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#1811: Kay (Kandeel) Judge and Maxine Barish-Wreden

March 22, 2017, 3:30 am
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Homeopathy is nonsense based on medieval metaphysics and pre-scientific mistakes about medicine. And just to make sure it is as nonsensical as it seems to, research has also repeatedly demonstrated that it has no health benefits. But people have been swearing by things that have been demonstrated not to exist for centuries, and there is no reason to think they’ll stop now. Kay Judge and Maxine Barish-Wreden, for instance, continue to push it. They are even medical doctors, illustrating one more time that being an MD is not the same as being a scientist, and that you can get through medical school without understanding the most basic thing about how research and evidence work. So, in the Sacramento Bee weekly “Integrative medicine” column (oh, yes), Judge and Barish-Wreden write, without shame, things like “the homeopathic medicine arnica has been shown to assist in acute pain such as bruises or strained muscles,” which is false and hard not to characterize as an outright lie – though note how they don’t cash out “shown”, or “assist in”, which is nothing but weasel words. But arnica (though the herbal version, not the homeopathic one that Judge and Barish-Wreden push) has been promoted by Dr. Oz!

Both of them apparently practice internal medicine in the Sacramento area. Barish-Wreden is apparently Medical Director of the Sutter Center for Integrative Holistic Health, which is not a place to seek out if anything serious ails you, and is apparently a practicing internist. But her qualifications also include “studies in medicine that encompass the mind-body-spirit connection,” which must count as an anti-qualification at least to the extent that it suggests offensively poor critical reasoning skills. According to her website “[i]n working with her patients, Dr. Barish-Wreden views illness as a teacher and looks at symptoms as signposts that can direct our attention to areas that may be out of balance in our lives.” Yes. It’s humorism, no less. She is also into nutrition woo. According to Barish-Wreden “[f]ruits and vegetables that are raised organically are felt to have more phytonutrients than those raised commercially, since organic plants tend to be hardier as they learn to survive without the benefit of pesticides and insecticides” [my emphasis]. This is New Age religious nonsense, of course, but it is telling that even Barish-Wreden is reluctant to make any substantial claims on behalf of organic food as medicine, which makes one briefly suspect that she at some level knows that she is peddling bullshit. On the other hand, Judge and Barish-Wreden have no qualms about claiming that “sulforaphane [a phytochemical] helps to fight cancer” (note the vagueness) and that kale is a “cancer-fighting” vegetable. It probably isn’t, and methinks Judge and Barish-Wreden know that.


Diagnosis: The world would be a significantly better place if people like Kay Judge and Maxine Barish-Wreden used their skills and resources to actually help people instead of misleading them with New Age religious, demonstrable nonsense. And apparently their influence might, as it is, be substantial enough for them to cause real harm. It’s a tragedy, really.
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#1812: Robert Kaita

March 24, 2017, 2:35 am
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Since he’s already been sufficiently neutralized and thoroughly covered elsewhere, we’ll skip Theodore Kaczynski– even though he is certainly more colorful than Robert Kaita. The latter is Principal Research Physicist in the Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University, and a respectable scientist in his own field with a more than respectable publication record. But being an expert in one field is no guarantee of any deep understanding of science in general but apparently, for some, a source of arrogance. Kaita is also a Fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, and a proponent (or at least defender) of Intelligent design creationism; he is for instance a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism and contributed to the anthology Mere Creation: Science, Faith & Intelligent Design, edited by Bill Dembski. He was also involved in (unsuccessful) efforts to convince a textbook board in Alabama to adopt the creationist textbook Of Pandas and People – for which he was a reviewer – in 1993.


Diagnosis: Yes, he has genuine – and rather impressive – credentials, and when people with genuine credentials allow ideology to trump intellectual honesty, accuracy and meticulousness, the results are ugly. Kaita is a pseudoscientist more than he is a scientist.
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#1813: Mark Kalita

March 25, 2017, 1:30 am
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Hardly a day goes by without another earth-shattering discovery made by non-establishment amateur scientists who write those discoveries up into book format, publish the book with a vanity press and announces the discovery by hiring a press release service (the WND, for instance, tend to pick up the stories, too, if they express an ideological fit with their readership). Mark Kalita is the proud author of Light Event, which, according to the press release from PR.com, reveals “the ‘Light Formula’ for the Human Being”. Kalita is apparently also the author of 7 Day Bodhi and Secrets of God. Light Event, however, is the first to publish the “Light Formula”, which is a “ground breaking theory places the Human being as a variable in the most unique equation of existence. The ‘Light Formula’ makes All Human beings a measurable quotient of existence. This unique ‘Light Formula’ of the Human being also mirrors the ‘Unified Field Theory’ as Mark uses the Infinite as a constant with claims that all energy is a subtle kinetic energy with a unique ‘Light Event.’” The formula is apparently k = IHx; that is, “the k(inetic) energy that is released when the constant of the I(nfinite) is aligned by the H(uman) variable. ‘x’ is the exponential rise of subtle energies when other H(uman)s are adjoined in the I(nfinite), also known as UNITY.” We are not convinced Kalita knows what “measurable” means. Abbreviating your terms in a metaphor that superficially looks like a scientific law doesn’t imply measurability. It is also unclear from the press release whether he thinks he has tested his formula, but apparently the “‘Light Event’ horizon for Humanity has been predicted [by the prophets of various world religions] since the beginning of time.” Indeed, according to the press release “Mark esoterically relays the cryptic meanings of his discovery. ‘As the Human factor aligns itself with a positive polarity, the subtle kinetic energies emerge as the “Greater Gifts” or the “Three Natures” of existence.’”

So what are the applications of his discovery? Apparently “through the understanding and application of the ‘Light Formula’ light workers, or healers, psychics and mediums, can naturally and effortlessly enhance their gifts by taking a few easy steps to align their being with the Infinite.” Apparently rigorous testing is underway: “To further understand and verify the ‘Light Formula’, Mark is currently seeking volunteer psychics, healers, mediums and other light workers for an investigational focus group using the ‘Light Event’ tools to positively align the study subjects.” You have to cover your expenses yourself, however.

As a matter of fact, Kalita seems to have written numerous books, including Apocalypse 2015, End Times 5775, Hidden Messiah: Roman Conspiracy of Christian Apostasy, and One World Religion: The Guide to Money & Prosperity. The titles suggest a certain mindset.


