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#1831: Melba Ketchum

May 6, 2017, 12:21 am
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A legend in crank circles, Melba Ketchum, a veterinarian by trade, is probably today’s leading, uh, expert on Bigfoot. Ketchum claims to have sequenced Bigfoot DNA and found it to be a new species of hominid that is a hybrid of Homo sapiens and some other species. Yes: Bigfoot arose some 15,000 years ago when some cryptids had sex with modern human females, resulting in hairy hominin hybrids. According to a 2012 press release, which described their five-year long DNA study “currently under peer-review”, Ketchum and her team obtained three “whole nuclear genomes from purported Sasquatch samples. The genome sequencing shows that Sasquatch mtDNA is identical to modern Homo sapiens, but Sasquatch nuDNA is a novel, unknown hominin related to Homo sapiens and other primate species.” Of course, the obvious conclusion to draw (further reasons here) from sequencing showing that Sasquatch mtDNA is identical to modern Homo sapiens, is that her samples were human DNA, but “obvious” is just a repressive tactic of the establishment.

It is also unclear how they determined that the samples were really from a Bigfoot: If they took a blood or saliva sample from a living Bigfoot one may wonder why they didn’t capture or photograph it; if the samples were just found, it is a bit unclear how do they determined that they weren’t left by another animal or hiker. At least Ketchum has (on a different occasion) claimed to have obtained her DNA samples from a blueberry bagel left in the backyard of a Michigan woman who claims that 10 Sasquatch creatures visit her property on a regular basis. Here’s a video recording they made of the beast. Isn’t it unfortunate that it just happens to be so out-of-focus?

It is, however, telling that Ketchum refused to let anyone else see her evidence. She did, however, release a statement requesting that the U.S. government immediately recognize Bigfoot as “an indigenous people and immediately protect their human and Constitutional rights.”

When the paper predictably failed to clear peer review, Ketchum responded by buying an existing journal, renaming it (De Novo) and releasing a special edition containing one paper: her own. According to Ketchum, the standard venues used peer-reviewers that were too close-minded (“I am calling it the ‘Galileo Effect’,” said Ketchum), and “Denovo, the new journal is aimed at offering not only more choices and better service to scientists wanting to submit a manuscript, but also reviewers and editors that will be fair, unlike the treatment we have received.” At least she can now claim to have the results published in a peer-reviewed journal, and that’s what matters. The paper is discussed here; some comments from geneticists are here.

Ketchum is at present still running the Sasquatch genome project, which at the very least sports an awfully formatted webpage. It should probably be a cause of some concern that Ketchum, in her bio, states that she “provides professional forensic consultation and testimony in legal cases.” It would be a pity not to use the skills and techniques acquired from sequencing a Sasquatch genome for public good, such as sending people to jail.

Her team, listed here for future reference, consists of:

-       Patrick Wojkiewicz, “Director of the Shreveport Laboratory of the North Louisiana Crime Lab System and the Technical Leader of the DNA section.”
-       Aliece Watts, “Quality Director for Integrated Forensic Laboratories, Inc.”
-       David W. Spence, “trace evidence supervisor with the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences, Criminal Investigations Laboratory, at Dallas County.”
-       Andreas Holzenburg, Director of the Microscopy & Imaging Center at Texas A&M University.
-       Douglas Toler, “clinical pathologist at Huguley Memorial Hospital in Fort Worth.”
-       Tom Prychitko, “laboratory director at Helix Biological Laboratory, a biological testing firm he established in 2009,” and who apparently has a long backstory of Sasquatch hunting and DNA testing.
-       Fan Zhang, “Bioinformatician at the Department of Academic and Institutional Resources and Technology, University of North Texas Health Science Center.”
-       Ray Shoulders and Ryan Smith (no biographical information given).


Diagnosis: A prime example of how cargo cult science operates, complete with vanity labs and vanity journals. Of course, Ketchum and her gang are mostly pretty harmless and fun, but other pseudoscientists in other fields using the same sorts of approaches and techniques are not.
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#1832: Devvy Kidd

May 8, 2017, 12:48 am
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Devvy Kidd, a spokesmodel by trade, is a conspiracy theorist of the sort who rails against the New World Order and who has occasionally been given column space at the WND. To give you an idea of the kind of stuff she peddles, here is (a report on) her take on the nefarious Alfalfa club, which apparently is a dark, secretive group whose members include the Bushes, John Kerry, Henry Kissinger, Sandra Day O’Connor (“who, in the infamous Lawrence v Texas sodomy set-up case didn’t deny homosexuality is a voluntarily chosen lifestyle”), Mitt Romney and president Obama – or “the current impostor president, Barry Soetoro, aka Obama;” Kidd is, of course, a birther. Oh, and by the way, apparently Kissinger is a communist agent. No, really. Yes, Kissinger.

Otherwise, Kidd promotes the standard wingnut crazy, only slightly more helplessly than usual. So, when trying to argue that the US was founded as a “Christian nation”, Kidd doesn’t only not hesitate to use fake quotes attributed to Jefferson (many borrowed from pseudohistorian David Barton, of course) – she even shamelessly links to original letters in which those quotes do not appear (don’t expect someone like Kidd to actually read her sources). She can even, as proof, point to Patrick Henry claiming that this “great nation” was founded upon Christianity – in 1765, so Henry, who was anyways opposed to the Constitution, could obviously not have been talking about the US – but of course Henry didn’t say that at all; it’s an infamous fake quote. But according to Kidd anyone “who has done the historical homework knows that America is a Christian nation founded upon Christianity and Christianity alone. Atheists and the American Communist Lawyers Union (ACLU) have done their darndest to convince Americans otherwise with their constant propaganda by using repetition of certain phrases, i.e., ‘separation of church and state,’ a [phrase explicitly used by Jefferson to describe the First Amendment] concept hallucinated up by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1947.” We don’t think Kidd really understands what “doing your homework” means. (According to Kidd, the ACLU is “a communist front organization” – she has exhibited no sign of understanding what communism is, either).


Diagnosis: None too concerned with truth, fact or accuracy. She is not alone.
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#1833: Katie Kieffer

May 10, 2017, 1:29 am
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Katie Kieffer is a self-described millennial (and apparently counted as a spokesperson for millenials among people leaning religious right – she doesn’t seem to mind), columnist at Townhall, author of Let’s Be Clear and in general something of an Ann Coulter wannabe. Ann Coulter is not a good role model.

Kieffer has written and spoken on a range of issues. She is, for instance, a climate change denialist, arguing that scientists who believe in climate change are “funded by the government,” so there. (In the linked clip she also touches on evolution; “I believe in some evolution,” says Kieffer, which is a standard thing that many hardcore creationists say.)

