#2965: Leon Hammer

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a presientific system of vitalistic myths, and TCM’s ways of diagnosing disease are nonsense based on vagueness, fluff and imagination. Among the diagnostic methods employed by TCM practitioners is pulse diagnosis: using palpation of the pulse at the wrist and inspection of the tongue to try evaluate the patient’s state of health and make diagnoses. The idea is, of course, complete bullshit, and it is based on the notion that the radial artery represents the health of the person and can be used to measure non-existent phenomena like qi – the technique even comes with maps that assigns points on the wrist and tongue to various parts of the body in a seemingly random manner familiar from (other versions of) reflexology.

 

Leon Hammer and John Shen don’t think it is bullshit. According to Hammer, who is the founder of the Shen-Hammer system, aka Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis (CCPD), the pulse can in fact “give us the most precise picture of even the most subtle and complex deviation from this standard of health” because “[t]he pulse record is an instant picture of the current status of a person’s voyage from birth to death”. For a practitioner who approach the issue “with dedication, quiet patience and consistency, becoming attuned to pulse qualities is an ongoing meditation, a training ground for awakening and awareness into total focus and concentration. As such, pulse diagnosis is an opportunity for practitioners to obtain the ultimate satisfaction of being one with their patients, one with themselves, one with the diagnostic process, and perhaps one with the universal forces that are expressed through the pulse.” In other words, it’s utter bullshit, with a sprinkling of helpless deepity. That said, Hammer also appeals to experiments set ut by the Chinese government in the 1950s in which “many well known masters of Chinese pulse diagnosis were asked to examine a patient”. Not surprisingly, “[t[heir findings varied widely”, and pulse diagnosis was accordingly judged to be an unreliable diagnostic tool – Hammer disagrees, however: the variations just shows that “each different pulse system is correct, providing not contradictory information, but different information.” And if your reaction is something in the vicinity of “wait …”, Hammer is ready to admit that it “is difficult to contemplate and absorb”. Indeed. You are just close-minded. Anything goes.

 

Hammer is also the creator of Contemporary Oriental Medicine (COM), which includes “over 100 unique concepts not included in TCM”, including “birth traumas and Heart shock, toxicity, Liver qi and yang deficiency, the separation of yin and yang as precursors to significant and debilitating illnesses, etc.” In other words, Hammer takes TCM and adds whatever woo he fancies to comprise what he views as “the true embodiment of tradition, seamlessly blended with modern insight and wisdom”. None of it has anything to do with reality, of course. Hammer is very clear that he really believes that it works, but doesn’t seem to recognize the need to actually test it.

 

In fact, there is a test of his pulse diagnosis. Sort of. Hammer’s own disciple Karen Bilton submitted “Investigating the reliability of Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis as a diagnostic tool in Oriental medicine” as partial requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Technology in Sydney. In the study, Bilton carefully tested inter-tester reliability among Hammer’s own acolytes and found decent levels of agreement of intra-rater comparisons and (somewhat less) of inter-rater comparisons for certain conditions. Of course, she admits that “reliability … was the exclusive interest of the study, and not validity.” In other words, she found some agreement among students of Hammer’s when it came to setting diagnosis, and carefully avoided judging whether any of those diagnoses had anything whatsoever to do with reality! It is, in other words, an absolutely glorious example of tooth fairy science, and utterly laughable as such. That Bilton was apparently not immediately forcibly removed from the University of Sydney’s premises is a disgrace to that institution.

 

Diagnosis: Batshit stupidity with delusions of grandeur. And this one, too, seems to have achieved some popularity, at least to the extent that the nonsense has drifted into and mixed with the general fog of fads and quackery that is the modern wellness movement.

 

Note: Hammer seems to have passed away, but since we’d already written this entry we decided to publish it anyways. His work presumably lives on.

