Doctor’s Data is a fraud

Posted on July 4, 2010 by Michael

Doctor’s Data is a quack group that quacks around with data it produces for patients. That information is then used to create unjustified fears in healthy patients.

PZ has a post on this I’m going to copy and paste. I normally wouldn’t do this for an entire post (mostly for aesthetic reasons), but I know how much charlatan Christopher Maloney hates when people do that. I mean, I get it. Exposure isn’t good for alternative woo medicine business.

I don’t envy Stephen Barrett at all, but this is going to be good. Barrett is the doctor behind QuackWatch a wonderful resource for exposing bogus medical claims. Among the many subjects of common charlatanry he’s taken apart, one is the use of invalid tests to justify useless treatments, like chelation therapy, which is a goldmine for quacks. Do the doctory thing of drawing a little blood while wearing a white lab coat, send it off to a ‘lab’ that does a few tests and sends back a very official looking mass of data, and then the quack gazes into it and announces that you need powdered newts’ eyes, or whatever nostrum he’s peddling that day.

Barrett explained in thorough detail how the reports of one such ‘lab’, called “Doctor’s Data”, were jiggered to create unnecessary fears in patients.

Now Doctor’s Data is suing him.

This is going to be such a hassle for Barrett—a pointless, frivolous suit by con artists who don’t like the fact that he has publicly exposed their scam. But it is also deliciously ironic, because the suit will also make Doctor’s Data more widely known as a fraud. Everyone should go read the relevant articles on QuackWatch:

* How the Urine Toxic Metals Test Is Used to Defraud Patients
* CARE Clinics, Doctor’s Data, Sued for Fraud
* Be Wary of CARE Clinics and the Center for Autistic Spectrum Disorders (CASD)
* Three brief articles in Consumer Health Digest:
o Slate article blasts the urine toxic metals test
o Shady clinic and lab under legal assault
o “Autism specialists” sued
* Laboratories Doing Nonstandard Laboratory Tests

Spread the news far and wide. Make sure everyone knows Doctor’s Data is a fraud.

And if you want to help out monetarily, Quackwatch accepts donations.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , , , , | 17 Comments »

The 24 types of Libertarian

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Michael

Go here for a readable version.

Via PZ.

Filed under: Humor | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Society and the individual

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Michael

I’ve pissed off feminists in my day. The reasons they give are going to revolve around me not understanding this or that, not automatically agreeing with them in the details, etc. (‘You don’t agree with me on this issue! Sexist!’ … ‘Why?’ … ‘Because!’) Basically, nothing specific.

But the problem isn’t some deep misogyny on my part. (Disagreement about what a picture of fat people means does not somehow magically equal hating women.) The problem, instead, is one of philosophical structure.

Feminism, as I’ve argued in the past, is a philosophy of consequence. It largely ignores intention, instead focusing upon the result of an action. It’s about as advanced as libertarianism. Of course, both philosophies have value, but when they’re promoted at the expense of everything else, they’re mere ideologies which inevitably lead to absurd conclusions. The same is true of all ethical and moral systems, including the ever-so-popular utilitarianism and egalitarianism (both of which I tend towards).

I got thinking about this because of a post by PZ on the lack of women in atheist and skeptic groups.

So I’m going to try something a little different. Instead of telling you my opinion, I’m going to forgo the essential principle of blogging (which is “Me! Me!”) and just ask people, especially women, to leave links to their godless/skeptical feminist blog or make suggestions or gripe or tell me what these stupid male-dominated conventions have to do to correct the imbalance…I shall be a passive receptacle for your ideas.

…

I do have to make one suggestion (the testosterone compels me) for something I’d really like to see happen…

Don’t mind his suggestion here (but at his site, he says a female-run conference on atheism/skepticism would be good). Take a look at the emphasis I’ve added. He says he is compelled, inherently, by the fact of being male. This is in line with a good bit of feminism, including the caricatures that haunt the Internet, but it’s a load of bull.

This idea that someone is compelled to do this or that may have a basis in sex, but philosophy is not the way to determine that. I want hard evidence. And, depending on just what is being discussed, there is plenty of evidence that men and women will tend towards certain behaviors because of their sex. Of course, that data often comes with the compounding factor of just what influence nurture has had, and the sociologists have a say there. But philosophy is not data. Logic can tell us nothing new; logic can only interpret the data we have.

What PZ does when he says it’s his maleness that makes him act one way or another is he devalues himself. (Hell, he even goes counter to all the feminist arguments that say the individual is responsible for rape/sexual abuse and ought not blame society – something with which I agree.) It’s a devaluing of the individual to place blame on some external source – especially without evidence. We may be able to blame an act of violence by a mentally ill person on his mental illness, but that principle does not extend to most people and most actions. It isn’t some external source that is to blame for individual actions among competent people 95% of the time. It’s the individual.

That said, there certainly is value to the arguments that say society is dominated by men and that that is an impediment to true equality between the sexes. Again, that doesn’t somehow magically mean a picture of two fat women is sexual objectification, but there are plenty of incidents where that domination is a serious problem, ones we gloss over on a daily basis. Watch just about any TV show. Women will be objectified and our culture allows it. That’s not a problem with the individual, but society. But it’s ridiculous, devaluing, and plainly wrong to claim that society is the whole problem.

The individual bears responsibility.

Filed under: Philosophy | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Giberson gets it before Maloney

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Michael

Karl Giberson is one of those insufferable BioLogos accommodationists who loves to make up stuff about New Atheists. He has recently offered up a sort of apology for his crappy rhetoric. This comes after Dan Dennett pointed out that his attacks make him a fibber for faith.

As I reflect on the various exchanges [via email with Dan Dennett], I see no evidence that religious believers are standing on any higher moral ground. The vilification of the New Atheists is accompanied by caricature, hyperbole, misprepresentation (sic) and a distinct lack of charity.

On the Answers in Genesis site, to take one example, Ken Ham published a report about the atheist that Christians love to hate entitled “Dawkins Ranting in Oklahoma.” The audience was described as “mind-numbed robots,” and Dawkins’ ideas were sarcastically dismissed as communications from “an extraterrestrial.” Anti-evolutionary religion sites across the Internet make similar claims. But not all the charged-up rhetoric is on the lowbrow backwaters of the Internet. A passage from the 2007 book “Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists versus God and Religion,” compares Richard Dawkins to a “museum piece that becomes ever more interesting because, while everything else moves forward and changes, it remains the same.”

Alas, I have to confess to having authored the museum metaphor. It was a cheap shot and, while hardly the cheapest of all possible shots, it was probably about as cheap as could reasonably sail past the staid editors at the venerable Oxford University Press. Certainly my co-author, the late Father Mariano Artigas, would have objected to anything less charitable.

…

Confession, they say, is good for the soul. So Dan, I was a faith fibber. Sorry about that.

My only hope is that this doesn’t get confused as a call for unneeded civility. I always like to see substantial, cutting arguments that address issues; Giberson didn’t always do that, instead making up whatever about an entire group of diverse individuals who aren’t even held together via a common philosophy. But I think he could have let his language soar, a la Hitchens or Dawkins or Myers, and not been charged as a Faith Fibber by Dennett.

I have to confess that the temptation to ridicule one’s debating opponents is all but unbearable, especially when playing street hockey on the Internet, where one must shout to be heard. In the past few months I have tried hard to come up with clever rhetorical attacks on Jerry Coyne, Sam Harris, PZ Myers and countless others whose ideas I was supposedly challenging. PZ once wrote the following about me, which I thought was pretty clever: “I will have no truck with the perpetuation of fallacious illusions, whether honeyed or bitter, and consider the Gibersons of this world to be corruptors of a better truth.” Of course, I responded to his evangelistic assault on me by calling him “Rev. Myers” in an essay on Salon.com. And so it goes. (I recommend against verbal swordfights with PZ Myers — you can’t win.)

If only his rhetoric could soar to such levels.

But notice his use of “Rev. Myers”. My, oh my. Who else has done that?

Dear “Reverend” PZ Myers,

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 Myers, 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.

Yes, yes. Christopher Maloney.

Now I understand why Maloney refers to me as The Maine kid with an English degree who can’t read: his writing reads like a child’s and maybe he’s looking for (made-up) excuses why everyone else does so much better. Honestly. Aside from the fact that he has qualified that an English degree is unable to read (which I suppose is true), his rhetoric is about as strong as his medical background. But then he’s taken all sorts of homeopathic classes. Maybe that explains why the strength of his responses are so diluted?

At least Giberson has figured out how the Internet works.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

I just don’t get it

Posted on June 1, 2010 by Michael

I made issue of two errors in one of Christopher Maloney’s new, sort of weird blogs. First, he had a typo. I’m sure I have plenty of those; I really just wanted to see how quickly he would make a change to his site. My stats page has long made it obvious that he clicks and sends off each post I make about him, presumably because he doesn’t get that sitting down and doing nothing is still his best solution. As it turns out, it didn’t take him long to make the correction. Second, I also made issue of the title to a link where he said I could not “read science”.

Oh, and naturopaths apparently read science. Not scientific literature, raw data, or anything of that nature. They literally read science itself. It’s magical.

This prompted a change in that link title.

The Maine kid with an English degree who can’t read.

This is probably funnier than the way it was originally. The whole point of the first title was to say I cannot understand the Gish Gallop of citations Maloney provides when he’s trying to draw anti-science conclusions. He even goes so far as to claim I have an English degree (I don’t), specifically implying that my specialty lies outside the realm of science. But while he poorly worded everything the first time around, the point was understandable, if still false on a number of counts. Now he’s completely changed his point. It’s not that I don’t understand science, it’s that I’m illiterate. And to top it all off, he leaves the falsehood that I have an English degree.

But I don’t get this. I mean, I make one quick post to point out a number of flaws with Maloney’s work and the turn-around is impressive. Basically the next morning the guy has made a number of alterations, accepting my criticism as worthwhile. But then he still leaves several lies. He’s still saying I have an English degree. He still hasn’t changed his whine about his post being moderated, even though he knows it was caught by a spam filter:

Somehow I crossed an unseen boundary, and the following post was moderated out of existance. Myers later claimed on his blog that he has standard moderation and that he doesn’t check it. But I wrote to him personally the same day he moderated me out and received no reply. The only logical conclusion is that Myers found my posting too much of a threat to allow me to continue. I was crossing the boundary from quack to regular, and he couldn’t handle the transition.

While I’ve pointed out in the past that PZ has responded to a number of my emails, he certainly hasn’t responded to them all. I’ve managed to get his attention for a post mocking creationists, the Discovery Institute, and the validity of the term “new atheists” (a post which also showed up on RichardDawkins.net) as well as the whole Maloney-Moritz malarkey, but several of my emails have been ignored. And that’s understandable. Pharyngula gets millions of hits a year, PZ gets hundreds of emails a day. It is not a logical conclusion to say PZ did or thinks one thing or another just because he doesn’t give a personal response to every individual with an email account who wants to talk with him. Nobody moderated Maloney out of “existance” (how long until that one changes?), but basic truth isn’t his particular concern.

But what I really don’t get is that if a single, short post is enough for him to accept my criticism as valid, then why does it seem like my more lengthy posts refuting his entire profession go by the wayside? This really isn’t that hard: cite established facts with empirical evidence, use information that has the support of the medical community, and only offer patients and critics studies which involve more than 29 people. Hell, it would be nice if he just stopped citing studies which don’t even have the full backing of the original researchers, e.g., studies which say more research is needed before any firm conclusions are drawn.

But I’m asking for a lot from a naturopath.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

It’s so simpy!

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Michael

Instead of laying low like a good quack, Christopher Maloney has expanded his lies. He has made several sites, each one more poorly done than the last. And it’s all so perplexing. He cannot make anything better. We’ve already destroyed his web presence – “we” meaning the readers of this site, Richard Dawkins’ site, PZ Myer’s site, Respectful Insolence’s site, Dr. Novella’s site, David Colquhoun’s followers on Twitter, and the hundreds of other bloggers who picked up on the malarkey of Maloney. The best he can do is not make things worse. But fine. If he wants to keep expanding his Internet footprint (despite not really understanding how the Internet works), I’ll keep posting about him on my blog. After all, sure, I’m number 1-4 in Google for “Christopher Maloney Maine” when the quotation marks are included, but I’m only number 6 without them.

