December 1, 2017, 12:35 am
Jennifer Margulis is a a journalist and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, home birth advocate, quackery promoter, author, and a radical anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and infectious disease advocate. As most critics of modern medicine, Margulis moves between legitimate concerns related to e.g. over-treatment, and batshit paranoid conspiracy theories involving how Big Medicine and Big Pharma are out to destroy you and your children for profit.
Homebirths
Margulis is perhaps most famous as a homebirth advocate and promoter of the idea of “embracing the pain to make you stronger” because it is natural. In her book The Business of Baby: What Doctors Don’t Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Before Their Bottom Line (good review here; here is Margulis trying to manipulate Amazon reviews of her book), Margulis argues not only for homebirths and “parents know better than doctors” (after all, doctors were wrong before) and that bathing a newborn is harmful, but questions the need for well baby checkups – which she apparently thinks are primarily a gimmick to sell vaccines – and for giving newborns vitamin K and prophylactic eye drops. Indeed, Margulis is against chemicals in general, and tries to scare you as she has scared herself for instance by telling us hat Johnson’s Baby Wash contains “a host of unpronounceable chemicals [yes, the Food Babe gambit, no less], some of which are known toxins … and carcinogens,” which shows that Margulis has failed to grasp even the most rudimentary principles of toxicology and chemistry, or at least that she’s aware that her readers obviously haven’t. Similarly, Margulis is firmly opposed to formula, which she says is killing babies because it’s unnatural, and against disposable diapers because they contain chemicals which, according to Margulis, can cause your child to become infertile, citing – as her only evidence – a single study showing that disposable diapers, rather obviously, raise scrotal temperatures. There is another good review of the book here.
A typical move in her bookis to chide doctors (lots of that) for ignoring “the existing scientific literature” on bed rest or toilet training, and then promptly assert that ultrasound exams of pregnant women may be responsible (they aren’t) for (the mythical) rising rates of autism among children, based on information by “a commentator in an online article” (who is left anonymous but has apparently “used ultrasonic cleaners to clean surgical instruments (and jewelry)”). Also, “[p]eople who do not use ultrasound, like the Amish, are at lower risk for autism,” says Margulis, which is not even wrong, since Amish women don’t reject ultrasound and the urban legend that Amish don’t get autism is demonstrably exactly that.
Indeed, her book relies primarily on i) anecdotes, and ii) appeals to nature to support her claims, as well as the (familiar) formula “anything used by mainstream doctors and hospitals = bad; anything used by midwives or alternative healers = good,” and she laments how back in the days “birthing women were usually attended by informally trained midwives who passed on their skills from generation to generation,” whereas today a birth taking place in a hospital today involves “at least half a dozen medical professionals.” Therefore giving birth was much better before. Margulis has several stories of babies or mothers dying in those horrible “sterile” and “hygienic” hospitals because of indifferent or incompetent doctors, and no stories of women dying in childbirth without the intervention of doctors; you do the math.
Of course, the mortality rates for homebirths in the US are rather frightening, something that Margulius has some trouble explaining away. Her response is … striking.
Autism
![]() |
Hat-tip: Refutations to
Anti-vaccine memes |
As for Margulis’s inane hypothesis that there is a connection between ultrasound and autism, she later wrote to Linda Birnbaum, the Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and a toxicologist with a PhD in microbiology and an extensive publication list, offering to educate Birnbaum on the causes for the (mythical) rise in autism, citing her degrees in English and literature, her background as an “award-winning journalist” and her stay in Niger in 2006–07 (“I think it is important to have a global perspective on health”) as her qualifications. “My extensive research,” said Margulis, who has no background in research (she means google guided by confirmation bias), “as a journalist has led me to suspect that two environmental factors may be directly contributing to the autism epidemic:1) Over/ill-timed exposure to prenatal ultrasound … 2) The use of Acetaminophen, especially before or after infant vaccination. This may be the smoking gun …” Neither of the two hypotheses, which are not compatible, has any plausible connection to autism, the prevalence of which has not increased in any case – there isn’t even a correlation to confuse with causation here! The hubris of Jennifer Margulis is breathtaking.
Vaccines
“As a parent, I would rather see my child get a natural illness and contract that the way that illnesses have been contracted for at least 200,000 years that Homo sapiens has been around. I’m not afraid of my children getting chicken pox. There are reasons that children get sick. Getting sick is not a bad thing”
- Jennifer Margulis
We don’t know if that quote needs further comment, but if you think it does, try (following one “Bradley”) to replace “illness” with “bear attack” and “getting sick” with “mauled by bear”).
![]() |
| Hat-tip: RtAVM |
![]() |
| Hat-tip: RtAVM |
In 2010, during a Frontline episode (reviewed here), Margulis asked why we are still vaccinating for polio since polio has become more rare. This is not an intelligent question.
![]() |
Nor can she let the vaccine-autism link go.
Hat-tip: RtAVM |
Diagnosis: Rabid, loud and – frankly – stupid infectious disease advocate, conspiracy theorist and promoter of all sorts of things that count as natural according to her standards for such matters. She seems to be relatively influential, however. Extremely dangerous.
↧
December 3, 2017, 12:45 am
![]() |
Richard Markoll - we couldn't
locate anything verifiably Ernestine |
One would expect that quacks, frauds and promoters of alternative medicine would have found ways to promote magnets as a miraculous cure for all sorts of ailments, and sure they have. There is, of course, no scientific basis or evidence to conclude that small, static magnets can relieve pain or influence the course of disease, and the magnets suggested by promoters of magnet therapy (a good survey here) do not even produce any significant magnetic field at or (much less) beneath the skin’s surface.
