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#1871: Jack "Kewaunee" Lapseritis

July 18, 2017, 1:19 am
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Ah, yes: Bigfoot. Now, Bigfoot is a pretty silly myth, and bigfoot cryptozoology is pitifully ridiculous, but even tinfoil hat groups like the Bigfoot hunters have their own radical fringes. The late paranormal investigator Jon-Erik Beckjord (called “perhaps the most colorful character in the history of the Internet”) theorized that the lack of hard evidence for Bigfoot’s existence is due to the creature being an interdimensional being that slips in and out of dimensions (rather than, you know, the fact that it doesn’t exist), and many – starting with B. Ann Slate and Alan Berry in 1976 – have linked bigfoot to UFOs, telepathic experiences and incoherent mumbo-jumbo.

Despite a distinct lack of empirical data to back up such hypotheses, people have picked up the thread; Jack “Kewaunee” Lapseritis, for instance, argues in his book The Sasquatch People and Their Interdimensional Connection (2011) that 187 documented cases have “objectified the reality of dimensional bigfoot creatures”. It seems that bigfoot, according to Kewaunee (it’s a bit hard to tell), utilize the multiverse to jump dimensions. Kewaunee’s grasp of the multiverse hypothesis is, needless to say, tenuous and rudimentary. There is also quantum: “[q]uantum physics describes the reality of mental telepathy, invisibility, inter-dimensionalism, and other PSI phenomena, and is actually juxtaposed with psychic Sasquatch and ET behavior,” as Lapseritis sees it. It does not.

Apparently Lapseritis’s work consists mostly of telepathic field work – according to himself, “Kewaunee has been successful in his research because of his benign, spiritual, field methodology (no guns or cameras) – not unlike Dr. Jane Goodall’s approach with chimpanzees, except the Sasquatch are highly evolved nature people. They are terrestrial extraterrestrials, living inside giants’ bodies.” Using senses unavailable to most humans, Lapseritis has apparently intuited for instance that the Bigfoot race was brought to Earth (“seeded”) by the Star People long before humans, ostensibly to provide us with psychic guidance: in 2012, for instance (The Sasquatch Peoplewas published in 2011) “there will be a huge shift in human consciousness that most earthlings are ill prepared to face. The Sasquatch people, who are the ultimate environmentalists, want to share their ancient wisdom with the human, but few are listening.” Lapseritis has also written The Psychic Sasquatch and Their UFO Connection.

You can read more about it all on his strikingly designed website (embellished with random capitalizations and lots of different fonts). According to the book blurb for The Sasquatch People, Lapseritis himself is “a Holistic Health Consultant, as well as a Master Herbalist and Wellness Educator with 37 years of training and service in this field. Among many other resources for training, Kewaunee studied Herbalogy/Botany with the Ojibwa traditional shaman, Keewaydinoquay, PhD in Ethno-Botany; he is also a Master Dowser and a Sasquatch and ET contactee. Kewaunee is a world-traveled/trained herbalist who twice healed himself of cancer by natural herbal remedies and formulas.” Right.

In September 2017 Kewaunee and “spiritual teacher” Kelly Lapseritis (probably related) will host the second annual Spiritual and Psychic Sasquatch Conference, where they will apparently speak “on behalf of the Sasquatch People, Mother Earth and all of Humanity” and “propose a spiritual and ecological approach to healing our planet and our own collective soul consciousness.” Apparently their “speakers will share their own personal encounters with these sentient beings as well as the messages that have been shared with them to assist in improving and healing ourselves, relationships, and perspective realities,” and they include, in addition to the Lapseritises:

- SunBôw, author of The Sasquatch Message to Humanity Part 1 and 2.
- Andrew Robson, author of Sasquatch Revelations and Symbols from Beyond the Veil.
- Garrett Duncan, Navajo Shaman.
- Su Walker, Clairvoyant and Medical Intuitive.
- White Otter, Shamanic Practitioner.


Diagnosis: Completely harmless, of course, and probably of limited influence. And one cannot, in all honesty, help feeling a bit of sympathy with how special he is and his possession of all these unique, magic abilities that few seem to take seriously.
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#1872: Don Larsen

July 20, 2017, 1:51 am
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Don Larsen is – or used to be (we can’t quite find the relevant information) – chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party. In 2007 Larsen gained a bit of attention after he apparently submitted a resolution warning that Satan’s minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.
 
In a speech at the convention where he proposed the resolution, Larsen told those willing to listen that illegal immigrants “hate American people” and “are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won’t do.” They are apparently in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats to “destroy Christian America” and replace it with “a godless new world order – and that is not extremism, that is fact.” It is, of course, extremism, not fact, and that Larsen felt the need to explicitly claim the opposite should perhaps have been a clue. At the end of his speech, Larsen apparently began crying, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. “by self invasion.”

According to his resolution, in order for Satan to establish his “New World Order and destroy the freedom of all people, as predicted in the Scriptures, he must first destroy the U.S.” The resolution then proposed to “prevent the destruction of the U.S. by stealth invasion” by closing the borders, thus trapping everyone in there with Larsen.


Diagnosis: This is not an exception. The voter base for a significant proportion of wingnut politicians consists precisely of people who respond to such public displays of deranged lunacy by voting for them. We haven’t heard about Larsen since this, but there are plenty of likeminded people out there running for office and receiving the support from morons.
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#1873: Joseph La Rue

July 21, 2017, 12:13 am
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Joseph La Rue is a wingnut and legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), and he is – of course – most famous for being virulently anti-gay. La Rue thinks for instance that Christians will be “treated as second class citizens by their government” if they are not allowed to treat gay people as second-class citizens, which I think is as good a definition of “bigotry” as any, even though La Rue probably doesn’t like being called “bigot”. La Rue made the claim in connection with the 2014 Arizona gay segregation bill that ADF helped craft, and said that the bill “is not about denying service,” which it rather emphatically is.

Apart from fighting against gay rights, La Rue is a bitter and aggressive combatant in the imaginary War on Christmas.


