Encyclopedia of American Loons

Honorable mention to Brooks Bayne for his fantastically weird, but ominous Sandra Fluke conspiracy theory involving both Jews and Obamacare and persecution of True Christians. But there is too little evidence of significance. Nor will we provide a separate entry to Kaye Beach, who in 2013 sued the state of Oklahoma, claiming that it’s a violation of her religious freedom to require her to get a driver’s license because the license is the Mark of the Beast (we haven’t really monitored subsequent developments).

Lindy Beam is a staff person at Focus on the Family, which makes her at least part of a movement with some influence. While not a leading figure, at least she drew some attention to herself for weighing in on the debate over the evils of Harry Potter, pointing out that “The spiritual fault of Harry Potter is not so much that Rowling is playing to dark supernatural powers, but that she doesn't acknowledge any supernatural powers at all. These stories are not fueled by witchcraft, but by secularism.” Clearly such books are unsuitable for children or, indeed, anyone. But Beam is also concerned that the books might lead children to become interested in the charms and spells and later explore witchcraft and the occult – an activity which “is neither harmless nor imaginary.”

Diagnosis: Although by no means close to the most insane fundie reaction to kid’s literature (see illustration) Beam’s conclusion is, in fact, hysterically crazy. Have some perspective. And seriously: Being affiliated with Focus on the Family should really be enough.

Beckman

The Law That Never Was: The Fraud of the 16th Amendment and Personal Income Tax is a 1985 book by William J. Benson and Martin J. “Red” Beckman, in which the authors claim that the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, known as “the income tax amendment”, was never properly ratified. Given the mindset of certain groups of people the idea has, subsequent to the book's publication, had the opportunity to be tested in court on several occasions, and been ruled to be fraudulent at least in 2007 and again in 2009. We’re talking serious pseudolaw here (though Beckman and Benson, it should be pointed out, weren’t the first to try the argument).

The primary strategy in the book is to find various ideosyncracies in the process of ratifying the Amendment in various states, including variations in wording, punctuation, capitalization, and pluralization in the language of the Amendment as ratified by many states. Those changes means, in the author’s views, that those states had not properly ratified the Amendment. The courts have not been impressed, and if you know something about tax law you may already see some problems with using the idea as a basis for a legal strategy. Benson has himself a history of legal problems related to income tax, and has tried to use his own defense in court. There is a portrait of Benson here.

Though crazy, Benson doesn’t seem to hold a candle to his coauthor, Red Beckman, a Montana activist and militia sympathizer who has somehow managed to gain himself a certain influence in the anti-government movement. Beckman is famous for claiming that the Holocaust was God’s punishment for Jews because they worship the devil in his book The Church Deceived: “It was judgment, not holocaust ... The true and almighty God used the evil Nazi government to perform judgment upon the evil Anti-Christ religion of those who had crucified the Christ.” Yes, Beckman is a promoter of the Christian Identity idea that Jewish people are the literal children of Satan, and people of color are sub-human “mud people.” He has presented his findings at various white supremecy gatherings.

As for tax issues, Beckman claims to have more respect for a terrorist “who might plant a bomb somewhere” than for the IRS, which is a “psycho-terrorist” that likes to mess with people’s heads”. In fairness, he did lose everything through a tax case in 1994 in which he used not primarily the arguments he had concocted with Benson, but the even sillier strategy of claiming that the judicial system did not have jurisdiction over him. The judicial system disagreed.

Before the conviction he told the press that “This isn’t going to go the way they [law enforcement] plan. There’s going to be enough guns here to make sure of that.” Yeah, that kind of guy. Beckman is (but of course) also a fan of various conspiracy theories, and thinks for instance that the Oklahoma City bombing was carried out by the CIA.

Diagnosis: I’ll grant that Beckman and Benson seem to promote a brand of lunacy that is, at least to some extent, “typically American”. It’s still a bit disconcerting that there are actually plenty, plenty of people out there who keep ruining themselves on their ideas.

Hardly significant in the grand scheme of things, but Bruce Bedinger is at least vice-president of the River to the Nations Ministries in Winston-Salem. And he’s a creationist. According to Bedinger, the perceived lack of transitional fossils is not only a major problem for the theory of evolution, but something that school textbook authors and publishers nefariously neglect to tell students as part of a plot to fool them into believing in evolution. Instead, according to Bedinger, the fossil record reveals the sudden appearance of new species. And – also according to Bedinger – this discovery has led to the development of a new version of evolutionary theory called “punctuated equilibrium,” which Bedinger thinks is a version of the creation story of the Bible. Also quote mining.

Diagnosis: Village idiot. We need to cover some of those as well.