Richard Markoll and his wife Ernestine are, together with one David H. Trock, M.D., central promoters of the nonsense known as pulsed signal therapy (PST), through an outfit called Bio-Magnetic Treatment Systems (BMTS). Or at least they used to be: in 2001 they pled guilty to criminal charges in connection with a scheme involving pulsed magnetic therapy and fraudulent billing codes to seek payment from Medicare and other insurance plans for PST treatment with a device (Electro-Magnetic Induction Treatment System) that did not have FDA approval; more details here. The device in question was invented by Richard Markoll, who does not appear to have a medical license but is a graduate of the Grace University School of Medicine, a Caribbean medical school. Trock, who was formerly principal investigator for the Magnetic Therapy Center, has co-authored studies claiming that PST is effective for treating pain. It isn’t.
PST is still promoted, however, though apparently mostly for pets. Quackery, once released, is rarely contained again.
Diagnosis: Well, they were convicted, so that should be enough. Hopefully neutralized, but being convicted of a scam is not always enough to keep suckers at bay.
↧
↧
December 5, 2017, 12:21 am
![]() |
| Rose Marks |
Oh, well. The Markses are a Florida family of “psychics” – or “ex-psychics”, perhaps – who claimed their powers could influence terminal cancer and allow them to peer into their victims’ previous lifetimes, which, of course, they couldn’t. The business, which seems to have been masterminded in particular by Nancy Marks and her mother-in-law Rose, would choose their victims carefully, targeting those who had recently suffered devastating losses, to milk them for huge amounts of money, and several of them accordingly received substantial prison sentences back in 2012 and 2013 for defrauding clients of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
![]() |
| Nancy Marks |
Now, one might easily suspect that the Markses weren’t exactly acting in good faith, and do as such not deserve and entry in an Encyclopedia of loons (hence the question mark), but Nancy Marks’s defense did argue that she “didn’t know what she was doing was wrong,” and if that is true, it’s good enough to qualify as a loon even if you don’t really think you’ve got psychic powers.
Diagnosis: It is, however, not easy to distinguish what the Markses were doing from what “ordinary” psychics are doing. Hopefully they’re neutralized, at least.
↧
December 7, 2017, 12:25 am
Marsch claims that liberals are as anti-science as young-earth creationists (Marsch does reject young-earth creationism) because of their adherence to the pagan religion of environmentalism. Marsch himself is sympathetic to global warming denialism and enthusiastic about the possible beneficial health effects of radiation hormesis. And since people who reject science for non-scientific reasons might have some difficulties establishing a reputable scientific career, Marsch also claims that scientists with a Christian worldview are persecuted, because being a denialist is apparently a religious creed.
Diagnosis: A relatively minor figure, perhaps, but he did sign the Discovery Institute petition (while presumably understanding what it aimed to achieve), which is sufficient for qualifying as a loon and meriting a mention here. It doesn’t help his case that Marsch has at least toyed with a range of other anti-scientific ideas as well.
↧
December 9, 2017, 12:18 am
Patrick Marsh is a former employee of Universal Studios and the design director for the Ark Encounter (Mike Zovath headed the management team; comprehensive description here), which is “a full-size Noah’s Ark, built according to the dimensions given in the Bible” in Kentucky and the subject of well-deserved, international mockery, partly since the resulting wooden box sort of piles on further evidence – if more were needed – that the Ark myth is, indeed, completely and utterly a myth. Although scientists have cataloged 1.3 million species of animals, the Ark Encounter figured that Noah could have brought on just 1,000 to 2,000 pairs to represent every animal “kind” (the pseudoscientific study of Biblical “kinds”, baraminology, is accordingly notable mostly for unintentionally providing further evidence for evolution). Of course, they don’t think too hard about e.g. insects or aquatic species, but neither does the target audience, presumably. The Ark Encounter was initially supposed to include a lot of other exhibits about antediluvian life, though those are apparently not yet in place.
Anyways, “[w]e’re basically presenting what the Bible has to say and showing how plausible it was,” says Marsh, which the encounter to some extent actually does, but not in the way Marsh intends, making Marsh’s assertion that “this was a real piece of history – not just a story, not just a legend” sound a bit desperate. According to Marsh the whole Ark encounter is really about evangelism to the unchurched: “the Bible is the only thing that gives you the full picture. Other religions don’t have that, and, as for scientists, so much of what they believe is pretty fuzzy about life and its origins.” Apparently, Marsh also wanted to show that early man was not primitive (he doesn’t believe in non-human hominid fossils). For instance, “Adam one of the most brilliant people that ever lived on this earth. In a very short period of time he named all of the animals that there were,” which assumes a non-standard interpretation of “brilliance”.
Diagnosis: Seriously crazy fundie. How much his theatrical theme parks will manage to sway those not already lost to seriously crazy fundamentalism is a different matter, however.