Diagnosis: This doesn’t really even qualify as “pseudoscience”, does it? It’s just rambling nonsense with some New Age esotericism and motivational speech tricks thrown in at random. Probably entirely harmless.
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#1814: Raymond Kam

March 27, 2017, 12:31 am
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Raymond Kam is a Boston-based former psychiatrist who lost his license in 2013. When a 16-year old girl suffering from “several serious psychiatric symptoms and/or conditions” reported parental neglect and abuse to him, Kam decided that, instead of reporting the abuse (as required by law), the girl was demon-possessed. Upon deciding that the girl’s diagnosis was “spiritual” rather than psychiatric, he officially took himself off her case and appointed himself her “spiritual mentor” instead, apparently giving her a cross to wear (in exchange for an undisclosed other religious symbol) and bringing her to his church. At least the Board of Registration in Medicine voted to suspend his license indefinitely, saying his conduct called into question his “competence to practice medicine,” though they also allowed the suspension to be lifted as early as 2014 if Kam completed a psychiatric evaluation and other assessments, and entered into a five-year probation agreement – we haven’t seen any updates. Apparently Kam was supported in his assessments by another psychiatrist, Enrico Mezzacappa, who was reprimanded but didn’t lose his license – in other words, Mezzacappa is still out there preying on unsuspecting victims.


Diagnosis: It’s astonishing that Kam could get through his education being so abjectly incompetent at what he was doing, but he did. At least Mezzacappa is still at large, and even Kam himself might have returned to practice; watch out.
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#1815: Ted Kaptchuk

March 28, 2017, 1:14 am
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Ted Kaptchuk is a Professor of Medicine and Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, which has become notorious for its efforts to legitimize quackery, and most famous for his research on the placebo effect. He has also been an expert panelist for the FDA, served on numerous NIH panels, worked as a medical writer for the BBC, and is quite a big deal in certain quarters. He is accordingly one of the most influential woo apologists alive. Despite his current position, Kaptchuk lacks formal training in modern medicine or biomedical science. Instead, he has a “degree” from the Macau Institute of Chinese Medicine.

Kaptchuk rose to fame in the 80s with his book The Web That Has No Answer: Understanding Chinese Medicine (Andrew Weil himself wrote the foreword for the second edition), discussed here, which is an ambitious attempt to defend traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) through appeal to tradition, special pleading and handwaving. Kaptchuk claims that TCM is very successful, but admits that “studies generally demonstrate that traditional Chinese medicine does work best when left in the context of Chinese logic;” that is, it doesn’t seem to work so well when you use ordinary standards of evidence and you should therefore apply different standards (apparently this is because Western medicine is terribly reductionistic whereas TCM treats the whole person, which one would think would be rather irrelevant when evaluating health outcomes); TCM, you see, is according to Kaptchuk “internally consistent” (it really isn’t, if Kaptchuk’s claims are taken as a guide), and that is apparently evidence enough. As you’d expect, the book contains some interesting contradictions that Kaptchuk tries to brush over with New Age fluff (e.g. that TCM “has standards of measurement that allow practitioners systematically to describe, diagnose, and treat illness,” but “[i]ts measurements, however, are not the linear yardsticks of weight, number, time, and volume used by modern science but rather images of the macrocosm;” perhaps this is an example of the aforementioned “Chinese logic;” Kaptchuk’s book is crammed with offensive orientalism), and the fact that TCM gets the function of most of our organs wrong just means that it has an alternative anatomical theory (that should apparently not be taken entirely literally because it is pretty obviously false and Kaptchuk is working under the presupposition that the theory is correct), just like prescientific Western medicine applied an “alternative anatomical theory” until practitioners began to study how the body actually works a couple of centuries ago. Kaptchuk does assert, though, that “Western clinical studies (done in China) of traditional Chinese medicine, by proving its practical efficacy, have helped it win its battle for survival in the twentieth century, and promise it a place in the future of medicine,” but admits in a footnote (that most readers won’t see) that the studies in question weren’t really studies – they weren’t controlled and used “imprecise assessment methods. They would most properly be called clinical observations.” He doesn’t even seem to try to back up claims like “Chinese remedies are often more effective than Western ones, and they are always gentler and safer[;] Chinese prescriptions, for example, do not produce side effects because they are balanced to reflect a patient’s entire state of being” or “Chinese medicine, because it emphasizes balance and relationship more than measurable quantity, can also frequently discover and treat a disorder before it is perceptible by the most sophisticated Western diagnostic techniques[;] Chinese medicine is capable of touching those places that evade the microscope;” oh yes, he is referring to subtle energies, no less. In the book, he does not discuss how traditional Chinese medicine came to the fore in modern China, which you’d think would be rather important framework information.

After his breakthrough (and influential) book Kaptchuk spent several years championonig various forms of alternative medicine (he seems to be still shilling for TCM), including follow-ups like the Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica (with Dan Bensky and Andrew Gamble). Currently, he is most famous for his research and “research” on the placebo effect, but his background matters (though he seems, in fairness, to have shied away from defending the most egregious forms of quackery). Kaptchuk still doesn’t seem to mean by “placebo effect” what real researchers mean; rather, placebo is to Kaptchuk powerful, mystic medicine and the power that ultimately legitimizes the altmed practices that he has already convinced himself are efficacious – appealing to “placebo” is a matter of finding a framework of promoting them that might look palatable to those who care for evidence and experiment if they don’t look too closely. He has even suggested that various “CAM” treatments may have “enhanced placebo effects,” effects that are even stronger than specific biomedical treatments. I assume most people realize that “enhanced placebo effects” is a contradiction in terms if “placebo effects” is used to mean what it in fact means, but apparently some of Kaptchuk’s fans don’t. Indeed, for Kaptchuk, “placebo effect” is understood as a postmodern deconstruction of the current authoritative role of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), that reliance on evidence obtained through rigorous testing is really just a cultural contingency, and our predilection for evidence and testing an imperialistic scheme used to dismiss the types of alternative practices Kaptchuk has convinced himself work by not relying on evidence and testing. In his 1998 article “Powerful Placebo: the dark side of the randomised controlled trial,” for instance, Kaptchuk characterizes RCTs as “self-authenticating”: “In a self-authenticating manner, the double-blind RCT became the instrument to prove its own self-created value system.” As you’d expect, the article uses legitimate shortcomings with RCT to imply that altmed that show no effect in RCTs is just as good as real medicine, just like flaws in airplane design is evidence that flying carpets exist (hat-tip: Ben Goldacre). Not that Kaptchuk seems to have a particularly firm grasp of how confirmation works in any case.