At the 2013 CPAC panel on women’s issues (CPAC banned a gay group from participating, but could at least pretend to discuss women’s issues) Kieffer called Obamacare “sexist” because it expanded access to birth control, which she believes lets men get women pregnant or give women STDs without feeling any responsibility. “Obamacare is sexist because it puts guys off the hook,” Kieffer explained, “all he has to do is say, oh that’s not my fault you should have been using Obama’s free birth control.” We don’t think further comment is needed.

Apparently she is sometimes described as a “libertarian” by religious fundamentalism characters who have deluded them into thinking that Bible-based social conservatism is libertarian. Kieffer supported Ted Cruz during the 2016 primaries.


Diagnosis: Not entirely unlikely to emerge as a Fox News anchor in the relatively near future. Yeah, that kind.
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#1834: Tracey Kiesling

May 12, 2017, 12:58 am
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It used to be – and probably still is – popular for school boards to allow schools to teach elective courses on the Bible, which of course is legal as long as they are “taught academically, not devotionally”. In practice, however, the distinction is often – shall we say – “blurry”. One of the central promoters of such courses is The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS), which has lobbied school boards to not only teach such courses, but also tried to sell them their own textbooks for such classes. The NCBCPS’s textbooks are, as expected, designed not merely to teach students about the Bible, and are riddled not only with falsehoods and errors, but the kind of fake news memes you’ll find on crazy conspiracy theorists’ facebook pages stated as facts, such as citing alleged NASA findings that suggest that the earth stopped twice in its orbit (nope) as evidence that the Biblical description of the sun standing still in Joshua and II Kings as a literal truth. The curriculum would also quote approvingly from Christian Nation apologist David Barton and claim that the Bible was “the blueprint for the Constitution,” which suggests that they have neither read nor care too much about the Constitution (other than in this sense, of course), which is not very surprising.

Tracey Kiesling is (or at least was) the NCBCPS’s national teacher trainer. In her course she offered “scientific documentation” on The Flood and cited Carl Baugh as a scientific authority – “an internationally known creation scientist who founded the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Tex,” according to Kiesling, and whose promotion of the Paluxy footprints as evidence for young-earth creationism has made him shunned even by the more batshit crazy factions of the young-earth creationist movement.

Currently Kiesling is promoting a weight-loss scheme, T-tapp. She has also written a book called Meet Me at the Well: Living Water for the Thirsty Teachers. We recommend neither.


Diagnosis: Not a reliable source of information about absolutely anything. Stay well away.
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#1835: Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick

May 14, 2017, 1:04 am
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Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick was the U.S. Representative for Michigan’s 13th congressional district from 1997 to 2011, when she lost out partially due to corruption scandals involving her family, in particular her son Kwame Kilpatrick, who was mayor of Detroit until 2008. Well, she reappeared in the news in 2013, as a participant in the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, a panel on alien visitations, together with luminaries like Mike Gravel. “Evidence has been mounting for the last 65 years,” said Stephen Bassett, who organized the event; “we’re going to be holding the hearing that Congress should be holding.”

Perhaps one may try to explain away Kilpatrick’s participation with the $20,000 payment, but it is hard not to notice the crazy in her own justification for being there. In particular, Kilpatrick said she doesn’t like that “this country makes jokes about (UFOs), but in other countries, it’s a spiritual kind of thing, so I’m really looking forward to seeing exactly what it is.” Apparently she always had an interest in UFOs as a member of the congressional Appropriations Committee and Armed Service Committee, and at the citizen hearing she wants “to hear the factual information and I’m taking it very seriously. I don’t want to be ambivalent. I don’t want it to be a joke. It’s too serious. If we bury our heads in the sand and say there's nothing there, we lose, our country loses.” Both Kilpatrick and Gravel called for a real congressional investigation into UFOs, and for the issue to be brought up again at the United Nations.

To top it off, Kilpatrick used the occasion to introduce Louis Farrakhan, whom she called “one of the leaders in our nation on this topic” (Farrakhan has publicly talked about his own UFO experiences), an attribution that on its own would earn Kilpatrick an entry in our Encyclopedia.


Diagnosis: Ok, so we should perhaps keep the possibility open that this is just a matter of getting paid. We choose to be charitable, though, and characterize her as a loon.
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#1836: Ayo Kimathi

May 15, 2017, 12:43 am
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A.k.a. The Irritated Genie of Soufeese

Ayo Kimathi is an anti-gay extremist and self-proclaimed 21st-century Black freedom-fighter who has given lectures on Black racial survival and helped African people avert genocide in the 21st century around the world. The thing is, however, that for Kimathi, the crucial focal point for the struggle is a firm opposition to homosexuality, in particular in the Black community (though he is also opposed to interracial romantic relations).

In 2005 Kimathi self-published his book War on the Horizon – Black Resistance to the white-sex Assault. His definition of “white-sex” is “[i]n short, misogyny, rape, homosexuality, child molestation, bestiality, and various other forms of european sexual perversion”, and Kimathi’s idée fixe is that homosexuality, pedophilia and other “perversions” were deliberately invented by Europeans as weapons used to target the Black race for destruction and genocide. The ideas are also eloquently summed up in his lecture “Effeminization of the Black Male”, which he routinely gives around the US and the world. And yes: white people, apparently along with President Barack Obama, have been attempting to “homosexualize” black men to make them weaker. And, entirely predictably, he explicitly highlights the Jews, arguing that he has been under attack by “the smallhats (white so-called ‘jews’)” (as well as “white homos like Gay Edgar Hoover”) and that the Jews have been ruining his business. Kimathi also advocates for the supremacy of black men over black women, of course, and offers tips on his website (on which he regularly encourages violence) “to help every Black woman in the world understand what she needs to do to keep a strong Black man happy.”

In 2015, Kimathi was elected International Spokesman of a newly created movement called the Straight Black Pride Movement (SBPM). The same year he was officially banned from Bermuda for a lecture he did where he stated, among very many other things, that “Black men should only date and marry Black women.” Earlier, in 2013, he was fired from The Wire and the Department of Homeland Security, where he was inexplicably employed (Kimathi himself claims he was terminated because he was fighting corruption in the ICE), after arguing that “[w]arfare is eminent[sic], and in order for Black people to survive the 21st century, we are going to have to kill a lot of whites – more than our Christian hearts can possibly count,” while also advocating “ethnic cleansing” of “black-skinned Uncle Tom race traitors.” His list of “traitors” includes Al Sharpton, Lil Wayne, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell (who he calls “Colon”) and President Obama, “a treasonous mulatto scum dweller … who will fight against reparations for Black people in amerikkka, but in favor of fag rights for freaks in amerikkka and Afrika.” Interestingly, he has also listed“conspiracy theorists” among his enemies.


Diagnosis: Furious and hateful conspiracy theorist, and since he is also utterly delusional his hate and anger have found the most bizarre targets. Dangerous.
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#1837: Ben Kinchlow

May 17, 2017, 2:30 am
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Benjamim “Ben” Kinchlow is best known for being the co-host of The 700 Club from 1975 to 1988 and again from 1992 to 1996, though he has also hosted other shows on the Christian Broadcasting Network, such as Straight Talk, which was not about straight talk. He is also the founder of Americans for Israel, and regularly writes columns for WND. Apparently he used to be a Black Nationalist before becoming a fundamentalist wingnut extremist.

