A little context: Recently an alt-med wackaloon called Mike Adams — who runs the antiscience site NaturalNews.com and calls himself the "Health Ranger" — was in the lead for something called the Shorty Award. It's the sort of thing where people vote for their favorite person in a certain category, by tweeting. It's not an actual award, just a Twitter popularity contest.
But to Mike, it must have been like the Nobel. Because when he lost the award to DrRachie, an actual cell biologist, he also totally lost his shit!
There are awesome articles by PZ, Orac, and Phil Plait discussing the side-splitting melodrama. (For one thing, it was found that Mike was violating the Shorty rules by getting votes from brand new Twitter accounts created just to tweet a vote for him. However it was done, by Mike himself sockpuppeting or some of his fans doing it too, it was against the rules, and didn't help him in the end anyway.)
Mike has just been "pulling a Yomin" over and over at his site. In addition to threatening to sue people, he's now posted an absolutely hilarious "exposé" of skeptics. Apparently we're "agents of death" who don't even believe we're alive. I won't link to the article, because there's no need. The very first link in this post goes to a magnificent demolition of Mike's endless rant over at Dubito Ergo Sum. It's truly epic in every way. Mike Adams is a person so completely divorced from reality it's a wonder he can tell up from down. He doesn't build a straw man in his lunatic screed. It's a whole straw army. Mike Adams makes Ray Comfort sound sensible. Think about that.
Thanks for the link and the Internet! I've never won one of these before...where will I put it?
ReplyDeleteHeheh, Mike Adams NaturalNews website has a "news" article by david icke about the great AIDs conspiracy... nuff said...
ReplyDeleteWarning the dubitoergo blog article has an own goal. Natural Sunlight (Vitamin D) and taking care of your health makes you a fool, skeptics agree!!
ReplyDeleteMike, is that you?
ReplyDelete"Natural Sunlight (Vitamin D)"
ReplyDeletehuh? Non sequitor much?
but I have to comment
Sunlight is not the same as vitamin D. Sunlight is crucial to pathways that make Vitamin D but if you don't have the nutrients to begin with it's like having gas but no car; no vas, doesn't go.
b) Sunlight isn't the best thing to constantly expose yourself too. From mild sunburns to sun sickness to cancer the Natural Sunlight (opposed to what? The light from Ray Palmer's artificial dwarf star?) has side effects.
The thing that made me laugh as I pulled this up and began to read is that just last night I posted on chat to a friend that "there's nothing more embarrassing that _losing it_ in public." It's just so horrible. The only way to save face is to admit you've been an idiot and apologize. But normally they just go off on a tear to defend the indefensible, and it just snowballs until I can't bear to watch for the discomfort of my sympathetic embarrassment!
ReplyDeleteOk I'll spell it out to you. The article doesn't mention anything about nutrients or dwarf stars. It does give the Homeopaths amunition to say "Look these skeptics agree that taking care of your health is foolish!".
ReplyDeleteThe argument was: "And all you people drinking green smoothies, and growing your own food, and getting natural sunlight, and taking care of your own health, and drinking herbal tea... well you're all just fools, say the skeptics."
Which should of been rebutted but instead the author agreed. Better would be something like "Drinking Green Tea doesn't make you foolish, believing it cures cancer is".
I'm playing devil's advocate if this is to be rewarded the internets for being a mastery of rebuttal.
Wow, nobody could weave rope fast enough for him to hang himself. What an article.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to have an opinion on Adams' statements, but since I don't have a consciousness, I am unable.
ReplyDeleteOkay, Dances, I wasn't sure which bit you were referring to. Yeah, Tom could have given a better answer there. But, coming as it does most of the way through an extremely detailed rebuttal of pretty much every sentence in Mike's rant, I'd say the homeopaths would have to be pretty damn selective and dishonest to ignore all of that to focus on that one point. And we already know, at lest in Mad Mike's case, just how desperately dishonest they are.
ReplyDeleteI see and appreciate the criticism, Dances, and I waffled on that line myself. I was midway through a joke about the Shamrock Shake when I decided to go the more flippant route. If I'd really delved into it, I'd be repeating what I said earlier about sunlight and "taking charge of your own health."
ReplyDeleteAnd fools? Definitely the point I thought the most about, but here's my reasoning: people who do all those things thinking that's enough, or thinking that's a substitute for medicine, are fools because they've been fooled by Barnumesque hucksters like Mike Adams.
And, to paraphrase a proverb, "A man who is his own doctor has a fool for a patient." Medicine is a field best left to the experts.
If that's the worst criticism my huge rant receives, then I think I did a pretty decent job. But thanks for the feedback!
This whole affair is hilarious. I dare say it is running neck-and-neck with the Skeptic Baby-eating Thanksgiving photoshoop that featured on Generation Rescue last year for sheer altie fanaticism.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Yomin, whatever happened with that situation?
Basically an addendum to the original post explains it.
ReplyDelete@Martin: Ah, thanks, I kept expecting a new post; didn't think to go back to the old one.
ReplyDeleteAlso, "Dr." Mercola has jumped ahead of Real Dr. Rachie in the twitter poll by sending out an emergency email to all of his followers to help him win the homeopathically diluted Nobel Prize which is the Twitter award. Sadly, the contest ends tomorrow, and it looks like the forces of unreason will win the silly thing. :(
Sometimes I think it really will take a regression to the Dark Ages again before reason finally prevails.
@Tom Foss: The Internet is super easy to store - it's portable, but just be careful you don't drop it.
ReplyDeleteThe IT Crowds shows off The Internet - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg.