I thought she’d just want to know, since she talks about it as one of her hideous personal deformities without knowing what it is called.
Nice video. It takes quite a bit of confidence to be able to do that. I’d make a similar one recounting my flaws, but youtube has a 10 minute limit on their videos.
You know, Rebecca will be one of the speakers at Skepticon III…
Springfield, that is. And you’ll have to wait until November, but it will be worth it. It’s Skepticon 3! Read about the meeting. Peruse the list of speakers. Register now. If you’re rich, help by sponsoring.
I hear there will be a drinking contest between Richard Carrier and Rebecca Watson, which will be an event for the ages. I’m excused because of my advanced age and unfairly fine-honed metabolism.
It’s a fabulously fun meeting. You want to go.
There was a natural disaster somewhere, so I opened my mailbox to find lots of links to Pat Robertson saying stupid things about the Chilean earthquake, like this one and this one and this one and this one.
Sorry, gang, I don’t believe it. Not only do I expect that nowadays, when his staff at the radio and television stations hear about a disaster, the first thought in their heads is how to stifle Pat, but some of those accounts are clearly satire, and they all say something different. It’s become the obvious expectation that Robertson will blame something stupid for natural events, and everyone is jumping the gun. Write to me when you’ve got video straight from the 700 Club, and not before.
I like water, but I don’t think it has magic powers.
Do you believe homeopathy is an effective form of treatment?
65% Yes
35% No
Rom Houben, the unfortunate fellow with severe brain damage who doctors claimed to be conscious via facilitated communication, is silent again. Investigators did the trivial experiment of sending his facilitating communicator outside the room while they showed Houben a series of simple objects, then brought her back in, and asked him to name them. Suddenly, facilitated communication failed…to nobody’s surprise, except perhaps to the gullible medical staff.
I’m amazed it took them so long to do something so trivial and so conclusive.
The Prime Quack has been identified: Andreas Moritz. He has admitted to getting WordPress to pull Michael Hawkins’ blog, and is also threatening me, now.
Michael Hawkins,
You may blame me for having your blog pulled. WorldPress had to remove your blog because otherwise it would have faced a hefty lawsuit, given the nature of the defamation campaign you had launched against me, and having positioned your blog link second place on the search engines.
I have not yet decided whether to sue you for defamation. I have asked my attorneys to assess the damages your defamation campaign has done to my work, business, and reputation since your blog has been up. I know that they are significant, but if they turn out to be an excessive loss of revenue and reputation and/or if I see any more defaming publications by you or your blog friends against me or Dr. Makoney, I will not hesitate to launch an expensive lawsuit against you that you will not forget for a long time. I have collected all the data of your blogs and publications involving me. Your last email to Dr. Makoney clearly shows that you are instigating a new defamation campaign, at least against him.
My investigations show me where you live and where you study (Augusta, Amine), and if I hear or see any further activities that involve me or Dr. Makoney you will need to hire a good attorney to defend your slanderous actions and campaigns.
My close friend, Dr Deepak Chopra, who in addition to Dr Makoney and myself have been viciously attacked by your friend, the fish zoologist, PZ Myers, are considering a lawsuit against him. Slander is slander, whether it is done online or offline. If your friend is wise, he will immediately remove those blogs from his site.
Just in case you are not aware of it, below are stated the laws that protect people like me against people like you.
Sincerely,
Andreas Moritz
Hmmm, misspelling names seems to be an epidemic among quacks. It’s also interesting that he’s openly threatening an expensive legal campaign against Hawkins.
If the threats of lawsuits and his own crazy snakeoil site aren’t enough to convince you that he’s a loon, consider that he was written up favorably on NaturalNews.com (you may recall Mike Adams, whose mind snapped under the weight of our criticism). Michael Hawkins wrote up an angry rebuttal to Moritz, as did I. He’s not a good person.
Moritz is a cancer quack. He is an evil man who takes advantage of others’ pain for his own profit.
Here’s what he says about cancer.
Cancer has always been an extremely rare illness, except in industrialized nations during the past 40-50 years. Human genes have not significantly changed for thousands of years. Why would they change so drastically now, and suddenly decide to kill scores of people? The answer to this question is amazingly simple: Damaged or faulty genes do not kill anyone. Cancer does not kill a person afflicted with it! What kills a cancer patient is not the tumor, but the numerous reasons behind cell mutation and tumor growth. These root causes should be the focus of every cancer treatment, yet most oncologists typically ignore them. Constant conflicts, guilt and shame, for example, can easily paralyze the body’s most basic functions, and lead to the growth of a cancerous tumor.
