#2980: Barbara Harper

Water-birthing, the practice of delivering a baby into a body of water, even a putatively sterile one, is inherently risky and has no benefits for anything whatsoever, something that is pretty obvious even to people with little medical experience. The practice has nevertheless had a run as a woo fad, because of course it has. There is a decent discussion of the practice here.

 

An influential and thoroughly woo-infused resource for the practice of waterbirthing is something called Waterbirth International, which is run by Barbara Harper, a nurse who is also a proponent of rebirthing-breathwork., the idea that suppressed negative emotions can be healed by ‘reliving one’s birth’ while … breathing. Harper and Waterbirth International apparently promote waterbirthing all over the world with plenty of incoherent New Age fluff (including, apparently, something about your cells having feelings) centered on the desire for a drug-free childbirth based on a fallacious appeal to nature; you don’t need to ask her what definition of ‘natural’ makes waterbirthing natural. And her response to reluctance from actual MDs and people who know things about medicine (and risk) is entirely predictable: the backlash is a result of the fact that with a waterbirth “you as the attending physician pretty much have to stand there with your hands in your pockets and let it happen without your participation. That is pretty scary to a physician-oriented institution.” She doesn’t address concerns referring to risks. She does, however, express some rather striking and frightening misconceptions about human physiology and childbirth.

 

In fact, there is some research on the practice, which also summarizes the existing evidence of benefits – which is precisely what you’d expect: “most published articles that recommend underwater births are retrospective reviews of a single center experience, observational studies using historical controls, or personal opinions and testimonials, often in publications that are not peer reviewed”. There is, as the study obviously has to point out, also a stark absence of basic science to support the proposed physiologic benefits.

 

Diagnosis: In fairness, complications from waterbirthing are probably relatively rare if conducted in the presence of a medical professional. Harper might, as such, not be more than a moderate danger to her environment. But her misconceptions and woo are certainly not benign.

 

Hat-tip: Clay Jones @ Sciencebasedmedicine

#2979: Karen Hardin

More prophets and intercessors! There’s plenty of them, and every single one really qualifies for an entry here. Karen Hardin is an an intercessor, literary agent, co-founder of the City-by-City prayer movement, and author, who, with her husband, Kevin, leads Destiny Builders and leads prayer teams in DC – and yes, she has the ears of leaders: In 2019, for instance, she met with White House staff and reported that “they expressed great concern for the increased attacks and threats against [Trump] and have called for a corporate Esther fast from Nov. 2–5” (we won’t try to assess the accuracy of her report; we are reluctant to ascribe credibility to anything she says). Her output has otherwise appeared in WND, Charisma Magazine, The Elijah List and similar deranged conspiracy outlets.

 

Politically, Hardin is MAGA, and she was no fan of the Biden administration; in 2021, for instance, she warned that a new Holocaust was “being ushered in by the Biden administration which will affect every American personally.” Meanwhile, she imagines that Trump is a proper spokesperson for God; in 2019, for instance, she reported from the National Prayer Breakfast that Trump’s “spiritual growth” was obvious: Trump “shared several scriptures and they flowed out of him not as from a speech, but from the heart. He was familiar with them. He knew them.” Her conclusion is, in other words, based exclusively on what she wishes were the case. Otherwise, Hardin is an incessant spreader of conspiracy theories, and has for instance asserted that the January 6, 2021 Capitol storming was a false flag event carried out by Antifa and BLM.

 

An although she believes in the power and accuracy of prophecies, she has an escape hatch for when they fail: many “prophetic words are contingent upon the follow-through action of the recipient. If we don’t receive the word and act upon it, then it remains unfulfilled. It’s not that the prophetic word was off. It’s that the recipient did nothing to partner with the word to bring it to pass.” In other words, if the prophecy didn’t come to pass, the blame belongs on people who didn’t do their part, so you’ll never, in fact, find an example of a false prophecy.

 

Diagnosis: Fully unmoored from reality and floating freely in a fantasy realm characterized by fundie rage and paranoia. Don’t listen to anything she says.

#2978: Bill Hardiman

William Clyde Hardiman III was the mayor of Kentwood, Michigan from 1992 to 2002, subsequently a state senator from 2003 to 2011, and an unsuccessful Congressional candidate in 2011. This is, in other words, somewhat antiquated stuff, but we deem it to be still worth mentioning, albeit briefly. Hardiman’s stint in the state senate was characterized by backing a number of bills promoting intelligent design creationism and, in particular, teaching intelligent design creationism in public schools, such as a 2008 bill that would open up for teaching “alternative views” on evolution, global warming and cloning. Hardiman, the lead sponsor of the senate version of the bill, said he was inspired by the ‘documentary’ Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which is approximately on the level of referring to a Jack Chick comic.

 

Diagnosis: Fool. At present hopefully out of any group with any power to influence these matters.