Al Bedrosian was a hardcore theocratic, batshit mainstay of Virginia politics for a while (a perennial candidate), until he actually managed to get himself elected to the Roanoke County Board in 2013. Bedrosian is a staunch theocrat, and it is worth quoting his position onfreedom of religion at some length:

“As a Christian, I think it’s time to rid ourselves of this notion of freedom of religion in America. Now that I have your attention, let me take a moment to make my case. Freedom of religion has become the biggest hoax placed upon the Christian people and on our Christian nation. When reading the writings of our Founding Founders, there was never any reference to freedom of religion referring to a choice between Islam, Hindu, Satanism, Wicca and whatever other religions or cults you would like to dream up. It was very clear that freedom to worship meant the freedom to worship the God of the Bible in the way you wanted, and not to have a government church denomination dictate how you would worship. Christianity, by its own definition, does not allow freedom of religion. A Christian is defined as a follower of Jesus Christ.”

So there (and of course he is absolutely wrong about what the Founding Fathers wrote about freedom of religion). The problem, according to Bedrosian, is that freedom of religion may lead to acceptance of and even measures to protect people’s rights to deviate from God’s laws as laid out in the Old Testament – “soon we are allowing laws and regulations to be enacted that are totally opposed to our belief system” – and can you imagine anything worse? It’s almost as if the secularists have the audacity to suggest a political system not modeled on the Taliban regime.

He even has a “gotcha” line against defenders of freedom of religion: “The freedom of religion doesn’t mean that every religion has to be heard. If we allow everything, where do you draw the line?” Well, some may suggest the line is referred to as “the separation of church and state,” but that one isn’t even on Bedrosian’s radar.

At least Bedrosian recognized that his platform may lead to legal challenges, but said the county could probably get free or inexpensive representation from Christian legal groups. And if it couldn’t, it could cancel the Vinton Library project. That would free up plenty of money to defend itself in a drawn-out legal battle. Such legal battles, according to Bedrosian, is what government is for (his suggestion to cut government spending was apparently just for show).

Grist for his mill was provided by the infamous Greece v Galloway ruling, which Bedrosian obviously didn’t read (he wasn’t the only one: Daniel Reiman, Mayor of Cateret, NJ, is another good example). The ruling, as readers may remember, allowed prayers at county board meetings, but was quite explicit that a legislative body cannot limit pre-meeting prayers to only Christians. Bedrosian, of course, took the ruling to mean that only Christian prayers could be allowed at county board meetings. When asked how he would respond to a non-Christian’s request to offer the invocation at the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors meetings, he – illuminatingly – said: “I would say no. That does not infringe on their freedom of religion. The truth is you’re trying to infringe on my right, because I don’t believe that.” So, according to Bedrosian having to sit through the prayers of other religions you don’t believe in infringes on your rights; he evidently doesn’t see how he just provided a pretty solid argument for why prayers at legislative meetings are constitutionally problematic (but then again, he has a rather idiosyncratic interpretation of the Constitution).

Diagnosis: At least he is admirably clear about his agenda, but one does wonder what the good citizens of Roanoke, VA, who elected him may be thinking.

During the day Pieder Beeli is Senior Scientist for Schafer Corp – he has a PhD in physics and a respectable research record – but when his shift ends he turns into … Pieder Beeli, who writes for the WND, no less, where he e.g. tries to explain how anti-gay hate groups “can enrich any neighborhood.” Indeed, wingnut Beeli is not content being a mere physicisit, but transcends boundaries between disciplines with ease – he is a signatory to the Discovery Institute petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, for instance, and (for the WND again) has applied “forensic linguistics” (no, not what is usually termed “forensic linguistics”) to unmask Obama’s secret Muslim sympathies. According to Beeli “[o]ften we can tell the truth about what someone believes by performing an inferential or forensic analysis. We analyze what is implied rather than what is explicitly stated.” So what’s the evidence for Obama’s secret Muslim sympathies? Well, you can see for yourself here. Suffice to say, Beeli’s methodology suggests that you should be careful about trusting the results achieved in his published papers on physics as well.

As for evolution, Beeli complained during his student days that the neo-Darwinian “fish to man theory that is dogmatically taught” was taught at Notre Dame, complaining that there were no examples of beneficial mutations.

Diagnosis: Batshit wingnut, and proof that a PhD in physics does not entail any understanding of science or scientific methodology.

The name “Elohim Belial” is allegedly the name of the founder of the God Damn America Movement, a faction of the Yakub Islam movement, but we are not entirely convinced that the whole thing is not a hoax (though maybe it isn’t). Eldon Bell, a retired air force officer and birther, is not a hoax, though he is a joke, but probably too insignificant in the grand scheme of things to merit a separate entry.