When reporting his research on the placebo effect, Kaptchuk has defended active use of placebo in patient treatment for conditions like asthma: “placebo treatment is just as effective as active medication in improving patient-centered outcomes.” Of course, placebo treatments for asthma have no effect on objective measures of lung function – only on subjective measures – so Kaptchuk’s position requires quite a redefinition “patient-centered outcomes”, but such redefinition often seems to be what Kaptchuk is trying to promote. (Apparently he is partly influenced in the effort by anthropologist Daniel Moerman, whom Kaptchuk has worked with and who seems to think that healing responses are cultural constructs – Moerman is a seriously dangerous nutter.) Contrary to Kaptchuk’s claims, “harnessing the power of placebo” is of little clinical value, at least if one is clear aboutwhat the placebo effect is. For Kaptchuk, though, promoting the powers of the placebo effect still seems to be primarily a ploy to legitimize a variety of non-efficacious altmed treatments, and rebranding CAM as “medicine harnessing the power of the placebo” has actually become quite athing.

Now, not all of the actual studies Kaptchuk has been involved with have been bad – far from it – but he obviously has an agenda, and is not afraid to put a dizzying spin on even the meagrest result if it serves said agenda.

Kaptchuk has even (in an article coauthored with Michelle L. Dossett, Roger B. Davis and Gloria Y. Yeh), promoted homeopathy as a means to achieve “reductions in unnecessary antibiotic use, reductions in costs to treat certain respiratory diseases, improvements in peri-menopausal depression, [and] improved health outcomes in chronically ill individuals.” It should be needless to say that the evidence supports no such claim. The article refers to the article “A critical overview of homeopathy,” which Kaptchuk coauthored with Wayne Jonas in the Annals of Internal Medicine, suggesting that “Homeopathy deserves an open-minded opportunity to demonstrate its value by using evidence-based principles.” Well, evidence-based approaches have been used to investigate homeopathy; it’s been refuted, but somehow Dossett et al. selectively chose to miss that part, as promoters of homeopathy are wont to do.


Diagnosis: Kaptchuk has, in fact, done quite a bit of serious work. But he is also spinning that work in a manner that support an agenda of legitimizing quackery. As a result, he has managed to become one of the most important and influential apologists for woo in the US; he is currently very influential, and very dangerous.
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#1816: Sharon Kass

March 30, 2017, 1:07 am
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We’ll give Raymond Ronald Karczewski, who claims to be Jesus Christ and out to free everyone else from Satanic mind control through his website and youtube videos, a pass. Perhaps Sharon Kass should have been given a pass for similar reasons, but she has been trolling LGQBT people for years with emails extolling reparative therapy and the ex-gay group NARTH. She has apparently written for the delusional conspiracy website WND, too.

According to Kass “GayScam is a moral and constitutional atrocity,” and “[t]he Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t apply to people with homosexuality or transgenderism – no matter what the half-loony Supreme Court says (the loony half including Kennedy),” ostensibly because “[h]omosexuality is abnormal, distorted sexuality.” Homosexuality can, however, “be prevented through gender-affirmative practices on the part of parents and parent figures,” and “successfully treated through modern psychodynamic psychotherapy and same-sex mentoring,” which is not correct. Apparently she is under the, uh, conviction that sending emails making these claims to gay people will somehow have a desired effect. According to Kass “GayScam could end as soon as 2021.” We have no idea whatsoever what premises led her to draw that conclusion.

She received some flak in 2013, when she targeted a 11-year-old who successfully petitioned a Tennessee StudentsFirst group to rescind an education award from state rep. John Ragan, sponsor of the pro-bullying “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Kass wrote to the boy’s father telling him that he was responsible for his homosexuality (Kass's formulations were less well-hinged), a “disorder of deep-seated gender self-alienation.” Apparently a poor relationship with fathers is a main cause of atheism as well.

In fairness, we are not entirelysure Sharon Kass is a real person called “Sharon Kass”, but whoever is behind those emails certainly deserves to be called out.


Diagnosis: “A bad, hateful person” seems to sum her up well enough. Her influence is relatively limited, and she may conceivably hurt the anti-gay movement more than help it.
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#1817: Joel Kauffman

April 1, 2017, 1:11 am
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Back in 2008, avid science denialist, loon and senator Jim Inhofe compiled a list of “650” scientist who reject the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is largely manmade. The list received ample criticism, not the least from many of the listed scientists themselves, since they did not at all question or deny AGW and would have no truck with Inhofe’s war on science. It is, however, rather interesting to look at some of the figures that made it onto the list. One of them was Joel Kauffman. Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia (?). Kauffman thinks that global warming is not manmade, but that “primordial ionizing radiation from within warms the Earth,” which at this point is approximately as dumb as blaming ley lines. His, uh, thoughts on AGW have been published for instance in the Journal of Scientific Exploration (JSE), which is most famous for publishing articles on UFOs and parapsychology. Said thoughts include musings on why scientists tend to subscribe to AGW, and the explanation is – surprise – conspiracy. According to Kauffman, scientists are in a mafia-like conspiracy to promote truth AGW, and also control the media – and he uses that claim to justify his own use of non-refereed sources and conspiracy websites: “Because of the existence of a research cartel and media control in this field (Bauer, 2004), the readers’ forbearance in my use of websites and non-refereed sources is requested.” Bauer (2004) would be Henry Bauer, no less – most famous for promoting HIV denialism, e.g. in the paper Kauffman cites (also published in JSE, it turns out), but also a recognized cryptozoologist (he’s done some important work on the Loch Ness Monster, for instance) and an ESP “researcher”.

The HIV denialist connection is no coincidence. Kauffman also appears on Rethinking Aids’s list of HIV denialists, which, to put it mildly, does not reflect particularly well on him, and has himself published HIV denialist screeds e.g. in the pseudojournal JPANDS, currently most familiar perhaps for publishing Jane Orient’s hilariously inept and utterly delusional thought piece on how Hilary Clinton would be medically unfit for serving as president.

But Kauffman’s pseudoscience is not limited to AGW denialism and HIV denialism. In fact, Kauffman is probably best known as a cholesterol denialist, and has made appearances in, well, spamacross the Internet promoting cholesterol pseudoscience – and why not? He has already established that scientists are in a mafia-like conspiracy to squelch pseudoscience and honest intuitions with instruments like evidence, truth and accountability, and that he is therefore free to rely on any hearsay or conspiracy he likes to support his own claims. His cholesterol denialism illustrates Kauffman’s general approach to facts rather well: “Cholesterol is highly protective against cancer, infection and atherosclerosis,” says Kauffman, and “high TC [total cholesterol] and LDL levels are beneficial at all ages.” Let’s hope no one listens to him, since this advice is, shall we say, not conducive to living long and prospering. Kauffman’s source is a paper by cholesterol-denialist guru Uffe Ravnskov, though Kauffman’s changes “may protect” to “are beneficial” without explanation, and just adds in “cancer” for good measure. Details, right?