Diagnosis: Bigot.
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#1874: Steve Lashuk

July 22, 2017, 12:39 am
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So, ok: the Lesbian Studies Institute might be a parody (or have been – it seems to have gone AWOL sometime in 2010), but at least it won an Encouragement Award in the 2006 Millenium Awards for its attempt to spread hatred. No, it’s not an institute or a think-tank, but a website devoted to warning the world about the imminent takeover of society by lesbians (and Jews), or – in their own words – to “track, synthesize and expose the secret, social and political corruption of America’s powerful, government financed Lesbian Mafia”. It consists of Steve Lashuk, who calls himself “chairman”, and whose qualifications include having “devoted over nine arduous years and thousands upon thousands of dollars towards the study of this topic. I have accumulated a mini-library of books from both sides, subjective and objective [?]. I subscribe and have access to many periodical publications, subjective and objective. I have on files thousands of news articles all corroborating as evidence of a sinister force working to destroy America’s existing culture.”

Apparently the Lesbian Mafia is out to criminalize heterosexuality – and make no mistake, “[f]eminism is lesbianism.” What is their motive? “VERY SIMPLE, THE SAME REASON Adolph Hitler spread hate between the Jews and German people. It’s a clinical fact, lesbianism is a sickness, they suffer with an extreme form of paranoia and persecution complex [wheee]; and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You see it’s a medical proven fact [now he’s asserted that it’s a fact twice, which obviates the need to cite evidence], lesbianism is a developmental disorder which progresses into psychotic paranoia. Hence causing extreme fear of all men, otherwise associated with heterophobia. It’s common practice for lesbians to call all heterosexuals, homophobes, but clinical studies have confirmed [I guess asserting it three times makes it even more conclusively established] that all lesbians have a dreadful fear of heterosexuals and especially men.” In more detail, “as clinical studies verify, in their early childhood developmental stage (one to three years) their childhood conflicts caused their minds to short circuit into averse thoughts about men, hence, creating an imbalance for relationships with men, and creating the dynamics for bursts of aggression towards all society and even themselves […. therefore] Unbeknown by most, lesbians have a grandiose plan in effect to overthrow the heterosexual culture in the U. S. and replace with a Lesbo Amazon Nation.” They don’t fool Steve Lashuk, though: “I broke their code, I unlocked their secrets, I deciphered their manifesto…” Apparently there are also secret Lesbian Breeding Programs.

The studies mentioned seems to be articles by our old friend Texe Marrs, for instance about how John Kerry is secretly a Jew and a communist raised by the Illuminati to destroy America, or how the evil Jews control everything.

Lashuk also has a self-published dissertation that he apparently mailed to numerous people in the 90s. It doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact, even though he warned, referring to a genocide he expects to happen after his death, that although “I’m not going to see 50 million people die, when this thing starts mushrooming, you're going to see people shot.” At least he doesn’t “have any problem with the homosexual gay man per se – it’s the lesbians that are creating all the problems.”


Diagnosis: (With the caveat that he might be a parody, Lashuk is) one of the craziest fellows on the whole, wide Internet, which is no mean feat. Probably harmless, though.
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#1875: Robert Lattimer & COPE

July 24, 2017, 12:04 am
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Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) is a Kansas-based group whose name suggests a corollary of Badger’s Law. COPE “promotes the religious rights of parents, children, and taxpayers” and claims that public schools “promote a ‘non-theistic religious worldview’ by allowing only ‘materialistic’ or ‘atheistic’ explanations to scientific questions,” which is false (if anyone could offer a genuine non-materialistic explanationfor anything in science – “and then a miracle happened” is not an explanation – it would be allowed). In particular, the group filed a suit (details here) in 2013 challenging Kansas’s science standards because they include the teaching of evolution, which COPE claims is a religion and therefore should be excluded from science classes: by teaching evolution “the state would be ‘indoctrinating’ impressionable students in violation of the First Amendment.” COPE’s mission, by contrast, is to create “religious[ly] neutral” schools won’t promote “pantheistic and materialistic religions, including Atheism and Religious (‘Secular’) Humanism” – a category that includes “Darwinian evolution” and apparently the Big Bang.

COPE was founded in 2012, with young-earth creationist Jorge Fernandez as president (Fernandez has published articles in Journal of Creation and on the True.Origin Archive website). He was later replaced by Robert P. Lattimer, the current president. Lattimer has previously been involved with Science Excellence for All Ohioans, a creationist group that – backed by the hate-group The American Family Association and strongly supported by Governor Taft’s chief of staff, Brian Hicks – tried to undermine the treatment of evolution in Ohio’s state science standards in 2002 (Lattimer himself was, for some reason, appointed to the Ohio science standard writing committee). Back then, the goal was to lobby the Ohio Board of Education to give intelligent design creationism (ID) equal time with evolution in science classes; after the Dover trial that goal has become unrealistic (to Lattimer’s intense dismay), so in Kansas the goal was modified to rather banning science in general from science classes.

Lattimer has said, concerning his support of ID, that “[a]mong scientists, we’re a distinct minority. Among the public, I’d say I’m easily in the majority,” which was apparently intended as an argument for the scientific legitimacy of ID. Apparently, he used to be a standard Biblical creationist, but switched to Intelligent Design for political reasons, and has for more than a decade been pushing ID to various congregations, schoolboards, and others willing to listen. Of course, it is all about marketing – Lattimer hasn’t even considered trying to support ID by research or science. He is, however, a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.

The other board members of COPE are:
  • Anne Lassey, vice-president, who has served as “teacher, principal and Superintendent of Schools in several locations in Kansas,” which is dismaying.
  • Debra Marks, vice-president, whose “passion in life is to help educate people regarding the value of family and life and how to avoid the often tragic and painful consequences of not making wise choices;” this passion is not further detailed, but it sounds ominous enough for us to recommend that you stay well away from her.
  • Greg Lassey, treasurer, who has “taught Advanced Biology at the high school level,” clearly without having minimal understanding of central parts of the subject.
  • Albert Gotch, who has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry and is therefore a major catch for an anti-science group like COPE (even though the education is unrelated to evolution); he has also been Director of the Stark County Home School Association, and the Executive Director of the Akron Fossils & Science Center, a small, Ohio-based creation museum.
  • Christy Hooley, a homeschooler who runs the “Wyoming Against Common Core” blog.
  • Joseph Renick, who is “Executive Director of the Intelligent Design network of New Mexico, where he advocates for objective science education”. That group has a history of supporting antievolution legislation in NM: in 2011, for example, it paid for a full-page advertisement in the Albuquerque Journal in support of a (failed) “academic freedom” bill.