Iris Bell, on the other hand, is both a joke and frighteningly influential. Bell is a homeopath, which is, as most of you know, woo so amazingly silly that one almost has to pity its proponents. But Bell is also a faculty member at the University of Arizona, home to the godfather of “integrative medicine”, Andrew Weil – in fact, Bell is Director of Research for the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, which means that students who eventually get medical degrees may have listened to the rubbish that falls out of Bell’s mouth. Indeed, Bell actually managed to obtain grant money from the NCCAM to study homeopathy (yes, that’s tax money). Entirely predictably, no support for homeopathy as an efficacious treatment was found, and equally entirely predictably, Bell thought she had found such support. The fact that the results were published in obscure alt-med journals should really tell you everything. There is takedown of her “research” here.

For instance, Bell adheres to the (frankly incoherent) idea that homeopathy works through “nanoparticles.” Yes, it is quantum woo, and the “nanoparticles” described by Bell have nothing to do with, you know, nanoparticles as scientists understand them. The papers are, accordingly, full of technobabble, nebulous nonsense and appeals to magic, containing no measurable results or testable hypotheses whatsoever, to the extent that readers with a bit of background in relevant areas would suspect a Sokal hoax; you can read a deconstruction of one of them (coauthored with Mary Koithan) here.

Another article, “Adaptive network nanomedicine: an integrated model for homeopathic medicine” was published in the pseudojournal Frontiers of Bioscience in 2013; it is notable in particular for being coauthored with none other than Gary Schwarz.

Apparently Bell has risen to be come one of the movers and shakers in the homeopathic “research” community for her nonsensical nanoparticle rants (e.g. here). Previously, she participated in some court cases (Bahura et al. v. S.E.W. Investors et al.) as an expert witness, though her testimony, in particular on her “limbic kindling” hypothesis, was excluded as unreliable.

Diagnosis: Deranged, but truly scary. Despite the amazing level of bullshit and pseudoscience, and the level ridiculousness exhibited in her “scientific” work, Bell still manages to stay affiliated with an institution that apparently takes itself seriously as a research institution. It’s as exasperating as it is frightening.

Reparative therapy is the idea that homosexuality and transgenderism can and should be “cured.” There are plenty of such therapies out there, of course; none of them work, and even the guiding idea is, needless to say, based on pure, unsupportable bigotry, but that has, once again needless to say, not stopped several fundamentalist bigots from setting up reparative therapy “camps” where parents can send their children to be abused.

Raymond Bell is a pastor of the Cowboy Church of Virginia (yes!), and has his own version of reparative therapy: “Equine Assisted Psychotherapy” (EAP). Yup, Bell thinks gay kids can be turned straight by hanging around with horses (presumably not ponies). How it is supposed to work is a bit unclear, but according to Bell “homosexuality is actually a type of addiction. It is not ‘curable’ as a disease because it is a ‘choice driven’ by the person,” and EAP to identify how a person got “involved” in homosexuality to begin with; for example, because of rape, abandonment, lacking a male role model, abuse, and having low self-esteem. Then they ride and stroke horses and turn straight, apparently. So there.

Diagnosis: One cannot help but suspect a poe. On the other hand, Bell thinks he can “cure” gay men by inviting them over to stroke horses … we really don’t know.

Dickie Bell is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates (since 2010), representing the 20th district. He is most famous (to us, at least) for his efforts to get pseudoscience into Virginia schools through his 2014 creationism bill, in which he adopted the Discovery Institute’s “academic freedom” language, including “teach the controversy” and “strengths and weaknesses”. No, he didn’t actually mention evolution explicitly in the bill, but when the language is copied and pasted from the Academic Freedom Act, he doesn’t really have to. Well, Bell didclaim that his bill had been misunderstood after it started to draw some attention: “We certainly didn’t intend to create a firestorm with it,” said Bell, and indeed he probably didn’t – indeed, one suspects that the whole pointof the language of the bill was to avoid notice. Interestingly and encouragingly, the bill didn’t get any other sponsors, and died in the House Education Committee.

Diagnosis: Pretty typical, in other words, though it is a bit disconcerting to notice that Bell has worked as a highschool teacher himself.

The Robert Scott Bell show is a lunatic altmed conspiracy podcast on on the lunatic fringe “Republic Broadcasting Network”. The podcast is characterized by conspiracy theories that would make even the whale.to audience pause (well, not really) and the misuse of technical terminology to make incoherent rants on medicine sound plausible to those without any knowledge of medicine or physiology or command of the vocabulary whatsoever. Bell is a proponent of a range of quackery and crackpottery, from homeopathy to colloidal silver (to treat autism, no less), and a range of denialist positions, from anti-vaccination to HIV denialism. Apparently his claims have sounded sufficiently impressive to the reality-challenged for him to be given space and time e.g. at the quackfest Autism One. Mike Adams is a fan; Adams is also a fan of David Icke. (In fact, Adams shared his by now infamous McNugget of comical gold on Bell’s show).