Diagnosis: Professional crackpot, denialist and conspiracy theorist, and a good example of the power of crank magnetism. Though he’s not among the leaders or most widely recognized authorities in the anti-science movement, he casts his net wide and is likely to cause some real harm somewhere.
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#1818: Doug Kaufmann

April 3, 2017, 1:11 am
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Cancer quackery is possibly the worst – and most lucrative – form of quackery, and few types of cancer pseudoscience are sillier than Tullio Simoncini’s tinfoil-hat “cancer is really a fungus” idea. Now, Simoncini isn’t American, but he’s got a few champions in the US as well, including Doug Kaufmann, who has published his findings in peer reviewed scientific journals on youtube and various conspiracy websites, and given talk at quack conferences promoting the insanity (such as the annual convention of the Cancer Control Society, a hardcore pseudoscience and conspiracy group). He’s got his own website, too, Know The Cause, where he claims that virtually every chronic disease is caused by fungus, including diabetes, malnutrition, allergies, arthritis, asthma and a host of others (for the details you can, of course, purchase his book, but I think you already see where this is going).

Evidence? Not really, but Kaufmann doesn’t really seem to know anything about medicine, physiology or how to evaluate evidence, so of course he’d think he has some evidence, for instance a study that shows that lung cancer patients turn out to have fungal infections. Well, it’s not a study, but a letter to the American Journal of Roentgenology that points out the dangers of misdiagnoses among lung cancer patients, and that an investigation among patients with suspicious lung lesions showed that some of the lesions actually had other causes (not actual misdiagnosis – just a reminder of the danger of misdiagnoses) – a staggering 0.6% of them fungal infections. To Kaufmann, however (“my take”), this means that it is “impossible” to tell lung cancer from fungal infections, from which he infers (by contradicting his own premise about the impossibility of a diagnosis) that all cancers are fungal infections. Elsewhere Kaufmann is truly overwhelmed by how fascinating70 year old books about cancer are: they even acknowledge the possibility of misdiagnosing fungal infections as cancer, which is, contrary to what Kaufmann thinks, not exactly evidence for his view that it is impossible for doctors today to tell. And the old books are indeed rather different than books on cancer today, for the obvious reason that we have gained staggering amounts of new knowledge of cancer the last couple of decades and much of the old ideas and musings have been falsified. Kaufmann, though, sees a conspiracy: “What did these texts know that today’s medical textbooks really didn’t know?” To which the correct answer is “nothing, of course,” but Kaufmann has already demonstrated that he is systematically going to choose wrong answers.

Kaufmann has apparently heard that some scientists thinks genes may have something to do with cancer but, noting that there are still things we don’t know about genes and cancer, concludes with“I say” that fungus “mimicks cancer” and that “cancer” is a misdiagnosis. Yeah, that’s not how it works. 

In fairness, it is a bit unclear what Kaufmann’s “hypothesis” actually is, but much points to the idea being that fungal DNA fuses with human DNA and causes cancer, apparently mostly in the TP53 gene, which is an idea that is ridiculous in the extreme, given our knowledge of that gene and genetic testing of tumors. In more detail, Kaufmann’s approach appears to boil down to this (hat-tip Respectful Insolence):

- Fungi can produce most of human diseases
- Fungi can cause inflammation, which can contribute to cancer
- Fungus is in our food
- Pathogenic fungi can make Aflatoxin b1, which commonly contaminate the grain supply and is a potential carcinogens

Therefore fungi can cause cancer. It is hard to overestimate how ridiculous that idea is, or how confused and nonsensical the reasoning that goes into it. The scary thing, though, is that there are people who take this nonsense seriously.

Diagnosis: Seriously delusional, but his is a brand of crackpottery that has the potential to do real and serious harm. Dangerous.


Hat-tip for most of this entry: Respectful insolence.
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#1819: Peter H. Kay

April 5, 2017, 1:41 am
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Homeovitality is a branch of homeopathy targeting genetic causes of disease. Oh, yes. Apparently “[i]n 1997, Prof. Khuda-Bukhsh [affiliation not disclosed] proposed that homeopathic substances have the capacity to interact with the genetic blueprint and deliver their benefits by increasing the expression of genes that synthesise health promoting proteins.” Of course, homeopathic substances are just substances and the homeopathic properties of those substances don’t exist and accordingly have no effect on anything whatsoever. But, yes: the idea is “gene targeting by homeopathic DNA,” no less. “The Homeovitality system uses highly diluted DNA molecules [sic] with precise sequences to target genes that produce the body’s natural proteins that have been proven to promote health as well as protect against and resolve many diseases.” In other words, the practicioners create remedies, expose them to DNA molecules (ones similar to the DNA that are responsible for the symptoms of the disease in question – just think about it), but dilute the remedies (while carefully observing the steps of the magic ritual) so much that they don’t actually contain any DNA molecules, and voila: Homeopathic gene therapy. It sounds like a parody of a kindergarten game of pretense wizardry, but there are actually grown-ups being engaged in this stuff full time and in all seriousness.

Several people promote homeovitality, but it seems to be particularly associated with one Peter H. Kay, who, according to a homeopathy websites, is a “world renowned scientist, molecular pathologist, immunologist and geneticist,” who was apparently responsible for the Homeovitality micro-DNA therapy system, which he developed to allow everyone to enjoy “super health.” Apparently Kay is a pioneer in “homeogenetics” (no, seriously), “the future field of study investigating the interactive processes between the genetic blueprint and homeopathy.” And apparently his ideas are supported by homeopathic provings. (For those not in the know; conventional testing demonstrate that homeopathic remedies don’t work, so of course homeopaths have developed their own system of testing: “provings” are what homeopaths use to “prove” whattherapies to use (not whether they work– this is the essence of tooth-fairy science) by giving the undiluted substance to healthy people and get them to write down their experiences. Of course, since the homeopathic remedies are diluted versions of the substance, such provings would be utterly irrelevant to the final remedy even if they ended up showing anything interesting, which they don’t.) In any case, homeovitality researchers have “demonstrated”, through provings, that whole genomic DNA from other species can change gene expression. Therefore, their magic potions let you target specific genetic diseases “safely and effectively”. It’s medieval magic and religious fundamentalism gone utterly unhinged. These people are deranged.

But yes, you can purchase an array of Kay’s homeovitality remedies online, including e.g.:

- Age Well, an antiaging treatment (oh yes, nothing shouts “serious science” louder than pushing anti-aging potions.) The potion is created with IL-7, a “natural cytokine that has the ability to stimulate the production of new immuno-competent cells in the bone marrow.” It can also neutralize toxins, kill viruses and help boost the immune system. Of course, in reality drinking solutions containing IL-7 will do exactly nothing except providing the body with a tiny quantity of nucleic acids. And Age Well doesn’t even contain IL-7, but the magic memory of having been in contact with IL-7.
- Cancer Care, which apparently includes (magic memories of) the cDNA for two tumor suppressor genes, which makes no sense even by homeopath’s own lights: a cancer remedy should use a homeopathic dilution of something that causes cancer, shouldn’t it? Not that Kay seems anything but confused by how his remedies are supposed to work, which I suppose is alright since they certainly don’t.

