Honorable mention to John Stojanowski for his creative attempt to explain how the dinosaurs went extinct. A separate entry would be to exaggerate, and Stojanowski is in any case harmless. Kenneth P. Stoller is (arguably) not. Stoller is an anti-vaxx activist. Indeed, Stoller is quite unhinged, even by anti-vaccine standards, to the extent that he has been awarded with his very own whale.to page. And yes, Stoller is – despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary – completely convinced that vaccines cause autism. Of course, the fact that increases in autism disorders can largely be explained by changing diagnostic criteria doesn’t impress him, because – according to Stoller – this simply isn’t the case. It just isn’t. And that autism has, in part at least, a genetic component? Well, according to Stoller “there are no genetic epidemics”, so there’s that.
But he does have some ideas of how to cure autism – hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Evidence that it works? Stoller’s intuitions and anecdotes, the same mechanism that worked so well for him when he arrived at the conclusion that autism is caused by vaccines. Apparently hyperbaric oxygen therapy might help against other ailments caused by toxins (vaccines are apparently full of toxins), including aspartame as well.
Stoller is director of The World Association for Vaccine Education (WAVE), sharing the board with luminaries like Boyd Haley and HIV denialist Andrew Maniotis.
Diagnosis: Eternally locked in combat with reality and reason, Stoller does seem to have gained some influence through use of tropes and rhetorical techniques that apparently seem appealing to the reality-challenged. That makes him not negligibly dangerous. One to watch.