↧
↧
December 11, 2017, 1:10 am
Intelligent design creationism (ID) is pseudoscience, and as with most branches of pseudoscience, proponents of ID see the theory’s lack of popularity among those who actually has some expertise in the relevant areas not as a result of ID’s lack of scientific merit but as a result of conspiracy and/or bias. ID’s proponents themselves, of course, do not possess such expertise. A fine example is John Marshall, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia and ID apologist, who claims that mainstream scientists are trying to kick intelligent design “off the playing field of science” even though, according to Marshall, ID is “as much science as Darwinian evolution is science”. It isn’t. Marshall, of course, is not a biologist, and does not appear to have extensive knowledge of the relevant fields. Nevertheless, “as a theory, I believe that intelligent design fits the evidence of biology better than Darwinian evolution,” says Marshall, since that’s what he chooses to believe, regardless of evidence or principles for good scientific inquiry or evaluation of evidence (Marshall, in a 2007 talk in which he asserted his stance, failed to answer questions (from scientists) about ID’s testable predictions, for instance, which are sorely missing). He did bring up the standard false analogy involving DNA and information, however, saying that DNA is the “most complex, densely packed, elaborate assembly of information in the known universe” and even bears similarities to computer codes or a language, which is misleading at best. There is a nice, brief discussion of Marshall’s claim that ID is science here.
Diagnosis: Marshall is a scientist. But being a working scientist in one field doesn’t mean that your dabblings in a different field are anything but pseudoscientific. Marshall is also a pseudoscientist.
↧
December 13, 2017, 12:49 am
Abigail Suzanne “Abby” Martin is an “investigative journalist”, presenter of The Empire Files, and formerly host of Breaking the Set on the Russian network RT America. A relatively well-known figure, Martin has been heavily involved in various foundations and “documentaries”. She also claims to have grown weary of viewing politics on a Left–Right axis, but what she offers is nevertheless more or less a liberal version of Breitbart-style conspiracy mongering.
In fairness, she has said that she “no longer subscribes” to the idea that 9/11 was an inside job, but even if she doesn’t there are plenty of conspiracy theories she does subscribe to. For instance, Martin is an important promoter of conspiracies surrounding water fluoridation, and devoted at least one Breaking the Set show to the topic. Like so many fluoridation conspiracy loons, Martin invoked studies showing the dangers of fluoridation, neglecting completely the fact that those studies employed dosages many times as high as would be physically possible for humans to get exposed to through water. But as most chemically illiterate people, the rather fundamental idea that the dose makes the poison remains beyond Martin’s grasp. She also ran various conspiracy theories targeted at Monsanto, the big bogeyman of liberal conspiracy theorists everywhere.
Diagnosis: Often described as a spokesperson for the Millenial generation, Martin is probably at best a specimen of Millenial conspiracy mongerers. Addle-brained fop. Don’t listen to her.
↧
December 15, 2017, 1:38 am
![]()
Barry Martin is the owner of the blog jfkspeaks.blogspot.com, where he channels the spirit of former president J.F. Kennedy: “The information on this blog was given to me by a spirit, President John F. Kennedy,” says Martin. Apparently post-demise Kennedy has taken a keen interest in New Age woo, and freely relates to mr. Martin, through automatic writing, information for instance “concerning our friends, the Pleiadians and dolphins.” The Pleiadians – we’ve had ample opportunity to deal with them already – are humanoid aliens that come from the stellar systems surrounding the Pleiades stars. Dolphins, according to Kennedy/Martin, are “a gift from the Pleiadians”. Sayeth Kennedy: “The Pleiadian realms, the planets are roughly about 90 to 95 percent water. Their atmosphere is the same type as on earth, although the light there is a bit hazier. The sky is a bit hazier in some places. They brought dolphins to our world. Dolphins are Pleiadians. Man will communicate and interact freely with dolphins much more one day. Just as dogs inhabit the earth as pets, dolphins will be the new pet of man, as the world after the Shift will be about 87 percent water with many inlets and waterways and much sea water.” One may lament that JFK seems to have lost some of his eloquence after passing over to the spirit realm, but death generally tends affect people’s ability to come up with memorable turns of the phrase.
Apparently JFK was no fan of Clinton. Regarding the 2016 election, JFK said that “Mrs. Clinton will most likely win the 2016 Election. This is not something that makes us happy. She is a member of the New World Order.” There is also plenty of stuff about Atlantis and aliens and ancient technology and suchlike, and Kennedy helpfully tells us that under some ranch in the American southwest, “one would find the remains of crystal generators that powered whole cities, whole continents, nations and civilizations. With the power of crystals, this would enable mankind to power cities with a smaller output of electricity than mankind uses. This is a different type of electricity and is truly peaceful. It’s a form of clean fusion.” Kennedy’s grasp of the concepts electricity and fusionseems somewhat tenuous. Perhaps this was Robert Kennedy. It seems that Martin occasionally channels Bobby Kennedy as well.
In any case, everything will ostensibly culminate in “the Revelation of life everywhere in the universes,” which “is going to happen in 2018 we believe.” (It is not entirely clear who “we” refers to.) Also, there will be a major Shift that “will include major seismic and weather events, starting in about 2018 and lasting well into the 2020’s. The world will survive these events, but look much different geographically. The planet will be about 83% water and the population will be much lower.” It’s a poor prophet who can’t give us a proper Armageddon. Apparently the Shift will bring back Martin Luther King, only in this reincarnation he “will be a white man”. So it goes.
Diagnosis: Mostly harmless, and one of the characters that frankly provide some color (mostly teal and pastels) to the Internet. (The other Barry Martin, superintendent, is a different matter.)
↧
December 17, 2017, 12:42 am
The bizarre Internet phenomenon Kevin Douglas Martin is a self-proclaimed “senior meteorologist” and founder of several weather and weather forecasting websites, including TheWeatherSpace.com, SouthernCaliforniaWeatherAuthority.com, WeatherAlertCentral.com, and SouthernCaliforniaWeatherForce.com, ane a long history of releasing “weather alerts” warnings about impending tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes (his track record is abysmal). Martin has no formal qualifications or education in meteorology or any science related to weather. Instead, he claims that he was born with “gifts” that effectively allows him to pull his weather forecasts out of his own ass and an “ability to understand it without studying it”.
