Encyclopedia of American Loons

Perhaps better known as the character Amy Farrah Fowler on the – frankly rank anti-science – TV show The Big Bang Theory, Bialik is quickly rising to become one of the leading voices of pseudoscience and denialism in real life. Bialik does, indeed, have a degree in neuroscience, and, when combined with her character in the aforementioned TV show, that apparently lends her a bit of credibility as a spokesperson for various scientific issues, opportunities she uses to spread misinformation, quackery and evil, in particular anti-vaccine conspiracies and support for homeopathy. It should be a cause for concern that she was invited as the 2014 featured speaker at the National Science Teachers’ Association conference.

Bialik is, for instance, a celebrity spokesperson for the Holistic Moms Network, an organization promoting “natural” parenting, where “natural” apparently means embracing every form of “natural” woo yet invented, sponsored by a range of quack institutions including Boiron (manufacturer of the homeopathic remedy for flu known as Oscillococcinum), the Center for Homeopathic Education, and the National Center for Homeopathy – heck, their advisory board include Lauren Feder, Barbara Loe Fisher, Peggy O’Mara, publisher of Mothering Magazine, “integrative” pediatrician Lawrence Rosen, and Sherri Tenpenny.

Most importantly of all, though, Bialik is anti-vaccine (though she has tried to deny it), primarily – it seems – because she views vaccines as “unnatural”. Somehow, though, she justifies not vaccinating her kids because it is, according to her, a “personal decision”, even though not vaccinating is a personal decision in the sense that texting while driving is a personal decision.

Diagnosis: A sad case for reason, science, and critical thinking. Apparently a real science education is no guarantee for understanding how reason or evidence works. Hysterically lunatic, and dangerous.

Paula Ruth Bickle runs – or at least used to run – the 5-day-a-week hour-long, Internet-based “Dr. Paula” radio show, where she would provide usually wrong medical and nutritional advice to people who call about serious health concerns. Many people are, in fact, adviced to treat themselves with products from American Longevity (founded by quack Joel Wallach), a multilevel marketing company where Bickle and her husband Howard are distributors. Of course, to get a fit between patient and product, Bickle also suggests that people should distrust prevailing medical opinions.

Bickle promotes herself as a qualified nutritionist, a nutritional biochemist, a distinguished educator, a groundbreaking researcher, a consumer advocate, and an authority on many health matters. It is worth mentioning, then, that her “Ph.D.” is from the infamous diploma mill Columbia Pacific University. Her CV does not state who issued her Master’s Degree, but since she has only two years of college, it is not unlikely that we’re talking an unaccredited institution. She also lists an impressive amount of research experience, though PubMed lists no publications. In particular, she claims that her research resulted in “moving DMPS to the allowed list of bulk compounds that can be used in the United States,” which is interestingly obviously false; DMPS is not approved, and is accordingly illegal to market for the prevention or treatment of any disease.

Her practices in Washington and Oregon are a long story of woo, chelation therapy promotion deception and Bickle being charged with practicing medicine without a license: in 1996 in Washington and in 1999 in Oregon (and again in 2000; relevant documents can be accessed here). She appears to have stopped now, but continues to provide the same kind of advice she did before through her Internet services.

A more detailed description can be found here. Fortunately, the quackwatch entry is the first hit on a search for “Paula Bickle” on Google.

Diagnosis: A sort of small-time Kevin Trudeau, it seems, though it is of course possible that Bickle is entirely honest but just so severely deluded that she actually thinks she may be helping anyone.

Perhaps he is a small fish in the grand scheme of things, but Mark C. Biedebach is still worth mentioning. Biedebach is Professor Emeritus of Physiology at the California State University, Long Beach, which superficially might make him sound like a scientist. His actual research record is pretty slim, however (old papers in Acupuncture & electro-therapeutics research just don’t impress us, though they did apparently impress the people at the “Lost teachings of Atlantis” website). Instead, Biedebach has apparently used his credentials to lend a sheen of legitimacy to a range of denialist views, anti-science, religious fundamentalist causes, and conspiracy theories.

For instance, Biedebach is a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s pitiful petition A Scientific Dissent to Darwinism. And at present Biedebach appears to be affiliated with Caroline Crocker’s denialist organization the American Institute for Technology and Science Education, a cargo cult think tank devoted to religious fundamentalism, creationism and global warming denialism. Biedebach’s own contributions to creationism consist of trite, old, often-refuted ID talking points, and they – as well as his endorsement of Stephen Meyer’s latest book – are evaluated here.

At present, Biedebach appears to be writing a book titled Evolution is a Weasel Word.

Diagnosis: No, Biedebach. The weasel words here are “Professor Emeritus of Physiology”. Biedebach is an apologetic for fundamentalist religion, and his understanding of science is, despite his apparent credentials, sorely deficient.