After having seen thousands of cancer patients over a period of three decades, I began to recognize a certain pattern of thinking, believing and feeling that was common to most of them. To be more specific, I have yet to meet a cancer patient who does not feel burdened by some poor self-image, unresolved conflict and worries, or past emotional trauma that still lingers in his/her subconscious. Cancer, the physical disease, cannot occur unless there is a strong undercurrent of emotional uneasiness and deep-seated frustration.
Note that he has absolutely no credentials or expertise in medicine; he calls himself a “medical intuitive”. Yet he is dispensing dangerous, defeatist advice on how to manage cancer, such as recommending against chemotherapy. Have you had a loved one die of cancer? It was their fault. Do you have or have you had cancer? It’s your own damn fault for being so negative.
Switch your target from Makoney, errm, Maloney to Moritz: he’s even crazier and more dangerous.
By the way, here is Andreas Moritz.
He’s peddling something called a liver flush — you gulp down a nasty concoction of Epsom salts, olive oil, and grapefruit, and then you go lie down for a while and suffer nausea and diarrhea. If you’re really dedicated, you can poop into a colander and collect strange lumps, as much as 2″ in diameter, that he claims are liver stones flushed out by the oily glop. This will make your knees feel better.
Seriously.
Read Orac’s take on Moritz. You might also be interested in his explanation of the liver flush: oil+salts is a nice way to make saponified lumps in your digestive tract.
Christopher Maloney, N.D.*, is rightfully complaining about the fact that he has received rude email, and also implies that he may have received harassing phone calls. He’s a sensitive soul, apparently — hundreds of email messages is nothing, I get that much every few hours — but if you are sending nothing but vituperation and anger his way, knock it off.
I repeat, STOP IT.
No phone calls. Email should be arguments, not stab-someone-in-the-eyes loudness. You don’t have to compromise on content, just don’t be stupid. If you are intruding on someone’s personal life, you are in the wrong, plain and simple.
Making the internet a place where the foolishness of kooks is easily spotted, though, is perfectly legitimate. Carry on.
*N.D. is short for “Noisy Duck,” by the way.
That quack, Christopher Maloney, has written to me now…with a nice little edge of hysteria and paranoia.
Let the witch trials begin! Michael Hawkins and Rev. Myers presiding
Dear “Reverend” PZ Meyers,
How fitting that, three hundred years later, the witch trials continue. If you recall, it was the herbalists that were burned then as well. Your flock has spoken to me, Reverend Meyers, with the shrieking common to all fundamentalist cults. I believe if you check you will find that fundamentalism involves a closed mind while doing science requires an open mind. It also involves a thing they call research.
Do you do basic research into a person’s claims before posting? Did you perhaps go to medline and type the words “elderberry” and “H1N1”? Did you even bother to read my original editorial that cites Cochrane database and CDC raw data? If you had done basic research or contacted me directly you would perhaps not have posted lies in your blog.
u can call me an idiot and a quack, but when you repeat the “fact” that I am not a doctor and not qualified, that is a written lie or libel. I am a doctor under Maine state law and meet the qualifications of that title.
In terms of poor maligned elderberry, the medline citation is “The H1N1 inhibition activities of the elderberry flavonoids compare favorably to the known anti-influenza activities of Oseltamivir (Tamiflu; 0.32 microM) and Amantadine (27 microM). (Phytochemistry. 2009 Jul;70(10):1255-61) While this is a test tube study only, please keep in mind that we had no vaccine and were at the peak of the pandemic here in Maine. I never suggested elderberry as a vaccination but as a possible home treatment for sick children.
Michael Hawkins is an undergraduate at UMA who replied to my editorial. His rambling editorial was not based on science or research, but his need to publicize himself. After failing to get an editorial published against God he decided I was, flatteringly, next on the list. All of the research and medline citations for my editorial are available under swine flu on my website, and were there for Mr. Hawkins to simply see. But, despite the reality that I practice evidence-based medicine, neither you nor Mr. Hawkins have ever bothered to read my site.
Mr. Hawkins managed to get his own website suspended by arguing with his server about what constitutes libel and blames me. I have never directly contacted WordPress about him and I have never replied to either his hate posts or his email attacks on me personally. In doing my own research, I found that another individual is in the process of filing a lawsuit against Mr. Hawkins and requested that the individual write to Mr. Hawkins directly. It was this other individual in South Carolina, and not me, that helped Mr. Hawkins get himself kicked off. Since Mr. Hawkins has received that email today, I believe that your case against me as an enemy of free speech should be re-examined.