 

#2977: William Happer

William Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, emeritus, at Princeton University and an internationally recognized expert on atomic physics, optics and spectroscopy. He is most famous, however, for his views on climate change, a topic that is emphatically not within his area of expertise. Happer, who not a climate scientist, rejects the scientific consensus on climate change and has, indeed and obviously without knowing what he is talking about, become one of the big authorities in the climate denialist movement. In 2018, then-president Trump therefore appointed him to the National Security Council to counter evidence linking carbon dioxide emissions to global warming – and as opposed to some of Trump’s appointees who admitted that scientific consensus had a strong case, Happer stayed true to dogmatic denialism throughout his tenure. There is a detailed breakdown of Happer’s antics on the council here. He resigned from the council in 2019, partially, it seems, because the council didn’t go as far along with his denialism as he wanted.

 

Happer is also co-founder and board member of the well-funded astroturf advocacy group  the CO2 Coalition, which was established in 2015 to “educate the public that increased atmospheric levels of CO2 will benefit the world”. He is also an “adjunct scholar” at the Cato Institute, on the academic advisory council of the British Global Warming Policy Foundation, and a member of Climate Exit (Clexit), a group formed shortly after the Brexit decision based on the idea that “[t]he world must abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade.”

 

Happer’s position is that climate change was invented by “paranoid” scientists – Happer dismisses climate scientists as a “glassy-eyed” “cult” – and is a “completely imaginary threat that doesn’t exist. People are afraid to stand up and say that.” More specifically, he thinks that “the warming will be small compared to the natural fluctuations in the earth’s temperature, and that the warming and increased CO2 will be good for mankind”, which is a conjunction with two false conjuncts. The latter, however, is something of a main schtick for Happer; CO₂ is plant food, and “from the point of view of geological history, we are in a CO2 famine”, which is not only inaccurate but even if it were accurate, utterly irrelevant since it sort of neglects the small point that sea levels were also typically “100s of feet higher during [e.g.] the Phanerozoic”. To Happer, however, the important point is to “counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. It’s not a pollutant at all”; rather “[a]lmost all plants grow better and are more drought resistant with two to four times more CO2 than now” (“[i]f plants could vote, they would vote for coal,” says Happer). Apparently, he considers it something of a gotcha trick against climate scientists to ask “is CO2 a pollutant or a vital molecule for life onEarth”, just like how “is poop a vital organic fertilizer for plants or is it bad to eat” would be a gotcha for other medical doctors. In 2014, Happer said that the “demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler”, which is a strikingly silly thing to say on a striking number of levels.

 

And William Happer is a an obvious confused and silly person, who really, really doesn’t even remotely grasp the essentials of the issue he is going all denialist about (he does, for some reason, complain that people who call him a denier are trying to make him “look like a Nazi sympathizer”) and staunchly refuses to consult introductory textbooks that would explain them. That, of course, hardly matters to denialist organizations that frequently cite him and invoke him as some kind of authority he clearly isn’t. Here is a fair response to some of his denialist PRATTs from someone who does have some understanding of what it is all about.

 

According to himself, Happer arrived at his beliefs about climate change during his experience at the Department of Energy back in the age of Bush the elder (he was dismissed in 1993 over disagreements concerning the ozone layer); at least he has been in the game for a while – he was for instance coauthor of petition to change the official position of the American Physical Society to a version that raised doubts about global warming in 2009, which was overwhelmingly rejected by the APS Council – and has no intention of letting scientific evidence affect his firmly entrenched commitments.

 

Diagnosis: Happer has been accurately described as “a fringe figure even for climate sceptics”, and he really has no idea what he is talking about. But he nevertheless talks about it with confidence, and has, due to his credentials in other fields, established himself as a frighteningly powerful authority figure in the denialist movement.

 

Hat-tip: Desmog

#2976: Dan Happel

Dan Happel is a Montana-based speaker, self-declared political analyst, and radio host at Connecting the Dots with Dan Happel on Patriot Soapbox. Yes, as the name of his radio program suggests, Dan Happel is a conspiracy theorist. It is worth mentioning that he was also a delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention and member of the Ted Cruz 2016 campaign’s Montana LeadershipTeam.

 

Happel is perhaps most famous for his promotion of Agenda 21 conspiracy theories, and he believes that Agenda 21 – a several decades old, nonbinding sustainable development initiative from the UN – is actually a Stalinist plot to create a one-world government to ensure that “private property can be increasingly controlled and ultimately eliminated” because that’s what the superrich really want. In particular, according to Happel, Agenda 21 will “involve relocating most Montanans to some large city, like Seattle, where they would be housed like sardines in compact housing developments, deprived of automobiles, and basically held hostage to some job in the city. Meanwhile vast areas of land would be reclaimed for wilderness to be used by the rich oligarchy.” And you should be worried, for as Happel sees it – completely falsely – Agenda 21 (at least prior to Trump) “drives 90 percent of federal legislation”.