We’re a bit unsure about this one, but we suppose he’s worth a mention. Robert Bigelow is a hotel and aerospace entrepreneur; in particular, he is the owner of the hotel chain Budget Suites of America and the founder of Bigelow Aerospace, the latter of which is particularly known for launching two experimental space modules, Genesis I and Genesis II, and for their plans for full-scale manned space habitats to be used as orbital hotels, research labs and factories. Bigelow is currently building the BEAM module for launch to the International Space Station, with launch planned for 2015 on the eighth SpaceX cargo resupply mission.

Indeed, Bigelow has done quite a bit for science, including funding for plenty of valuable research. However, Bigelow also has a penchant for pseudoscience and bullshit, and much of his money have gone into research (not particularly scientific) on alien abductions, cattle mutilations and suchlike. Indeed, Bigelow himself is president and founder of the National Institute for Discovery Science, which focuses on precisely the phenomena mentioned, and in the course of realizing his space adventure dreams he has contracted MUFON with potentially very large sums of money for the pursuit of first-hand UFO information. Indeed, longtime UFO activist Ed Komarek has suggested that Bigelow’s goal is nothing less than an “alien reengineering project.” Bigelow’s proposal, at least, is to generously fund the efforts of MUFON investigators to enable them to respond quickly to alleged UFO incidents, contracting plenty of scientists to investigate the claims and so on.

But why does it matter that Bigelow spends his money on whatever bullshit he might fancy? For one thing, it (obviously) ties up resources that could have been used infinitely better; elsewhere moreover, such efforts tend to result in lending a sheen of legitimacy to the crazy, as for instance in the case of the Robert Bigelow’s endowed Chair of Consciousness Studies at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, the goal of which was to teach courses on such subjects as dreams, meditation, hypnosis, out-of-body experiences, telepathy, and drug-induced altered states of consciousness. Bigelow pulled the plug on the program in 2002, but during its existence it did much to promote the pseudoscience of its directors, parapsychologist Charles Tart and later Raymond Moody, who surely have done quite a bit to popularize this kind of cargo cult science. Now, it is not entirely clear why the program was axed, but perhaps Bigelow came to realize that it produced nothing of scientific value whatsoever?

Diagnosis: I am reluctant to accuse Bigelow of being an outright loon, and there is little doubt that he has made many positive contributions to science and civilization. But he has also done a bit to facilitate the promulgation of ridiculous pseudoscience – and at least the effort to give such pseudoscience a sheen of legitimacy – and although his negative contributions may not outweigh his positive ones, he probably merits a mention.

If you take a quick look at the courtcases involving creationism in public schools in the US, one name tends to pop up so often that it is hard to avoid giving him an entry in our Encyclopedia. Wendell Bird is an Atlanta-based attorney who concentrates primarily on litigation and in tax laws affecting exempt organizations. Now, of course any defendant deserves an attorney, and defending creationism in public schools is as such not itself an indication of lunacy, but Bird definitely seems to have a personal interest in the creationism-evolution debate, and that interest is not guided by reason, evidence or science.

Oh, what the heck. Bird is a former staff attorney for the Institute of Creation Research and fellow of the Discovery Institute, for crying out loud, and the Discotute’s current strategies for getting creationism into public schools are really a continuation of Bird’s tactics from the 1980s (this timeline of creationism is illuminating). Bird is, in other words, among the founders of the Intelligent Design movement and its outreach strategies (no, Bird is not a scientist, but the Intelligent Design movement has, contrary to what they assert, never been about science but about getting their unscientific musings into public schools).

So, for instance, Bird defended Louisiana’s “equal time” law in the famous 1985 Edwards v. Aguillard, which was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals and eventually by the U.S. Supreme Court (good resource here); during the case Bird, interestingly, pushed the “academic freedom” strategy hard, arguing that it is “a basic concept of fairness, teaching all the evidence” (never mind that the “evidence” procured in favor of creationism was not evidence for creationism in any case). He also took the familiar crackpot trick of quote-mining to new levels; apparently with the help of Paul Nelson, he assembled a massive 500-page brief that consisted almost entirely of thousands of quotes from authorities on every topic bearing on “creation science”, from astrophysics to biology to philosophy to religion. Given the obvious dishonesty involved, the brief failed to convince the judges, but Bird later turned his brief into a large, two-volume book, The Origin of Species Revisited.

It all began in the 1970s; in 1978, then Yale Law School student (under Robert Bork) Bird wrote an article arguing that the U.S. Constitution required the teaching of “scientific creationism” in public schools, an argument he further developed for the Institute for Creation Research to a resolution (authored by Bird) “concerning balanced presentation of alternate scientific theories of origins,” intended as a model for local school boards that wished to adopt a policy of teaching creationism. That strategy was then the basis for the defense in MacLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, a case where Bird was the primary legal advisor for the anti-science rabble. But the resolution was also the model for all later creationist bills and “academic freedom” bills used to try to get religiously-motivated science denial taught as science in public schools (e.g. this one and these), and Bird’s defense deliberately tried to gloss over explicitly religious or Biblical language to make everything sound more scientifically acceptable – instead of God’s creation of species, he would talk about their “abrupt appearance” and explicit references to the Bible would be removed – the very same strategy pushed by religious fundamentalists under the heading “Intelligent Design” to this day.