The lawyers representing COPE in 2013, by the way, were celebrity creationist lawyer John Calvert (founder of the Intelligent Design Network and chief strategist behind the Kansas kangaroo court hearings on evolution in 2005) and Kevin T. Snider of the Pacific Justice Institute, who helped represent Jeanne Caldwell in her (failed) 2005 lawsuit alleging that the University of California Museum of Paleontology’s Understanding Evolution website was in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.


Diagnosis: Anti-science religious fundie – and apparently a resourceful (if utterly deluded) one. Dangerous.
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#1876: Greg Laurie

July 28, 2017, 1:52 am
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Greg Laurie is senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, a megachurch, and Harvest Church in Kapalua, Hawaii, and Orange County. He is also on the board of directors for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, chaplain for the Newport Beach Police Department, member of Teen Mania Ministries’ Battle Cry Coalition, and Honorary Chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force in 2013. Indeed, the Trump itself selected Laurie as one the evangelical church leaders for the National Prayer Service hosted at the Washington National Cathedral following the 2017 Inauguration. He has also written some 70 books (yeah, like so many of these people it’s rather blatantly obvious that not much thought goes into those books, but that’s not the point, of course – and Laurie is no theologian; his response to the problem of evil would easily fail any Intro to Philosophy class). Moreover, Laurie has a TV program GregLaurie.tv on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and is guest commentator at Worldnetdaily. A versatile and influential guy, in other words.

A recurring theme for Laurie is warning us about the upcoming end times, as for instance when he wondered whether 9/11, hurricane Katrina and the 2004 tsunami were “reminders to us that Jesus Christ is coming back soon?” He also pointed out that “[a]ccording to the U.S. Geological Society … for the past 50 years, every decade has increased in the number of earthquakes recorded.” That would be the U.S. Geological Survey. They say the opposite of what Laurie claims they say. Facts, honesty and accuracy don’t sit well with prophecy.

Another recurring theme is the use of prayers to achieve things. On each occasion Laurie seems confident that prayers will work this time.

A third – and perhaps the most popular – theme is delusions about being persecuted. In his column “The ugly results of banning God from the culture” (suggesting, of course, that God is banned in the US) he complains about the fact that people can disagree with him and even challenge on matters related to religion, which apparently shows how persecuted he is. Then he predictably warns us that God will punish America if we don’t fall into line.

Laurie is also a creationist, who likes to assert things like “The Bible is proven true by Archeology” or “The Bible is confirmed through science”. According to Laurie, who appears to be seriously inspired by Ray Comfort, “[t]o say that all of the beauties of God’s creation came about randomly is ridiculous. The person who believes in the theory of evolution makes a choice to believe it.” The theory of evolution sort of says the exact opposite of nature being the result of random processes, but Laurie has no time or interest in actually understanding even the crudest basics of the view he wants to criticize (he actually uses the “tornado in the junkyard” characterization). He rather wants to speculate about why they make that choice, and it is “because the lifestyle they want to live has no place for God,” of course. Really, those who believe in evolution actually knows that it is false; they just want to escape judgment.


Diagnosis: Idiot, but he weighs up for his lack of insight with zeal and a corresponding lack of care for truth and accuracy. This guy is also seriously powerful and influential, making his hatred for truth, reason, dignity and civilization all the more frightening.
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#1877: Greg Lawton

July 30, 2017, 1:33 am
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Greg Lawton is the founder of Blue Heron Academy of Healing Arts and Sciences, where you can exchange your money for help to “change not only your career but also your lifestyle and that of others, through a variety of programs in medical massage therapy, holistic health care, acupuncture, personal training, nutrition, and herbal medicine.” They even offer things like Holistic Health Practitioner Certification Programs, where you “learn the philosophy and methods of contemporary Asian medicine, as well as, acupressure, shiatsu, tuina, and Asian bodywork.” That is, the kind of certificate you should be willing to pay to get rid of if you were ever saddled with it; apparently it’s a “fast-track state licensed educational program” (Blue Heron Academy is licensed by the Michigan Office of Secondary Education), but “state licensed” does not mean “accredited”. One of Blue Heron’s programs promises you a certificate as a phlebotomy technician, which does not require certification in most US states (they don’t mention whether the certification is issued by an agency accepted by the four states that do require certification).

Lawton himself “is a graduate of the four year naprapathic medicine program at the National College of Naprapathic Medicine and a licensed Naprapath in Illinois [one of two states that licenses them].” Naprapthy is quackery. He is also “nationally board certified in Chiropractic, Radiology, Acupuncture (Diplomat), and Physical Therapy.” Indeed, Lawton has also “trained in Aikido, Judo, Kenpo, Tai Chi Chuan, Pa Kua, Hsing Yi, Hap Do Sool, and Shorin Ryu,” which certainly boosts his orientalist credentials.

If you ever encounter Lawton outside of the context of his Academy, it will probably be through one of his many books, leaflets and similar promoting an impressive range of pseudoscience and bullshit, from hydrotherapy to naturopathy.


Diagnosis: Bullshit. Methinks anyone with an illness ought to avoid Lawton as she or he would avoid a charlatan trying to sell them snake oil and Hulda Clark devices.
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#1878: Caroline Leaf

August 1, 2017, 12:31 am
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Oh, good grief!

Caroline Leaf is a religious fundamentalist who combines religious extremism with incoherent altmed pseudoscience, woo and fluffy new age word salads – it’s not just religious woo, but religious quantum woo. According to Leaf, “There is growing evidence that biological systems operate at the level of quantum physics. When applied to neuroscience, the Quantum Zeno Effect indicates that the brain becomes what you focus on [yeah: read that again]. Focus is directed attention and is a function of the mind. Thus, quantum physics supports the notion of mind over matter.” Calling this attempt at technobabble “not even wrong” would be an insult to incoherent nonsense. Leaf has managed to gain a relatively impressively sized audience, though, and is a staple on predatory shows targeted at the gullible and/or desperate, like Kenneth and Gloria Copeland’s Believer’s Voice of Victory and her own Dr. Leaf Show.

