (of dubious historical accuracy) that, according to him, is equal to science as a source of knowledge about the world (including commitment to a Supreme Consciousness or Creative Force, both material and “transmaterial” causal forces, and an emphasis on “inner experiences” as a source for acquiring knowledge). If the purpose is to remedy the fact that African-Americans are underrepresented in science, Adams’s essay is, in other words, not going to help.

Hundreds of copies of the Baseline Essays have been sent to school districts across the country. Carolyn Leonard, Coordinator of Multicultural/Multiethnic Education for the Portland Public Schools, has given more than 50 presentations on the Baseline Essays, and they have been adopted or been seriously considered by school districts as diverse as Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Chicago, and D.C., have been used for several years in Portland, and been adopted by the Detroit Public Schools.

Adams has also been associated with the magic melanin group, the promoters of the idea melanin gives dark-skinned people superpowers, and Adams is presented as a respected scholar for instance in books like the anthology Why Darkness Matters: The Powerof Melanin in the Brain (eds. Ann Brown, Richard D. King, Edward Bruce Bynum, & T. Owens Moore), which rivals whale.to for pseudoscience content. Although he never explained why he thought astrology was science in his Science Baseline essay, Adams did do so at the 1987 Melanin Conference. According to Adamsmelanin has an extraordinary ability to absorb and respond to magnetic fields, and “that movement [magnetic motion] is reflective of the movement of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. Thus, at birth, every living thing has a celestial serial number, or frequency power spectrum. This is the basis for astrology right here.” We’ll admit that it is probably as good a basis for astrology as any.

Diagnosis: As anti-science as your most desperate creationist, Adams’s bullshit is still being treated with respect for political purposes by well-meaning people who should know better, in the service of goals that his works will ultimately ensure cannot be achieved if taken seriously.

#1280: D. Gary Young

#1281: Jin Young, Niki Han Schwarz & Charles Schwarz

#1282: Doug Yurchey

#1283: Ravi Zacharias

#1284: Bill Zedler

#1285: John Zerzan(?)

#1286: Tony Zirkle

#1287: Mike Zovath

#1288: Henry Zuill

Round 3 ...

#1289: Gerald Aardsma

#1290: Richard Abanes

#1291: David Abel

#1292: Keith Ablow

#1293: Harry Accornero, Susan DeLeMus & the birthers in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

#1294: Judith Acosta

#1295: Christopher Adamo

#1296: Christina Adams

#1297: Contessa Adams

#1298: Hunter Adams