In 2007 Bird led a notorious lawsuit against the University of California, brought on by some private Christian high schools (Association of Christian Schools International et al., or ACSI) against the U.C. because the U.C. doesn’t give credit for certain courses taught at these private schools (described in some detail here). The courses in question included “science” courses that used Bob Jones University textbooks full of fake fundamentalist pseudoscience. During the case Bird applied his usual tactics, including radical quote-mining (it’s pretty striking that an experienced attorney would fail to realize that quote-mining is an exceptionally bad idea in a court case, where the references usually will be checked) and – but of course – persecution complexes: By not treating denialist pseudoscience as equivalent to science, the U.C. is persecuting Christians, the way Bird sees things; also the fact that “[t]he senior reviewer is Buddhist, and the reviewer who handled religious school science courses and drafted most policies is Jewish …” is evidence of anti-Christian bias. Needless to say, perhaps, the ACSI lost, but their tactics still reveals a mindset that is pretty scary.

Diagnosis: One of the movers and shakers behind anti-science legislations in the US, and arguably one of the founders of the modern Intelligent Design movement. A scary and hugely influential figure, in other words.

Timothy Birdnow is a property manager in St. Louis associated with Tea Party Nation, who has somehow managed to make a name for himself on the delusional right, with all the pseudoscience and denialism you would possibly expect from someone like that. He thinks global warming is a hoax, homosexuality is evil, evolution is bunk, and that history is all about the ascent of Christian America.

Birdnow is, for instance, a hardcore creationist – he got an article published by the ridiculous webmag The American Thinker, the “scientific” content of which is pretty much the dozen most inane creationist PRATTs ever constructed and which are so legendarily stupid and wrong that it is almost hard to fathom, even for a creationist. Just one example:

“Furthermore, we don’t even see crossovers between the 5 Phylla (classes of animals) anywhere, at any time. Where are the giant mammaried mosquitos? Where are the snakes which deliver live young? I haven’t seen too many feathered fish around lately! The species remain distinct, and they shouldn’t if Darwin is correct. Consider the Permian Triassic Extinction, the so called ‘Great Dying’, 250 million years ago,in which 9 out of 10 marine creatures and 7 out of 10 land creatures died. Before the Great Dying five phylla walked the Earth; insects, mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles. After the Great Dying we had the same 5.”

I don’t think he would have impressed any biologists. Indeed, I don’t think most biologists would really believe it would be possible to write something so hysterically wrong and stupid if one tried really hard – and yes, that’s the quality of his points. Birdnow, however, blithely used the argument to conclude that all scientists must be wrong. He followed up with a response to critics (“Darwinists Launch Jihad Against Birdblog”), again being so obviously factually wrong about absolutely everything that it beggars belief; the critics were, in other words, not uniformly satisfied that their concerns had been satisfactorily addressed. Not that Birdnow would ever know. Here is a discussion of his comments on a 2009 creationist bill submitted in Missouri. It’s precisely up to his usual standards, and includes the Piltdown man, peppered moths, failure to understand the difference between laws and theories, as well as informing us that “Copernicus was a priest” and “Galileo was a devout man.” Indeed.

His argument that atheists are destroying Western civilization is hardly less delusional. He has also blamed the Sandy Hook shooting on teachers, called for schools to hire George Zimmerman, and exposed progressives as “hypocrites” for supporting portion control and gay rights: “If controlling the kinds of food and portion sizes that children are allowed is a state-sanctioned function, then shouldn't controlling homosexual imagery and experience be likewise?” asks Birdnow (the, uh, “argument” seems to have originated with David Barton). Completely without connecting the dots, he also warns that “the current ‘gay fad’” is part of “the advancement of socialism” and leads to “greater government control.” Yes, the argument is self-undermining, but Birdnow would probably not have cared if he had noticed, which he probably never will.

Diagnosis: One of the most ridiculous creationists on the rightwing, and that says quite a bit. This is Ray Comfort-levels without the style. Marvelous.

Having scientific credentials is an indicator but no guarantee of scientific literacy, and Phillip Bishop is a case in point. Bishop is a Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Alabama, and has some publications in that field. He is, however, also a religious fundamentalist, and his commitment to fundamentalism has led him to reject science, reason and evidence as factors that will inform what he chooses to believe.

Bishop is, for instance, a creationist. He is a signatory to the feeble Discovery Institute petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism, but is most famous for his practice of teaching “optional” classes with a “Christian perspective” for his exercise physiology students, where he would promote creationism in particular. When his employers at the University asked him to stop, Bishop promptly took them to court and lost. Of course, Bishop’s court case has subsequently (but of course) been widely used by creationists as a limitation of Academic freedom, since it is obviously a matter of academic freedom when a professor is denied the opportunity to use his classrooms to forcefeed his students his particular religious fancies.