Leaf is the kind of person who says that thoughts can change your DNA. Indeed, according to Leaf, “… whatever reaction we have changes the DNA and the DNA then expresses and it builds either that which is what our bodies are wired for, so whether you’re Born Again or not, your body’s wired for love because that’s the design that God has made, and if we make a wrong choice, we build that.” Well, no, that’s not remotely how this works. But according to Leaf, not only does it work that way, but your current thoughts, by altering your DNA, are “affecting the future generations as well because the thoughts from your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather … and your mother has come through the sperm and the ova. So whatever thoughts we have as we go through life that we build into our heads basically passes through the sperm and the ova to the next four generations.” Just think about it, but keep in mind that Leaf probably assumes that you won’t; yes, your thoughts are “affecting the cells. It actually gets captured inside. Exactly … 75–100 trillion cells in our body are impacted by every single thought that we think. So it’s captured as a physical thing, it’s passed through the generations.” And yes, she is, indeed, alluding to epigenetics, which she doesn’t remotely understand but neither does her audience (so perhaps she might understand it,* which doesn’t really make any of this any better): “… we’re not bound by the sins of our fathers, We call that epigenetics. It’s actually called the science of epigenetics. Epi – over and above the genes – the fact that our mind controls genetic expression” (something that does sound suspiciously like it contradicts a rather central tenet of mainstream Christianity; better not think too hard about it – there’s no danger that Leaf ever did.) And for the grand finale, Leaf is going to tell us what thoughts are made of: “… we are speaking from physical thoughts made of proteins and all kinds of chemical structures inside of our brain that look like trees.”

Apparently Leaf has a degree in topics related to neuroscience; one imagines some interesting exchanges between her and her advisors. (Her website tells us that “The main coordinating center of the nervous system is the brain, which is located in the skull.” At least she got that part right – it’s more or less the only part she got right – and we can sort of imagine the aforementioned advisors breathing a sigh of relief.)

Leaf is the author of Switch On Your Brain and Think and Eat Yourself Smart, which you can safely pass over. Also, “[s]ince 1981, she has researched the science of thought as it relates to thinking, learning, renewing the mind, gifting, and potential,” which is an awfully strange way of putting it if you have been involved in, you know, actual scientific research on the brain or on psychology.

According to Leaf’s website (random capitalization abounds), “75% to 95% of the illnesses that plague us today are a direct result of our thought life,” and if you wonder where she got those numbers you are probably not in the target audience for her website (she does have testimonials, though). Also, “[m]edical research increasingly points to the fact that thinking and consciously controlling your thought life is one of the best ways, if not the best way of detoxing your brain.” No, she doesn’t provide any references here either, for rather obvious reasons (“detoxing your brain” means removing “toxic thoughts and emotions”.) But it is indeed a fine example of “deepity”. We’ll grant her that, and wonder in dread what her books read like.

Her website has a “scientific FAQs” section (which must really be seen to be believed) and a “Scriptural FAQs” section, which are more or less interchangeable and have nothing to do with science (“Man is a triune being consisting of a spirit, soul and body. The mind is synonymous to the soul. The mind operates in the spirit and, by extension, in the spiritual realm” – that’s the Sciencesection). The “Scientific FAQs” section does, however, push anti-GMO conspiracies and complementarianism (“Mankind is created in the image of God – both male and female. The male and the female are different from, and yet complementary to, one another. God’s image is reflected in both men and women” – yes, that’s also from the Sciencesection), and contains a substantial section on how speaking in tongues is good for your mental health as well as the general health benefits of prayer and worship (“Interestingly a number of scientific studies indicate that we are wired for God, that is, our brains have been designed to commune with God,” says Leaf, and cites this one; the part after “that is” is what we might call her “interpretation” of the research discussed in said article). There is a very tentative critique of some of her claims here.

Diagnosis: If you fall for this idiocy, you are really, really stupid. There’s really no way around it. No, seriously: this is among the dumbest New Age fluff we’ve yet encountered, and we’ve encountered a fair amount.


*She doesn’t. Here’s what her website says: “The mind thinks and produces thoughts. Thinking epigenetically affects DNA and gene expression. Thinking therefore lies within the sphere of epigenetics.” That’s … not a classically valid inference, and words fail to describe the premises. She does cite Dawson Church, but we are not sure even a loon like Church would endorse Leaf’s argument. 
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#1879: John Lear

August 3, 2017, 1:01 am
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The Internet has provided fantastic opportunities for the totally unhinged to provide color and joy in the form of the most deranged but fantastic, meth-dream-style conspiracy theories, and elaborate pastel metaphysical schemes that rival late-Medieval, neo-platonic theology in ornamentation and elaboration (though not in rigor, mind).

People like John Lear. Lear is associated with something called the Pegasus Research Consortium, and has apparently become something of a person of note in the so-called “dark side” community; he used to be a pilot, and once flew an aircraft for a CIA-linked company, which makes him virtually an insider to the world of conspiracies as his readers see things (and they certainly see things). Here are nebulous shadow governments controlling the world and the international drug trade, manufacturing AIDS and various other population-control schemes, and stalking their critics with black helicopters, all (possibly) for the purpose of turning Earth (and other planets) into slave labor camps. And their plans will be realized with the help of evil extraterrestrials (the “grays”, mostly – according to Lear, they seem to be little more than robots) with whom the governments have been colluding.

Much of the Pegasus Research Consortium’s webpage The Living Moon (which helpfully reveals immediately by its design what kind of website it is) is devoted to various anomalies, in particular lunar anomalies. Lear claims, based on blobsquatches and pareidolia, that there are trees and plants on the moon, as well as secret government bases – “seeing” what Lear sees in the images requires … a bit of imagination (to put things diplomatically); Lear himself seems to have a very well-trained eye for these things. Bob Lazar (hi Bob!) seems to be a contributor to the site, too.

They do other “anomalies” as well, including cryptozoology and out-of-place artifacts like the magnificent Wedge of Aiud, which is ostensibly a piece of some extraterrestrial or future (time-travelled) technology beyond our wildest dreams reportedly found in the vicinity of some mastodon bones in Romania in 1974. In reality, the Wedge of Aiud is, based on shape and construction material and metallurgical tests, consistent with being a tooth from a modern-day excavator bucket. But people willing to consider the former hypothesis tend to have priors that allow them to neglect the second hypothesis in favor of “the fact that the shape and characteristic of this object are [they aren’t] strikingly similar with the landing gear of a drone or special [sic] robot” of kinds that still only exist in fantasies and imaginations formed to fit the look of the “artifact”.