Here is their homeovitality FAQ. [Update: It seems to have gone missing. Which I guess is OK. If you have questionsthen these products are probably not for you.]

Diagnosis: Utter nonsense, fuelled by the feverish, deluded dreams and religious revelations of a deranged madman and realized with the sophistication of the kids-cartoonversions of witches’ brews. Kay does have a real degree, though, which makes one wonder whether he actually believes what he is peddling.


Hat-tip for this entry: Respectful Insolence.
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#1820: Phillip Kayser

April 6, 2017, 1:16 am
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Phillip Kayser, who leads the Dominion Covenant Church in Omaha and is associated with something called Biblical Blueprints, is an alleged libertarian and Ron Paul supporter. He is also a theocrat who wants to impose Biblical death penalties on gay people and adulterers. Strange how Ron Paul tended to attract these people (not really; see below); Paul’s 2012 campaign said they “welcome Rev. Kayser’s endorsement and the enlightening statements he makes on how Ron Paul’s approach to government is consistent with Christian beliefs.”

In laying out his vision for society, Kayser emphasizes that “Whereas Hebrews 2:2 gives a blanket endorsement of all Old Testament penology as justice, the rest of the New Testament gives specifics. It teaches that homosexuals who come out of the closet are ‘worthy of death’ (Rom. 1:32). It teaches that juvenile delinquents who abuse their parents can in certain circumstances ‘be put to death’ (Mt. 15:3-9) and that rejection of this provision was to ‘transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition’.” He assures us, however, that justice would be dispersed fairly and equitably in his ideal society: “The civil government could not round them up. Only those who were prosecuted by citizens could be punished, and the punishment could take a number of forms, including death. This would have a tendency of driving homosexuals back into their closets.” Apparently adultery requires the death penalty, too, and having sex with a woman who is menstruating should potentially also qualify, according to Kayser. Apparentlygiving equal rights to gay people is “a whole lot worse” than the crimes of King George that led to the American Revolution, and should accordingly be opposed with violence if necessary by true Christians™.

The reason Kayser supports Paul is of course that Paul has promised to give the states the freedom to establish theocratic governments and reject the Constitution at will, which is precisely what Kayser is hoping for. At the “Freedom 2015: National Religious Liberties Conference” (attended by the GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal), Kayser also admitted that it may be unrealistic to expect the national imposition of Biblical law at present, but still maintained that it could be achieved at state and local levels. He also stated his support for Kim Davis, calling her “a hero” and claiming that “Magistrates must follow Christ in their interposition,” not secular law (because religious freedom, duh!). In the pamphlet he distributed at the conference he advocated capital punishment not only for gays and adulterers, but also for blasphemers, Sabbath-breakers, apostates and witches. “Christians should advocate the full implementation of all God’s civil penalties in every age… Every Old Testament statue continues on the books, and without those statutes, we could not have a consistent ethnical standard.” Even “pagan” nations are obliged to follow biblical law, he writes, as “God held gentile kings accountable to these civil laws.” The government should also execute murderers (including abortion providers), and those guilty of kidnapping, rape, prostitution and bestiality.

Kayser’s work is promoted on the Theonomy Resources website, which is run by Stephen Halbrook.


Diagnosis: His rabid bloodthirst is pretty impressive for someone living in the 21th century. As with so many radical fundamentalists, Kayser seems to run on pure hate; his impact is probably relatively limited, but several GOP presidential candidates have at least been willing to lend him an ear.
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#1821: Michael N. Keas

April 8, 2017, 12:38 am
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Michael Keas is a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the College at Southwestern (Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary), or possibly (currently) adjunct faculty at Biola University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the radical anti-science organization the Discovery Institute, and a creationist. And although he is not a scientist, I guess the creationist horde considers him to be “close enough”; at least Keas is a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. He is also the primary author of the auxiliary materials for the Discovery Institute’s “textbook”, Explore Evolution.

Despite not being a scientist, Keas apparently “leads workshops for science teachers on how to teach about controversial subjects such as Darwinism.” He has even taught an Intelligent Design course, “Unified Studies: Introduction to Biology”, at the Oklahoma Baptist University, which is one of very few such courses that have been taught for credit at an accredited institution (though OBU, where “the general science, education and chemistry programs … take a strong Intelligent Design advocacy position” is hardly a real university in the ordinary sense of “real university”).


Diagnosis: Not among the loudest Intelligent Design anti-scientists, Keas seems nevertheless to wield rather significant influence in the movement. Dangerous.
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#1822: Webster Kehr

April 10, 2017, 12:57 am
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Webster Kehr is a legendary crackpot and crank magnet. Kehr is a religious fundamentalist (Mormon) creationist and conspiracy theorist, notable for promoting free energy suppression conspiracies and denying the existence of photons (and thus the technology required for the screen on which you are reading). Kehr writes for the website, CancerTutor, which promotes a range of fake, unproven and utterly ridiculous alternative cancer treatments. CancerTutor is formally the website of the organization “Independent Cancer Research Foundation, Inc.” (ICRF), though Kehr and his gang wouldn’t know the difference between researchand making up lunatic conspiracy theories on the spot. Nonetheless, the website actually seems to be somewhat popular, and is among the top hits if you search for “natural cancer cure” (which you have no reason to do: go here instead). Kehr apparently retired in 2015, whereupon he received some kind of lifetime achievement award from Ty Bollinger; yeah, that kind of stuff – Kehr wrote the foreword to Bollinger’s book Cancer – Step Outside the Box.

