Quote of the day

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Michael

Michael Hawkins how you can say that i am incoherent as Moritz

~Mukesh Chawla

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

Maloney update

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Michael

Maloney’s review was today. As I said earlier, I was unable to attend – it was observation only anyway – but I did give the relevant people a call to get an idea of what happened. I highly recommend getting your information from me since Maloney will almost certainly lie about.

The complaint was dismissed, but not without a recommending letter. The board is going to issue Maloney a letter advising him to make changes to some of his practices. That’s pretty close to what I asked them to do:

A person with a serious ailment may seek an alternative to, say, the hassle of the overhead associated with many mainstream healthcare providers. Should this person come across Mr. Maloney’s website and see his lack of burdensome overhead, there may be confusion; the person may only be looking for an alternative to overhead, not an alternative to mainstream medicine. Mr. Maloney’s illegal claim to being a doctor without the qualifier “naturopathic” or its derivatives ought to be corrected. I urge the board to enforce the law and demand Mr. Maloney correct his website at the least.

So while the letter will be non-binding, the board does appear to agree with my position. Maloney ought not represent himself in any way that makes him appear to be a real doctor.

The account I was given over the phone made it sound like the letter has yet to be drafted, but I can’t be sure. I was not given specifics, so I can’t go into great detail or speak with great certainty (hence “the board does appear to agree…”). (It very much sounds like they will be asking him to change his inappropriate phrasings.) Once I get the letter, I will make a new post. At that point – unless he continues to fabricate history, attack atheists, or dole out plainly false medical information (again, there is no good evidence that black elderberry is effective against H1N1 – don’t believe him!) – I hope to mostly be done with this ridiculous character.

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Maloney review scheduled

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Michael

I made an official complaint against Christopher Maloney some months ago. The jist of what I said was that he was claiming to be a doctor when Maine law is pretty clear about saying he needs to distinguish himself from real doctors (i.e., physicians), utilizing phrases like “naturopathic doctor” or “doctor of naturopathy”. Now, according to a letter I received today, his review has been scheduled.

The complaint filed by Michael L. Hawkins against your license will be reviewed by the Board of Complementary Health Care Providers on October 29, 2010. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 9:00 a.m. at the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, 76 Northern Avenue, Gardiner, Maine.

(My middle initial still isn’t “L”.)

Unfortunately, I am unable to make the meeting. I would probably see what I could do to swing getting the time off from work if it was allowed that I might participate, but the session is observation only. However, if anyone from the central Maine area is interested in attending the meeting, that would be great; I would love to hear a first-hand account of everything. (On the off chance anyone does plan on attending, it is recommended to call Kelly McLaughlin at 207-624-8621 the day prior to the meeting to verify that the review will take place – from what I understand, these things have a habit of jumping around a bit.)

Also, as promised in an earlier post (see above link), I’m going to post the letter I wrote in response to Maloney’s response to my initial complaint. For the sake of blog aesthetics, see the comment section.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , | 7 Comments »

He doesn’t get atheism either

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Michael

It’s annoying enough when Christopher Maloney wades in over his head and pretends to know something about medicine beyond what a pre-med student might know. But it’s even more annoying when he goes after atheists. (And, I mean, does he really want to go down that road, what with yet offering a viable defense for his quackery?)

I’m constantly amazed that the spokespeople for religious points of view aren’t better at getting their points across. The atheists are the one group who could have picked their spokespeople logically and by open election, but they let the most grumpy of their brethren carry the flag. Here’s a comparison of Dawkins vs. Gervais. If Gervais were the spokesperson for atheism, there would be a lot more converts. He makes his point, and you can’t help liking him for it. Dawkins makes a clever (rehearsed- he gives the same mocking answer to others as well) response without engaging the speaker.

Here’s Richard Dawkins not answering a question. Or answering it, if answering with the same question is an answer.

He then links to this video of Dawkins where an audience member asks what happens if he’s wrong about the Christian god. Dawkins replies by asking the audience member what if she’s wrong about all the other gods. To Maloney, this isn’t answering the question.