Kinchlow the Constitutional scholar
Kinchlow is opposed to the separation of church and state (“The concept of separation of church and state used incessantly by anti-prayer, anti-Bible and anti-God forces to erode our constitutional liberties”), and since he is delusional, he has convinced himself that the separation of church is not suggested in the US Constitution (“[t]here is absolutely nothing in the U.S. Constitution or any other founding document that articulates, supports or defends the concept of the separation of church and state”). Instead, it is a communist idea; it is, as he has repeatedly pointed out, part of “the Soviet (not the U.S.) Constitution.” He also thinks the Establishment Clause violates the Free Exercise Clause, which is idiotic, and like most dominionists and dominionist sympathizers, he rejects (willfully ignores) the 14th Amendment. And no, he doesn’t have the faintest idea how the Constitution is supposed to work.

Kinchlow on politics
Naturally, Kinchlow was no fan of Obama, and as people like him are wont to do, he would quickly revert to delusions, lies and conspiracy theories in his criticisms. So, among Kinchlow’s complaints was that Obama “made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries,” something Obama neither has done nor has the power to do, “has erected a multitude of New Offices,” which Obama neither has done nor has the power to do, imposed “Taxes on us without our Consent,” which he cannot do either (only Congress can – details to which Kinchlow’s mind is impressively immune), “subjugated the countryto a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws,” something Kinchlow didn’t attempt to explain further.

According to Kinchlow, Obama is, if not a Muslim, at least “registered as a Muslim in Hawaii.” Apparently he read it “somewhere”. He doesn’t tell us when Hawaii started registering people by religious affiliation. But he does conclude that the White House is now “claimed for Islam”. He manages to derive that conclusion because he is a moron as well as a liar.

Here is Kinchlow’s brand of American exceptionalism. It’s … exceptional (“America is the first example in human history of a nation where people were given the right to vote, elect representatives and determine their own political fate [one wonders whether the crucial term here is “human”, and what that would imply];” “America has […] created a veritable paradise compared to most of the world;” “We have, on the whole, tended to be a moral and devout people. At home, we made a choice to end slavery [a few centuries after everyone else, but still], even at the cost of a bloody Civil War;” and, the best: “Abroad, again and again, we have chosen to side with less powerful nations when they have been attacked by aggressors. Americans have reached out at home and abroad with the hand of charity to people who are hurting.”)

Kinchlow’s solution to accusations of racism against the police is “No more white cops responding to distress calls in ‘da hood’;” if “no black cops are available, let the residents handle the situation, or wait until one is available.” As opposed to Kinchlow (“Bingo! All charges of racism will cease immediately”) we do not think the solution will make all charges of racism cease immediately.

Kinchlow and facts
Facts has never really mattered to Ben Kinchlow. So, for instance, when he claims that Iraq was involved in 9/11, he can neither back it up nor does he see the need to. He also has a tendency to attribute fake quotes to historical figures to bolster his agenda.

Kinchlow on evolution
Kinchlow is a creationist. According to Kinchlow, evolution is a religion of murder. The argument goes as follows: evolution is the religion of the godless (because of a dictionary that defines religion as “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe;” yeah, that definition did in fact include some further conditions on what it takes to qualify as a religion, but Kinchlow disregarded those); religions come with moral codes; the moral code of evolution is murder. So there. And no, he doesn’t show any evidence of understanding the basics of the theory of evolution or the difference between a scientific theory and a moral code. Here is his description of the theory of evolution: “our theory (a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural) is … we crawled out from the primordial ooze onto dry ground – and voila!” That … doesn’t much resemble the theory of evolution, but the “voila” part does resemble certain creation stories. “What is life? No one knows for sure, but it is assuredly much more than the result of a random bolt of lightning striking a pond of primordial stew,” continues Kinchlow. Ka-zing! He also helpfully emphasizes that “[k]eep in mind, according to the dictionary, a theory is a ‘proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural.’ It is a speculation, a guess, a conjecture,” which is not the definition of a theory [scientific] even according to the dictionary Kinchlow was using, thus demonstrating, once again, that he is dishonest in addition to stupid. No surprise there.

Ultimately, Kinchlow concludes, evolution is a religion that leads to eating babies.

Christianity, on the other hand, is not a religion, according to Kinchlow (forgetting his own definition for a moment): “One of the factors contributing to this precipitous deterioration of our society is the mistaken idea that the Bible is about religion and religious activities. Nothing could be further from the truth. This Judeo-Christian ‘Book,’ unlike some other ‘holy books,’ is not about establishing religion, but about creating order from disorder, control from chaos.”


Diagnosis: Good grief is Kinchlow dense and dishonest! People actually seem to listen to him, but it’s hard to determine what percentage of his audience tune in for the sheer entertainment value of such breathtaking inanity.
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#1838: Patricia King

May 19, 2017, 3:30 am
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Patricia King is the leader Extreme Prophetic, a group that advances doctrines considered fringe even among lunatic fundamentalists – even Cindy Jacobs and C. Peter Wagner reject them, though mostly for silly reasons, it seems. In particular, King and her group think they can raise the dead, and have devoted much effort to doing so: “Raising the dead has always been a mandate of the church. Jesus commissioned us to go in His name and preach the good news of the Kingdom. He then went on to explain, that includes healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead.” Our old friend Caleb Brundidge is a prominent member, and Todd Bentley is allegedly a fan and student of King’s. It is worth noting that Cindy Jacobs claims to be able to raise the dead, too; her renounciation of what King claims to be doing seems to have more to do with fundie dislike of competition her perception of King as being involved in New Age worship of evil demons rather than a charge of charlatanery and/or delusion.

Apparently King runs an online Bible school and something she calls the Glory School, where students are offered the opportunity to “freely access the throne of grace, acquaint yourself with the glorious supernatural phenomenon in the Kingdom, encounter the Lord and His angelic majesties, and much more” (it’s not free). Here is a deranged critique by one Victor Hafichuk, who knows that King (“a New Age witch”) is a fraud because “God has graciously granted me and others access to the throne of grace to which she refers, and I’ve never seen her there.” Part of the criticism of King seems to be based on her New Ageish idea that “supernatural experiences” (i.e. hallucinations and tripping) should be a normal part of Christian life.


Diagnosis: Seriously delusional. She does indeed seem somewhat less explicitly evil than some of her critics – though that’s a low bar. Her impact is, despite her own claims to the contrary, probably relatively limited.
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#1839: John Kirkwood

May 21, 2017, 12:46 am
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Richard King, a central proponent of the the magic melanin theory who, because he viewed melanin as a necessary component of humanity, preferred to use term “hueman” rather than “human” to describe white people, has apparently passed away.