In his calculations Martin primarily relies on the workings of HAARP “or HAARP-like projects”, which are responsible for “abnormal” weather patterns and natural disasters such as Hurrican Sandy, and chemtrails. You will find weather radar images that ostensibly track and forecast HAARP activity and chemtrails on his websites. Martin’s HAARP status alert service, based on his project HAARPstatus.com, consists mostly of relabeling available weather map graphics to show alleged “current frequency readings” of HAARP transmissions. Apparently “[v]olunteers have added 22 sensors at their residences, in unknown locations. These sensors measure the effects and changes of the ionosphere that HAARP tampers with and a magnitude system that goes with the sensor readings triangulates the center of the frequency above the country.” How you triangulate anything from sensors located on unknown locations is anybody’s guess. His “Chemtrail Forecast System” is more economical in its explanation of its use of data: “DO NOT ASK: We keep out algorithms to the project. We provide the image and reserve the right to not publicly disclose our ‘core’ of the project.”
In 2007, The Ontario Weather Service (Martin is as founder and “Chief Meteorologist”) asserted that they (he) would “go into battle” against the National Weather Service, and marketed itself as “the only source in the world that can tell you when chemtrails will be put out. Spread the word. I am willing to put my reputation on the line to spread the word of chemtrails.” Not that Martin had much reputation to put on the line. He did gain some, however, with his SouthernCaliforniaWeatherAuthority.com website in 2009, after rushing to the defense of his “Lead Forecaster”, Ricky Lukacs, a teenager who was charged with (and admitted in juvenile court to) starting large wildfires in the Yucaipa area. The website TheWeatherSpace.com, meanwhile, bolstered its forecasts with UFO stories, including a hoaxed video (Martin ultimately claimed to have seen the UFO but was told to keep his mouth shut by powers that be). His 2014 tornado alert for Weather Alert Central.com also received some attention.
Martin is also a global warming denialist (“Global warming is just another scam for the government to think they can control you”).
Together with his brother Brian, Martin has also been involved in an ingenious get-rich-quick scheme. You can assess its merits yourself here.
Diagnosis: Aggressive, loud and completely lunatic, Martin’s antics don’t quite even hit the level of “pseudoscience”. He manages to draw some attention to himself, on occasion, mostly due to his personality and general level of crazy, but is hopefully harmless.
↧
↧
December 19, 2017, 3:23 am
Noreen Martin is an HIV denialist. She is also AIDS positive, but insists that her AIDS is not viral: “My own experience with AIDS was due to a lifetime of negative health issues. When extremely sick, I took the medicines, ate healthy, took over 50 supplements a day, and had a good attitude. So, within a few months I was as good as new.” Indeed, Martin used ARVs (antiretrovirals) to get back to health, and admits that when she stopped using them, her health deteriorated: “my fatigue slowly came back, my CD4s dipped and my viral load increased to over 3 million. Nevertheless, I never placed much stock in either of these numbers because after extensive research, I realized that neither were related to health. It was other conditions that caused the problems and the ARVs were powerful enough to keep them at bay.”
Of course, reading testimonials like this, I suspect most readers would be somewhat concerned: Martin’s state of mind is not of the sort we ought to ridicule and call out in an Encyclopedia like this. Thing is, though, that Martin is pretty vocal about her denialism, and may potentially cause real harm; she’s even gotten her bullshit published on the website Opposing Views (which is admittedly denialist friendly insofar as it is premised on the balance fallacy). In fact, her OV piece, “Other Ways to Treat Cancer Besides Chemotherapy & Radiation”, is primarily focused on cancer quackery. According to Martin, “[c]ancer is a most unnecessary disease that is not created by Nature but by man.” Martin apparently knows preciously little about cancer – and nature – but nevertheless goes on to claim that “[s]ince modern medicine does not offer much hope for incurable diseases [which, you may note, is true by the definition of “incurable”], it is time that we take back our power over disease, chart our own course, and take responsibility for our destiny.” Ah, yes – this is an important premise for any quackery: the get-out-of-jail-card premise that allow promoters of quackery to blame the victim when their advice fails and say that you just didn’t try hard enough. In any case, Martin goes on to blame cancer on – you guessed it – The Toxins. Evidence? “A century ago, 1 in 33 developed cancer. Now, 1 in 3 persons will develop cancer in one’s lifetime. What has changed to cause this significant increase? The main answer can be stated in one word, toxins, pure and simple.” Of course, the real reason for the increase is – demonstrably – that people live longer and don’t die of the diseases they did in 1900. Nor does Martin – entirely unsurprisingly – specify which toxins she is talking about.
![]()
Martin is also the proud author of two self-published books: AIDS: They Suckered Us and Get A Life – Free From Toxins and Disease. She has amply demonstrated that she has no clue about either topic, but plenty of misinformation to spread.
Diagnosis: Completely delusional and utterly crazy conspiracy theorist and quackery promoter. Avoid at all costs.
↧
December 22, 2017, 11:19 pm
Rodney Martin is a white supremacist, supporter of the National Alliance Reform & Restoration Group (NARRG) – a spinoff of the neo-nazi National Alliance – part of the American Nationalist Network, and anti-semitic conspiracy theorist. “There are all sorts of [degeneracy], porn, lowering the age of consent, prostitution […] The hand print of Jews are all over that sexual decadence in the United States … The whole homosexual agenda …which is pushed by Jews. Not only did Jews create NAACP to direct black action against white people, but they started a whole host of homosexual organizations to promote the homosexual agenda,” says Martin.