According to Mr. Kehr “cancer is caused by microbes inside the cancer cells.” This is not true, but shows that Kehr probably doesn’t even care whether he got it right. He seems to have gotten the idea from legendary crackpot Royal Rife, who in the 1930s described unknown, non-existent bacteria he thought, without much evidence, were the cause of cancer, the “Bacillus-X”. The main treatment pushed by the CancerTutor webpage is accordingly the BX Protocol, which is advertised to help not only with cancer but, for good measure (remember: the broader the range of application, the greater the income base) “most diseases”, including Alzheimer’s, autism, asthma, autoimmune diseases, blood disorders, cancer, COPD, diabetes (type I and II), epilepsy, heart disease, lupus, Lyme disease, malaria, neurodegenerative disorders, Parkinson’s, respiratory infections, tuberculosis, and “most bacterial and viral conditions”. (The “inventor” of BX protocol is “Dr” Dewayne Lee Smith, who runs the Delta Institute and claims to have a Ph.D. in “biological sciences” from “University of Canterbury” or “Canterbury University” – he seems unsure; The University of Canterbury is a real university in New Zealand, but “Canterbury University” a Seychelles-based diploma mill). What the BX Protocol actually is, is a bit unclear, and it is hard to make sense of Delta Institute’s “explanation”, except that it is supposed to be a “new paradigm” and that Western medicine is flawed because it is merely “treatment of symptoms, and not causation” – and for the BX people there really is thecause of disease: A mythical and undefined “mitochondrial dysfunction” involving undetectable “stealth pathogens”. The protocol involves what is basically homeopathy, an “energized non-toxic biomolecule created from pure crystalline fructose” (i.e. sugar-water) that is potentiated through some unspecified magic ritual involving light(?), and which will “seek out and bond with toxic structures” and “dismantles” the toxins with an “electric field”. Indeed.

The CancerTutor website apparently makes money by referring readers to various quackery and crankery sellers, especially the BX Protocol cure-all (data leaked from Delta Institute show that CancerTutor/Webster Kehr received 15% commission on fourteen sales of BX Protocol.) The current retail-price of BX Protocol is $16,995. Kehr suggests to his readers that they may for instance sell their life-insurance for half its value to a broker he knows personally to pay for the BX Protocol.

How does Kehr know that his advice is good? Well, he’s got anecdotes! He even admits that “[w]e depend on cancer patients to contact us if the [treatment] protocol is not working.” Given that their treatments are often aimed at the terminally ill (or at least people who would die without propertreatment), you can perhaps discern a potential problem with this way of testing the efficacy of the advice you are giving.

It’s not the only cancer cure pushed on CancerTutor, though. Kehr says that there are more than 20 ways to turn cancer cells into normal cells (even though he is demonstrable unable to distinguish a cancer cell from a bacterial infection), and these are “[i]nexpensive, safe and gentle cancer treatments (with 90% cure rates) have existed for decades, but very, very few people know these treatments even exist.” For instance, CancerTutor also advocates biological dentistry and dentists trained by Hal Huggins. Why do few people know about these cures, you think? Ah, you didn’t need to ask: “The reason the media blacklists the truth about the 90% cure rate treatments is that the media is owned by multi-billionaires and the treatments that have 90% cure rates are not profitable enough to satisfy their lust for profits.” Those multi-billionaires also die of cancer, but apparently the profit margin is more important. Why the media and its owners have an economic stake in hiding cancer cures is less clear.

The CancerTutor website is currently run by Kehr’s associate, “acupuncturist /naturopath” Gary Edward Teal. Teal is most notable for his expertise on and promotion of Rife machines, which Teal thinks cure both cancer and infectious diseases (though he is for legal reasons forced to admit that the devices “are sold as electronic test instruments. No suitability or claims for any other purpose is stated or implied … We make absolutely no claims of any cure for any disease”).

As for Kehr, his pseudoscience is – as we mentioned at the outset – not limited to cancer quackery. Kehr is also a creationist and thinks “evolution is the most absurd scientific theory in the history of science!!” He has even written a couple of books about that. The main claim in The Evolution of Evolution is, according to himself, “that human DNA cannot contain enough information to ‘morph’ a fertilized egg (e.g. of a human) into a newborn baby.” So his main beef is apparently not with evolution but with genetics altogether. And in Introduction to the Mathematics of Evolution, his main beef is apparently with Cantor, insofar as he thinks that the set of naturals and the set of reals are the same size (he might not realize precisely what he’s claiming); he admits there is no bijection between them, though, which makes it rather obvious that he doesn’t have the faintest idea what he is talking about – yes, he describes himself as the author of many mathematical papers; MathSciNet doesn’t list a single one, however. (Otherwise the book seems apparently mostly to confuse evolution with abiogenesis and standard PRATTs such as “evolution by mutations cannot add new information” and “random chance cannot produce a human”. Anyone who thinks that line of reasoning is relevant has emphatically not remotely understood the basic principles of the theory of evolution.) Kehr also rejects Einstein’s theory of relativity and, as mentioned, photons.


Diagnosis: One of the most impressive crank magnets on the Internet. If you have a stupid theory or idea, Kehr is apparently willing to adopt it, especially if you cannot procure evidence or reason for it, since the fact that you can’t demonstrates that there is a conspiracy to suppress it. Raging lunatic.
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#1823: Merrill Keiser

April 12, 2017, 1:37 am
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Merrill Samuel “Sam” Keiser Jr. is an insane religious fundie nutter truck driver from Fremont, Ohio, who got a few minutes in the spotlight when he attempted to run as a candidate in the Democratic primary for Senate in 2006 against Sherrod Brown. Keiser ran on a platform of “traditional values”, including opposition to gay marriage, appointment of strict constructionist jurists on every level, “winning” the War on Terror (and the War on Drugs), teaching and encouraging school prayer, taxpayer-financed school vouchers, support for a strong military and using the US armed forces to “battle drugs and terrorism”, supporting US withdrawal from the UN, anti-abortion and a “Biblical” view of Israel. He was also opposed to embryonic stem cell research, saying that it “is a ploy of money-hungry academic researchers and blood-thirsty liberals and politicians who want to bring a culture of death to America and it part of their religion. It is just like the religions of old in which they used human infant sacrifice in idol worship.” Yeah, throw in a conspiracy theory for good measure. Of course, “money-hungry academic researchers” is sort of a contradiction; if you’re money-hungry, you’d stay as far away from academic research as you’d get. Keiser’s premise is really rather just the good’ol one that he doesn’t like or understand stem cell research, and everyone who disagrees with him is corrupt.

During his campaign Keiser called creationism “true” and endorsed the position that creationism, not evolution, should be taught in public schools (since “if you teach kids that they’re here by accident rather than purposely by somebody putting them here, their self-worth won’t be more than any other animal,” an argument famously championed by Jack Chick). School children should be “taught to pray,” and “liberals” have spent too long worshipping the “god of Reason.” Yeah, that bloody hallmark of heathen perversion, reason. As Mark Rushdoony says, “we must base our laws on faith, not reason.”

In May 2006 Keiser called for homosexuality to be punishable by death: “Just as we have laws against taking drugs, we should have laws against immoral behavior,” said Keiser. He has later apparently modified the position, claiming that although he would not oppose making homosexuality a crime punishable by death for the overall spiritual and moral health of society, he himself, would not introduce such legislation In March 2006, Keiser suggested that Elton John should be killed (“worthy of death”), as should Mary Cheney (daughter of Dick Cheney), for being homosexual.
  