They also provide “esoteric wisdom”, in the section of the site called “the cosmic wisdom of the ancients”, which provides resources on everything and anything from “faerie secrets” (no, really – they have articles on how to spot and interact withfaeries; Lear sees them aplenty in blobs in photographs) to “holy graal [sic] secrets” (yes, it’s the holy grail bloodline, familiar from cutting-edge documentaries like the Da Vinci Code or Preacher – it runs through the Knights Templars to modern-day, Illuminati-controlled shadow governments), remote viewing (here is “Remote viewing Tibetan monks see Extra Terrestrial powers saving the World from destroying itself in 2012”), levitation (yes!), numerology, pyramid woo, astral projection and alchemy (most of the alchemy articles were written before 1600; such wisdom ages like fine wine). Claims the site: “Mainstream Academia has often in the past brushed this off as occult nonsense, witchcraft and pure fabrication, but recent policy has changed. Many modern Universities are studying Sacred Geometry, The Secrets of the Pyramid and other Ancient Arts.” We don’t think John Lear has been affiliated with academia in a while, if ever.

There is an interview with John Lear by Art Bell here.


Diagnosis: Probably harmless. Indeed, it is a bit unclear to us precisely what Lear actually believes about the stuff he is covering, but he doesn’t seem to care about its trustworthiness either, and that’s good enough for us.
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#1880: Bill Ledbetter

August 5, 2017, 12:58 am
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Bill Ledbetter is the pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Oklahoma, wingnut, creationist and proponent of David Barton-style pseudohistory and Christian Nation nonsense. As such, he has for instance been invited to serve as the weekly chaplain for the Oklahoma legislature, and his 15-minute sermon there sums up his lunacy pretty well (discussion here and here and here; follow the links if you for some reason want to hear the original – it is gloriously insane): Ledbetter started off by claiming that “America is the only nation in history that’s been under one governing document her whole history,” which is false (the Articles of Confederation, anyone? Not that Ledbetter cares overly for accuracy or fact). Then he distorted the infamous Lutz study of references made by the Founding Fathers and passed on a fake Patrick Henry quote about the nation being founded on Christianity as evidence that the Constitution is based on the Bible (Henry, of course, was firmly opposed to the Constitution) and to argue against the separation of church and state (and in favor of mandatory prayers in public schools, which Ledbetter apparently believes is mandated by the Constitution), before rounding it all off with some creationist talking points and claiming that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment on New Orleans for sin; also, 9/11 was God’s punishment for not instituting a theocracy: “We must have people in office or put people in office that will make law that corresponds with the word of god and the will of god. not political correctness. Not tolerance – it always brews intolerance.”

Here is his take on evolution: “If you throw God out, then you have to come up with some idea that you’re going to teach your kids about where they came from. And you have to teach that in school. And now all across our nations, kids are taught that they are advanced mutations of a baboon. They are taught that they came from a monkey. Let me tell you something. Evolution is not science – and I know that’s not politically correct … But what it is is an indoctrination to teach a godless worldview.” The problem with his opinion isn’t that it is politically incorrect. And apparently teaching evolution is also unconstitutional, since the Constitution tells us that the Bible should be the guideline for public school curricula: “It [evolution] defies our founding documents – our forefathers talked about the creator in the Declaration of Independence – read it!” Uh-huh. That the Origin of Species was published in 1856 is a problem but far from the main problem with that assertion.

That kind of guy.


Diagnosis: That kind of guy, indeed.
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#1881: Dennis Lee (I)

August 9, 2017, 12:43 am
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A legend in pseudoscience circles, Dennis Lee is the head of Better World Technologies and United Community Services of America, a company that markets pretty much every piece of ridiculous nonsense technology or “technology” you can imagine, from healing devices that use zero-point energy to an over-unity motor. For the most part, Lee is seeking investors for his devices (examples of revival meetings where Lee promotes his products to potential “investors” are described here), which are supposed to provide us with infinite free electricity. Like the over-unity motor, the devices in question violate the laws of physics (details can be found here if you are interested), and although he’s been in the business a long time, Lee has never managed to demonstrate that any of them work– indeed, his energy products are for the most part “not quite ready”, but you are nevertheless offered to buy a franchise for somewhere between $30,000 and $100,000 and begin selling free energy devices yourself (note that in becoming a dealer, you waive your rights to legal recourse – Lee does, however, offer commissions to bring in new dealers and makes considerable effort to discourage dealers from communicating with one another). There’s a list of his excuses Lee has given for why he hasn’t shown that any of his devices work here.

As pseudoscientists and promoters of voodoo science are wont to do, Lee claims that Corporate America is doing everything in their power to suppress him – apparently the entire government and American industry is part of some huge international multi-generational conspiracy to suppress the truth he only can offer. Lee has also been indicted for fraud at least twice, and pleaded guilty to two felony counts of consumer fraud in California in 1990 in connection with the sale of an “energy-saving heat pump kit,” but those incidents presumably just show how afraid mainstream corporations are of competition – apparently Lee subsequently claimed to have invented the world’s most efficient heat pump, but that conspirators sabotaged his efforts, stole his company, and incarcerated him. So it goes.

According to Lee, all his instructions are dictated to him directly from God, and he has indeed created a following that, to the undiscerning eye, looks remarkably like a cult fuelled by religious fervor and paranoia (an interesting insider story about what it was like to work with Lee can be found here; this one is pretty telling, too). A nice illustration of Lee’s operations is Lee’s and his followers’ dismissal of critics, such as Eric Krieg (whose criticism of Lee is archived here): Lee’s wife called Krieg “CIA sponsored”, without a shred of evidence, and Lee’s followers have apparently been told that they are not allowed to even look at Krieg’s website.


Diagnosis: Pseudoscientific crackpot. We’ll just assume he’s a loon for present purposes. There are, of course, other interpretations of his behavior and his claims, but “pseudoscientific crackpot” would probably apply in any case.
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#1882: Dennis Lee (II)

August 11, 2017, 12:13 am
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Almost certainly not the same person as last entry’s Dennis Lee, this entry’s Dennis Lee is senior pastor of Living Waters Fellowship in Mesquite. Interestingly, “Living Waters” is also the name of Ray Comfort’s publishing company. This may or may not be a coincidence; we sort of suspect it’s not. In any case, Lee’s article “Discovering truth verses tolerance” (discussed here) gives you a fair idea about what he’s up to. It opens thusly: “I really don’t think there’s a single person that doesn’t think truth verses tolerance is an important topic for our day. That’s because it’s our society’s redefinition of tolerance that allows topics like abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, and evolution to become so accepted while Christianity has become so hated and practically outlawed.” And that is really enough from Dennis Lee (II).


Diagnosis: Fundie loon with a well-developed persecution complex. He’s not alone, and although Lee’s own influence is probably rather limited, this kind of delusional nonsense deserves to be covered extensively in places like this Encyclopedia.
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#1883: Richard Lee

August 13, 2017, 12:06 am
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Most people are aware of conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 or the JFK shootings, but it turns out to be difficult to find a major event in history that has not been subjected to conspiracy theory. There is a whole industry of conspiracies surrounding the suicide of Kurt Cobain, for instance, and Seattle public access TV presenter and independent journalist Richard Lee is probably its most famous promoter. According to Lee, Courtney Love collaborated with Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic – and probably many more whose motives and identities remain shrouded in shadows – to kill Cobain, and Lee will apparently stop at nothing to prove his hypotheses true, g the fact that they are obviously false and ridiculous notwithstanding.

To promote his ideas Lee produced a show called Now See It Person to Person: Was Kurt Cobain Murdered? (later the somewhat more assertive Now See It Person To Person: Kurt Cobain Was Murdered), which was running weekly for years (with some involuntary hiatuses) and might still be online for all we know; Lee is at least still pushing the conspiracy theories, and has over the years acquired a number of restraining orders for stalking people he thinks were involved or know something about Cobain’s death. There is a fine portrait of Lee here.

Over the years Lee has also tried to run for various political offices. He ran for Seattle City Council in 1999, but a judge ruled him ineligible because he reused old petition signatures to get on the ballot. In 2001, Lee ran for mayor of the city of Seattle, and used the opportunity to question other candidates about a supposed cover-up regarding the investigation of Cobain’s death.

Of course, Lee is not the only one to push Kurt Cobain murder conspiracy theories. Others include:

  • Tom Grant, a private investigator hired by Courtney Love to find Cobain after he went missing from a rehab facility, and then to investigate Cobain’s death. Grant came to believe that Cobain was murdered by Love.
  • Eldon “El Duce” Hoke of the band The Mentors, who claimed that Courtney Love offered him $50,000 to kill Cobain. Hoke’s later death in an accident only fuelled the conspiracy theorists.
  • Ian Halperin and Max Wallace, who wrote two books, Who Killed Kurt Cobain? and Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain(2004), the latter with help from Tom Grant.


Richard Lee the conspiracy theorist should be distinguished from Religious Right figure Richard Lee, editor of the American Patriot’s Bible and paranoid persecution myth promoter.


Diagnosis: Colorful, belligerent and probably mostly harmless (except for the harassment issues, which I suppose are serious enough), but also representative for a mindset that is not particularly harmless at the scale we are observing at present.
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#1884: Sin Hang Lee

August 14, 2017, 11:57 pm
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Sin Hang Lee is an MD and formerly pathologist at the Milford Hospital pathology laboratory (where he received the boot in 2010), who has gained a reputation for himself for scaremongering about the Gardasil vaccine (facts here). His ideas about HPV DNA are silly and have been widely discredited, but that matters less to the antivaxx crowd than his credentials and that he tells them what they like to hear, and he is currently one of the more sought-after antivaxx voices for various antivaxx events – he appears, together with an impressive array of other conspiracy theorists, for instance in the recent “documentary” The Truth About Vaccines.

Lee has been reasonably well-known in the conspiracy community for a while, but made a bit of a splash in 2011 when the conspiracy website SANE Vax claimed to find “Recombinant HPV DNA” in “multiple samples of Gardasil”. Lee, of course, was the guy (“well-known for using cutting-edge DNA sequencing for molecular diagnoses”) contacted to perform the analyses. Of course, we are not informed about how he got the results – there is no scientific article or report attached to the findings, and neither he nor SANE Vax would tell us because they need to “protect the proprietary processes and information utilized by our laboratory to test the samples.” That is one pretty enormous red flag, insofar as testing for DNA contamination is otherwise a pretty straightforward affair, at least if the amount of contamition is sufficient to be anything to conceivably worry about. Nor do SANE Vax tell us how much was detected, which is rather telling; it turns out that the quantities were so small that Lee had to use nested PCR to detect it, which means that they are close to homeopathic (if Lee really found anything at all). Moreover, one would need some serious pseudoscience to dream up a possible mechanism by which such DNA would be harmful, but at least Lee is perfectly willing to provide that:  “the HPV DNA in Gardasil™ is not ‘natural’ DNA. It is a recombinant HPV DNA (rDNA) – genetically engineered – to be inserted into yeast cells for VLP (virus-like-particle) protein production. rDNA is known to behave differently from natural DNA. It may enter a human cell, especially in an inflammatory lesion caused by the effects of the aluminum adjuvant, via poorly understood mechanisms.” That is utter nonsense (but common nonsense in anti-vaxx groups), but we suspect that most of SANE Vax’s regular audience wouldn’t know, so claims like this probably do their tricks among the target audience. More details here.

So, basically Lee is the source of a fear mongering campaign derived from a nonexistent understanding of molecular biology, if not on his part then certainly on the part of his intended audience (what he is pushing is ultimately nothing but a version of the toxins gambit). And Lee has continued in the same vein, claiming that deaths not caused by the HPV vaccine were caused by the HPV vaccine and publishing case reports in what appears to be predatory journals based on laughable methodology (indeed, it becomes clear when looking at the report that Lee deliberately made poor methodological choices; one wonders why.)

His research has, of course, been endorsed by various antivaccine activists and pseudoscience groups, such as the deranged conspiracy theory and anti-science hate group (!) the American College of Pediatricians (not to be confused with the reputable American Academy of Pediatrics, though the ACP certainly revels in the confusion).

SANE Vax claims that Lee is persecuted.

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientist and crackpot, who seems to have a penchant for choosing the methodology for investigation based on what is most likely to create fear and sensation rather than accuracy. Dangerous.


Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence
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#1885: Tim LeFever

August 17, 2017, 1:15 am
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Tim LeFever is a two-time Republican nominee for Congress in the Sacramento area, chairman of the board of the Capitol Resource Institute, member of the board of directors of The Pacific Justice Institute – both fundie anti-gay organizations, if you wondered – and occasional writer for Townhall (which is pretty much a fundie anti-gay organization as well). The CRI and LeFever did for instance get some attention for their efforts to repeal the 2011 California landmark gay education bill, which ensures that contributions of gays and gay rights are included in school textbooks, and adds sexual orientation to the state’s existing anti-discrimination protections prohibiting bias in school activities, instruction, and instructional materials. The reason the bill should be repealed was ostensibly because it, according to Lefever, undermines lessons in the Constitution. (Yeah, no: it’s hard to believe that Lefever really believed that.) Meanwhile, Robert Newman, head of California Christian Coalition, said about the bill that he was concerned about the protections against bullying, claiming that bullying is not an important issue and anyways part of the “maturation process.”

Currently LeFever seems to be particularly concerned with preventing people from using bathrooms that accord with their gender identity.


Diagnosis: A person with some influence in the wingnut movement, though probably not among the more familiar faces. Still, loons like this deserve exposure.
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#1886: Noson Leiter

August 19, 2017, 3:06 am
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More from the fuming, delusional hatred department. Noson Leiter, of the rather unappealingly named Torah Jews for Decency, is apparently one of the Religious Right’s favorite rabbis, and has appeared at Tea Party conferences along with luminaries like Rick Scarborough. Leiter rose to a modicum of fame when he blamed Hurricane Sandy on New York’s marriage equality law. He was, of course, not the only dingbat to do so, but might have been the only one to point out the appearance of a double rainbow after the storm as evidence that Hurricane Sandy was a sequel to the Flood (which God, according to the Bible, explicitly promised never to do again). Leiter had previously worked with Liberty Counsel and New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms in an unsuccessful lawsuit to overturn said law. Not everyone was impressed with Leiter’s observations.

Leiter has also asserted that the “end game” of the gay rights movement is “child molestation.” (No, he has no decency, which is presumably why he feels the need to put “decency” in the name of his organization.) “They are after our kids,” says Leiter; “they are after the bibles and guns that Americans cling to but they are also after us and after our kids.” He also warned that gay rights advocates “will not rest until all of their opposition is totally eliminated,” but fortunately assured us that they will ultimately lose, because “the Lord will vanquish evil.” Apparently, this is a recurring theme; also in connection with blaiming Hurricane Sandy on the gays, Leiter said that the “LGBT radical homosexualist movement” will increase child abuse by giving molesters a “license to victimize” children and even “a certain degree of diplomatic immunity.”

Here is Leiter in 2013 warning then-Senate candidate Tom Price about the “tremendous medical health impact and economic impact” of the “homosexual agenda” and asking him (Price) whether Congress will consider studying the “fiscal impact” that “promoting such a lifestyle will result in.” Leiter’s general point was ostensibly (but not really) that any bill involving social issues should require a study of the “fiscal impact” the legislation would have. Price agreed, of course.


Diagnosis: Hate, hate and more hate, fuelled by fanatic delusions. Same as always.
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#1887: Peter Leithart

August 22, 2017, 1:27 am
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Peter Leithart is a theocrat and president of Theopolis Institute for Biblical, Liturgical, & Cultural Studies in Birmingham, Alabama. He is also the author of numerous books, some coauthored with George Grant or Gary DeMar, including a series of children’s bedtime stories that we haven’t read but nevertheless recommend that parents who wish to raise wholesome, good and wise kids avoid with a passion. Taking a cue from Islamic fundamentalists – reconstructionists like Leithart tend to harbor a certain envy for radical jihadists – Leithart has presented “American Christians with a call to martyrdom,” in particular as a response to the legality of abortion and gay marriage: “Throughout Scripture,” Leithart says (in his book Between Babel and Beast), “the only power that can overcome the seemingly invincible omnipotence of a Babel or a Beast is the power of martyrdom, the power of the witness to King Jesus to the point of loss and death.” At least Leithart, as opposed to some dominionist, recognizes that the type of hatred and bigotry he would prefer be the law is neither popular nor embedded in the Constitution: “To be faithful, Christian witness must be witness against America.” How Leithart’s claims are relevantly different from a Taliban video is less clear, insofar as Leithart is explicitly and repeatedly calling for Christians to seek martyrdom in combat against America and its values.

It is probably not even worth mentioning that Leithart is a young-earth creationism; indeed, he doesn’t even seem to bother with the science: any semblance of criticism of a literary reading of the Bible from science or history is for Leithart entirely beside the point.


Diagnosis: He does his best to make himself ideologically indistinguishable from the most delusionally rabid Taliban jihadists – and he seems to have a number of followers (David Lane, for instance). Dangerous.
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#1888: Bryan Leonard

August 26, 2017, 1:04 am
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Bryan Leonard is one of the alleged martyrs featured in the creationist movements dishonest “academic freedom” campaigns, people having been the victim of what Intelligent Design creationists would describe as oppression by the Darwinist establishment (i.e. actual scientists with actual expertise and a commitment to science). A more comprehensive description of the so-called Bryan Leonard affair can be found here. We’ll just provide a brief recap:

Leonard was (or perhaps is) a high school biology teacher at Hilliard Davidson High School in a suburb of Columbus (yes, he was teaching the controversy and promoting creationism to the high-school kids; surprised?), and – a decade ago – an appointee to the Ohio State BOE’s model curriculum-writing committee, where he authored the creationist-friendly “Critical Analysis” model lesson plan adopted by the Ohio State Board of Education in 2004. Leonard also testified for the pseudoscience side at the Kansas Creationist Kangaroo Court hearings (excerpts from his testimony here). Leonard himself appears to be a young-earth creationist.