As you’d expect, Martin is very much opposed to (liberal) immigration reform: “I think if they do, if they ramrod this amnesty bill through, then I think where I talked about the United States being a Soviet Union, I think overnight, we become Yugoslavia, and it becomes not a pretty picture,” said Martin, and claimed it is “genocide” (the referent of “it” being admittedly a bit unclear). Martin seems unsure about the meaning of – among other things – “overnight”.
Diagnosis: We apologize for the brevity of this post, but we cannot be bothered to delve too deeply into the kind of disgusting nonsense Martin is into. Stupid git. It would admittedly be a potential mistake to dismiss him as entirely harmless, however.
↧
December 26, 2017, 12:15 am
Woody Martin’s “Blood of Jesus oil” is so daft it probably doesn’t even count as a scam, and doesn’t quite qualify him for an entry here. Victor Martinez is hardly a household name either, but he has some influence in UFO circles, and did for instance moderate the maillist that first broke the hilarious
Project Serpo story, a poorly written science fiction story (and possibly intended as a hoax) about how a number of American astronauts visited the (fictional) planet Serpo in a spacecraft reverse engineered from the Roswell crash UFO in the 1950s by travelling 40 times the speed of light. (We’ve
covered it before). Of course, many of the maillist’s subscribers, already on board with this kind of stuff, apparently accepted the story as detailing real events.
And Martinez himself is a true believer, who implores his readers not to be sidetracked by inconsistencies and nonsense in the story but rather focus on the bigger picture, “that twelve of our citizens from the United States of America embarked on a 13-year mission to live on another world. That’s where the focus should be – not on all of these petty, nit-picky details! [Like evidence, truth, coherence or physical possibility] That’s what everyone should be in awe of.” Awesomeness trumps veracity every time, apparently. Martinez trust the general veracity of the story because of the testimony of impeccable sources like Richard Doty, Whitley Strieber, who “claims to have met a surviving team member of Project Serpo in Florida,” and a number of conveniently anonymous source who ostensibly talked to an acquaintance of fellow UFO enthusiast Bill Ryan, who (the acquaintance) was “amazed that details were now being released” but doesn’t want his name revealed and would deny everything if asked. When your conspiracy is as far out as Project Serpo you’ll take the sources you can get; to Martinez the story is simply too amazing not to be true.
“Why the secrecy?” wonders Martinez – why is the government not willing to share the details of the mission with him and his followers? The answer, of course, is well withing reach, but we wager that Martinez will never figure it out. Instead, he is patiently waiting for “at least some major announcement regarding the UFO subject being made public;” some government person in power needs to step up since “most people need an authority figure to come out and say this-and-that […] because most people can’t think for themselves. In other words, they can’t weigh and evaluate the evidence on its own merits and come to a definitive conclusion on their own; they need someone to do it for them.”
Diagnosis: Some people are indeed unable to “weigh and evaluate the evidence on its own merits”, but that obviously doesn’t tend to prevent them from coming “to a definitive conclusion on their own”. Martinez is at least relatively harmless.
↧
December 29, 2017, 12:09 am
![]()
Martonfi – might be pseudonym – runs the website Psalm 40 ministries, where she for instance laments the fact that even Christians won’t recognize that Santa and his elfs are a devious ploy to replace Jesus at Christmas time (“Hark the Harold Angels CRINGE”) is the unintentionally apt title of the article) and how the intrusion of superheroes, who are demonic idols (just look at how “Yoda is a demonic looking creature”; Martonfi would know), in popular culture and everywhere is evidence of the challenges faced by Christianity in the US today, which of course also shows that the end is near. You can also request prayers from her, and Martonfi’s prayers are powerful: from a young age Martonfi “prayed for the sick and they recovered;” she’s also once healed a washing machine and prayed her way out of a $2900 car repair bill. Apparently her broken watch required a bit more effort: to begin with, God did nothing, but after a week or so “[a]gain, I petitioned God, only now I was really serious. I remembered the acronym P.U.S.H. Pray Until Something Happens. I was not going to be deterred.” Eventually, she put away the kids gloves and reminded God of His duties to her: “Dear Lord, I stand on your Word that says that You shall supply all of my needs and dear Lord, I need to know what time it is!” This did the trick, and according to Martonfi her “watch has not missed one second since.” I think the lesson is that you just have to show God who da boss sometimes.
It seems that she’s also written an autobiography.
Diagnosis: Despite their content, her posts are mostly grammatical and semi-coherent. They’re completely unhingend nonetheless, and although she’s pretty obscure we suspect that her views are shared by a large enough group of people that they cannot be completely dismissed as harmless fringe delusions.
↧
↧
January 3, 2018, 12:26 am
Greg Marvel is President of the Board of Education for the San Ramon Unified School District. He is also an anti-vaxxer. In fact, Marvel claims to be “a strong believer in the use of vaccines.” However, he said of Leslie Manookian’s antivaxx propaganda movie The Greater Good (review here) that “it presents a balanced argument, with national experts advocating for universal vaccination, while others in the film present cautionary arguments.” If you think the conspiracy ravings of The Greater Good presents a “balanced argument”, you are delusional. And anti-vaccine. Given that he is also a school board president, the fact that he sees The Greater Good “as a starting point for each viewer to begin the discussion within their own families about the benefits and risks associated with vaccinations, and thus strongly recommend that every parent watch this film,” is deeply problematic. One also wonders whether it is considered within the scope of his role to send a letter on school board stationary praising the film to antivaccine groups. Well, the antivaccine Canary Party used Marvel’s endorsement for all it was worth.