We are not going to discuss the extent of Bell’s ridiculousness, but take his and one April Boden’s discussion of the HPV vaccine as an example of the style and content. Apparently HPV is a harmless virus that does not cause cervical cancer at all. Indeed, like most “viruses” the HPV is “expressed under cellular stress,” and is suppressed or made completely inactive in a healthy, well-regulated cell. So, cells which are nurtured and fed essential nutrients, like essential fatty acids, selenium and glutathione regularly stop the expression of “viruses.” Cells “which are dysregulated, starved for nutrients and intoxicated by chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals and neurotoxins often express viruses.” (You don’t need much background in medicine to recognize this as a word salad.) So why, then, does government recommend the HPV vaccine? Well, the truth is, apparently, that “California [the rant was broadcast when HPV was introduced there] is broke, and in order to make up its endless budget shortfall, it is selling its children into pharmaceutical slavery. Yes, it’s a conspiracy, just like HIV – not a fatal disease, according to the show, but an excuse to distribute lethal drugs like AZT to kill off parts of the population to save money. Yup, that’s reality as they see it over at Robert Scott Bell’s show.

And when Jon Stewart criticized anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, Bell didn’t take itlightly. According to Bell, Stewart is a “Nazi” waging war on “all of us who believe in health freedom and healing liberty,” and “he’s ready to take us out and put us in concentration camps,” since everyone who disagrees with Bell obviously and by default want to commit genocide.

Diagnosis: Hysterically insane, fuming, incoherently babbling tinfoil hatter. Now, Bell is apparently fringe even for the fringe, so his impact is presumably somewhat limited. Still.

Joel Belz is the founder of God’s World Publications, which includes the World Journalism Institute and WORLD Magazine, a biweekly fundamentalist tract. He is also a signatory to the Manhattan Declaration, and otherwise disconcertingly influential on the religious right.

To outsiders, the WORLD Magazine is most famous for its virulent anti-gay stance, and Belz himself has claimed that the “homosexual agenda” is “an extreme in-your-face challenge to God’s order.” When WORLD named ex-gay activist Alan Chambers the “2011 Daniel of the Year” (that was before Chambers disavowed reparative therapy), Belz accused supporters of marriage equality of being “forces of anarchy” who are “undefining the family.” “If heterosexual immorality is like driving 85 mph in a 35 mph zone,” said Belz, “then homosexual immorality is like going 85 mph the wrong way on a one-way street,” which is a good quote but oh, so wrong-headed.

Belz is, of course, also a creationist. Indeed, Belz has lamented how “the rise of Darwinism led step by step, discipline by discipline, cultural corner by cultural corner, to the exclusion of God from public discussion.” But it’s not only Darwin: “Darwin did it successfully in the field of science, Marx in economic theory, Freud in psychology and the social sciences, Dewey in education, and then almost everyone in politics.” Indeed, it seems, all of modern science is really a conspiracy against Jesus! Which shows that Freud, Marx and Darwin are really just three sides of the same coin. Now, Belz says that the huge disparity between what the public thinks about evolution and what the scientific community says is part of a larger problem, which is correct, but Belz suggests that the discrepancy means that scientists are therefore wrong because … well, conspiracy, mostly. In fact, evolution, according to Belz, is one of the “seven Big Lies we are all subjected to virtually all the time” by the media (which is part of the conspiracy against Jesus). Other lies include global warming, where, once again, the media just appeals to experts “instead of serious two-way arguments” with the public who tend (in Belz’s mind at least) to disagree with them. (The other items on his list of “lies” are homosexuality (he cites Richard Cohen’s

“research”), stem-cell research, Islam and pluralism.)

Diagnosis: We’ve seen a lot of fundamentalist denialists, but few people we have covered are so thoroughly and staunchly and zealously anti-science as Joe Belz. We should perhaps not exaggerate his influence, but it is certainly not negligible.

A.k.a. Dr. Ben

Yes, another one of those. Dr. Ben is considered one of the more notable – read that as “notorious” – Afrocentric scholars, one of those who take an Afrocentric perspective on history (which in itself is not silly, mind) to justify all sorts of desperate pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Dr. Ben began teaching Egyptology at Malcolm King College in the 70s, and subsequently at City College in New York City and as an adjunct professor at Cornell. He is the author of numerous books, primarily on ancient Nile Valley civilizations and their perceived impacts on Western cultures, where he argues that the original Jews were from Ethiopia and were Black Africans (Moses was black, for instance), while the white Jews later stole the Jewish faith and its customs. Evidence? Primarily existence of a conspiracy to suppress the truth about black supremacy, it seems.