He has also written a series of truly inane anti-science screeds for various fundamentalist venues (e.g. here).

Diagnosis: And as usual, the denialists promote their denialism through subversion, dishonesty and lying. Bishop may not be among the most influential, but he is anti-science, and uses whatever means he can to convert others to his cause.

Richard H. “Dick” Black is, since 2012, a Virginia State senator, after successfully portraying his opponent as a “moderate” – and who would want a moderate character rather than a fuming, batshit crazy Taliban fundie as their candidate? Not the good people of Virginia’s 32^ndDistrict, apparently.

Black is probably most famous for his continued opposition to making spousal rape a crime, citing the impossibility of convicting a husband accused of raping his wife “when they’re living together, sleeping in the same bed, she’s in a nightie, and so forth,” and that changing the law could cause a man “enormous fear of the damage to his reputation” if his wife ever filed a false rape claim. Since that’s what really matters. But he’s also somewhat famous for his early 90s time on the Loudoun County Library Board in Northern Virginia, where he wrote a policy blocking pornography on library computers. The move ended up drawing national attention when a First Amendment litigation against the Loudoun County Library Board struck down the policies, costing the county $100,000. During the period when Black was on the council, Loudoun librarians say they only ever received one complaint about porn on their computers – against Black himself, as he was “researching” the background for his policy.

But Black isn’t just a one-trick pony. In 2003, Black led a fight to prevent the erection of a statue of Lincoln on the Tredegar Iron Works, a Civil War-era foundry that supplied the Confederate army with cannons, claiming that “[p]utting a statue to [Lincoln] there is sort of like putting the Confederate flag at the Lincoln Memorial.” It really isn’t, but you know.

He also has a solution to school shootings. After Columbine Black tried to go to the roots of the problem by suggesting a legislation requiring Virginia students to address their teachers as “Ma’am” and “Sir” since “[t]he counterculture revolution of the ‘70s took the war into the classroom. Before that time, public schools were a model of decorum, and then we began this thing we’ve seen play out at Columbine.” He didn’t cite any research.

He is also afraid of zeh gays (surprise), and has championedlegislation to ban same-sex couples from adopting children, claiming that gay men and women are more prone to violence, alcoholism, and suicide. When it was clear the bill would fail, he amended it to require adoption agents to investigate whether the prospective parents were “known to engage in current voluntary homosexual activity.” In 2003 he also tried to pass legislation preventing same-sex couples to apply for low-interest home loans from the Virginia Housing and Development Authority – the current policy, he said, “subsidize[s] sodomy and adultery” and promotes “a radical homosexual agenda.” And in 2005 he urged his constituents to picket a local high school that had staged a student’s one-act play about a gay high school football player, since portraying same-sex relationships in “a cute or favorable light” put children at risk of contracting HIV. “If I’m the last person on the face of this Earth to vote against legalizing sodomy,” said Black, “I’ll do it.”

Diagnosis: Charming fellow, and we’d recommend people to stay well clear of those who actually vote for him.

Joshua Black is a former street preacher who in 2014 sought to represent a Tampa Bay district in the Florida House. In the process he managed to draw some national attention to himself for the love and compassion he apparently accumulated during his previous career. Though many Tea Party candidates have called for Obama’s impeachment, Black went a little bit further and called for Obama’s execution – in particular, “I’m past impeachment. It’s time to arrest and hang him high,” apparently because he doesn’t care for military service members and because he “sought to have Bradley Manning and Eric [sic] Snowden executed for treason when they didn’t kill anyone,” a claim that Black did not back up by references. Also Jesus, apparently.

In fairness, when a supporter responded to his suggestion to hang Obama with “drawn and quartered always worked for the Brits!” Black politely declined to have the president torn apart by horses. “Not here, though. That's cruel and unusual punishment. Leave that in the Dark Ages,” said Black.

But it’s not only Obama. Indeed, all Democratic politicians should be prepared for such a fate after the second American Revolution. After all, Democrats hope to “make us their slaves” and “eagerly sought the death penalty for George W. Bush.” He also pointed out that a bill backed by eight Democratic congressmen to end the death penalty in treason cases is proof that “they know that they could face these charges themselves – if there is a full revolution in America – and they want to leave an opening for them to return to power after people have forgotten their atrocities, ala Nelson Mandela.”

Diagnosis: Even other wingnut candidates distanced themselves from Black (well, not the RenewAmerica crowd). That seems to take some crazy on his part these days.

We’ve covered a respectable number of anti-gay nutters here, but Paul Blair still manages to impress, with a deranged lack of insight and critical thinking skills to challenge the worst. Blair is pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, a 2011 candidate for the Oklahoma State Senate, and rabid, long-standing anti-equality activist (though he tried, in 2011, to portray himself as someone who just happened to end up being opposed to Oklahoma’s legislation supporting anti-discrimination measures and subsequently receiving death and bomb threats from gays, Blair has been involved for a long time).