Of course, maybe this is just me making another simpy rant.

Previously, I have been bewildered by your need as individuals and as a group to attack me. But as I have come to understand you, it has become clear that you are sad and lost. Rather than engage in constructing the society that you would like to live in, you have given up hope and simpy rant from the sidelines.

I guess he’s made some progress. Instead of going to length to let all who visit his main website know that half the Internet has attacked him, he has moved everything several links away. But he loses points for directly addressing two distinct audiences on the same page.

Pharyngula: the Master Blog

Unless you happen to be interested in the opinions of the ignorant (basically internet graffiti), it is necessary to both moderate a blog and to respond to personal emails. Since PZ Myers does neither, his blog is the equivalent of a bathroom stall in terms of quality of information.

Yet if you search for replications of Myers’ blog posts, you will find several dozen individuals who are intelligent enough to copy his information but do not engage in any true evaluation. These are his “minions” people who either automatically post his ramblings or add their own profanity to his tirades.

I actually have several responses from PZ in my email. Hell, I even have a Cc response from Simon Singh during the height of his legal troubles. Maybe not everyone deserves a response about everything? Crazy, I know.

As far as moderating goes, no. Unless someone is spamming or posting something which may bring about moderation from the hosting site (e.g., porn), there ought to be free range for users. I can understand why a naturopath would be against this sort of open exchange, but Maloney is wrong on this one.

Next up, Maloney links to a number of “Myer’s Minions”, arbitrarily picking 12 (several of which I hadn’t even seen until just moments ago) and calling them “The Dirty Dozen”. I presumed they would all be “simpy” copy and paste jobs of PZ’s post. That would make sense since he apparently has excluded FTSOS from the list, right? Well, most are repeats, but a couple clearly are not. One is Dr. Novella’s post which goes to length to refute Maloney’s bull and misrepresentations. Another is A Hot Cup of Joe. This one gets cited twice, once for a recount of PZ’s post. The second time, however, goes to length to address Maloney’s malarkey.

So give this a moment’s thought (because Maloney clearly did not). He’s been trying to hammer home that everyone is just a minion or parrot of PZ’s, yet he includes sites which do no such thing. (Note, there is nothing wrong with the repeats; they’re why I’m back in business.) One wonders why, then, he would exclude the central person in the criticism of him and his profession – me.

But don’t worry! Under “Pharyngula” I finally get my mention. (Because that’s the location that makes the most sense. Sure.) I’m so flattered.

The Maine kid with an English degree who can’t read science.

First I was a freshman. Then I was 18. Then I was an English major. And now I have an English degree. Oh, and naturopaths apparently read science. Not scientific literature, raw data, or anything of that nature. They literally read science itself. It’s magical.

Here Maloney links to an old post of his which just repeats his lies and anti-vaccine positions. I’ve already addressed them.

My absolute favorite part of Maloney’s new quack outlet has to be this.

Did Myers basically turn over his blog to some Maine kid? Is he losing it? I haven’t seen a single “campaign” against the pope, child molesting priests, or specific evangelicals. I’ve been reading through Myers blog, and organizing attacks is not his style. He’s not a rabble rouser, he’s a rabble collector. More like a bar tender than a guru.

There are two possibilities here. One, Maloney is lying and he has not actually read through PZ’s site. Two, he has read it, but he just likes to lie that much. It’s tough to pick one.

When has a week gone by where PZ hasn’t attacked the pope or priests? Since when is attacking Graham and others not specific enough? Was Crackergate not a big enough “campaign”? Christ. This is such basic information about Pharyngula.

A lot of this junk has already been addressed, I know. For instance, Maloney is still insisting that he had a post which was not allowed. He has already been told several times that he triggered the spam filter because he included five links. The exact same thing would happened to him on FTSOS (and I think I’m being rather generous with how many I allow). But do any of these facts matter? Of course not.