Diagnosis: One of many raging about the evils of radical Islam while themselves favoring a society governed by principles somewhere to the extreme right of the Taliban. Deranged fundie bigot, and apparently his votes in the 2006 primary exceeded what can be explained by ballot-marking errors, which is scary. Then people elected Trump.
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#1824: Crockett Keller

April 18, 2017, 1:29 am
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Legendary crank magnet Jim Keith seems to have passed away. Crockett Keller, however, doesn’t deserve more than a brief note. Keller is a store-owner in Texas who in 2011 got some attention for an ad for his own courses on gun safety for people to receive their conceal/carry permits, where he stated that“if you are a socialist liberal and or voted for the current campaigner in chief, please do not take this class. You have already proven that you cannot make a knowledgeable and prudent decision as under the law” and “if you are a non-Christian Arab or Muslim, I will not teach you the class with no shame” because “the fact is if you are a devout Muslim then you cannot be a true American.” Keep in mind that this was supposed to be a gun safety class.

He later doubled down on his claims and equated giving Muslims handgun training with providing flight instruction to the hijackers responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks: “Why would I teach people who have sworn the annihilation of the United States and who can lie, cheat, steal and murder Americans in order to further Islam?” said Keller: “Why would I arm someone like that? Why would I enable them to carry a weapon legally? I don’t want to be a part of that.” No, he displays no hint of understanding what Islam is.


Diagnosis: I don’t think you should trust someone as deluded and crazy as Crockett Keller to give you gun safety advice in any case. Deplorable git.
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#1825: Rebecca Keller

April 20, 2017, 1:10 am
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Real Science-4-Kids imprint publishes student texts, teacher manuals, and student laboratory workbooks –ostensibly covering chemistry, biology and physics to serve kindergarten through ninth grade – specifically targeted at homeschoolers. The material does, of course, not primarily seek to introduce kids to science, but to religiously motivated science-denialism, including creationism, and Rebecca Keller, who runs the outfit, has realized that since creationists can’t challenge scientists on evidence, truth, accountability and research, they should focus on “educational” materials aimed at kids instead. This is of course the usualy ploy among denialists: there’s a reason the Intelligent Design movement has focused on getting Intelligent Design taught in public schools and not on doing research to establish Intelligent Design as a viable scientific alternative. Keller has frequently spoken at intelligent design conferences about and provided testimony for teaching the controversy and allowing students to “critically evaluate” all scientific data that support and/or oppose scientific conclusions, once again because the focus of Intelligent Design conferences tend to be outreach, not science.

She has also been directly involved in various attempts to get Intelligent Design creationism taught in public schools. For instance, in 2006 she was invited by Mike Fair to testify before the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee in favor of language to allow students to “critically evaluate” all scientific data. Like all such attempts, this one didn’t include any discussion of how students, with little or no prior knowledge or understanding of the field, its questions, or research, would be in a position to “critically evaluate” any of it.

Now, Keller herself is a former assistant professor at the University of New Mexico, where she did indeed work in molecular biology. Her rejection of evolution was not grounded in science, however, but in religious fundamentalism, though it provided her with the credentials needed to be a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. Keller herself is currently a home-schooling mom with no academic or research affiliation.

Her educational material is apparently extensively used, however, since many homeschoolers are religious fundamentalist science denialists.


Diagnosis: Anti-scientists. And that is of course precisely what makes her and her writings rather popular in certain quarters. Influential and dangerous.
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#1826: Jon Kelly

April 27, 2017, 2:50 am
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Jon Kelly is a colleague of Alfred Webre, and a, uh, “researcher” on exopolitics. In particular, Kelly is “a world-famous expert in the application of voice-based disclosure technology for revealing UFO secrets.” That would be … playing recordings of people speaking backward to see if they reveal hidden messages about extraterrestrials; “expertise” doesn’t seem to enter into the process at any discernible point. Now, apparently Webre is currently considered “fringe” even in the exopolitics community – which is like … well, I struggle to come up with a good simile – and was ultimately considered too crazy even for the Examiner website and given the boot in 2011. Kelly’s defense of Webre: “Examiner.com’s corporate publication ban against the Seattle Exopolitics Examiner is an Illuminatiagenda-inspired media hit targeting the columnist who revealed President Barack Obama’s participation in the CIA’s secret Mars visitation program.”

As for Kelly’s own investigations, here is an example: Kelly analyzes statements by Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, John McCain, and Edgar Mitchell about UFOs and Extraterrestrials using backwards speech analysis “and discovers startling revelations. One of these 4 may be an E.T. abductee. One of these 4 may have an E.T. implant. Only one of these four key actors in Exopolitics conscious mind (‘forward speech’) is saying what his subconscious mind actually thinks.” (By the way: Mitchell, himself a loon, is clearly part of the conspiracy – how conspiracy theory groups tend to dissolve into infighting and accusations that other conspiracy theorists are part of the conspiracy seems to be pretty lawlike.) So apparently forward speech reflects the conscious mind and backward speech the unconscious. Good to know. According to himself, Kelly has “responded to the call of science [yeah, about that …] for improved methods of UFO witness interrogation by revealing the UFO and extraterrestrial secrets of Kenneth Arnold, Betty Hill, NASA astronauts, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and President Obama.” And his credentials? “Jon’s work in sound and consciousness is heavily influenced by a multi-decade immersive study in classical yoga meditation.” Science, people.

And don’t worry: Kelly is pushing terrestrial conspiracies as well, for instance about how the UK Monarchy is using snipers to destabilize the world and push for WWIII. I suppose when you have figured out how you can use backward masking to uncover evidence for alien mind control, you’ll be able to find evidence for anything anywhere. Kelly can even predict the future. The novel discoveries he proudly mentions on his website are:

-       “Accurately reported the ‘Shock and Awe’ strikes that opened the Iraq War 2 years in advance.
-       Successfully identified the BTK Killer on Wichita morning radio 15 minutes before he confessed.
-       Reliably disclosed Oprah’s true feelings about James Frey on Atlanta morning radio 2 weeks before she called him out as a liar on daytime television.”

We’re as impressed as anyone has any right to be. And if you wish, you could sign up for “Jon’s online streaming on-demand video class ‘UFOs and You: Experiential Contact for Beginners’ provides essential insights into Disclosure, UFO Communications, Psychic Dimensions of Contact and Night Vision Equipment in a way that students describe as informative, educational and riveting”.