Is Dawkins’ point really that hard to get? He’s saying that the only reason that question seems reasonable to the audience member is that she has been brought up in a Christian culture. His question about what it means if she’s wrong about Zeus or Thor or whoever is to show that it doesn’t matter about what god we want to ask the question. It’s a trivial issue that assumes a lot of culture with it. So what if he’s wrong about the Christian god? Then he goes to hell, to the glee of a so-called benevolent creator. And if the audience member is wrong about Allah, she can kiss heaven goodbye. Who cares? The whole question is just a rudimentary way of posing Pascal’s Wager, that piece of philosophical trash.

Oh, and I love how Maloney links back to religion and atheism, as if we need his help in defining the terms. (Well, maybe he needs some help in defining “atheism”.) And linking to the IMDb page for Dawkins? Gold. I love when the elderly use the Internet.

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

I can’t believe Maloney is still lying

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Michael

I was searching for PZ Myers YouTube videos but moments ago when I came across this magnificent piece of garbage from Christopher Maloney.

Let’s start from the top:

Maloney did collaborate with Andreas Moritz. Maloney can keep claiming that PZ retracted this or that, but the fact of the matter is this is what PZ actually said:

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:

[Email from WordPress]

…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:

And he goes on to quote an email in which Maloney admits to being in contact with Moritz. There is no doubt that these two acted together to report me to WordPress; does anyone believe Maloney didn’t know what Moritz was doing? does anyone believe Maloney didn’t tell Moritz exactly what to send to WordPress? does anyone believe anything Maloney says?

Next Maloney claims my original letter about him has since been pulled from the Kennebec Journal, as if to suggest the paper saw how dastardly it was and just had to remove it! In fact, the KJ remodeled its website shortly after my letter was published – no letter from that period can be found. As evidence for my point, take a look at my response to a couple letters others wrote in response to what I wrote. Now try to follow the links to those letters back to the KJ’s website. (Let me know how that works out for you, Maloney.)

Maloney then goes on to claim he’s just a poor victim who is being harassed by the big mean mob. In fact, since destroying his web presence for getting my blog shut down with the help of Moritz, all the posts about him have been responses. I’ve often said he can’t make things better, he can only not make them worse. Apparently I was being too subtle: stop trying to promote your quackery and everyone will stop ‘harassing’ you. You, Maloney, make things worse by creating elaborate responses months after the fact – case-in-point, this YouTube video.

Next Maloney, for some bizarre reason, tries to say what atheists oppose: authoritarianism. It’s perplexing because atheism is not a philosophy, not an indicator of how to act (or how one will act), and it isn’t a normative position. Atheism is a position that says, for whatever reason, theism is not worth holding. Even then it is necessary to qualify that this only means it is not worth holding for that particular atheist. Many atheists are pro-theism and see it as a positive in the world; they just reject what they see as being positive as also being true. Of course, many atheists do happen to reject that theism is positive (mostly because arriving at atheism is generally for rational people and it’s only rational to see theism as a propagator of evil) but that does not mean that it is possible to know what positions an atheist holds by virtue of knowing he is an atheist. As usual, Maloney is out of his league.

After some rambling Maloney tries to bumble his way out of being called a quack by saying what he does doesn’t fit into the etymology of the word. Feel free to skip over that part of the video. He’s a quack because he practices a form of medicine for which there is no convincing evidence.

Weird that continued attempts to reestablish himself and promote his quackery have resulted in yet another blog post, huh?

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , , | 4 Comments »

Oh, Jesus Christ, Moritz

Posted on October 3, 2010 by Michael

I don’t even like posting about this scummy loon anymore. I’m only doing it out of a sense of responsibility.

Andreas Moritz had his Wikipedia page deleted. He was promoting himself and there are no neutral non-blog sources on the scumbag. Pretty simple. But he hates any form of criticism (because he refuses to go get educated on how anything works), so he edits the hell out stuff. He did it with a link I had here. The result? I posted the new link and copied and pasted everything to which I was referring. In other words, he should have learned a very simple lesson about editing. Instead he went and edited his discussion for deletion page. Twice. (I’ve edited out some of the Wiki coding for the sake of clarity here.)