 

But Happel might not be a mere one-trick pony, however. During COVID, he was one of the most influential pushers of COVID-related misinformation in Montana, and in September 2021 he was chair of the “second annual Red Pill Expo” in Rapid City devoted mostly (but not exclusively) to COVID-related conspiracy theories: “We’re going to be talking about the vaccine programs and what the vaccine programs are about,” said Happel about the event. “We’re going to be talking about COVID, we're going to be talking about Agenda 21. We're going to be talking about globalism and the push to create a one world global government …” so ok, he is a one-trick pony. But he is also anti-vaccine; as he lays it out in his post “VACCINE HESITANCY aka COMMON SENSE!”, “not only were these ‘vaccines’ [the COVID ones] not adequately tested, they became a political football to outlaw the use of inexpensive, time tested and verifiably safer drugs like hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin.”

 

Diagnosis: Although his Red Pill Expo was nominally arranged to “help truth seekers understand how the world really works,” Happel is evidently among the worst possible guides you could have. He has an audience, but we doubt he has much power to win new converts.

#2975: Jim Hanson

Jim Hanson is a deranged conspiracy theorist affiliated with the anti-Islam organization Center for Security Policy. And Hanson sees Muslim and and pro-Muslim conspiracies everywhere. For instance, when a 14-year-old Muslim was arrested in Texas for bringing a homemade clock to school back in 2015 under the pretext that it might be a bomb, Hanson saw through the pretense immediately and concluded that everything about the situation “was a P.R. stunt, it was a staged event” designed by Islamic radicals for the purpose of undermining anti-terrorism security protocols. “They wanted people to react and they wanted to portray this kid as an innocent victim ... I don’t think there is any question he was put up to it by someone else who wanted him to take that in to create this exact scenario”. Evidence, you ask? Hah, you narrow-minded heretic. No, Hanson knows: this whole thing was organized by Islamic fundamentalists who “want a Muslim-privilege exemption to ‘see something, say something' and that's what this is about” (he also refused to believe that the clock was, in fact, just a clock). Meanwhile, Hanson and his organization has long been pushing the conspiracy theory that Democrats are purposely bringing in immigrants who “don’t share our culture and values” in order to seize power and undermine America. And keep in mind that the organization’s ‘research’ into such issues has been invoked e.g. by American presidents (name not necessary) to propose policies like a ban on Muslim immigration.

 

Diagnosis: And that’s enough about Jim Hanson. Please overlook him, his rants and his organization. Many, unfortunately, don’t.

#2974: Paul J. Hansen

Paul J. Hansen is a flamboyantly lunatic sovereign citizen (self-proclaimed) who has made a bit of a career offering legal advice and selling legal “kits” to other sovereign citizen types and people in trouble with the law. Despite admitting to being a “native-born of the Land of Nebraska” and living in Omaha, Hansen “believes that neither the city nor Douglas County holds sway over him” and “does not believe the laws of the United States of America apply to him”; he does, accordingly, for instance refuse to pay taxes. On the other hand, he does sell “briefs” on his website to people who don’t want to get a driver’s license or license plate, or who do not want to observe public health codes or pay taxes. His followers tend to claim that his legal reasoning is sound because they have no training in or idea about how the law works, and preditably tend to neglect the probably rather more pressing question “will it fly?” And to answer the latter, it is worth noting that Hansen has outstanding warrants for his arrest for failing to appear in court, tax liens for tens of thousands of dollars, and been arrested a two-digit number of times. Over the course of his career, Hansen has made news for instance for taking money from a disabled person and for being sentenced to jail for refusing to address 14 housing code violations as well as “one count of giving false information, one count of resisting arrest and two counts of obstructing the administration of the law.”

 

Hansen is, however, most famous for his work on behalf of legendary loon Kent Hovind. After having landed himself in jail for tax fraud, Hovind – who had long promoted sovereign citizen theories himself – sought the legal counsel of Hansen. The WND described Hansen as “an attorney advising Hovind”; Hansen, however, is not a lawyer but, according to himself, a “law-educated layman”; indeed, the courts issued an injunction in 2013 preventing Hansen from “engaging in the unauthorized practice of law in any manner, including but not limited to holding himself out to another as being entitled to practice law as defined by § 3-1001” after an investigation of Hansen's blogs and legal “kits”. A fairly representative example of Hansen’s work on Hovind’s behalf is his 2011 letter to the Florida Attorney General informing the government that Hovind is a “free inhabitant” per the Articles of Confederation and the government “must accept the Articles of Confederation” – i.e., Hansen based his argument on a system of governance that dissolved itself in 1789. That Hovind would buy such bullshit is hardly surprising. The courts emphatically didn’t.

 

Apparently, Hovind’s and Hansen’s partnership has continued also after Hovind finally got out of jail, and they have gone on to file frivolous lawsuits to be dismissed with prejudice based on hysterically insane pseudolaw.

 

Note that there is also a Paul Hansen who has published work with Answers in Genesis. We have no idea whether that is the same guy or not.

 

Diagnosis: Kent Hovind found his reasoning compelling enough to partner up with him, and that tells you all you need to know. And Paul Hansen is primarily a danger to himself and those who associate with him. That said, there is a scary amount of these dingbats to go around.

 

Hat-tip: Rationalwiki