Diagnosis: He adds some color. We’ll give him that. Probably harmless.
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#1827: Mike Kelly

April 29, 2017, 12:41 am
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Mike Kelly has been the U.S. Representative for Pennsylvania’s 3rd congressional district since 2011 and is the kind of person who thinks that the administrative decision categorizing contraception access as preventive health care was comparable to 9/11 and the attack on Pearl Harbor, and who says that August 1, 2012, when the HHS mandate passed, was “the day that religious freedom died”. That’s pretty silly, but illustrative of the persecution complex and willful failure to understand what “religious freedom” amounts to that characterizes Mike Kelly. In 2014 Kelly and Mike Enzi sponsored a bill that would allow adoption agencies to refuse to facilitate any adoption that “conflicts with … the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.” The motivation was, of course, neither religious freedom nor moral conviction.

Kelly is also on the record comparing the EPA to terrorists for regulating pollution from coal plants. He did admit that he used the word “terrorism” broadly. “Idiotic” is a better description, but yes: No one doubts that he went for inflammatory rhetoric rather than accuracy.

Unexpectedly, Kelly was no fan of Obama. Kelly thinks Obama “divides” Americans “on race”, presumably because Obama is black and some people react negatively to having a black president. Accordingly, Kelly didn’t rule out impeaching him to prevent him from dragging the US into a civil war. In 2015 Kelly blamed the Baltimore riots on Big Government, mostly because the riots were bad and so is Big Government. Apparently Obama also emboldens terrorists (note the dog whistles to the birthers in that one) because, well, apparently because Obama is in favor of gun control and legislation that is sensitive to environmental concerns.


Diagnosis: Saying something so patently idiotic as Kelly continues to say should make you ineligible for being left home alone, but in Pennsylvania’s 3rd District they apparently elect you to Congress instead. It’s hard to react with anything but a sigh at this point.
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#1828: Gary & Hallie Kemper

May 1, 2017, 12:11 am
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Who are Gary & Hallie Kemper? Well, at least no one had heard about them until their book Discovering Intelligent Designwas touted by the Discovery Institute’s pro-creationism blog. Apparently the book was published by the Institute’s in-house vanity press, the Discovery Institute Press, and it was presented as suitable “supplementary materials” for Louisiana science class, since Louisiana, thanks to the Louisiana Science Education Act, allows distributing creationist tracts in biology classes. The book is described as “the first full curriculum to present the scientific evidence for intelligent design in both cosmology and biology in an easy-to-understand format. The curriculum includes a textbook, a workbook, and a DVD with multimedia video clips that are integrated into the readings.” So, it’s yet another piece of creationist rhetoric aimed at the lay market. We’re still waiting for the sciencefrom the Intelligent Design creationists.

The Kempers themselves are apparently homeschoolers – which ought to make their whole marketing campaign look a bit weird – and have no discernible background in science. However, apparently the Discovery Institute’s own “research coordinator” (oh, wee), the infamous Casey Luskin, was involved, too. The publication of the book – which appears to contain all the usual creationist canards – was subsequently ranked by the Discovery Institute as one of their 10 “great triumphs” of 2013. It is telling that triumphs for Intelligent Design creationists don’t mean scientific breakthroughs or anything related to research or discovery, but outreach results, once again demonstrating that the point isn’t to test their theory, but to get it taught in public schools.


Diagnosis: Fundamentalists and non-scientists. Other than that they’re pretty darn obscure, and their impact is probably negligible. Really: WTF is this?
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#1829: Carl Kerby

May 3, 2017, 12:52 am
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Carl Kerby is one of the founding board members of Answers in Genesis, one of the most ridiculous organizations in existence. Kerby is a representative specimen, and we’ll just give two examples of how his mind seems to work:

Like his fellow AiG members, Kerby believes that more or less all of the Earth’s inhabitants were wiped out some 4,500 years ago during the Biblical flood, and like other young-earth creationists Kerby doesn’t even use this event to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs – Noah brought the dinosaurs on the Ark, all types; anything else would violate the Biblical claim that he did, indeed, bring every kind on the Ark. Of course, as a scientific hypothesis the Ark story has some flaws, but Kerby is a self-styled “creation scientist”, and he’s got them answers. So, to the problem of how to fit two of every animal, for a year, on a boat about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 50 feet high – “how did they put the big old dinosaurs on there?” as Kerby poses the question – he goes for the obvious: “Well, I would suggest to you they didn’t take the big old dinosaur — they would have taken the younger ones.” Uh-huh. “My grandson is a whole lot smaller than I am,” elaborated Kerby.

There’s a good report on Kerby’s talk, “Evolution and Pop Culture”, at the 2005 Creation Mega Conference here, which was basically a rant about how references to anything “prehistoric” in movies or TV series is offensive since the Earth is 6000 years old and there is no prehistory. For instance, there was a scene from the movie Ice Age that Kerby didn’t like: A scene from an ice cave showing three animals frozen beside a (living) sloth so that the four are lined up in a row, from a primitive looking creature on the far right to the modern sloth on the left – like an illustration of how the sloth evolved from more primitive ancestors. Enter Kerby: “They [Blue Sky Productions and 20th Century Fox, presumably] were trying to indoctrinate your kids, they were trying to show evolution, but they failed. You know why they failed?” Oh yes, bring it on: “Because they show all four of those animals existing at the same time. That’s not evolution!” Even Ray Comfort would probably not be able to top the inanity of that one. Now, Kerby’s revelation of how Ice Age tried but failed to brainwash kids into believing in evolution would probably render most reasonable people speechless. We’ll grant him that. But yes, one of the premises is that evolution is part of an orchestrated plot to lead children away from Jesus; Hollywood is part of it, but like all Satan-inspired evolutionists Hollywood is doomed to make mistakes that God-fearing people like Kerby are able to spot right away.


Diagnosis: This one might be dim even by young-earth creationist standards, but he’s still a reasonably influential figure – which figures but is nonetheless quite amazing.
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#1830: Paul Kersey (pseudonym)

May 5, 2017, 12:38 am
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Paul Kersey is the pseudonym for the white nationalist and conspiracy theorist who runs the blog Stuff Black People Don’t Like, where he advocates for racial separation. The name “Paul Kersey” is of course borrowed from Charles Bronson’s character in the Death Wish series. We are not going to speculate about the author’s real name.

Kersey seems to have gained a bit of a name for himself in altright circles. For the 2016 election he was a giddy supporter of Donald Trump, saying of his immigration speech that it “was a complete repudiation of ‘The New Colossus’ that was regrettably placed on the Statue of Liberty in 1903,” referring to the Emma Lazarus poem welcoming “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Outside of the altright movement Kersey is probably most famous for claiming that the Oklahoma City bombing was a false flag operation to smear the militia and the anti-immigrant movement.


Diagnosis: Insane, mush-headed racist and bigot. Probably only moderately influential, but there are many of these people out there, so one can’t just dismiss the movement either.
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