*Absolutely agreed [the page should be deleted]. Andreas Moritz is just some random guy with enough cash to self-publish. He is not notable enough for Wikipedia.–[[User:MHawkins1985|MHawkins1985]] ([[User talk:MHawkins1985|talk]]) 23:20, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

and

*”’Delete”’ for lack of WP:RS. Article makes claims of medical practice/teaching/etc, but GS hits in the actual medical literature seem to mostly come from 2 physicians having the same exact name: one in Germany and one in Austria. I think it’s safe to assume that our particular Andreas Moritz has no actual sources in the literature. His book is touted, but that seems to self-published by an entity called the Ener-Chi Wellness Center. In fact, most of what is found via web search is promotional material that ultimately originates from the subject, e.g. http://andreasmoritz.org/ andreasmoritz.org, http://www.andreasmoritzblog.com/, http://www.andreasmoritzblog.com, http://liverandgallbladderflush.com/, liverandgallbladderflush.com, etc. The highest-ranked Google hit that ”is” independent is http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/andreas_moritz_is_a_cancer_qua.php this entry in PZ Myers’ blog Pharyngula that is highly unfavorable, to say the least. To me, it looks like the subject’s highly developed promotional machine effectively obscures any legit, neutral sources that might be out there. I certainly don’t see any. Respectfully, [[User:Agricola44|Agricola44]] ([[User talk:Agricola44|talk]]) 15:39, 16 September 2010 (UTC).

*”’Delete”’ This seems entirely self-promotional [[User:VASterling|VASterling]] ([[User talk:VASterling|talk]]) 16:19, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

–
*”’Delete”’ self-promotional, conflict of interest, no secondary sources. Thanks, [[User:Starblueheather|Starblueheather]] ([[User talk:Starblueheather|talk]]) 00:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

–
*”’Delete”’. Fails WP:NOTE. Lack of significant discussion in reliable secondary sources independent of the subject. — ”'[[User:Cirt|Cirt]]”’ ([[User talk:Cirt|talk]]) 00:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Stop trying to promote the harm you cause people, Moritz.

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

Andreas Moritz deleted

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Michael

But only from Wikipedia.

I’ve said it again and again to these quacks that just won’t crawl away: they can’t make it better, only not worse. Once rational people of scientific mindsets take notice, quacks don’t tend to do so well. That’s the case with Moritz. If he only thought about it for a moment’s time, he would realize that I didn’t really care about putting him up for deletion (though another user beat me to the punch). I wanted to add some fair criticism, but since he can’t take the truth, he insisted on deleting it over and over. He can do that, but I’m afraid I’m unable to stand by while a stupid, dangerous man tries to build up a deceptive reputation that could cost people their health. I don’t much care if he has a page for whatever, but I want to make sure everyone knows that whatever he creates is going to be filled with lies.

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Hey, thanks

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Michael

In my latest post about professional bullshitters, I mentioned Andreas Moritz has a Wikipedia page. I personally added a criticism section to it, but I expected others would do a bit more as it became more and more exposed. And I was sort of right. Whereas I expected people to help show Moritz as the dishonest, lying, thieving, trashy, scummy, dirty, snake oil selling, inhumane, selfish, dirt sack that he is, someone just went ahead and reported his page as what it is: sock puppet self-promotion.

So thanks.

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That’s how you do it

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Michael

Remember that scumbag Lawrence Stowe*?

Stowe charges exorbitant sums of money so he can insert IVs into people in some dank, run-down building in Mexico. One family sold their home to pay for Stowe’s bogus treatments. Others have paid tens of thousands of dollars of their savings with no results.

It’s hard to be a big fan of any sort of news that comes from TV these days, but there is still some worthwhile stuff that comes out of investigative reporting. Originating from “60 Minutes”, that information on Stowe should make everyone happy there are still good reporters out there.

In fact, I have to admit I’m a little jealous. I took part in the successful marring of the web presence of Andreas Moritz, another lying quack who steals from sick people. (I only say marred because while there are still hundreds of sites out there that expose him as the quack he is, he has unfortunately regained some footing, at least insofar as Google search** is concerned. However, the hits I get on my posts about him go through the same rough fluctuations as they did when I was number 2 in searches for his name. This isn’t so bad when considering 1) PZ’s post is going to obviously be more prominent and 2) typing “Andreas Moritz” into Google pops up several options, one of which is “quack”.) But this hardly compares with taking down a quack nationally as “60 Minutes” did.

And, of course, there’s our old friend Christopher Maloney. Google searches for his name bring up a lot of unrelated results, but “is a quack” remains a Google suggestion and a search of his name with “Maine” added brings up a whole slew of excellent and honest results. Regardless, this still isn’t much compared to the success of “60 Minutes”.