John Kirkwood, however, is still very much a Chicago pastor, (sigh) rabid anti-gay activist and co-host of the radio show Americans For Truth About Homosexuality Radio Hour, which – by extension of Badger’s Law – has nothing to do with truth. (AFTAH is Peter LaBarbera’s group). According to Kirkwood, gays and lesbians are like heroin users, and supporting gay rights is similar to encouraging a drug addict. In an interview with LaBarbera Kirkwood also attacked “the Lady Gaga theology that you were born that way,” pointing out that those who believe such things are “rejecting Kirkwood God” and “disagreeing with himrejecting the Bible.” (Obama, for instance.) Indeed, gay Christians are “satanically inspired,” according to Kirkwood, though for a rabid fundie like Kirkwood “x is satanically inspired” is just a substitute “I don’t fancy x.”

And of course, the gays are bringing America down. In fact, the “homosexual movement” is the “greatest threat to freedom” in the US, as far as Kirkwood is concerned; homosexuality “is a super sin because it reaches far beyond the bounds of what happens between two men or two women in their bedroom, it’s crushing our Constitution and it’s stripping us of our religious freedom, that sounds pretty super to me.” We are not entirely sure what the details and tacit premises of that inference are supposed to be, and suspect Kirkwood isn’t either. Regarding some openly LGBT judges in Cook County (“the adulterous judges of Cook County”), Kirkwood claimed that we “were better off when the Mafia ran Illinois because they were interested in making a profit, not making some kind of political statement that is totally abhorrent.” Of course, Kirkwood is officially very tired of the sexualization of America, even in the same paragraph where he states that Michael Sam’s “penchant for penis” is no cause for celebration. Hint: It’s not Michale Sam who is sexualizing this, John.


Diagnosis: It is hard to avoid concluding that Kirkwood is ... well, extremely interested in and focused on gay sex. In addition to being a hateful fundie bigot, of course.
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#1840: Jason Kissner

May 23, 2017, 2:05 am
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Jason Kissner is a criminologist and birther who has made his presence well known on various conspiracy websites with his apparently unique take on the birther conspiracy: Kissner claims that Obama is really Indonesian and (of course) a Muslim. In fact, Obama is apparently the son of a cult leader, one Mohammed Subud, since Obama and Sudub, according to conspiracy theorists, look kind of similar in pictures (that they admit to have modified to make the resemblance more obvious to the untrained eye). Kissner has written about these issues for the interestingly named (a corollary of this) website American Thinker; you can find his critical thinking trainwreck about Obama here; it’s rather hilarious.

In addition to his birther stuff, Kissner has made himself known with his Ebola conspiracies – a topic that seems to have generated a whole conspiracy industry back in 2014. According to Kissner, the 2013 outbreak was apparently due to a bioengineered variant of Ebola that is more contagious than previous strains. His evidence is simply an argument from incredulity, based on the fact that Ebola reemerged after being dormant for years and that the Zaire strain that appeared in West Africa is a distinct strain, which Kissner cannot imagine could have happened without human intervention. Kissner is not an epidemiologist. That’s to put things diplomatically. In any case, Kissner concludes that US bioterrorism must have introduced this “new” Ebola strain to Guinea. Why? Well, it has to do with the Ebola drug ZMapp; according to Kissner, the developers of ZMapp must have known about the new strain beforehand. Once again, Kissner is no epidemiologist and really doesn’t appear to have the faintest clue how these things work. More elaborate discussion here. 


Diagnosis: Hilarious nonsense, and one does sometimes suspect he’s a poe. But when you consider what this kind of thinking has managed to lead to by 2017, it does admittedly become a bit less funny.
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#1841: Ken Klein

May 26, 2017, 12:32 am
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Ken Klein is an author (America, Globalism and the False Prophet), filmmaker and former NFL defensive back, and apparently not a POE. According to the WND – who is no more trustworthy than spam on these matters – Klein has “stunned viewers” with his DVD Trans-Humanism: Destroying the Barriers. Whatever he claimed in that one (and all evidence suggests that it can’t have been remotely related to anything reasonable), it probably doesn’t begin to compare to his next big report: That “fallen angels exist, are on Earth, and have been filmed …” Indeed. “It’s not a joke,” said Klein, in case anyone thought otherwise: “We have filmed these things in the infrared spectrum, and it’s really real, and it’s really happening on this planet, and it’s getting worse and worse,” he said. “Really real” is a common phrase used to emphasize your conclusions when your evidence is really good.

Apparently these fallen angels are visible in the infrared spectrum, and if you had doubts: “These are those angels that once followed Lucifer, who were deceived, woo’d by him with a great sales pitch, and as a result of that war God decided that he would have to be thrown out of his angelship. And he was thrown into this world, and he’s got billions of followers that are assigned to humanity – some to each human – to monitor each one of us, because each one of us is a potential threat. We shall be called children of God and he hates that because he’s been judged, and he’s not a happy camper.” He didn’t elaborate on the means he used to obtain the backstories of the demons he saw.

Oh, but he’s got more: “Jesus’ physical body had to be tailor-made through the development of generations of specific genes that would pass down to Mary and allow for the Immaculate Conception. It wasn’t just any body that the Spirit of God could dwell in. And so Jesus body came through a very specific line of predecessors. The integrity of His physical DNA was managed through the purity of a specific line of people all the way back to Adam […] I think we can expect the same thing to happen with the body that Lucifer will have to take, because we know that there will be an Antichrist who will be the embodiment of the spirit of Lucifer, who was an archangel. It can’t just be any body; it’s going to have to be an engineered body,” asserted Klein. And you see “Now we have the science to merge all kinds of brilliant scientists and thinkers into a genetic soup that could bring forth a superior intelligence [remember he made a DVD about transhumanism? You probably don’t need to watch it]– and not only that, buta superior body – that could house the spirit of Lucifer.” In other words, technology will unveil “a body that could house the spirit of Satan.” And thus it is that any true believer should beware of science. (At least Lucifer cannot be Obama, so that’s something.)

Klein was also interviewed for Brian Kraft’s The Fall of America and the Western World. His website is here. We are not sure whether he himself classifies the other books and DVDs he sells as fiction or documentaries. These include

- A DVD about the Harlot of Babylon, the identity of which can apparently be revealed by code breaking Revelation 17 (apparently there’s a yuge conspiracy, too).
- “Israel Islam and Armageddon,” a video showing “how the current peace process is fraught with peril, why it is impossible for Jerusalem to know true peace in our age how the Antichrist will lead the world’s armies to destroy Israel, the truth about the Vatican’s intentions, and the Palestinian myth.” Allegedly, the video “powerfully corrects” much of the “misinformation and propaganda” aggressively “advanced by the world media and others.”

He calls his youtube channel “Ken Klein University,” which doesn’t need a comment.


Diagnosis: You can do this one yourself, folks.
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#1842: Charles Klotsche

May 27, 2017, 11:57 pm
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Color therapy was, by 1993, apparently “a new dimension in holistic healing,” which “provides a powerful technique for treating specific imbalances and strengthening the immune system.” Most people who are not medically illiterate will of course know that “strengthening the immune system” is code for “nonsense” (for obvious reasons), but color medicine was probably never intended for the medically literate (medicine it isn’t) – or, in general, the minimally literate. So, for instance, in Charles Klotsche’s 1993 book Color Medicine: The Secrets of Color Vibrational Healing, by “combining aura-attuned chromatherapy with harmonious sounds, tissue salts, and hydrochromatherapy, the 49th vibrational technique was developed. It is safe, simple, economical, and highly effective.” Yeah, as a description it might just be too inane to even count as technobabble; “word salad” seems more apt.An interesting detail about Klotsche’s description is his desire to describe the technique as simultaneously new and revolutionary, and ancient as rocks (too tempting a fallacy for most altmed promoters). So, color therapy is “[a] breakthrough, yet as old as recorded medicine.”

How does it work (apart from not)?“Color Medicine utilizes the subtle energy vibrations similar to those found in the visible spectrum – the 49th octave. Light energy is processed through color filters and irradiated into the aura. By matching corresponding wavelengths to the organs and systems of the body, it strengthens or sedates energy in the distressed areas, creating a support system for the healing process.” Critics may point out that there are some crucial details missing here (“matching corresponding wavelengths” [my emphasis]; the difference between “strengthen[ing]” and “sedat[ing]” energy that by the author’s own descriptions cannot be measured, and so on). Nevertheless, Klotsche’s book is a “textbook and how-to handbook, it encompasses an encyclopedia of vital, fascinating information, charts, diagrams, and tables, as well as methods of treatment and technical advice.” Wanna bet on whether Klotsche’s “information, charts, diagrams, and tables” address the worries just raised anywhere?

In more detail, the information in the book covers the following topics:

- Explore the electromagnetic effects on physical/etheric bodies.
- Recognizing the aura: color meanings and tonal equivalents.
- Adjusting the body’s oscillations by sound [how does your body oscillate? Ever thought about that?]
- Effects of monochord/color and rhythm on the body.
-  Interplay between music and the chakra system. [Ah, yes: There we are.]
- Biochemical system’s [sic] dependency on light.
- Materials and practical techniques.
- 123 major illnesses and their treatments.

Oh, well. We struggle to locate much more information about Klotsche, apart from the title of a later book, Journeys: Self-Discovery Through Travel– assuming it’s the same guy.

Diagnosis: It’s always hard to determine the extent to which promoters of this kind of bullshit actually believe the drivel they’re spewing. Assuming he does, Klotsche is an extreme religious fanatic and should probably be avoided unless you think you can help.


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#1843: Curtis Knapp

May 29, 2017, 11:46 pm
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Curtis Knapp is the pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas, and he thinks the government should kill homosexuals. Quoting Scripture, Knapp said in 2012 that homosexuals “should be put to death. That’s what happened in Israel. That’s why homosexuality wouldn’t have grown in Israel. It tends to limit conversations. It tends to limit people coming out of the closet.” Being a sensible man, however, Knapp didn’t think you should just start going around killing gays: “‘So, you’re saying we should go out and start killing them?’ No. I’m saying the government should. They won’t, but they should.” When confronted with his claims, Knapp pointed out that “We punish pedophilia. We punish incest, we punish polygamy and various things. It’s only homosexuality that is lifted out as an exemption.” Ah, distinctions. How the f*** do they work?


Diagnosis: No, Fred Phelps isn’t alone. Curtis Knapp has all of Phelps’s charisma and reasoning skills – and probably not much less impact.
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#1844: Victoria Knight-McDowell & her accomplices

June 1, 2017, 12:33 am
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Airborne is a dietary supplement that is – or at least used to be – marketed in checkout lines with the claim that it would ward off germs and prevent flus and cold. The product was developed by Victoria Knight-McDowell (together with her husband, screenwriter Thomas Rider McDowell), an elementary school teacher with no background in science or medicine (apparently a source of pride). Ostensibly, it contains a proprietary herbal blend including Echinacea, a proprietary amino acid blend, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, large amounts of Vitamin C, and other chemicals. According to the Airborne website “[r]esearch has confirmed that the key ingredients in Airborne support immune health, and those studies have appeared in a number of peer reviewed journals.” It is interesting that the website does not link to studies, but it is hardly surprising since the claim is false. In reality, Airborne is “basically an overpriced, run-of-the-mill vitamin pill that’s been cleverly, but deceptively, marketed,” which should be understood in light of the fact that vitamin pills don’t really do anything either. It is, in other words, utter bullshit.

The company also used to claim that a double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted with “care and professionalism” by a company specializing in clinical trial management, GNG Pharmaceutical Services. GNG, however, is a two-man operation established just to do the Airborne study. There is no clinic, no scientists and no doctors, and although the guy who ran things said he had lots of clinical trial experience and a degree from Indiana University, the school says he never graduated. Airborne’s CEO, Elise Donahue, admitted after the scam was exposed that the pill is not a cold remedy: “I would never sit here and tell you that it’s a cure for the common cold,” said Donahue. “We don’t know if Airborne is a … cure for the common cold. What Airborne does is it helps your body build a healthy immune system. When you have a healthy immune system, then it allows your body, on its own, to fight off germs.” Airborne doesn’t help your body build a healthy immune system. “Boosting your immune system” is code for “this is nonsense”. The company conveniently included the Quack Miranda Warning on their websites and even on the product itself, just in smaller fonts than the ones used to claim that the product actually works.

Part of the success of the product can be attributed to Knight-McDowell’s appearance of Oprah Winfrey’s show.

In 2008 Airborne Health Inc. agreed to pay $23.3 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought against the company because there is, to put it mildly, no evidence that the supplement wards off harmful bacteria and germs.


Diagnosis: We’ll assume that Knight-McDowell and her companions actually believe their product is beneficial, which makes them merely delusional. But Airborne was wildly commercially successful and widely distributed in its time, which is exasperating.
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#1845: William Koenig

June 3, 2017, 1:04 am
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Bill Koenig is an endtime lunatic who thinks God is punishing us for states of affairs he (Koenig, we suspect – not God) dislikes. For instance, Koenig blamed the 2015 drought in California on The Gay (actually, he blamed it on God, but didn’t realize that this is what he did) while predicting a major economic collapse at the end of the year because of being-judged-by-God. Right after blaming the drought on GodThe Gays, Koenig got invited to address the Republican National Committee’s Conservative Steering Committee (David Agema is apparently a fan), which he used to rant about how a two-state solution in Israel is an affront to God and to give a history of the “Blood Moons” and how they intertwined with Israel’s history, which is roughtly about as delusional as blaming pixies and cursing them on your carefully assembled collection of fingernails.