Of course, such actions from a school board president should, in a reasonable world, lead at least to some serious criticism. Instead, since San Ramon is apparently a hotbet for antivaccine activism, he received support. Nancy Sheets, “a credentialed school nurse” in the San Ramon district endorsed the conspiracy flick, too.
Diagnosis: Wtf, San Ramon? Greg Marvel is a conspiracy theorist with a penchant for pseudoscience, and a danger to your children and community (Nancy Sheets, too). Get him out.
↧
January 5, 2018, 12:52 am
Marx claims that democracy no longer exists because of gay marriage. In 2013, he said thatthe Supreme Court’s rulings on DOMA and Proposition 8 have made our democracy only an illusion and accused the court of “dismantling American democracy” and turning America into “a nation where democracy is a mere visual effect used to spawn a perception of self-rule that no longer ultimately exists.” Apparently, the courts undermine democracy because “traditional marriage activists” ostensibly “vastly outnumber their opponents”, which is, incidentally, demonstrably false, but does show that Marx doesn’t really understand the role of the courts or the Constitution. (Marx apparently even believed that when courts rule against what he perceive to be majority opinion they “trump Constitutional principles”; no, he doesn’t understand this at all; not that anyone would ever suspect him of being intellectually honest about these things in any case.
Marx is primarily associated with his position as director of the wingnut Judicial Confirmation Network, a group that putatively combats “judicial activism” (i.e. decisions they don’t personally agree with), but which in reality seeks precisely to influence court nominations so that appointees would not too slavishly adhere to the Constitution when the Constitution comes into conflict with how Marx thinks society should be organized, which it frequently does. Marx was formerly head of the Virginia Christian Coalition and the day-to-day coordinator of evangelical support for President W’s reelection campaign. He is also a Pat Robertson’s Regent “University” alumnus.
In 2012 Marx supported Tony Perkins for Senate, calling Perkins “a thoughtful public policy leader, credible candidate for U.S. Senate.” Lunacy comes no more deranged than calling Tony Perkins a “thoughtful public policy leader”.
Diagnosis: Deranged Taliban-style activist, who – like so many likeminded people – like to pretend to defend freedom and the Constitution while (fervently) doing the exact opposite. Marx is nevertheless one of the movers and shakers of the religious right, and worrisomely influential.
↧
January 8, 2018, 12:18 am
A.k.a. Lynn Marzulli (real name)
L.A. Marzulli is something of a legend in conspiracy circles, having made his appearance in numerous poorly produced documentaries and sensationalist TV and radio shows aimed at the most gullible among us. His deranged rants have also been extensively published in venues that publish such stuff (such as the WND, who refers to him as “Reporter and researcher”). Precisely what Marzulli thinks is sometimes a bit difficult to determine, but he seems bent on adopting whatever crazy combination of conspiracy theories, deranged religious fundamentalism and pseudoscience he encounters. Aliens are a big part of it, as is the return of Jesus. And apparently the theory of evolution is false. In general, the general tenor seems to be a perceived battle between Jesus and his devout followers on the one hand, and a Satanic horde of ancient alien lizard people, demons, the Illuminati and the UN on the other. Apparently aliens built piezoelectric teleporters in Peru in prehistoric times, and people with unusual head shapes are aliens and signs of imminent End Times. That kind of stuff.
Examples:
- Marzulli is for instance one of many cranks who weighed in with nonsense on Comet Elenin – Marzulli maintained, with scant evidence beyond the malworkings of his own mind, that Comet Elenin is actually a “SUPERMASSIVE BLACK CARBON STAR” (perhaps this one). It isn’t.
- He was also host of the “documentary” series The Watchers, weighing in for instance on the evidence for the historical accuracy of the Nephilim. According to Marzulli, not only are the Biblical stories of the Nephilim accurate; they survive to this day. One of them was killed by American soldiers in Afghanistan. To back up the claim, Marzulli cites “rumors”. Apparently the powers that be have a vested interest in keeping the story under wraps: “If it points to the Bible’s narrative being accurate, they don’t want it;” in particular, “if it goes against Darwinian evolution, it’s not to be spoken of.” Ostensibly because “they” are secretly Satanists worshipping at the altar of Darwin.
- As for those piezoelectric teleporters in Peru: Apparently Marzulli has travelled extensively in South America, where he noticed some common, simple houses built out of tufa; the back walls of these buildings, apparently interestingly, had no windows. Therefore they were piezoelectric teleporters that ancient Peruvians used to zap themselves a thousand miles away. Apparently because aliens.
- He has also promoted the starchild skull nonsense (one of the more familiar out-of-place artifacts claims). The skulls in question were apparently tested by real scientists in real labs, but Marzulli obviously cannot reveal the names of these scientists for fear of persecution.
Marzulli also hosts something called Acceleration Radio, which actually seems to enjoy some listeners. He is also the author of the
Nephilim Trilogy;
Politics, Prophecy & the Supernatural and the
Alien Interviews. Cult leaders John and Glenys Darnell in Australia (
truly scary people) seem to be heavily influenced by Marzulli’s teachings, for instance.