To give an example of his “scholarship”: When European classics professor Mary Lefkowitz publicly confronted Ben-Jochannan about e.g. his claims that Aristotle stole his ideas from the Library of Alexandria, which black Africans used to collect their philosophical works: “how would that have been possible, when the library was not built until after his death?” Ben-Jochannan by telling those present that “they could and should believe what black instructors told them,” the audience accused Lefkowitz of racism, and concluded “that although they might think that Jews were all ‘hook-nosed and sallow faced,’ there were other Jews [back then] who looked like himself.” His works are riddled with inaccuracies, confusions and made-up stories like these, primarily because Dr. Ben doesn’t care about the facts as long as they serve his narrative.

Diagnosis: The pseudoscience that is promulgated under the heading of “afrocentrism” by people like Dr. Ben is rather disconcerting – and unfortunate (Molefi Kete Asante’s original point of reclaiming the narrative in his 1980 book is not silly, for instance). Yet, Dr. Ben’s myths and silliness seem, sadly, to have had quite a bit of impact.

Update: He actually passed away March this year.

Like many US states, Arizona has no inhibitions when it comes to electing crazies to positions of power. Take Ken Bennett, for instance. Bennett is the former president of the Arizona Senate, and was Secretary of State until 2015. He is also a hardcore birther. In 2012 he announced that although “I’m not a birther,” he was not convinced Barack Obama was really born in the United States, which makes one wonder what he thinks being a birther might involve (yes, we are pretending that he wasn't just lying and pandering). Since Bennett was in charge of running Arizona’s elections at that point he also threatened to keep the president off the ballot in the November election. How did he come to his birtherism? Well, apparently Bennett was following the lead of the state’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had ordered an investigation into the president’s birth certificate in 2011 that concluded that the document released by the White House is a forgery (based on the fact that he had already built his fringe career on the firm conclusion that it was, of course). Yes, that Joe Arpaio. Apparently Arizona’s Secretary of State lent his ear to Joe Arpaio. No shit.

After dimly realizing that he was being perceived as an embarrassment to his state by the rest of the world, Bennett feebly tried to back down.

Diagnosis: It may of course be that he was just trying to endear himself to Arizona’s substantial birther population. Still, he actually went there, and next time we may perhaps suggest he look into the possibility that political candidates may be disguised extraterrestrial reptilians, a view suggested by other independent researchers who are at least no crazier than Arpaio.

What is the link between polio, pesticides and cell phone radiation? You may think “none”, and you’d be right. Unfortunately, no one told Jonathan Benson (well, they probably did, but if you tell Benson anything he doesn’t already believe, he seems to conclude that you’re part of the conspiracy). Benson is a staff writer at NaturalNews, and though he doesn’t have the flair for hysterical commitment to glaring fallacies exhibited by Mike Adams, he is no less a champion of lunatic pseudoscience, denialism and conspiracy theories. The question above reflects the contents of Benson’s piece “History shows polio caused by pesticide exposure, then was eradicated by decline in DDT use.” It sure wasn’t vaccines, since vaccines don’t work and is part of a conspiracy; no, what caused polio was DDT, but for some reason the powers that be are trying to hide this for nefarious reasons. How does he get to the conclusion? Well, there is a correlation between the decline of polio and the decline in the use of DDT, therefore causation. Well, there is, in fact, not a correlation either, especially not when looking at what happened before the 1950s, but Benson is only interested in the parts that he can force to fit, not the ones that don’t.

NaturalNews has over the last few years, made some valiant attempts to expose the ADHD conspiracy with misunderstandings, incompetence, fallacies and threats of lizard people. Yes, according to NaturalNews, ADHD is a scam of Big Pharma and psychiatry (Jonathan Landsman), caused (according to Ethan Huff) by mercury from vaccines (which isn’t there, but you know – conspiracy), pesticides (Sharon Heller), and anesthesia (Peter Smith). Benson has, in that regard, helpfully provided us with a discussion of how it can be treated: homeopathic cures (“work better than Ritalin” according to JB Bardot) and eating organic food. Evidence? Hah, NaturalNews saw through and rejected the Big Pharma brainwashing mantra “back up your claims by evidence” right away, and they haven’t looked back.

Diagnosis: Idiot

You remember the Texas Board of Education, of course. In their creationist heydays, various nationally famous denialists and local lunatics would both launch attacks on biology, physics and history in manners that would draw national and even international attention, but the side of science generally won out in the end. When the State Board of Education‘s public hearing on new science textbooks for Texas public schools finally began in 2013, the creationists were unable to mount any serious attacks anymore. So all looked well for a while – until it became clear that oil and gas industry interests had instead decided to attack the only environmental science textbook up for adoption by the state board.