 

Hat-tip: Sciencebased medicine

#2964: Rachel Hamm

Rachel Hamm is an author (Life Beginning, some kind of biography/fundie self-help combo book), speaker, notable fan of Robin Bullock, creator of something called ‘The Miracle Mind Mastery’ – “where she helps people become the best version of themselves” – and unsuccessful 2022 wingnut candidate for the position of secretary of state in California. According to herself, she ran for secretary of state because Jesus appeared to her youngest son, who “is a seer” and an authority on spiritual issues for Hamm, in a closet – apparently Hamm thought at first it was an angel, but no: it was Jesus himself. And she would ostensibly make a great secretary of state insofar as she is a Christian (anointed by God, in fact) and therefore honest, fair, and honorable: “Someone who is ... godless very likely would not have those values.” The Jesus closet manifestation was apparently expected, though: “I’ve been a prophetic dreamer so I had spent a lot of 2019 and 20 having a lot of political dreams that I was in office”, said Hamm. Indeed, she is, according to herself, “kind of a forerunner,” meaning that whatever she experiences in her personal life is “whatever God is getting ready to do” on a national or global scale.

 

Her prophetic dreams and fundie commitments weren’t her only qualifications for secretary of state, though. Hamm also has substantial experience combatting Satan and satanists: apparently the neighborhood surrounding her local community college is “known for having a lot of Satanic activity,” and she’s had a number of hostile encounters with Satanists trying to take over her house. In fact, according to her book, Hamm has been battling these forces her whole life, ever since she attended a daycare as a child that was later revealed, at least in her imagination, to be a front for Satan worshippers (“this was a Satanic coven claiming to be a preschool so they could train children in Satanic rituals,” says Hamm), just like in the fictional accounts that launched the Satanic panic of the 1980s. Her apparently biggest victory against her neighbors, however, came when she putatively managed to kill a witch through prayer: apparently this witch – a neighbor “who live two doors down” – was trying to kill her, something Hamm realized on the basis of “a dream that someone has tried to break into my home, murder me and light my house on fire;” she responded by praying hard, and the next morning her mother told her that someone had broken into the home of the witch, “murdered her and lit the house on fire.” With a CV like this, no wonder she thought you should vote for her as secretary of state. Apparently she received the backing of people like Mike Lindell and Michael Flynn.

 

Her campaign was predictably characterized by delusional rantings and conspiracy theories, in particular concerning the 2020 presidential election – according to Hamm, Trump actually won all 50 states in 2020 and would apparently soon (in 2021) be returned to the White House to serve a full 10 years in office, and she’s got proof: she (of course) dreamt it, and accordingly “feel fairly certain that that is what happened and that it’s only fraud that made it look otherwise.” (That said, God also told her that Trump “sacrificed greatly” by leaving office after losing the 2020 election because he is “a good father” who knows that “sometimes their children do not learn lessons unless they learn it the hard way.”) And the nefarious forces that be (libruls) were after her, too, but she refused to bend: although she and her family knew “they might kills us ... there are some things worth dying for;” for instance, Hamm “would rather be dead than live in a communist country.” Here is Hamm and Delora O’Brien weighing in on the War on Christmas. And here is Hamm declaring that Black Lives Matter “is really evil at its core” and “a completely evil, corrupt organization that has harmed our country;” also, “two of the main leaders are witches.”

 

Of course, she perceived that massive voter fraud would be a central challenge to her campaign, and as a means to forestall such challenges she deployed prayer. So Hamm prayed that if anyone tries to steal votes from her, “God will send the angels to steal the vote back” and she also asked her fans to join her in praying that “if they create fraudulent ballots” to steal the California election, “they’re incinerated”. “Let’s ask the angels to go burn ‘em up. No fake ballots!”. (If she did get elected, she promised that she would fight to “make it hard” for people to vote so that “people who are not educated” on the issues – like knowledgeable about which side is backed by Satan and which side is not – are prevented from voting.) When she failed to clear the GOP primary, she predictably insisted that the election had, in fact, been stolen, sort of neglecting to notice that given her framing of the issue during her campaign, it sort of follows that God Himself must be to blame for the result.

