James McCanney is a certified, licensed massage therapist who calls himself “Professor McCanney” and is a crackpot’s crackpot, widely known for his involvement in the Planet X bullshit and various apocalyptic nonsense, on which he has (self-)published numerous books. The title of his 2003 work, Atlantis to Tesla – The Kolbrin Connection gives you an idea. Yes, it is – rather obviously – about Atlantis, and Tesla, as well as the Kolbrin. McCanney has of course been making wildly lunatic claims about things he don’t understand and know nothing about for a long time, but as with most loons of his kind, it was the Internet that finally provided him with an audience, and he has more recently appeared extensively on various conspiracy theory radio shows such as Coast to Coast AM, where he claims that all scientists, including NASA, is in a conspiracy to lie to you but that he knows the truth.
His theories are, of course, completely insane, and have been extensively debunked here; and yes, McCanney is deeply wrong about absolutely everything, but being debunked by a scientist isn’t going to change his mind since scientists are all in a conspiracy to deny his electric comets and the influence of Planet X (which is really a comet, according to McCanney, but he provides so little actual information that most followers of Zechariah Sitchin won’t even notice) on the frequency of hurricanes on Earth). According to McCanney, comets behave like giant electrical “vacuum cleaners” in space, attracting material to themselves and eventually growing into planets – which is of course so wrong in even its basic premises that it requires some unpacking. The proof that there is a conspiracy among scientists and NASA is of course that mainstream science won’t accept his demonstrably wrong ideas (they are ideas “NASA doesn’t want you to know about,” for some rather unclear reason). For Planet X is, indeed, coming for us (in the form of a growing comet), and you better buy his book (Planet X, Comets and Earth Changes) to figure out what to do – oh yes, that’s the follow-up part: His site has a lot of offers in terms of survivalist junk, and in 2003 he even managed to solicit donations for a holiday in South America from his readers. Oh, of course, “this comet will be important and comes at a time when the new world order is trying to keep the lid on celestial issues”. Exactly. And if this Planet X doesn’t work out, keep in mind that all comets grow, so “there's many, many planet X objects. We don't have a good handle on the history of these objects, some of them, not all of them, are gonna cause disasters to Earth.” There is a good resource on McCanney and his claims here.
He also claims that the moon landings were fake; but then, when you are so deeply entrenched in conspiracies and pseudoscience as McCanney you aren’t left with much choice on these questions.
He is of course a legend over at whale.to, the educateyourself website, and the David Icke forums.
Diagnosis: Hypercrank, of the rather common variety who takes the fact that everyone thinks your claims are false to be evidence for a conspiracy, and the existence of a conspiracy to criticize you is further evidence that you are on the right track. And so on.