It terms of his accusations against me that you have posted on your blog, I have taken the time to answer them at length and with scientific citations on my website: www.maloneymedical.com. I am also in the process of creating a more tolerable Youtube video for your flock.
Thank you, Reverend Myers, for burning me without trial. It’s nice to know some things never change.
Christopher Maloney, N.D.
Whoa…these danged evil witches. You burn them and burn them, and they still manage to crawl up out of the ashes and find a computer keyboard. Amazing powers of recuperation, those witches.
As for this witch’s bogus claims about elderberry and garlic, see Steve Novella’s article on the subject. You simply do not leap from a tentative basic research finding to making therapeutic recommendations. Unless you’re a quack, of course. Quacks do that all the time.
The plot thickens. Maloney denies getting Hawkins’ site shut down, which may be true. However, at the very least, Maloney was used as a pretext to shut down the blog. WordPress sent Hawkins email demanding changes to his posts, specifically this one:
Hi,
You wrote:
“I cannot overstate this fact: Naturopaths are not doctors and they are not
qualified. They cherry-pick evidence, often lie and misrepresent facts.
Recently, a local naturopathic “doctor,” Christopher Maloney, wrote a letter
in which he committed himself to that third possibility”
“Maloney is NOT a doctor! He has NO qualifications which earn him that title.”
We were sent:
Dr Maloney is a licensed Maine State Doctor, license number ND240. He is
recognized under Maine state law: Title 32: PROFESSIONS AND OCCUPATIONS
Chapter 113-B: COMPLEMENTARY HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS HEADING: PL 1995, C. 671,
§13 (NEW) Subchapter 3: NATUROPATHIC MEDICINE LICENSING REQUIREMENTS AND
SCOPE OF PRACTICE HEADING: PL 1995, C. 671, ¶13.
Please edit your statements to include his qualifications or delete your statements.
Thank you.
–
Mark
Note the comment from Mark at WordPress, “We were sent”. Someone targeted Hawkins, and sent a demand to WordPress to shut him down. This is someone in communication with Maloney, because Maloney just sent me this email:
Dear Prof. Myers,
The following is an excerpt from an email I received from the fellow in South Carolina. I will not reveal his name because I would not wish your unrighteous wrath on a dog, much less a fellow human being. But he has sent this message directly to Mr. Hawkins, who I am sure will be glad to redirect you.
Please call off your flock.
“This is what I wrote to him.
Michael Hawkins,
You may blame me for having your blog pulled. WorldPress had to remove your blog because otherwise it would have faced a hefty lawsuit, given the nature of the defamation campaign you had launched against me, and having positioned your blog link second place on Google search. …”
Now I’m wondering…who is the cowardly quack in South Carolina who used Maloney’s name to get a blog pulled?
I’m also wondering why WordPress would yank the blog on the word of a third party who has no standing in this specific argument at all?
Maloney is a naturopath in the state of Maine, where quacks like him get to call themselves “doctors”. These so-called “doctors” get to make recommendations like this, in which he disparages standard flu vaccines and suggests these useless prescriptions:
Parents waiting for vaccinations can provide their children with black elderberry, which blocks the H1N1 virus. A single garlic capsule daily cuts in half the incidence and the severity of a flu episode for children.
There’s another way you can tell he’s a quack. When a student, Michael Hawkins, dared to criticize him, pointing out that “Naturopathic medicine is pure bull” and stating that naturopaths are underqualified and do not deserve the title of “doctor,” Maloney took action to silence him. After all, we can’t have people questioning quacks — that just makes them look even more ridiculous, which could lead to a loss of business.
So Maloney complained to WordPress, where Hawkins blog was located, and got them to shut it down. This does not speak well of craven WordPress; if you’re using WordPress hosting, you might want to reconsider it and move elsewhere. You know, to someplace that respects reality.
Now not only is Maloney a quack, but he’s a stupid quack. Shutting down blogs that criticize him? That never, ever works. In fact, it tends to backfire rather severely — because now a much bigger blog is going to spread the word that Christopher Maloney is a quack. I’m also going to ask all of you out there who reads this to echo the message: Christopher Maloney is a quack. Won’t that be fun? Poke the net, and the net pushes back.
Share the message. Let the whole world know that Christopher Maloney is a cowardly quack.
He’s also tasteless. This is possibly the ugliest youtube video ever.
Some of you may recall the Bigfoot footage I posted a while back — now the full, unedited, complete version without the blurry effects is available. Note that the language here may be NSFW, unless you’re working as a longshoreman.