Not only is Marzulli’s insanity popular in fringe conspiracy circles; he also enjoys quite a bit of an audience at the intersection between the Tea Party and the religious right (ok, that would presumably count as a fringe conspiracy circle). In 2013, for instance, he was a keynote at the Pikes Peak Prophecy Summit with the talk “On the Trail of the Nephilim: The Mysterious Skulls and Skeletons of Peru”. Other keynotes included Jonathan Cahn (“The Harbinger Continues & The Mystery of the Malkosh”), the WND’s Joseph Farah (“After the Harbinger: The Prophecy Continues”), no less, Stanley Monteith (“Secret Agenda”), Chuck “Peanut Butter Argument” Missler (“The Denizens of Metacosm”), Gary Stearman (“First Trump Last Trump: Defending the Rapture”), Mark Biltz (“Signs in the Heavens: Blood Moons Are Coming to Israel”), Bob Cornuke (“Biblical Archaeology: A Police Investigator’s Perspective”) and Bill Koenig (“The White House’s Role in Israel and the Middle East”).
Diagnosis: Utterly deranged religious fundamentalist who has also adopted most of the whale.to-style conspiracy theories you could possible imagine – one step more deranged than the Alex Joneses of the Internet, in other words. Marzulli is nevertheless loud enough to have managed to attract an audience, but although he is perhaps not completely harmless, his impact zone remains fairly limited.
↧
January 11, 2018, 1:05 am
![]()
James Maskell is an anti-vaccine campaigner and the CEO of Revive Primary Care, an organization promoting altmed and conspiracy theories. Maskell believes that vaccines (may– he’s JAQing off) lead to a slew of negative health outcomes, including autism, which is false, and moreover that “vaccine side effects are largely underreported because the passive nature of the legal system puts the onus on the victim to make the connection, file extensive paperwork, and report the issue,” which sort of neglects the number of large-scale studies done on vaccines. Given his complete inability to assess evidence, probabilities and health outcomes, Maskell concludes that he “fear[s] the risk of complications from vaccines more than [he] fear[s] the risk of complications from infection,” since the risk of death from, say, measles is roughly 1/1000 (if not worse) and the risk of serious vaccines reactions (not death) is one in a million or lower. Also toxins; according to Maskell, vaccines commonly contain aluminum, “antibiotics, formaldehyde, MSG and thimerosal.” Most importantly, however, “I’ve seen scientists get it wrong before, and I don’t want my daughter to be a statistic,” which she sort of is becoming by not being vaccinated and which one would particularly become by succumbing to a vaccine-preventable disease. “Between the 1920s and 1960s, the same groups that are used to sell vaccines today (doctors, industry marketing, etc.) were used to sell cigarettes, and this has become known as ‘tobacco science’,” which is quite simply false regardless of how you try to view it (though the parallel between those who denied the link between tobacco and cancer and promoters of “natural cures” rejecting the evidence of the safety and efficacy of vaccines, is rather striking). Most importantly, vaccines have, according to Maskell, been insufficiently studied, where the standards for “sufficient” would be coming to the conclusions he wants the studies to arrive at, otherwise never.
Instead, Maskell promotes natural health (apparently he also takes his daughter to a chiropractor, which is … not recommended, but hardly surprising). Indeed, according to himself, he has spent the last few decades “encouraging a shift away from conventional western medicine and toward a wellness-centered, functional medicine model,” that is, away from the cold, alienating strappings of evidence and science toward the natural, which is a more personal, warm and fuzzy dogma since you can apparently define it any way you want and it is completely impervious to evidence, fact and skeptical investigation, and the anecdotal.
Like most anti-vaccinationists and conspiracy theorists, Maskell has a complicated relationship with honesty, as shown by the interview he did on ABC’s 7:30 show. Reporter Jane Cowan should receive an honorable mention as antivaxx sympathizer for failing to declare Maskell’s conflicts of interest (no entry, since she is not American).
Diagnosis: Conspiracy theorist, denialist and hardcore promoter of pseudoscience. Though perhaps not among the most famous members of the antivaccine brigade, Maskell does seem to have some influence, and his apparently ability to formulate grammatical sentences and assume what might immediately appear to be a relatively friendly and humble demeanor, might make him somewhat more dangerous than some of his ilk.
↧
↧
January 13, 2018, 12:43 am
Keith Mason is, together with Cal Zastrow, the founder of Personhood USA, an anti-abortion organization that seeks to (legally) define the term “Person” as starting from the moment of conception. The organization’s first target upon forming in 2008 was the Colorado Constitution (repeatedly unsuccessful), but they have expanded their target rapidly since then, with variable results. Mason is also affiliated with Operation Rescue.
Well, one thing is the goal. Another is the insane and tortured reasoning going into the campaigns to achieve those goals. “I think it’s important to note with the term fertilized egg, that’s the same thing as using the N word for an African American,” says Mason. It is not. According to Mason, however, it is so, “[b]ecause it’s a dehumanizing term and it’s not based in science.” Mason is not a scientist, which shows. Of Roe v. Wade, Mason maintains that “it’s a bad law,” because “[i]t was not based in reason. They ignored the concept of the pre-born child being a person.” Since Mason’s critique of the phrase “fertilized egg” is that it is not “based in science”, it seems to follow that he thinks “pre-born person” is. Science and reason are not Mason’s strongest suits.
Of course, like so many anti-abortion activists, Mason’s prime target seems to be contraception, and in particular womencontrolling their own sexuality. Because religion. No surprise there.