Blair is a close ally of Rep. Sally Kern, and a speaker at the “Rally for Sally” where he showed support for her after she said that gays represent a bigger threat to America than terrorism (since gay rights made Kern a victim, of course). He is the founder of Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ, head of the Reclaiming America For Christ organization, and a participant in what was officially an anti-hate crimes “Rally for Religious Freedom” where anti-gay activists vowed never to stop fighting homosexuality and challenged the Justice Department to prosecute them. Indeed, Blair and his organization is behind a video called “The Criminalization of Christianity” in which he warns that hate crimes legislation (“Pedophile Protection Act”, according to Blair) would “make it possible for a pastor to be prosecuted for doing nothing more than preaching a Biblical sermon on Sunday”.

Yup, a standard, hardcore Liar-for-Jesus, who doesn’t think twice about lying through his teeth to his congregation if that can garner him support for his hatred of homosexuals. According to Blair, equal rights is persecution of Christians, but I don’t think he even believes that himself. You can probably imagine his reaction when the courts struck down Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage, but the details are still fascinatingly lunatic: Blair called on state government officials to defy federal court rulings on issues like marriage, and that they could do this because “the republic is officially dead” as a result of overreaching government officials and judges – according to Blair the courts “have no authority” to strike down unconstitutional state laws. Yes, Blair only understands the Constitution when it suits him.

And according to Blair American “culture is under attack” as “we’ve gone from True Grit to Brokeback Mountain,” and it is “the Devil” who is leading the attack on the “realms of the home and the church” through the government, and marriage equality is apparently his tool. Ineed, if you advocate secularism or gay rights, you’re a minion of Satan, says Blair, and gay rights will bring about communist, Satanic dominion (it’s a conspiracy). And the fight against equality is, according to Blair, just like the fights against slavery and Hitler, since not allowing Christians to discriminate against gay people is just like enslaving an entire race of people and committing genocide. Good to have people like Blair to put things in a proper perspective.

Diagnosis: The Platonic idea of a liar for Jesus, Blair cares little about truth, accuracy or reason; instead he’ll use whatever insanity, lie or misrepresentation he can to further his hate-based agenda. A repugnant excuse for a human being, in other words.

Acupuncture is woo. It’s among the most familiar and widespread forms of altmed, and many otherwise reasonable people have been mislead into thinking that it might have something going for it. But despite the barrage of newspaper articles (based on press releases regarding poorly designed studies or worthless metastudies) claiming otherwise, it doesn’t; acupuncture produces no results beyond placebo. So, someone who promotes themselves as a “board certified Acupuncturist” is probably not someone you should turn to for medical advice. Jill Blakeway is precisely that, as well as a “clinical herbalist” and, according to her website, “former Professor of Traditional Asian Medicine” at Mercy College (which, given that her education consists of a “four-year M.S. In Traditional Oriental Medicine”, is rather striking). Pure woo, in other words.

Blakeway is the founder of the YinOva Center in New York City and the author of Sex Again: Recharging your libido and Making Babies: A Proven 3-Month Program for Maximum Fertility and of The Fertility Plan (with Sami David). She also teaches Gynecology and Obstetrics in … the Doctoral Program at Pacific College of Oriental medicine in San Diego. That is, needless to say, not a respectable educational institution. According to her website, “Jill’s gift is for taking a 3500-year-old system of medicine and making its deep wisdom speak to twenty first century New Yorkers.” Apparently she claims to be able to help patients with “PMS, migraines, menopause, low libido, digestive issues, back pain and pretty much anything else you can think of.” More worrisomely, she caters to parents who want “safe, natural solutions for their children for a wide variety of childhood ailments.” To address these issues YinOva Center offers a range of dubious traditional Chinese medicine treatments, including acupuncture, moxibustion, cupping, oil pulling and traditional Chinese medical diagnosis (uh oh). They also have a naturopath (Carla Kreft) on staff.

Blakeway has made several TV appearances, including on Doctor Oz, and has been a firm ally of Oz when critics have pointed out his dubious tactics and misleading medical information. Needless to say, Blakeway’s understanding of evidence and efficacy is … deficient.

Diagnosis: Another horrible, horrible person. Oh, she’s probably nice and kind and caring and all that, but the paving on the road to hell and so on – at some point stupidity and delusion becomes indistinguishable from evil.

The principle behind Advanced Cell Training (ACT) is that your body “can heal itself,” which is generally true for a lot of issues, though you feel that the ACT people – Gary Blier, the guy behind the sordid affair, for instance – is soon going to take things beyond the realm of the reasonable. Indeed, according to them, they can train you to cure yourself of almost anything by “training” a part of the brain that “governs” immune function and telling it to fix the body. And to back up the claim they offer the following familiar, completely false and idiotic quote (probably falsely) attributed to Schopenhauer: “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident” – sounds snappy, but you’ll be hard pressed, for good reasons, to mention a single good idea that has followed anything resembling that trajectory. But the presence of that quote always signifies that some serious, serious pseudoscience is going to follow, and ACT delivers in spades.