That two-state solution is a recurring topic of Koenig’s, who even wrote a book partly about, uh, “alternative meteorology” concerning the effect of discussing a two-state solution on precipitation and atmospheric conditions (it “documented the rise of punishing hurricanes whenever the U.S. turned toward anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian policies”), Eye to Eye: Facing the Consequences of Dividing Israel, in 2004. In 2012 – in connection with Hurricane Sandy – Koenig claimed (in WND, of course) that some of the United States’ most catastrophic storms and events have correlated closely with the nation’s God-defying attempts to divide the land of Israel: “When we put pressure on Israel to divide their land, we have enormous, record-setting events, often within 24 hours,” Koenig said: “Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 – we have experienced over 90 record-setting, all-time events as we have acted against Israel. And the greater the pressure on Israel to ‘cooperate,’ the greater the catastrophe.” (Note that Koenig is another exemption to the general trend of blaming 9/11 on radical Islam, blaming it instead on God.)

It is worth noting that the group of people blaming Hurricane Sandy on God struggled to come to consensus on the causal factors: wherease Koenig blamed it on putting pressure on Israel, Linda Marie Wall of Concerned Women for America blamed it on Vermont (God’s aim is somewhat approximate) for ruling against Lisa Miller in her legal battle to prevent her former partner from having visitation with the daughter they raised together before Miller decided that being a lesbian was evil; John McTernan took the safe route and blamed Obama and The Gays; Fred Phelps’s group didn’t actually blame anyone but rather celebrated all the death and destruction; whereas anti-abortion activist Rob Schenk didn’t really cite any particular cause but just thought God was asserting himself and showing who da boss.

In 2015, when the WND ran a substantive investigation on the relationship between a weather system forming in the Atlantic ocean (Tropical Storm Joaquin) and a Palestinian leader speaking at the United Nations and the Palestinian flag being flown over the UN headquarters, as is customary, they called on Koenig (and similar drooling loons, like Jonathan Cahn). Koenig, of course, found it “more than coincidental that a tropical depression formed in the Atlantic on Sunday night, as the world was observing the super blood-moon eclipse on the biblical feast of Sukkot.” Of course, the weather system had actually formed weeks earlier. Details.

Diagnosis: Rabid, completely delusional fanatic. Not much more to say about that.


Hat-tip: Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
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#1846: Rachel Kohler

June 5, 2017, 12:55 am
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Rachel Kohler is an International Medium (no idea), clairvoyant, psychic, metaphysical teacher and life coach. She calls herself “Dr. Rachel Kohler” and apparently sports “a degree in Metaphysics”. That is not a degree that would allow you to call yourself “Dr” where “Dr” is a protected title that requires an actual education; according to her website her training consists of “mainly teaching form [sic] my spirit guides,” which should put the degree in perspective. Apparently her spirit guides “taught me to integrate the spiritual laws as well as the laws of physics and apply them to my spiritual work.” Those would not be the laws of physics. Effervescent spirit guides are not good teachers when it comes to laws of physics. Kohler does, however, apparently teach “spiritual development courses, meditation, tarot and Channeling classes in Reading Area Community College.” The college does not list her among their faculty.

As an intuitive healer, Kohler claims to be able to make accurate diagnoses over the telephone: “I am a professional, licensed and degreed spiritual visionary with a documented accuracy rate of 95-100%,” says her website, though it is a bit thin on documentation (it has testimonials). It also says that “My Code of Ethics is your assurance of my integrity.” Right.

As a psychic she claims to have predicted 9/11. Her website lists no concrete predictions about the future, though she does warn customers that “[i]f a prediction is given to you and it does not happen, do not blame the psychic. But rather examine if you or someone else had a role in changing that prediction.”


Diagnosis: No, there is little that distinguishes her from hundreds of other similar New Age loons around the Internet – we don’t really know how we came across her in particular – but that doesn’t make her any less a loon, and she seems to be a fine representative for them all.
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#1847: Edward Kondrot

June 10, 2017, 12:08 am
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We think Paul Kokoski is Canadian. Edward Kondrot is not only American, but – according to a 2014 press release – set to become “the first American to become certified in chromatotherapy” by 2016 after studying the technique in France. Issuing a press release about one’s intent to travel to France to study an obscure type of woo is somewhat unusual, but Kondrot is an unusual man. Apparently a one-time physician who renounced reason, evidence and accountability to endorse homeopathy, Kondrot is the founder of the Healing The Eye & Wellness Center in Florida, president of the Arizona Homeopathic and Integrative Medical Association, and the clinic director of Integrative Medicine of the American Medical College of Homeopathy.

Chromatotherapy appears to be a type of woo particularly popular in France. It is apparently a “therapeutic method using references wavelength units called ‘colors’,” and is more or less as New Agey and dolphin-teleport-to-the-fifth-rainbow-dimension as you’d suspect. Chromatotherapists shine various colors of light into the eyes of patients to improve health and cure all manner of diseases up to and including cancer. It ostensibly works because i) life can emit bioluminescence, ii) all life depends upon light, and iii) the eyes are the window to the soul. There are some steps missing in the justification, but chromatotherapists’ attempts to fill them in don’t really help much: “Health and well being are commonly thought of as a form or emanation of light – or ‘glow.’ Walt Whitman, for instance, defined health as a ‘radiance that cannot be described’ [though, strangely, the analysis didn’t land him the Nobel prize in Medicine].‘Glowing’ physical health is primarily a function of the power of our ‘inner sun’ and our glow seems to increase as our awareness expands. At full illumination, this radiance becomes visible to the naked eye, which is why great artists are often likened to ‘stars,’ [whee] and saints are traditionally depicted as being surrounded by brilliant halos, and described as ‘illumined.’” The account even turns offensive: “The human body is a biological light receptor, the eyes are transparent biological windows designed to receive and emit light, and all physiological functions are light dependent. This becomes evident when observing individuals deprived of sight. In 1856, Wimmer, an ophthalmologist at Munich’s Royal Institution for the Blind wrote, ‘The whole appearance of a blind person … bears the markings of … retarded growth … and … pallor … But this underdeveloped … state disappears … and the organism seems to grow younger when vision is restored …’.” 1856 medicine is truly vintage medicine, so it must be good.

But you get the gist? Ok, one more: “The transformative power of light is founded on a simple principle: life and light are the same energy, in two states of existence – form and formlessness. In its formed, or ‘frozen’ state, light energy composes all the matter in the universe - everything that we can see, touch, or measure. Yet, from a scientific perspective, this fundamental building block of what we call reality is invisible, formless and without attributes. It cannot be directly perceived or measured.” Evidence by word salad, in other words – and note the quaint reference to “scientific perspective”. We wonder what the difference between a certified chromatotherapist, like Kondrot, and an uncertified one amounts to beyond having studied in France and been given a slip of paper by chromatotherapy’s chief proponent, Christian Agrapart. To make sure, chromatotherapists also connect their ideas to chakras and acupuncture points. According to Agrapart, chromatotherpay can be used not only to cure various eye diseases but even autoimmune diseases. This is not correct.