 

Following her loss, Hamm became convinced that she was destined to serve as press secretary for then-former President Donald Trump when he would be reelected in 2024. She regularly travelled to Mar-a-Lago and urged her viewers to give daily prayers for Trump and against the Democrats, whom she claimed were partnering with Satan to keep Trump from getting elected again. Part of what she would bring to the table in a role as press secretary would be prophetic warnings for Trump. In March 2023, for instance, she released a video in which she claimed to have learned (apparently through her usual sources of information) that “globalists” were planning to kill most of humanity, and she had asked God how to respond; apparently God ordered her to “decree” that He would send a “death angel” to the Capitol in May 2023 to kill a swath of elected leaders: “I’m here to tell you that an angel came to our house and told us that the death angel is visiting the Capitol in the month of May,” Hamm announced. Well, May came and passed with no large-scale slaughter of legislators, so Hamm (“super frustrated”) followed up with another video in which she prayed for God not to change his mind and still send the “death angel” to “kill these globalists” as He had promised (apparently keeping promises is not God’s strong suit): “Lord, please don’t change your mind,” prayed Hamm. “Lord, even now we do agree in Jesus’ name, please send this death angel to kill these globalists who have told us they want to kill 85 percent of us. And so, Lord, we need you to intervene. We need you. […] We need you to step in and send the death angel, in Jesus’ name.”

 

Diagnosis: Wheeee! Apparently even the most wild-eyed fundies in the MAGA movement seem to tend to be wary of this one, but she still has some followers. Completely bonkers at every possible level.

#2963: Julie Hamilton

Discussions of conversion therapy might have faded a bit from public consciousness in recent years, but it still exists and it is still dangerous nonsense. And as far as we know, Julie Hamilton remains one of the leaders of the group committed to the propagation of such therapies. Hamilton is former president of the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity (shades of Badger’s Law in that name), a group that describes itself as “principled advocates for persons experiencing unwanted homosexual attractions”, and of its mother organization, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH); she is also editor of the 2009 book Handbook of Therapy for Unwanted Homosexual Attractions: A Guide to Treatment, in the preface of which she suggests that conversion therapy can prevent murder. A serial spreader of misinformation, Hamilton’s official position is, in fact, that “there is actually no such thing as conversion therapy” and that bans of such therapies would ban “free speech in the counseling office.” Hamilton was a central feature of the documentary Such Were Some of You, a pro-conversion therapy tool that encourages people to consider “leaving homosexuality” and rejecting the “gay lifestyle” intended for Sunday school children.

 

Diagnosis: We would probably have given her more space 10 years ago, but she is apparently still around and still a hateful and crazy promoter of dangerous pseudoscience; indeed, she might be in a position to cause more harm than ever these days.

#2962: Jeremy Hambly

Jeremy Hambly is an influencer, altright troll and incel guru who runs (or has run) YouTube/Rumble/Gab channels like ClawStruck, Unsleeved Media, and – most famously –  TheQuartering. Now, we cannot claim to have followed these channels particularly closely, but they come across as, more than anything else, ragebaiting shitshows targeted at confused wannabe trolls, and Hambly produces and/or helps spread a not insignificant portion of the kind conspiracy-adjacent garbage that currently clogs up the internet.

 

Unsleeved Media appears to have been focused mostly on themes related to Magic: The Gathering; it was also various examples of silly behaviors related to that theme that originally got Hambly’s career going, insofar as these behaviors resulted in bans from Magic events and later Gen Con (we don’t have the details and don’t really care). Currently, his most popular channel is TheQuartering, which features Hambly’s critical rants against various institutions from a conspiracy-theory-oriented point of view – like accusing Disney (and politicians) of attempting to brainwash children through various forms of woke theory. The channel is absolutely committed to the MAGA cult and toys with (though doesn’t seem to explicitly endorse) various versions of The Great Replacement theory, white nationalism and anti-semitism; likewise, the channel has promoted a number of Alex Jones-land conspiracy theories, including 9/11 conspiracy theories. His twitter/X archive can be accessed here, though it doesn’t seem to be quite up to date. Of course, Hambly is primarily an (unapologetic) grifter and has even pushed Goldco scams on his channel. 