How does ACT work? After misrepresenting some science and referring to discoveries that have “sent the scientific community reeling” (in language strikingly similar to your standard spam mail), Blier refers to Hulda Clark and her Zapper and Royal Rife and his device as examples of the kind of things upon which his ACT is based. You hardly get more lunatic woo than that this side of whale.to. Nonetheless, ACT is apparently a skill that Blier can teach you through teleconferences and seems to involve, to a large extent, applied kinesiology.

“Once the codes are read, participants then listen to a CD. This CD has more instructional codes embedded in music at a faster rate of speed. This locks in the intent of correction toward Lyme pathogen or other inflammatory agents. After the CD is heard, participants call in for an outside thought of intent which we call a ‘prayer.’” A prayer? “Though controversial,” admits Blier “many scientific studies have shown prayer to be effective for many serious illnesses,” a claim that is not controversial but rather clearly and distinctly false.

But yes, ACT is zappers, applied kinesiology, the law of attraction and intent-based prayers (described in more detail here). It changes your brain. According to Blier “Relatively little is known about the human brain, as scientists admit we use only about 2 to 3% of our capacity.” Yes, Blier actually claims that.

And how does Blier know his techniques work? Will it surprise you if we reveal that it is not through clinical studies? Nossir. Blier’s got testimonials, including “notarized testimonials,” which apparently makes them more valuable as evidence.

Diagnosis: Blier does, admittedly, look like a true believer, though his spam-style presentations may not lead the untrained eye to conclude that he is. In any case, his claims are so astoundingly ridiculous that the proper response is to point and laugh.

I am not completely sure about his current whereabouts, but Richard Bliss used to be chairman of the Education Department of the California-based Institute for Creation Research. Since the ICR is one of the main American creationist organization, and since one of the primary goals for these organizations is to bring Jesus to public school children through education reforms, Bliss is certainly not a nobody in the anti-science brigade.

Though he traveled extensively in the 1980s presenting creationism (and how to teach it) to colleges, school boards and suchlike, Bliss is perhaps most famous for – as far as I know – introducing the very icon of modern creationism, the PRATT of PRATTs, namely the spectacularly failed bacterial flagellum argument for irreducible complexity. Bliss claims to be a biologist. He also claims to have accepted evolution as an indubitable fact (and been an agnostic) until he found Jesus in the 50s. He is furthermore committed to not bearing false witness, but - and this, of course, the reason why the phrase "liar-for-Jesus" was coined - fails to see the obvious tension between his claims and commitments.

Diagnosis: We don’t know where he currently is or what he’s up do, but if he is still around, he can’t be up to much good.

Chiropractors range from the almost-respectable near-physiotherapeuts to the deranged zapfdings lunatic medieval alchemist types. Chiropractors who advertise chiropractic treatments for pets seem to fall pretty consistently in the latter category, and Norman “Rod” Block exudes the respectability of spam mails offering discount drugs. In his book Like Chiropractic for Elephants he claims to have “an uncanny touch sensory perception that allows him to connect with the person or animal he comes in contact with [like this?] … It is then that the animal senses his intention of wanting to help and releases inhibitions that allow discovery of where the root cause of the pain, stress or pressure may exist … The doctor uses his uncanny ability to tune into the root cause of animal states of disease without the use of drugs or surgery.” The title of his book presumably reflects Block’s membership in the International Association of Elephant Managers.

Apparently Dr. Block supplements his understanding of the vertebral subluxation and his sensory abilities with something he calls “Quantum Shamanetics.” Oh, yes, there is quantum. “The quantum shamanist learns to trust and be guided by universal wisdom that exists beyond our genetic blueprint. By being part to, and observing, movement, one becomes more sensitive to subtle changes in energy. By following these dynamic changes, the shamanist develops a more expansive relationship with the flow of life and health.” Yes, that kind of quantum theory – the whale.to kind.

Of course, Block is not the only one to offer vitalistic gibberish for your pets. For instance, one Dr. Steven Eisen, a chiropractor who calls himself a “Holistic Dog Cancer Expert” has a book and series of web videos explaining how to circumvent the advice of real veterinarians and instead treat canine cancer with dietary measures and avoiding vaccines and parasite control products. Eisen is also known to respond to scientific disagreement over his recommendation in manners familiar from the realm of committed crackpots.

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientific gibberish aimed at the most gullible adherents of magical thinking, once again showing that there is no limit to what some people will take seriously.

I have no idea how I first came across this one, but Fred Bloem runs a “holistic and integrative medical practice” in Maryland, and is a hardcore promoter of woo and dangerous forms of denialism. Indeed, his website gives you the antiscience PRATTs and woomeister myths so densely that some may suspect that the whole thing is a poe. According to himself, Bloem taught traditional medicine for a while before “it became clear to me that Western medicine as it is being taught and practiced by most physicians today has its limitations. One of the main concerns that I had was that many of the allopathic treatments do not address the underlying causes of a patient’s illness,” which is a bad start.