It’s little surprise that someone like Kondrot would be attracted to this gibberish. He titles himself not only “homeopathic ophthalmologist,” but “the world’s leading Homeopathic Ophthalmologist,” which presumably means that no other homeopathic ophthalmologist achieves better homeopathic ophthalmology results than him, which is probably true. His website features e.g. an article claiming that intranasal lasers can reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. It can’t. But Kondrot has anecdotes, and can offer you the treatment for as little as $449, $50 off the regular price.

According to Kondrot, the cause of eye disease isn’t aging, trauma, diabetes, hypertension, or such things. The cause is Big Pharma and “suppression” caused by modern medicines. According to Kondrot, if you use real medicines “[t]he disease is being treated with opposites and this causes the disease to be pushed deeper in the body,” which, of course, is antithetical to homeopathy’s religious tenet that like cures like. And to emphasize: the latter is a religious dogma. Kondrot himself pretty much admits it: “These homeopathic laws of healing have not changed unlike modern medicine which changes treatment methods every year.” In other words, sine science is a self-correcting enterprise, the recommendations of science-based medicine changes in light of the best available evidence. To Kondrot that’s a badthing: Kondrot’s recommendations won’t change, regardless of evidence – which, of course, is the definition of “dogma”. And yes, there is a conspiracy. Wake up sheeple, reject Big Pharma therapies and shell out some 500 bucks to have Kondrot shine lights up your nose instead.

You can just as well replace "faith" with "pseudoscience".
Kondrot explicitly renounces the method in the left column. 

Of course, Kondrot doesn’t limit his quackery to homeopathy. He is also a member American Academy of Ozonotherapy, and at the IV World Oxygen and Ozone Congress in 2013 he gave a talk on “topics on ozone’s positive effect on Cancer, Heart disease, Obesity and metabolic disease, Chronic fatigue, Non healing ulcers, Disc pain, Infections, Ulcer stomach disease, Dentistry and more.” Quackery hardly gets more delusional than ozone therapy, except perhaps for – well – homeopathy, of course. On his website he also seels and endorses supplements, electrodes (to put on your head) and, of course, ozone gas to put up your rectum.

Recently – as has become popular with the worst of the worst of quacks, frauds and spineless opportunists – he has branched into stem cell therapy; his website says he is using “cord stem cells”, and trumpets the fact that “the FDA has approved Cord Stem Cells.” Well, yes – the FDA has approved one particular cord blood product, Hemacord, for use for conditions in which the body is not producing enough of one or more components of blood. Needless to say, this has little to do with Kondrot’s snakeoil. It is unclear what the stem cell products Kondrot pushes, BioBurst Fluid and BioBurst Rejuv, are supposed to be used for, but at least his company explicitly assumes that the products fall outside of the FDA regulations. So, Kondrot is deliberately misleading his customers. Big surprise. People like Kondrot tend to do that.

According to Dennis Courtney, who runs some of Kondrot’s Healing the Eye and Wellness Center practice, the treatments are perfectly safe: “We can’t harm you with stem cells. These cells are of such a level of age that they cannot differentiate to any harmful cells. They can’t become a cancer, for instance. That can’t be done with the kind of cells we use. We can only do good. We cannot harm.” Well, according to the FDA and research (but remember what Kondrot thinks of science), there are serious safety concerns with the use of cord blood (lots of “may be fatal” in that warning).

Diagnosis: Utterly deranged. Pseudoscience and New Age religious fundamentalism at its very worst – as opposed to most people who have achieved this level of New Age religious fanaticism, Kondrot is still able to form coherent sentences and operate rather slick-looking websites. Avoid at all costs.


Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence.

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#1848: Dean Koontz

June 12, 2017, 1:07 am
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Dean Koontz is a rather famous author of fiction. He is also a creationist, something that occasionally shows up in his novels, for instance Breathless (2010), where the following is stated by one of the main characters:

“They say – here are fossils showing the horse in its stages of its evolution. But they’re only assuming the fossils are related. These fossils may more likely be of different species instead of stages of the same one [yes, it’s the “no transitional fossils” argument]. They prove nothing. The other species became extinct. The horse didn’t. And the assumption that these fossils are arranged in the correct order, showing progression in certain features, can’t be supported with evidence. Neither carbon dating nor any method of fixing the period of a fossil is precise enough to support that arranged order. Again, they’ve been assumed to belong in that order, but mere assumptions do not qualify as science,” and later: “[b]ut the tiniest worm on earth could not have evolved from a one-celled organism in four billion years even if there had been a mutation in every one of those millionths of a second.”

Anyone with a minimal understanding of evolution would presumably discover some errors in these assertions. What is, of course, particularly sad is that readers who don’tknow the basics of evolution might be fooled into thinking that Koontz has the faintest idea about what he is talking about.

But then: these passages are from works of fiction; can we really conclude anything about Koontz’s own beliefs from them? Well, Koontz also contributed a jacket blurb to Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt. That’s right: that Stephen Meyer. Koontz says: “Meyer writes beautifully. He marshals complex information as well as any writer I’ve read and far better than most. This book – and his body of work – challenges scientisim with real science and excites in me the hope that the origin of life debate will soon be largely free of the ideology that has long colored it.” Yeah. Thinking that what Meyer is doing has anything to do with “real science”, and that it is the scientists, and not the creationists, who are driven to errors by ideological bias: That qualifies you for an entry here.


Diagnosis: Perhaps not as hardcore as many, and no one would presumably take him seriously as an expert; but few creationists reach a larger audience than Koontz, and if his readers ever were fooled into thinking that he has any idea of what he is talking about, then that would be a problem.
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#1849: Robert Kornfeld

June 14, 2017, 1:47 am
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Robert A. Kornfeld bills himself as the “founder of the Institute for Integrative Podiatric Medicine,” which is not something to be proud of. The Institute offers the whole gamut of pseudoscience and woo: homeopathy, anthroposophic medicine, functional medicine, and homotoxicology, to mention some examples. Apparently Kornfeld arranges conferences, such as “NUTRIGENOMICS and INFLAMMATION: A Science-Based Seminar for the Progressive Podiatric Physician” (no, not science) and has penned columns for Huffington Post; his “6 Medical Myths Even Your Doctor May Still Believe” is rather telling (more extensive commentary here: we’ve relied extensively on that article): the “myths” are either overstatements, exaggerations or strawmen, but nicely illustrates Kornfeld’s dislike of science and his dreams about returning to a simpler type of medicine characterized by religious dogma and magical thinking.