But these schmucks responded to criticism all wrong. They whined and moaned and tried to get an undergraduate’s blog shut down under the threat of a libel lawsuit and blah blah blah. They’re quacks and they sell snake oil in one form or another by virtue of their ‘professions’, so none of this was that surprising. But Lawrence Stowe is also a sleazy piece of trash; he causes real harm to the health of others, too. But what has his response been? Take a look.

Thank you for your interest in the Stowe Foundation. As a non-profit public charity our mission is to make available to the public an understanding of the human immune system through scientifically validated principles of Regenerative Medicine.

It isn’t until the second page of selling his snake oil that he even mentions “60 Minutes”. And when he does mention the show, he buries its relevance in a hog pile of pseudoscience and lies.

Stowe was clearly a bumbling buffoon when he was pinned down in front of the cameras. That’s what usually happens to snake oil salesman, and I suspect in front of a PZ Myers or Dr. Novella, bosom buddies Moritz and Maloney would suffer the same pathetic fate. But writing, especially on the Internet, is a different beast. Stowe doesn’t have to spend his time responding to every ounce of criticism flung his way; he knows he can’t. Just like the bosom buddies, he knows he’s utterly wrong in all the things he claims. Just as Moritz knows iridology offers no insight into other bodily ailments, and just as Maloney knows black elderberry absolutely does not “block” H1N1, Stowe knows he cannot cure ALS or any other disease. But unlike the bosom buddies, Stowe hasn’t deluded himself. He’s acutely aware that the falsity of his claims are not going to fool anyone. He knows he needs to dodge all criticism, not meet it head-on.

He’s a particularly dangerous snake oil salesman.

*I bring Stowe up again due to a sudden surge in hits. It appears “60 Minutes” updated their article on him (with what particular details, I’m not sure). It also appears that I’m number 2 in Google searches for his name. That would make me much happier if there were another 10,000 posts and articles about the scumbag immediately after FTSOS. (Or before. It isn’t about me; it’s about exposing quacks.)

**Another Google suggestion after searching for Moritz is “Wikipedia”. I took a look. Yes, Moritz has a Wikipedia page. And, gee, imagine that. Not a single disparaging word. Strange, huh? I wonder if that will change any time soon…

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Americans aren’t using sunscreen

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Michael

…thereby raising their risk of cancer.

Despite the attention of the healthcare industry on the role of sunscreen in preventing skin cancer, about 40 percent of Americans never apply sunscreen at all before going out and only 9 percent wear it everyday, the poll of 1,004 people, showed.

One of the regions with the lowest use of sunscreen was the South, where 46 percent of people said they never using sunscreen at all during the summer. The age group with the lowest rate of sunscreen use was 18- to 29-year-olds at four percent.

Men were also much more likely not to use sunscreen before going outside with 48 percent saying they do not wear it at all.

The biggest factor in the lack of sunscreen use, I suspect, is laziness. It’s a pain to put on every time one goes outside. Then there’s the fact that people don’t want to smell like the stuff all day. And, as the article cites, income gaps contribute as well. Unfortunately, that isn’t where it ends. There are also quacks who say irresponsible things like this.

First of all: realize that sunscreen blocks all UV activity to the skin. Your skin provides countless functions not least of which is the absorption and manufacture of the steroid vitamin D. Any sunblock chemicals used in moisturizers, lip balm, and make-up should be eliminated if vitamin D levels are to be properly maintained.

The ineffectiveness of sunblock chemicals has been known for over a decade. Even though it is clear that the use of sunblock does effectively prevent sunburns, the prevention of skin cancers has not been found in the research. Furthermore, it is now clear that at least some of the chemicals in sunblock cause cancer changes in the skin.

This is Richard Maurer, naturopath. I don’t think I need to go much further in explaining his quackeriness. Unfortunately, this sort of vitamin D obsession is common with the alt med crowd. They take something good and go all after it. I suspect part of the reason has to do with the ease in which they can recommend it since they are limited in just what they can prescribe, but it’s also probably partially that many big drug companies don’t have vitamin D as a major focus. If those guys aren’t pushing it, well, it must work, right? Evidenced be damned. (For the record, I’ve never read where Christopher Maloney has excessively pushed vitamin D or recommended against basic skin protection; the problem is still common with the alt med crowd, but that doesn’t mean it is universal.)

Wear sun block.

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