Currently Bloem is trained in “bariatric medicine, bio-identical hormone therapies, orthomolecular medicine, and energy medicine (NeuroModulation Technique (NMT) and Emotional Freedom Technique),” and offers treatments for “[a]ll allergies, [a]ll autoimmune diseases [yup], addictions, acute and chronic musculoskeletal conditions, autism [yes, he claims to be trained in chelation therapy], Crohn’s disease, irritable syndrome, diabetes mellitus, emotional, psychological, and sensory/motor neurological disturbances, hypertension, hypothyroidism, infectious diseases and obesity.”

Oh, and he is a hardcore antivaxxer, and his advice makes one wonder whether he learned anything at all in med school (he certainly learned nothing about how science and evidence work). Yup: Fred Bloem links to naturopaths David Mihalovic’s “9 questions that stump every pro-vaccine advocate and their claims”. Suffice to say that if Mihalovic’s questions stump you, then you know nothing about vaccines or vaccine research. He also links to NaturalNews (indeed, Mike Adams is a frequent source of Bloem’s health claims in general), Jeffrey John Aufderheide’s list of “disgusting ingredients used to make vaccines” and a long row of conspiracy theory websites – those mentioned should, I think, illustrate Bloem’s approach to reason and evidence: If there is no evidence supporting his claims (which there never is – anecdotes are not evidence), then it is because Big Pharma has covered it up, which is, again, further evidence that he is right and that those who disagree with him are shills. So it goes.

Bloem is hardly a big fish, but if he has received some attention it is for his advocacy of the debunked HCG diet, but there is hardly any discernible limit to the level of crazy Bloem is willing to recommend to his patients.

Diagnosis: Certainly not one of the big fish, and there are plenty of people like Bloem out there – we cannot expose them all, of course, but we can at least sample a few. This guy is crazy.

Oh, yes – there are creationists with credentials. Usually, however, those credentials are irrelevant to the topic of evolution, yet creationist organizations still like to push these people in an effort to cast a sheen of respectability on their pseudoscience. John Bloom, for instance, possesses a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University. Currently, however, he is professor at the faculty of Christian Apologetics at Biola University (he is also M.Div and Ph.D in Ancient Near Eastern Studies). As such, Bloom has published extensively on theology, including “Does Intelligent Design Theory Help Christian Apologitcs” and “Intelligent Design and Evolution: Do We Know Yet?” He has apparently done no scientific research for the last 30 years, yet his signature is apparently taken to add some weight to the Discovery Institute’s ridiculous petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.

Bloom claims for instance that “Darwinists do not have a clue how life first got started ‘by itself,’ [which the theory of evolution does not purport to explain in the first place] as was well documented in the recent movie Expelled:No Intelligence Allowed,” a claim so wrong that it resists easy classification. Bloom also thinks that the idea that humans and chimp share a common ancestor is ridiculous.

Diagnosis: Fairly typical anti-science advocate, though it is still impressive how little Bloom actually understands of the science he rejects and the reasons he provides for rejecting it, given his background.

Dave Blount is a wingnut conspiracy theorist writing for the conspiracy site Moonbattery and occasionally for John Hawkins’s Right Wing News. His posts range from the expected (Democrats in Congress caused the 2008 economic crisis, Nelson Mandela was a “socialist thug”, Occupy Wall Street is a Marxist-Leninist revolution – no, Blount doesn’t know the distinction between “things I disagree with” and “Marxism”) to rather blatantly racist screeds claiming e.g. that “most Hispanics, like virtually all blacks, will continue to vote overwhelmingly on the single issue of using the government to steal our money,” therefore “[w]e are witnessing the deliberate obliteration of the greatest nation in history. Those responsible have used their control of the media and education establishments to get so far into our heads that I will be condemned as a ‘racist’ for calling attention to their race-based designs.” Yes,there is aconspiracy: “a cabal of hard left Democrats like Chuck U. Schumer and the child-molesting Bob Menendez have teamed up with backstabbing RINOs like Juan ‘Lettuce’ McCain and Lindsey Gramnesty to sell out the USA to uncountable hordes of welfare colonists.” Of course, in minds like Blount’s there are always conspiracies: “We really are in the early stages of a communist revolution,” says Blount; “[t]he Marxist-Leninist revolution (aka ‘fundamental transformation’) has been underway in America since Obama’s election” and “25,000,000 Americans will need to be ‘eliminated’ (i.e., executed) to impose communism in America.” Heck, EPA (“green Nazis”) has already conducted experiments “reminiscent of Joseph Mengele” to further their environmentalist-Marxist conspiracies to ruin America. Good thing his readers don’t demand that he back his claims up with sources.