 

Diagnosis: Primarily a ragebaiting shitshow, and as such not the kind of thing we can be bothered to put much effort into investigating. Hambly might, for all we know, not even put much credence in the stuff he produces (or anything else for that matter).

#2961: John Haller

John Haller is a deranged fundie and self-declared prophet affiliated with Ohio’s Fellowship Bible Chapel. Haller thinks that the LGBT “agenda” is a sign of the End Times on par with “actual wars.” As he reads the Bible, before the End Times people will “lose the ability to reason and they think like morons. And I think that we are exactly at that time” in the case of people supporting LGBT rights. To back up his view, Haller points to what he thinks is history: “Both the days of Noah and the days of Lot existed in the historical context”, and the sort of “wickedness and violence” that “filled the earth” in those days are “exactly what we’re seeing” in the present day (people of his ilk tend to have an idiosyncratic understanding of words like ‘exactly’ and ‘literally’). And it “is happening all over the world”. So, the fact that LGBT rights have some degree of mainstream support indicates the Second Coming of Jesus is neigh. “I talk every week about the convergence of all these different lines of Bible prophecy, from Israel to morality to one-world government, one-world religion”, says Haller. We’re sure he does. Currently, he seems to be very concerned with the Israel situation and in particular the idea of a two-state solution, for as he points out, God is only “renting the land to the nation of Israel,” and they do not “have the right to ‘sublease’ it” because that might interfere with the return of Christ and the End of Days, or whatever.

 

Diagnosis: Person who has lost the ability to reason and who thinks like a moron. We guess we’ll see if that leads to anything.

#2960: Kathleen Hallal

Kathleen Hallal is a California-based “mother of three boys with autoimmune issues and food allergies”, something she blames partially on GMO foods and pesticides like RoundUp (and which she also claims to have cured with diet interventions), as well as cofounder of a group called Non Toxic Communities (and coordinator of the group Non Toxic Irvine) and co-founder of Zen Honeycutt’s woo and conspiracy group Moms Across America (MAA). Hallal’s stated goal is “spreading awareness about helping children with chronic health issues” although she predictably appears to have no remotely relevant background in medicine or any other relevant scientific discipline – instead, Hallal is a conspiracy theorist and anti-GMO activist who bases everything she believes on google and fellow conspiracy theorists. 

Now, Moms Across America (MAA) has become familiar for their promotion of scare tactics, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and bad science (some good examples here) disguised as means to empower moms fighting for kids’ health. Their primary objective is a general ban on GMOs and glyphosate, and some examples of the lies and pseudoscience they employ in the name of that goal are discussed here and here; they’ve also, predictably, toyed with anti-vaccine rhetoric. And of course, although MAA classifies itself as a non-profit, it is also an e-commerce company that pushes supplements and ridiculous products like “hydrogen water” through its Health Solution Store, collects and sells consumer data, and gets a commission on sales of supplements from other affiliates.

 

And when real scientists point out that MAM’s scaremongering is based on nonsense and pseudoscience, such as when real scientists debunked their informal test that purportedly found minute traces of glyphosate in breast milk and urine (completely false), Hallal and the MAM had a very predictable response: the shill gambit. Indeed, Hallal seems clinicially unable to entertain the possibility that anyone could disagree with her without ulterior motives, even going so far as to try to doubt whether the real scientists criticizing them are even real people. Never mind that she cannot even remotely back up her shill accusations, that the accusations are false (or at best based on ridiculous n-degrees of separation speculations) or that – ironically – actual shilling has been shown to happen only a few times, and consistently among anti-GMO activists shilling for Big Organic. So it goes.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, her tactics might tell you quite a bit about herself and certainly tell you very little about the people her false and unsupported accusations are directed at. A professional, glitzy pseudoscience promoter, scaremonger and conspiracy theorist, and although Zen Honeycutt is the big star of her movement, Hallal is certainly a significant part of the machinery that gives the Honeycutt bullshit an actual impact.