So I will end with this final gem:

For the sake of clarity, I took on the role of Quackalicious and was clear about who I was. Almost all the posters maintain anonymity, allowing them to say things that they would never say to someone in public. The following posts should be taken within the framework of a black man walking into a KKK meeting. People were prejudiced against me from the start, and I had to keep my temper while having a deluge of profanity hurled my way.

Oh, totally. I can really see how the plight of a black man is so similar to Maloney’s. I mean, he was judged by the piss-poor content of his ideas, his lack of empirical evidence, his dishonest behavior, and his insistence on spamming up the place with his Gish Gallop routine. Really, if black people would have just stopped doing all that, well heck, we probably wouldn’t even have had a civil war.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

They’ve got Maine all wrong

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Michael

PZ has a post about the new platform of Maine’s GOP.

We shouldn’t pick on the South all the time, so here is a tale out of the eminently Yankee state of Maine. The Maine Republican party recently met to establis their official platform, and ended up getting hijacked by the tea-baggers. Their new platform contains all kinds of nutty demands.

It’s true, the platform is pretty nutty. For instance, it calls global warming a myth (because conservatives are generally hostile towards science), it bizarrely calls for the adoption of “Austrian economics”, and it wants to see the elimination of the Department of Education, but let’s slow down. This has led to a number of comments on that post which get Maine all wrong.

While I lived in Connecticut and Massachusetts, we referred to Maine as New England’s West Virginia.

How dare someone refer to Maine like that. Everyone knows we prefer to be called the far south of the far north. Also, a number of other posts get a few important things wrong. For instance, it’s “lobstah”, not this stranger “lobster”. (I recommend getting it from a restaurant that sits in the harbor; it does a wicked job of soaking up that full ocean aroma so much bettah.)

It’s seriously obvious the Maine GOP is insane. But despite that fact, I would like to still take credit for this gem:

In pursuit of these principles we endorse and shall promote the following initiatives.

II. To Establish Justice:

b. Reassert the principle that “Freedom of Religion” does not mean “freedom from religion”.

I can only hope that my recent letter to the editor (also found here) played at least a small role in spurring the GOP to reassert their inanity. I’m sure the recent, correct ruling about the unconstitutional standing of the National Day of Prayer was the main catalyst, but either way, silliness lays at the base here. Freedom of religion is impossible without freedom from religion. To say “You’re free to practice any religion you want!…so long as you actually do practice a religion” runs counter to any notion of freedom I’ve yet to ascertain in my young life. Maybe these crazies just want to live in More’s Utopia? I don’t know.

But wait, there’s more!

VI. To Secure the Blessings of Liberty:

a. Restore a vigorous grounding in the history and precepts of liberty, freedom, and the constitution to the educational process. As Thomas Jefferson said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Really? They want to use Thomas Jefferson? Aside from not ever having stood for anything these haphazard teabaggers want today, I think he would have recognized the irony in their next line:

i. Eliminate the Department of Education and restore schools to local control as specified in the constitution.

Teabagger motto: No ignorance – unless it’s blissful.

Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

What a small world

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Michael

Shortly after adding her to my blogroll, Ashley Miller had a date dinner with PZ.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Where’s the shame?

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Michael

I really just think Christopher Maloney doesn’t quite understand the Internet. He will make out-of-context posts all over the place, often just repeating himself. For instance, once the Internet blew up in his face, he posted this letter on a number of sites. It makes specific references and is directly addressed to PZ. His website was even worse, where he put a shitload of posts (which no one was about to tease apart) from Pharyngula and elsewhere where he basically says “Look! Look at my responses! They were dismissed everywhere else, but now that I’m reposting them, they must be true!” He has since taken down a lot of that material, so I guess that shows promise. Honestly. By addressing everything with so much Gish Gallop nonsense, he only made himself look worse (which is a feat in itself); everything clearly was (and is) stressing him out, his (misdirected) SIWOTI sense was (and is) going off the chart, and he was (and still is) only making it worse. Since he obviously can’t make anything better for himself at this point, the best he can do is not make it worse. That should have been obvious from the get-go. It’s the Internet. Learn it.