So during the hearings Becky Berger, who identified herself a geologist and oil and gas professional, tried to argue that high schools shouldn’t teach environmental science classes at all. And during the hearings she launched a rabid attack on the environmental science textbook under consideration, claiming that it is filled with factual errors on topics like pollution potentially caused by fracking and the problem of carbon emissions. The attack was somewhat weakened by the fact that she provided no actual written documentation to back up her claims, and failed to even produce a list of the alleged errors so that the publisher could respond to her claims. Her attacks are discussed in some detail here.

The state’s official review teams had not identified any factual errors in the textbook. Nevertheless, some board members thought that Berger (who had not been part of the review process) was more credible. Of course, Berger somehow didn’t remember to tell the board that she is a Republican candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, information that would have been strangely relevant.

She wasn’t alone. Throughout the day of the hearings, various wingnut activists and websites had been urging “grassroots” to call on the state board to reject the science textbooks up for adoption, especially the environmental science textbook. Honorable mention to Alice Linahan of the for-profit political outfit Voices Empower, who argued that the textbooks were a threat to Texas’ oil/natural gas industry.

Diagnosis: Denialist wingnut. Yes, another one, and Berger is not afraid to use subversion and trickery to get her way.

Jerry Bergevin enjoyed a brief stint in the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 2010 to 2012, and although he managed to do only a limited amount of actual damage, he sure tried to present himself as the dumbest wingnut in any state house in the US. In 2011, for instance, he submitted to the NH legislature what may very well be the dumbest piece of legislation submitted the last 50 years; the proposed bill adds the following to the state law:

“Theory of Evolution. Require evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists’ political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.”

The language is illuminating in quite a number of ways. First, Bergevin apparently think of it as some kind of gotcha, for in Bergevin’s mind biology is all about theology, and evolution = atheism. And Marxism. And probably radical Islam as well. Second, and this is a standard cognitive obstacle, wingnut (and moonbat) ideologists are often unable to perceive the difference between science and politics – acceptance of scientific theories and rejections of others is not a matter of evidence but tribalism, and which scientific theories should be included in science education should be determined in part by the scientists’ views on economy and social issues. Third, and relatedly, people like Bergevin have a tendency to view science as a leftist plot – especially when they don’t like the conclusions; and since they fail to understand the significance of evidence, the science can equally be dismissed on political grounds.

Indeed, Bergevin emphasized that he didn’t get it: “I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It’s a worldview and it’s godless,” said Bergevin, and blamed the acceptance of evolution for the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the 1999 Columbine shooting.

He wasn’t alone in the NH legislature; another creationist bill, inspired by the Academic Freedom strategy and barely coherent, was introduced by Gary Hopper and John Burt, and is described here and here. “My taxpayer dollars pay science teachers to teach science, not philosophy. Let’s hope lawmakers don’t try to get in the way,” said the good New Hampshire legislators. Fortunately neither bill was successful.

In 2012 Bergevin introduced a bill that would mandate the teaching of the Bible in public schools. He didn’t appreciate the NH legislature’s approval of marriage equality either, declaring that they “just legalized the rectum as a sexual organ” (yes, you ought to think about how silly that statement is for a second) and warning “Christian citizens of the United States” that “Opposition to the Homosexual/Lesbian Political Agenda will be met with every and all conceivable actions be it criminal or even out and out murder to accomplish the complete suppression of your rights in our new world order. (P.S. Armageddon is the cure for the Homosexual/Lesbian pathology including every other vice & sin. – & may God bring it on‼!”

There’s gotta be something in the water in New Hampshire – their state legislature consistently appears to be (possibly) the most batshit crazy in the US, and that takes some effort.

Diagnosis: This will continue as long as certain people (apparently) view mindrot as a positive quality in the people they elect to legislative bodies. Bergevin never got a second term, but at least he used what he did get to show everyone his lack of reasoning abilities, critical thinking skills and aptitude for facts and evidence.