“Myth #1: Technology has improved healthcare.” Well, of course it has. According to Kornfeld, though “advances in technology have fostered a narrow field of vision, focused more on early detection and intervention than on prevention. If, by definition, health care means ‘the maintenance of good health,’ then technology has failed miserably to produce any measurable improvement in the overall state of health of mankind.” Note the false dilemma: either early detection, less invasive therapy, and better diagnosis or prevention. We suppose, however, that most people need only a moment’s thought to realize how idiotic Kornfeld’s claim actually is (hint: survival rates for most cancers are actually improving, and doctors certainly do prevention; it’s just that there is only so much you can do to prevent something from happening when it has already happened.)

“Myth #2 – Inflammation is bad” According to Kornfeld “inflammation is a directed response by the immune system designed to detoxify, repair and protect tissues under any form of functional or metabolic stress,” which is true and well-known to any physician. Which doesn’t mean that chronic inflammations are good, or that the symptoms cannot be alleviated. And do you remember Kornfeld’s conference “NUTRIGENOMICS and INFLAMMATION”? Yes, it was about using nutrition to suppress inflammation. His website even says that “when chronic inflammation remains for long periods of time and is not addressed adequately, it will cause the expression of genes that lead to degenerative conditions such as coronary artery disease, arthritis, cancer and others.” Ka-ching. Unfortunately, the “natural” remedies he suggest won’t actually help, so I suppose he is really advocating letting inflammations run their course.

“Myth #3 – Genetically coded diseases are unavoidable.” Strawman, anyone? (Well, just you wait until “Myth 6”). Continues Kornfeld: “If having a gene for any illness condemns you to having that disease, then why are you not born with the disease you are coded to have? Why isn’t every person who carries a gene for disease suffering at all times from that disease?” No, he doesn’t seem to have a clue (it doesn’t help that he says “gene” when he should mean “allele” or “gene mutation” when talking about a “gene for any illness”). What he seems to think is that if a mutation doesn’t cause disease from birth then people must to a large extent be able to control whether the genes ever “release their code for illness,” which is utterly ridiculous but echoes a central element of altmed approaches to disease, the illusion of control, and its flipside: victim blaming. If you get sick, it is ultimately your own fault.

“Myth #4 – Medications improve health”. Oh, noes: medicines are toxins, dontcha know? And they-only-treat-symptoms-not-the-underlying-cause [see #11 in that link]. Says Kornfeld: “every medication swallowed is perceived by the immune system as a ‘poison’.” Well, Kornfeld is surely not an immunologist; the immune system has nothing to do with whether a drug is “perceived” by the body as a “toxin”. That’s not his most egregious error.

“Myth #5 – Childhood immunizations protect us from serious disease”. Ah, yes. You knew it was coming, didn’t you? According to Kornfeld, vaccines can probably be blamed for “ADD, ADHD, autism, allergies, learning disabilities, infectious diseases, auto-immune illnesses and, most importantly, cancer.” This is false.

“Myth # 6 – The double blind – placebo controlled study guarantees safety and efficacy in drug therapy.” Now there’s a strawman for you! For Kornfeld, though, the fact that RCTs aren’t complete guarantees for safety and efficacy means that we should apparently pay less attention to them. Obviously, he cannot suggest any better method for investigating treatments, but his rhetorical goal is clear: Since RCTs aren’t perfect you can just as well embrace his pseudoscience instead – at least its got no ugly science or RCTs to back it up.

Ultimately, Kornfeld’s schtick is really the common dogma among altmed purveyors: a religious call for returning to the natural, the strong and the pure, and away from the corrupt and artificial science. Here is a note on Kornfeld’s views on diabetes.

Diagnosis: Classic denialist, really. Probably not among the most influential promoters of pseudoscience, but his name does seem to pop up here and there, so probably not entirely harmless either and he is a thoroughly shitty human being. (Oh, he probably means well but having good intentions just isn't good enough.)


Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence.
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#1850: John Kortum & Maureen McFadden

June 16, 2017, 12:14 am
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One persistent idea among the more ridiculous types of woo is the idea that organs in your body map to certain locations on another organ. It’s the guiding idea behind reflexology (feet) and – of course – traditional Chinese medicine’s tongue diagnosis. For iridologists, it’s the iris. There is also rumpology (oh, yes). Their claims are often backed up by appeal to subtle energies or qi – spirit juice, really – that connects the organs to the proposed markers, and the ideas are approximately as plausible as the claim that your organs map onto tea leaves, coffee grinds or celestial objects.

John Kortum, a “medical intuitive” from Indiana and developer of “the Kortum Technique”, says that most every indicator is perceived by aiming your blended vision at the human face. “The body has a symbolic language to indicate health imbalances within the different organ systems,” claims Kortum, and “[w]hen the imbalance reaches a certain point, it activates the symbolic language and becomes visible and accessible through the Kortum Technique,” which is dumba religious claim critically relying on mystical gibberish, and, yeah, dumb. The Kortum Technique apparently has three stages: “During the first component, the technique is used to survey the indicators. Further discussion allows the patient to provide information on what they already know about their health compared to the indicator evaluation. The second component is dedicated to revealing what the body wants to communicate. The organs can describe past events in a person’s life. The third component will be the opportunity to consider what has been revealed in the session and how the patient can use this information to best support their recovery of health and vitality.” People apparently pay money for this.

Anyways, Kortum was brought to (some) people’s attention when featured on the South Bend local news station WNDU, in something called Maureen’s Medical Moment, run by one Maureen McFadden, a reporter who touts herself as an “Emmy Award winning News Anchor and Reporter at WNDU.” McFadden appears to be as credulous of New Age woo as they come, and bolstered the case for Kortum with anecdotes. In fact, she also claimed that researchers “put the Kortum technique to the test” in a study in 2001, conducted by Leonard Wisneski and Beth Renne, in which they took patients with documented diseases and had Kortum assess them, with a 93% accuracy rate. The study is not listed in PubMed.

Wisneski, though, is Chairman of the NIH Advisory Board on Frontier Sciences at the University of Connecticut, has served on the board of the American Holistic Medical Association (listed here) and been President of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (also listed here). Needless to say, he would be precisely the kind of “researcher” who could convince himself of Kortum’s abilities through tooth-fairy science and conducting a “trial” by violating all protocols and bias-controlling measures.

When the shoddiness of her reporting was pointed out to her, McFadden doubled down on her claims: “This comes from 12 years of research and is considered a huge breakthrough by many MD’s [sic],” … who shall apparently remain unnamed, and “[f]eel free to argue with the researchers and the FDA and the doctors using it.” We admit that we have not checked whether the Kortum technique has been approved by the FDA. Neither Wisneski nor Kortum is a researcher in any meaningful sense of the word. But yeah: McFadden actually fell for Kortum’s New Age nonsense and thinks his “skills” is a “medical breakthrough.” The sad part is that she is a journalist, and journalists with this kind of complete inability to realize they’ve been fooled are rather scary.

Diagnosis: Kortum is a relatively typical New Age crackpot with a product to sell and – it seems – the charisma and personal skills needed to sell it. McFadden, though, is something of a disgrace to journalism, and ultimately the greater danger to society and civilization.

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence.
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