But, alas, he wants to keep it going.

I have requested meeting Hawkins’ in person, and he has responded by running to your blog.

Note the time stamp on that post. It was May 6 at 7:52 am. Maloney made his request on May 5 at 9:07pm (and it came across as an ambiguous, disoriented threat to go to the police). Now look at the time PZ made his post. May 4 at 5:44pm. Maloney made his request a full day after I emailed PZ with an update. This rearranging of events is common for Maloney. I’ve already documented quite a bit of his lying, but he’s getting so blatant now that I’m almost bored.

Of course, there’s more.

Since this is our first actual exchange, I will repeat. Like all stalkers you will not have the courage to meet with me. It is part of the pathology of stalking, and you are creating a feeble rationale.

Immediately above that post I said I would meet him. The only “feeble rationale” that I put forth was that I would not do it at his convenience, on his terms, sans all other witnesses people, and I would not let him “ply” me with anything, even if it is only useless homeopathic ‘medicine’. He is the one demanding the meeting; he does not get to dictate the terms. Of course, to him this means that I won’t meet him at all.

If you were capable of examining your own actions objectively, you would see that I have not reacted angrily to months of ignorant abuse. I reacted only when you managed, somewhat bizarrely, to get me noticed by Myers.

Right. The hours of hunting down critical websites, the trolling of threads on Pharyngula a month later, and the lengthy posts on his own site certainly do not indicate any sort of anger. Right…r-right?

Oh, and it wasn’t bizarre at all that PZ posted about Maloney on Pharyngula. Maloney and Moritz emailed each other back and forth before collaborating on a plan to get me shut down. The fact that Moritz was the one who sent the whining email is inconsequential to the guilt of Maloney.

But, despite months of your obsession, this is our first actual exchange. To claim that I am somehow the irrationally angry person is classic projection of your own pathology.

Says the guy who has been continuously claiming on his own website that I’m the obsessed one? While he continued to troll Pharyngula, pressing what had become an old, dead issue?

I would ask you this: how have I injured you? Have I reacted in any way that would justify your obsession with me? The only email I sent you was one requesting no contact with me, my family, or my neighbers, which you did not honor.

I actually honored the request not to contact Maloney or his family. He claims he received a paper, but given that he also claims I stuffed it in his screen door, I suspect he’s just lying again. (I never open anyone’s doors, and I doubt I mistakenly gave him a paper in the first place anyway.) His request I not contact his “neighbers”, however, was a silly one. Aside from the fact that the relative closeness of the houses to each other in that area makes it good for distribution, the people physically closest to Maloney need to know the sort of quackery he practices.

But as for injury, naturopaths do not have the proper training to be receiving patients, except according to unfortunate state laws. That is enough motivation for me. The fact that Maloney brought attention to himself in the first place with a letter to the editor of the local paper just raised his profile.

Now I am requesting that we sit down and discuss the situation like adults, but it is evident that your pathology is too severe to allow you any insight.

No, he is requesting that we sit down with no witnesses people so he can “ply” me with diluted ‘medicine’. I’ll be happy to call him a quack to his face, but not under ridiculous, creepo terms.

Your university told me that they have brought up counseling for you, but that they could not force you to take their suggestions.

I have been forwarded an email where Maloney claims to have gone to my university. Apparently he wanted to discuss whether or not my paper was endorsed by UMA. I’ve never claimed any sort of endorsement, so I’m not sure why Maloney would think I have. At any rate, I’ve never been contacted by anyone from UMA for any reason whatsoever. Maloney is lying. Again.

The Augusta police department is very familar with you, and if you continue your obsession I will need to take legal action. Not as a threat, Michael, just to make sure you get help.

He says the APD is familiar with me as if I don’t know. After I wrote about how one officer had no idea how to handle a freedom of information request, I personally delivered a copy to the police department. When I later discovered that another officer who was mentioned in the article had a Facebook profile, I friend requested him (not because I thought he would accept, but instead because it made me chuckle to do it at all), sending him all the links in which he was mentioned.