Now, by 2005 Leonard was also a doctoral candidate in science education at Ohio State University, doing dissertation research on the academic merits of an ID-based “critical analysis” approach to teaching evolution in public schools. Scheduled to defend on June 6, the defense was suddenly postponed to the shock and horror of conspiracy theorists and pseudoscientists everywhere. And of course, in real life the postponement was due to the questionable tactics and strategy of the creationists, in particular the composition of Leonard’s committee. You see, the OSU requires that the committee must reflect the expertise needed for the dissertation and must have at least three members: two from the science education program area and one from outside the science education program area. Leonard’s final dissertation committee did not meet those requirements – in particular, it contained no member from the science education program area – and one suspects this was because his advisor, Paul Post, realized that it would not pass if they included, you know, actual experts on biology on the committee. Instead, the committee included, in addition to an assistant professor in French & Italian, Glen R. Needham of the Department of Entomology and Robert DiSilvestro of the Department of Human Nutrition, both of whom have track-records as champions of creationism and pseudoscience – both are signatories to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, for instance, and DiSilvestro, surely coincidentally, also testified for the anti-science side at the Kansas evolution hearings. (He was also at that time contact person for the Ohio Intelligent Design Movement’s 52 Ohio Scientists Call for Academic Freedom on Darwin’s Theorypetition; and Needham was a signatory). Leonard’s advisor Paul Post has no relevant qualifications to comment on evolution either.

So, when members of the faculty of the OSU brought these and other anomalies to the attention of appropriate administrators in the Graduate School, the assistant professor of French & Italian asked to be relieved and was replaced by the Dean of the College of Biological Sciences who was an evolutionary biologist. At that time, the defense was suddenly postponed, apparently at the request of Leonard’s advisor; it was never rescheduled. And note: It was Leonard’s advisor who asked for the postponement, after it became clear that he wouldn’t be allowed to violate the guidelines in his attempt to fix the jury in Leonard’s favor (which rather strongly suggests that the creationists on the committee had little confidence in the actual merits of Leonard’s pro-creationist thesis). The pattern of behavior from the Intelligent Design community is rather striking – even if Leonard’s thesis wereperfectly OK, the attempt of the Intelligent Design community to subvert the process is telling, isn’t it? Being caught in the act, the Intelligent Design community responded by claiming “violation of academic freedom”, of course. Indeed, a decade later the case remains one of their go-to examples of howChristians are oppressed in academia.


Diagnosis: We haven’t heard much from Leonard since 2005, but the Bryan Leonard case is occasionally revived by pseudoscientists who aren’t that concerned with what actuallyhappened. Now, one can reasonably argue that Leonard was, indeed, a victim in that particular case – a victim of the shenanigans of established creationists, of course – but his activities on the Ohio State BOE’s model curriculum-writing committee and role in the Kansas Kangaroo court hearings still qualify him for an entry in our Encyclopedia.
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#1889: Lane Lester

August 29, 2017, 1:08 am
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We’ll skip Lillie Leonardi – things like this wouldn’t have merited an entry had she not written a book about it, pushed by WND, but even though she did I think we’re all best served by skipping her.

Lane Lester is a Professor of Biology at Emmanuel Missionary College (or, as it is currently known, Andrew University), Georgia – a small, extremist, Pentecostal college that offers non-accredited “education” – and Regional Representative of the Institute for Creation Research. Lester calls himself a “creationist geneticist”, though we have been unable to locate any real research from his hand – instead, Lester appears to write textbooks and articles for non-specialists in various creationist magazines, the purpose of which is outreach, not research, insofar as the goal of creationist “scientists” is, always, to broadcast their ideas and ensnare souls for Jesus, not to actually try to scientifically test their ideas. Now Lester does, indeed, have a real education. That doesn’t make him a scientist, of course, but it does make him qualified to sign various creationist petitions, such as the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism and the CMI list of scientists alive today who accept the biblical account of creation.


Diagnosis: Scientists are people who do science. Lester is not a scientist, and any attempt to make it look like he is can be safely dismissed. Lunatic fundie, is what he is. Limited impact, but students do attend his sorry excuse for an educational institution, and doing so is probably not free.
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#1890: Janet Levatin

September 1, 2017, 1:16 am
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Janet Levatin is a pediatrician and one of few actual pediatricians who sympathize with the anti-vaccine movement – she has, for instance, been used in the marketing campaign for the anti-vaxx film “The Greater Good” after praising the movie for “offer[ing] a balanced discussion of the issues” (it doesn’t). Of course, Levatin doesn’t care about “balanced”; Levatin is a hardcore anti-vaxxer whose article “Why Do Doctors Push Vaccines” appeared right there on leading anti-vaxxer Sherri Tenpenny’s website. That article is rich in standard anti-vaccine tropes, such as:

  • Confusing correlation and causation: “the deterioration of our nation’s health with the bloated vaccination schedule” (the correlation is itself highly questionable; the causation claim demonstrably false).
  • Claiming that many pediatricians continue to recommend vaccines “out of fear” of authorities (and possibly greed).
Of course, taking a look at Levatin’s own practices is revealing. Yes, she does have a medical degree; she has also been a Homeopathic Master Clinician for 15 years who “regularly refers children for chiropractic, craniosacral therapy, allergy elimination, and other modalities,” and proclaims that her practice offers “holistic pediatrics” and homeopathy for children and adults. Yes, Levatin is a good, old-fashioned quack. And, says her bio: “Throughout her training Dr. Janet disagreed with much of what she observed in the conventional medical practice, including overuse of medications, unwholesome hospital nutrition, and virtually nonexistent methods for true prevention and health promotion. Since seeing more than one case of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) after infant vaccination in the 1980s, she has been an outspoken physician against the over-vaccination of children”. Of course, vaccination is demonstrably negatively correlated with SIDS, but Levatin is not one to let facts override conclusions she emoted herself to through motivated reasoning.

None of her background in quackery and the antivaccine movement was mentioned in the marketing campaign for “The Greater Good”, of course.

Levatin is otherwise a mainstain at antivaxx conferences and gatherings, and makes sure to keep the pseudoscience content high and levels of accountability and sensitivity to evidence low. You can see a summary of her talk at the 2012 AutismOne quackfest conference here (the hib vaccine causes peanut allergy because some pseudochemical equivalent of astrology that outweighs the complete lack of evidence for any connection; and vaccines causes autism since science and evidence don’t matter when up against Levatin’s powers of intuition guided by what she already knows to be true regardless of evidence.)

She also appeared as an alleged expert in Ty Bollinger’s Truth About Vaccines series.


Diagnosis: Good, old-fashioned crackpot; and as all crackpot she bolsters her pseudoscience by rejecting actual science, evidence and facts in favor of an epistemic system based on inference by free emoting. But since she does have an actual education, anti-vaxxers cherish her firm commitment to the cause, and gives her ample air time. Frighteningly dangerous, in quite tangible ways (her vaccine position, if adopted by merely a small number, will likely lead to real deaths).
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