Though far from the loudest or most colorful, Brian Berman is, in fact, one of the movers and shakers of the medical quackery movement in the US. Berman is a Professor of Family Medicine and director of the University of Maryland School of Medicine Center for Integrative Medicine, a place to avoid at all costs that offers a range of absolute cargo cult-like, faith-based nonsense such as homeopathy, reflexology, and reiki. Though he has real medical training, Berman is also trained in a variety of bullshit – he is for instance “trained in homeopathy and has a membership in the Faculty of Homeopathy, has a diploma from the London School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and is a licensed acupuncturist,” and his career has been dedicated to “evaluating the efficacy, safety and cost-effectiveness of complementary and alternative medicine” – that is, to pseudoscientific validations of techniques and treatment regimes that demonstrably do not work (there is an excellent discussion of his career in this report on an interview he did with fawning chiropractor Daniel Redwood). Berman is the principal investigator of a NIH specialized center grant for the study of complementary medicine in the treatment of arthritis and related disorders, principal investigator on a number of large NIH and Department of Defense-funded clinical trials on modalities such as acupuncture and mind/body therapies, and has also been on the advisory committee of NCCAM, board member of the Institute of Medicine’s panel on woo, founder and field coordinator for the complementary medicine field of the Cochrane Collaboration, and chair of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, the mission of which is “moving the boundaries of the existing field of medicine to include the wisdom inherent in healing the ‘whole person’ – mind, body and spirit.”

Lots of worthless credentials, in other words, but they amply illustrate what Berman is up to – he is not the kind of pseudoscientist who comes up with new treatments or anecdotes, but the kind who works behind the scenes to boost the reputation and influence of bullshit, and to influence policy makers. One of his most noteworthy techniques is to describe diet, exercise, counseling, psychotherapy, and hypnotherapy as “alternative practices”. There is, of course, nothing “alternative” in any of them, but by including them among “alternative practices” Berman can argue that mainstream MDs already accept many “alternative” practices, which will again serve to legitimize the true woo he’s peddling – in particular homeopathy, which Berman will happily promote in particular, despite the fact that it is demonstrably useless for anything as well as grounded in the kind of incoherent metaphysics usually associated with cartoon witchcraft.

Berman has, in fact, managed to get a credulous, pseudoscientific article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, no less, promoting acupuncture and deeply steeped in ancient mythology; Berman even agrees that the ideas are based on religious dogma rather than sensitivity to evidence and reality. Given the protocol, the study is utterly worthless from a scientific point of view, of course, but it does, once again, serve Berman’s efforts to boost the apparent credibility of quackery. Another worthless acupuncture meta-analysis, by Berman and research associate Eric Manheimer, may not have been published in such a respected venue, but is very telling when it comes to the “value” of acupuncture as a medical technique.

As for other achievments, Berman must for instance be held largely responsible for getting Congress to recognize October 7-13, 2013, as Quackery Week (not their term), after a resolution submitted by Barbara Mikulski (D-MD).

Diagnosis: One of the biggest threats to health and well-being in the US; enormously influential and completely delusional.

SafeMinds is an advocacy group dedicated (to a large extent) to antivaxx lobbying and, in particular, to the utterly discredited hypothesis that mercury causes autism. And, for people with little aptitude for scientific evidence, little time for critical thinking, and a stake in the outcome, no study, however rigorous, is going to change their minds (as the name suggests, the group is entirely impervious to evidence).

Sallie Bernard is the executive director of SafeMinds, and a committed promoter of denialism and pseudoscience. A fine case in point is her comments on an article concerning a seven-year study of 1,047 children who received mercury-containing vaccines as infants funded by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention – which, of course, found no indication of developmental delays. As the authors of the study pointed out, “[a] majority of the selected families declined to participate or could not be located, and we were able to enroll only 30% of the subjects included for recruitment. Therefore, our findings may have been influenced by selection bias.” Bernard interpreted this as meaning that the study was biased and worthless. Of course, as the authors point out, the selection bias would almost certainly have biased the study in favor of harm, but Bernard missed that. And Bernard was, in fact, a consultant for the study and helped contribute to its design; but you know: when it nevertheless failed to show what she had already determined that it ought to show, what can she do?

Most of her errors are, however, even more obvious. When a major report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), entitled “Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality” showed that vaccines are safe, she went full Orwellian (including conspiracy mongering), once again demonstrating that no evidence, study or science will ever, no matter what, make her and her organization change their mind about the alleged causal links between mercury and autism. After all, Bernard herself published a rather infamous paper supporting a link in the pseudojournal (yes!) Medical Hypotheses back in 2001. And yes, her tactics are the same as always: conspiracies, shifting goalposts and pharma shill gambits abound. An illuminating discussion of her and SafeMinds’ techniques can be found here.

Diagnosis: A major player in the anti-vaccine movement, Bernard makes sure to employ all the familiar canards, all the obfuscation, and a complete lack of criticial thinking skills to dismiss any evidence (i.e. all evidence) against what she very zealously believes for reasons that have little to do with evidence. Dangerous mumpsimus.