But it’s cute that Maloney is pretending as if he isn’t making a threat. No, no. It’s just out of genuine concern for my welfare, right? Don’t mind all the lies leading up to this new claim.

But I’m curious. What would a lawsuit from Maloney look like? Aside from probably getting him far more national attention, I suspect it would be utterly ridiculed when everyone realized that the complaint came down to “someone was mean to me!”. But hell, maybe I would get more emails from people like Simon Singh and Richard Dawkins.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Christopher Maloney: still lying

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Michael

You all know Christopher Maloney, the quack with a history of lying. For quite some time he has remained pretty quiet, unlike Andreas Moritz, thus preventing himself from appearing on FTSOS too much. Unfortunately, I just came across some of his lies.

2/25/10
Michael Hawkins’ blog was offline for all of four days, including a weekend that involved a general wordpress failure of many sites. At this point it is clear the entire skeptic charade was a lot of screaming about nothing but standard software error. I don’t expect an apology anytime soon.

First, my site was down for 6 days. Second, Maloney is trying to say that the reason my site was down was because WordPress had technical difficulties. Those difficulties lasted a short period of time and were unrelated to the suspension of FTSOS that happened. But does anyone expect a scummy person like Maloney to be honest?

Michael Hawkins of Augusta ran a blog attacking me for a few months. In the process he began arguing with his webhost, got himself suspended, then argued with them again and got kicked off.

He flatters himself. There was one post of a letter I sent to the editor in response to Maloney. That letter was too strongly worded, so I sent another and posted that. I then responded to the responses that raised. I then responded to an email that threatened legal action from one of Maloney’s fans. (There was also one more post that merely mentioned Maloney, but was not about him.) He makes it sound like this blog is all about him. It isn’t. Most of the topics are far more interesting, and in fact, there were over 75 other posts made over the time I mentioned Maloney.

Of course Maloney has to conveniently forget all the details, right? He says that “in the process” of my posts about him I began arguing with WordPress. That isn’t true. I only made a post about “Mark” from WordPress being a simpleton after I got a warning from WordPress (as well as a brief suspension, what with this host’s shoot-first policy). I was pretty much done with Maloney at that point. But, of course, what Maloney doesn’t mention is that he was emailing Moritz back and forth; Moritz, armed with false information about Maloney’s status in Maine, had gone to WordPress. Does anyone else believe this makes Maloney innocent?

But there’s more!

My deepest apologies to my friends and neighbors who received the “Without Apology” hate mail.

Michael Hawkins is someone I have never met. He is not a patient, does not know any of my patients, and is only interested in attacking me because he wants attention. Today he waited until I was away from my home before stuffing his hate mail inside my screen door, which gives a pretty good sense of him as a person.

As I noted in my post about that edition of Without Apology, I specifically tried avoiding Maloney’s home. There were two houses which had lights on inside, but the outside light was too low for me to see the numbers. Since I don’t like approaching homes while people are awake at that time unless I can throw my paper from a distance (I’d rather not scare people), I did not get close enough to check the exact address. Maloney’s house number is 4, so I thought I was avoiding house 4 and 6 or 4 and 2. If anything, I was disappointed that I couldn’t risk giving all his neighbors my publication. Apparently he did get a paper, which is great, but I specifically tried avoiding giving him one because he sent me an email telling me not to contact him, his family, friends, or neighbors. He has a legitimate request on the first two counts, but his friends and neighbors are not off-limits. The fact that he mentioned them (not that I know any of his friends) is why I went to his neighborhood.

But my favorite part of this is that he thinks I know when he is and isn’t home. How? Does he think I stalk him? That’s the first time I’ve ever been on his small road. Hell, I wasn’t even sure which house was his. And I certainly didn’t “stuff” anything in anyone’s screen door. I would never open someone’s door like that because 1) that’s creepy and 2) it would make a lot of noise. It’s possible that I placed a paper in the handles of some doors, but I doubt it since the papers are small and would have just fallen out. I pretty much just throw the papers on porches or some other visible location.