Predictably, Blount has bought into (various versions of) the “government-is-stockpiling-ammo” conspiracy, and claims that the purpose is abundantly clear: Obama is planning an economic collapse and will need the weapons to introduce communism during the following period of unrest. Actually, some of his screeds suggest that Obama is a puppet as well, for – you guessed it – George Soros and his “shadow government”.

Gay marriage is a conspiracy as well. According to Blount the purpose is to undermine the church and persecute Christians. Evidence? “In light of the lethal AIDS epidemic, it should be obvious that sodomy causes far more serious health problems than baby formula or soda pop, so Nanny Bloomberg can’t adopt his usual pose of imposing good health on his subjects.” Therefore it must be a conspiracy to put Christians in camps. That’s why reasonable people have pushed the myth that there exists bullying and violence against homosexuals – Blount apparently denies that such phenomena exist.

Diagnosis: Zealous, paranoid conspiracy theorist crazy enough to make Michael Savage (or Alex Jones) sometimes look almost reasonable by comparison. We don’t know how many people actually listen to him, but if you ever visit one of his posts you should probably avoid reading the comment sections.

More creationists, and this time a small fish. I am not sure what Wayne Boettcher’s day job might be, but he got our attention with an essay he wrote for the StopTheACLU page trying to debunk evolution. Just the idea behind the StopTheACLU is pretty abysmally insane, by the way – somehow these people have got it into their minds that ACLU is working against religious freedom, and the persecution complex and delusions and lack of understanding of what religious freedom involves needed to reach that conclusion is pretty breathtaking.

In any case, the essay in question (discussed here) is itself a pretty breathtaking example of how the lowest Dunning-Kruger quartile confidently exploits their own total lack of insight to attack evidence, reason and expertise. Highlights include his argument from how disagreement among experts is evidence against evolution: “Scientist don’t agree on fossils. Some say dinosaurs are lizards, others that they are birdlike creatures who evolved into birds” (yeah, that’s Boettcher’s scientific acumen at work), and his very standard argument from hoaxes: “[S]hady paleontologists and evolution crackpots have gone overboard in their frenetic attempts to hoax the public. From Piltdown Man to ‘Lucy’ missing link hoaxes abound through history.” Yes, he names two, one of which is not a hoax, the other of which was procured by an amateur and rejected by scientists (he also alludes to peppered moths and Haeckel’s embryos, which only someone who has no idea about the science would even consider doing). But you know: only scientists care about accuracy and details; Boettcher surely doesn’t. He also recommends Jonathan Wells’s Icons of Evolution.

Diagnosis: Another know-nothing who has made a fool of himself in public. We doubt that he’ll ever know.

Gary Boisclair is a village idiot and acolyte of Randall Terry who is most famous (well, if at all) for mounting a primary challenge to Keith Ellison – despite not having lived in Minnesota since 2003 – on a platform that, well, seems to consist primarily of not liking muslims (his campaign ad was removed from youtube for violating their policy on shocking and disgusting content). Otherwise, he is most familiar from his anti-abortion campaigns with Terry, for instance when he donned a chicken costume to protest the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan (“Pagan Kagan”).

Boisclair’s primary complaint was that Ellison swore his oath of office on a copy of a holy book full of religious tribalism that threatens unbelievers with horrible fates, and of which Boisclair said that if its religious commands were followed they would be incompatible with the US Constitution. Indeed, some proponents of Ellison’s religion, Boisclair alleged, may be extremists who want to make those religious commands governing principles for the US. We clearly can’t have that, can we? – anymore than we can accept pagans on the Supreme Court! Think of the Constitution.

Diagnosis: Good grief.

As you probably know cancer is a target for quackery like nothing else, and Ty Bollinger has, over the years, managed to make something of a name for himself in cancer quackery circles – at least to the extent that his name pops up now and then when truly insane woo is the topic of discussion (for instance in the stories of Chris Wark or Judy Seeger). Which is why, of course, he appeared at The Cure to Cancer Summit in 2013, a quackfest conference like no other (well, like Autism One), I suppose). And Bollinger seems to be into it all. If you, for any reason, should happen upon his blog at CancerTruth.net (and there is not a non-deranged reason in the world why you would), you’ll find posts on laetrile (no less), pH quackery and sodium bicarbonate cures, all of it with more than a hint of everyone’s Robert O. Young (who may not attend the 2015 version of the Cure to Cancer Summit, if there is one) and Tullio Simoncini.

Diagnosis: Just stay away, will you?

#1379: Mayim Bialik

#1380: Paula Bickle

#1381: Mark C. Biedebach

#1382: Robert Bigelow(?)

#1383: Wendell Bird

#1384: Timothy Birdnow

#1385: Phillip Bishop

#1386: Dick Black

#1387: Joshua Black

#1388: Paul Blair

#1389: Jill Blakeway

#1390: Gary Blier

#1391: Richard Bliss

#1392: Norman "Rod" Block

#1393: Fred Bloem

#1394: John Bloom

#1395: Dave Blount

#1396: Wayne Boettcher

#1397: Gary Boisclair

#1398: Ty Bollinger