Quackery has gradually been infecting teaching institutions and hospitals all across the US as a result of deliberate marketing strategies and wealthy donors, and the developments are a cause for concern. Now quackery has found an unexpected ally. Mark Bertolini is gushing over a range of dieatary woo, acupuncture, naturopathy and craniosacral therapy, and he’s got the usual anecdotes to back up his claims: “We know this stuff works. We believe in this, it’s just building the evidence base,” says Bertolini. That’s right. Even though the evidence is missing he knows what the correct conclusion is going to be; now the question is just one of shoehorning and carefully selecting the data into serving the dogma. How committed is he? Well, Bertolini is a true believer in naturopathy, to the extent that he was the keynote speaker at the New York Association of Naturopathic Physicians’ annual conference.

Why does it matter? The thing, of course, is that Bertolini is CEO of Aetna. One wonders how his commitment to sheer pseudoscience will be treated by its stakeholder; health insurance companies have not exactly been rushing to cover magical cures based on medieval metaphysics. Let’s just say that if Bertolini is going to use his position to alter the policies of the major health insurance companies, he could have found a more praiseworthy target.

Diagnosis: I suppose Bertolini well represents the kind of conclusions people may draw if they have no understanding of science or critical thinking. But if you are going to use your powers as a CEO of a major health insurance company to improve the world I can hardly imagine a less worthy area of focus.

F. Kenton Beshore is the senior pastor of Mariners Church, California – which appears to be something of a megachurch – and World Bible Society President. But most of all, Beshore is a hysterically insane, rabidly fuming, total fundamentalist. As certain types of fundies are wont to do, Beshore has predicted the endtimes. In particular, Beshore bases his prediction on Hal Lindsey’s suggestion that Jesus could return within one Biblical generation (40 years) of the founding of Israel in 1948, but has claimed – after 1988 came and went – that the definition of a Biblical generation was incorrect and should actually have been 70–80 years, placing the Second Coming of Jesus between 2018 and 2028, and the Rapture by 2021 the latest.

Seeing this as a great opportunity for evangelism, Beshore is particularly targeting Jewish people, hoping that they will read the books containing Biblical prophecies about Jesus’ first and second comings and become some of the “144,000 Billy Grahams” described in Revelation 7 that will lead billions to Christ during the Tribulation.

Diagnosis: Another Harold Camping-wannabe, it seems, and Beshore is just as old, stupid and fanatical. It’s pretty depressing that some people actually listen to the incoherent ramblings of this angry, deranged and confused old fop but it seems that at least some people do.

A minor but rather obnoxious conspiracy theorist, John Best is the guy behind the blog Hating Autism, in which he denies the existence of autism and argues that the condition can be cured through various types of woo. Best believes that autism is the same as mercury poisoning, which according to him became epidemic with the invention of thimerosal – in cases of autism where thimerosal-preserved vaccines were demonstrably not given, Best blames dental amalgam fillings, which is possibly even sillier (though not by much). The cure for mercury poisoning, according to Best, is chelation, which is not the case but according to Best has produced immediate (but non-verified) results. Accordingly, he seems to view the Geiers as heroes, even though Mark Geier lost his license to practice medicine in several states due to his chelation therapy. And that, for Best, is one entry to insane conspiracy-land.

According to Best, the “truth about autism” is being hidden. Best claims that there exists a record of a meeting in 1999 where Big Pharma agreed to continue to poison children with vaccines – and that all politicians around the world are aware of this but paid off. He has accordingly called for the arrest of politicians by the FBI. He also subscribes to Illuminati and Rothschild family conspiracy theories, to the extent that even the loons at Age of Autism have been somewhat wary of allying themselves to him – Best has accordingly accused them of supporting the continued poisoning of children by failing to act on his conspiracies.

After the Sandy Hook shootings, Best speculated that the perpetrator, Adam Lanza, had Asperger’s syndrome and subsequently that everyone with Asperger’s syndrome were potential “psycho killers” that should be forcibly cured via chelation. He also blamed the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and President Obama for the shootings because they don’t listen to him.

He has furthermore tried to ask his readers to vote for him as President of the US and for Senate, but unfortunately mainstream media is corrupt and won’t give him a voice.

Diagnosis: A minor but particularly vicious player on the nonsense side. His influence is probably limited.

#1359: Lindy Beam

#1360: Martin “Red” Beckman & William J. Benson

#1361: Bruce Bedinger

#1362: Al Bedrosian

#1363: Pieder Beeli

#1364: Iris Bell

#1365: Raymond Bell

#1366: Richard Bell

#1367: Robert Scott Bell

#1368: Joel Belz

#1369: Yosef Ben-Jochannan

#1370: Ken Bennett

#1371: Jonathan Benson

#1372: Becky Berger

#1373: Jerry Bergevin

#1374: Brian Berman

#1375: Sallie Bernard

#1376: Mark Bertolini

#1377: F. Kenton Beshore

#1378: John Best