I encourage any and all neighbors to contact the Augusta city police department if they see him lurking around. The department is already very familiar with him because he spent one of his “newspaper” issues attacking them after he received a parking ticket.

Lol? Yes, lol.

I walked around his neighborhood in light colored khakis and a red shirt. I’m not sure how that is lurking.

But again with the lies. My article about the Augusta Police was not merely over a parking ticket. It was about an officer who did not understand that he needed to hand over certain records under the Maine Freedom of Information Act. The ticket was from years ago and played a small role in the motivation for asking for the records. (The bigger motivation was course requirement for a journalism class I happened to be taking.) I eventually received a written and signed apology from the chief of police over the incident.

On a side note, I’ve been surprised no one has asked me what I’ve been doing this whole time. I know people have seen me in various neighborhoods, but no one has asked me what’s up. Granted, other than once when it was freezing, I always wear fairly bright clothes, but it seems like the “Neighborhood Watch” signs should mean something.

But sure, tell the police that you see me. If I continue with the paper, I’ll even be sure to let them know when I’m going to be distributing it so they don’t have to waste their time asking me for ID over something that is not illegal. I mean, Christ. I have my name all over the paper, I know the police have seen it (I personally dropped it off at the police station), and I even have contact information included.

My understanding of him is that he is a desperately lonely UMA freshman who has fallen in with a group of atheists online and this hate mail process is a bit like trying to join a gang for him.

Well, it’s not like anyone has ever thought Maloney has much understanding of anything.

Aside from being a senior (who will have a Liberal Studies degree next semester, followed by a Biology degree shortly thereafter), I find it unfortunate that Maloney is trying to ‘win’ his case by using “atheist” as if it’s a dirty word. Atheists are some of the brightest people around, especially those who are in the limelight, so I ought to be taking this as a compliment. And really, wasn’t it atheists who helped me get my blog back? Thanks again to PZ, Richard Dawkins, and all the others who sent emails of support and made anti-quack posts on their sites.

Hawkins’ whole group has targeted me as someone small enough that they can attempt to bully me.

Really? PZ Myers dealt with the whole uproar over Crackergate. Richard Dawkins is one of the most famous atheists in the world. Simon Singh, who also sent me an email, recently beat the quackery of chiropractors in the U.K. Is this really about bullying or is it just that Maloney practices quackery?

I’m not sure if they’d like me to simply shut down or to cease to exist. I have been providing them with a steady stream of medical studies supporting what I practice, but for the most part these “scientists” are more interested in swearing at me than engaging in conversation.

Here’s another instance of someone undeserving of respect demanding he be given it. It’s pathetic. Oh, and Dr. Steven Novella had a pretty good take down of all those studies Maloney was abusing.

Christopher – you are just going through all the CAM logical fallacies, aren’t you.

Now you are playing – I have bad evidence, but so does regular medicine.

There is simply no comparison. We have already demonstrated that your ability to asses the evidence is incompetent, and you have not answered any of the direct questions. You cited irrelevant research, and you partially quoted an abstract drawing the wrong conclusion. You might as well just make it up.

The level of evidence for elderberry and garlic is so slight that the reliability is close to zero – this is almost as good as no evidence at all.

You cannot defend your position, so you trot out all the canards against mainstream medicine.

And to answer Maloney’s curiosity, we would like you to shut down. Your existence is okay.

I have been unimpressed by the level of scientific knowledge displayed and find myself having to explain the basics of medical research.

Again, Mr. Novella:

Christopher,

You are making excuses. There is not a difference between practice and science – practice should be based upon science. You simply cannot really know what works without scientific evidence. It is naive hubris to think otherwise.

Update: I guess I missed some more lies.

(Series of unfunny junk written without a bit of irony.)

Maloney also posted that on Pharyngula. Here is a rather succinct response.

No, the Qwackster is not a Poe. Just an idjit. Somehow, he thinks he becoming an authority via his repetative posts, so we will believe his malarky. That isn’t working, and he looks more desparate and deluded with each post. If he had even a smidgeon of intelligence he would just fade into the bandwidth, and quit wasting his time.

Double update: PZ has a new post.

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