Not surprisingly, Mason and Personhood USA are also supportive of a wide range of other religious rights issues, including anti-gay legislations. And like so many rightwing groups, they have also taken their agenda abroad, where various religion-based efforts to write discrimination and oppression into law may find more sympathetic audiences than in the US. Mason’s group is for instanceactive in fighting reproductive rights advances at the United Nations and has been pouring money into unspecified projects in Europe. Mason is also a regular at the fundamentalist anti-LGBT activist World Congress of Families.
Diagnosis: One can have a reasonable debate about the moral status of abortion, but not with Keith Mason, who is a deranged loon fueled by bigotry and fiery religious fanaticism. He and his group are certainly influential, however.
↧
January 15, 2018, 12:39 am
Miles Mathis is an artist, poet and writer, and one of the more colorful pseudoscientists – and insane conspiracy theorists – of the whole wide Internet.
Pseudomath
He is probably most famous for his claim that π is actually 4, though with the caveat that it be a “kinematic situation”, which sort of misses some important points about how mathematics works and π is calculated. Mathis also thinks that standard mathematical derivatives are false, and consequently that most of math and science is wrong well, predictive success to the contrary. (“Quantitatively, this may be THE biggest error in all of math and physics, since every single physical equation with π in it must now be thrown out”.) Mathis’s ideas have not been accepted by anyone minimally affected by reason and rationality (there is a good critique here). Part of the reason is that he doesn’t quite seem to grasp how mathematical proofs work, which is a bit of a drawback if you are trying to do one. Nor does he even remotely grasp the use–mention distinction or the distinction between a thing and a representation of that thing, or between a graph and what it can be used to represent. Needless to say, the inability to draw these distinctions is not conducive to doing good mathematics. There’s a good discussion of his work here, and a very courteous refutation here. An example (Mathis’s writings contain long passages like this): “Now let us return to the geometric circle. All the equations of geometry are created by assuming that time is not a factor. You can’t really just ignore time, so what the geometry does is assume that all underlying time intervals are equal. What does that mean, specifically? Well, it must mean that all the lines are understood to have been drawn with the same velocity. We can ignore the velocity since we define it as equivalent. What does that mean? It means that the radius is a velocity itself.” This is incorrect.
Of course, this is just the doorway to the rabbit hole. Since calculus is wrong and the derivatives have been calculated wrong (he shows this primarily by trying to redefine the derivatives), and any physical experiment that relies on them wrong as well, Mathis has developed his own unified field theory, which for the most part is an esoteric model based on extravagant and untestable hypotheses and confusions, but from which he draws some notable conclusions, e.g.:
“This means that if the Earth were denser, you would weigh less, not more. You weigh less on the Moon not because it is less dense, or because it has less mass, but because its foundational E/M field is stronger. And its foundational E/M field is stronger because the Moon’s radius is smaller than the Earth’s.”
Or:
“This means that the dark matter math is also a type of modified Newtonian dynamics. It is modified in that it takes the definitions and turns them upside down. We could call it a FFAND: a falsified and fudged Newtonian dynamics.”
Conspiracy theories
Mathis’s writings extend beyond math and science, however. Given that he claims to have overturned more or less all of science and mathematics, it is hardly surprising that he thinks scientists are in a conspiracy to suppress the truth and block information (paywalls, for instance, is a measure to hide information).
As with most of those who subscribe to ranges of conspiracy theories like this, his writings eventually devolves into anti-semitism. Among the people Mathis has accused of being Jewish are Jack Nicklaus, C.S. Lewis, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte and Pierre-Simon de Laplace.
Diagnosis: One of the most hysterically delusional cranks on the whole of Internet. And as with so many promoters of garbled, incoherent insanity, Mathis actually enjoys a number of followers ready to display anger, lack of comprehension and general idiocy in comment sections across the web. He must nevertheless be counted among the Internet’s curious splashes of color rather than as a serious threat to anything whatsoever.
↧
January 17, 2018, 2:42 am
![]() |
| The product. |
Oxygen Orchard is a company that pushes The Big Pitcher, a device that ostensibly cures Chronic Oxygen Debt Syndrome (CODS). Apparently the product, which belongs to the genus “water woo”, “polishes” customers’ water to enable oxygen to be absorbed through the mouth. This is apparently a good thing, since “the GI tract does not absorb gases.” The result is ostensibly that blood cells are “hypercharged” with oxygen and the body’s pH level maintained at a healthy 7.4. No, the inventor, Teri Mathis, does not have more than, shall we say, cursory knowledge of basic anatomy. If you were ever in doubt, CODS is a fully and completely non-existing condition. But Oxygen Orchard’s claim that people are not breathing enough and therefore have a significant debt of oxygen in the blood, which again is the “primary cause of most major illnesses”, is a relatively common one within the discipline of oxygen therapy pseudoscience.
The product in question blows bubbles up from the stand to the top through the water inside. Mathis and her husband Lee are very proud of the patent, though – which involves a pitcher with a receptacle for water, air ducts to the top, a button, a light, and a screen. They also have a list of doctors who assert that a shortage of oxygen in your blood is bad, which is true but astoundingly irrelevant to the question of whether buying the pitcher in question is a good investment.
At least the website criticizes alkaline diets. Unfortunately, they completely miss the point, and try instead to argue that “an acidic body pH is really due to an oxygen shortage,” something that blowing bubbles in your water with their equipment will ostensibly (but not) remedy.
Diagnosis: Utter and total bullshit, unfettered by any care for science, truth, evidence, knowledge or understanding of basic physiology. This is, in fact, one of the dumber woo products out there, and the level of incompetence and ignorance behind it is absolutely staggering.
Hat-tip: Rationalwiki.
↧
