#846: Jason Nicholas Korning (?*)

Jason Nicholas Korning is, according to himself, a Roman Catholic scholar and writer specializing in the Hebrew Bible, the Maccabees, and the Talmud. He is also the founder of the Eternal Order of St. Judas Maccabeus. Their website is here, and it is not for the faint of heart. Most of the material concerns politics. Korning does, for instance, dismiss democracy as unbiblical and totally gay:

“It should be remembered that ‘democracy’ was originally advocated by the philosophers Plato and Socrates, both homosexual pedophiles. Some contend that these historical facts are irrelevant. There are others who claim that, because of this, democracy is inherently homosexual. This may well be the case. Consider the fact that, just recently, the people of Canada and Spain, along with quite a few other democratic Christian nations, actually voted in favor of same sex marriages. For the first time in more than 2,000 years, the State was now allowed to sanction sodomy as an individual right and to give explicit approval and encouragement to the act of anal sex.”

You can also find Korning discuss the Russian revolution, and the extent to which Moses was a scientific genius, 3000 years ahead of his time (it requires some, shall we say, charitable interpretation of certain passages in Genesis, and a certain amount of shoehorning) – he also manages to dismiss alternative creation stories as fairytales: “not a single ancient Creation story ever truly addresses the material world’s origins in a scientific manner, with the sole exception of the Book of Genesis.” Right.

Diagnosis: Korning is hardly a threat to anything or anyone, which is a rather good thing considering that his aptitude for reality and reason is a bit shaky.

*Why the question mark? I simply cannot quite shake the feeling that he is an elaborate poe. 

#845: Jay Kordich

A.k.a. “the Juice Man”

Jay Kordich, the Juice Man, is a television personality, author, motivational speaker, and lecturer, and is known as “a father” (which is, of course, deliberately not the same as “an expert”) in the field of vegetable juicing, fruit juicing and nutrition. Kordich is an advocate of rawfoodism, and suggests that avoiding cooked food and drinking a lot of juice is helpful with regard to health issues.

According to his bio he was at some point diagnosed with bladder cancer, for which he sought out Max Gerson’s quack treatment focusing on raw juices and cleansing diets, went on a regimen of 13 eight-ounce glasses of carrot-apple juice a day, and claims that the regimen cured him. He doesn’t have a shred of proof that juice cured him of cancer, but – you know – nothing beats a dubious anecdote, especially when it is coupled with some fallacious appeals to nature. From there on, he would devote his life to making television appearances promoting juicing, and actually managed to gain some popularity for that. He is also the author e.g. of Live Foods, Live Bodies, a raw food preparation book coauthored with his wife Linda.

He has a substantial Quackwatch presence, and his methods are covered in detail here.

Diagnosis: As usual, we assume that his efforts are intended to help, but, sadly, when critical thinking skills and understanding of evidence and reality are absent, such efforts can have rather insidious consequences. Dangerous.

#844: Gene Koonce

Gene Koonce is the President of VIBE Technologies, LLC in Greeley, CO. They sell stuff, and as you might expect, the stuff Koonce is out to sell you has to do (at least according to the marketing) with healing, and with vibration, and hence we are up for some truly serious woo: “We at VIBE Technologies are committed to raising the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual vibrations of each living individual on the planet,” says the VIBE people.

One of the great inventions manufactured by VIBE technologies is the V.I.B.E. machine. How does it work? It is an “electronic device that brings the vibrational level of your body back to its natural state of being. VIBE stands for Vibrational Integrated Bio-photonic Energizer” (which I think means that it is a lamp). It is worth quoting the product description in some detail:

“Human DNA conformational changes have been previously used to measure energetic influences of subtle energy generated by healers. This new bio-assay measures direct resonances with the physical DNA as well as underlying quantum process associated with hydrogen bond formation. Experiments reported here were designed to measure possible correlations between psychotronic and biochemical measurement of DNA in real time as physical DNA rewound following thermal denaturation. Physical measurements of DNA were made in NY using a spectrophotometer and radionic measurements were made in Ohio using the Harmonic Translator. An active phone line created a connection between the two locations and allowed exact timing for simultaneous measurements using both devices.”

Oh boy. They used real phone lines. Clearly this must be taken seriously, though we were, admittedly, not aware that DNA worked the way the authors claim it works. There is also a lot of talk about energy and intent:

“Have you ever wondered why one person walking down a dark alley at night will get mugged while the previous person goes by untouched? Bad things may happen to apparently ‘good’ people and good things may happen to seemingly ‘bad’ people. This phenomena is all based upon the level of positive or negative energy that they are sending out into the Universe. You are like a radio tower that is constantly sending out a certain frequency of energy. Your thoughts and feelings together create an ‘energetic blueprint’ that is constantly being emitted out into the world. The interesting thing is that this vibration is always being reflected back to you, showing up as physical results in your life. What you send out is EXACTLY what you get back!”

I don’t think the universe works that way.

What about the experiments they are talking about ? The study in question is called “Clinical study on Direct Correlations between Psychotronic and Biochemical Measures of Human DNA”, and the authors are:

- Glen Rein, who does Quantum Biology Research for The Society for Scientific Exploration, where he has also contributed “Homeopathy: Energetic Mechanism For Information Storage”; and

- Peter Moscow, who is a holistic philosophy consultant.

In other words, they are precisely the kind of "researchers" whom you'd suspect would be able to find the contraption to be effective.

In any case it seems that the V.I.B.E. machine is unavailable at present: “Currently the V.I.B.E. Machine is going through FDA clearance …,” says the company’s website, which should be translated into saying that the FDA sent Koonce a rather angry warning letter. Fortunately, “[i]n the meantime, learn how to heal your mind-body with ancient techniques in our Manifesting Manual,” which is probably just as effective and much cheaper.

Diagnosis: Since this is, by assumption, not fraud, we have to conclude that there is some serious crazy going on here. It is doubtful that the efforts of VIBE Technologies will have very much impact, however. 

#843: Gary Kompothecras

A.k.a. Dr. Gary

Gary Kompothecras is a Florida chiropractor with quite a bit of money and particularly strong anti-vaccine beliefs. The money can be used to purchase political influence, of course. Kompothecras did for instance contribute heavily to Charlie Crist’s campaign and was subsequently appointed to the governor’s task force on autism. He used his influence to bully Florida health officials in support of quackery, in particular Mark & David Geier’s Lupron protocol, and he got the governor’s office to put weight behind his bullying – which included requests to violate HIPAA in the process. In fact, Kompothecras is a big contributor to the Geiers’ antivaxx organization CoMeD (whose president is one Rev. Lisa K. Sykes, an interesting qualification given the nature of the effort).

Kompothecras also pushed for a weakening of Florida’s vaccine requirements for public schools. Indeed, he managed to get himself the nickname “rainmaker” because of his political connections.

Diagnosis: Although he’s not among the loudest or most often cited members of the denialist movement, Kompothecras is certainly one of the more dangerous – few would be able to cause as extensive damage as him. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

#842: Kelly Kohls

Kelly Kohls is (the former) Chairman of Warren County Tea Party who was elected to the Springboro school board on a platform of fiscal responsibility. And then you know where this is going. She requested that the district’s curriculum director look into ways of providing “supplemental” instruction dealing with creationism in public schools. According to Kohls, “[c]reationism is a significant part of the history of this country,” which is silly, and “it is an absolutely valid theory and to omit it means we are omitting part of the history of this country,” which is even more stupid – even though John Silvius, professor of the insanely fundamentalist creationist teaching institution Cedarville University and signatory to the Discovery Institute-led petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, apparently offered his support. As did the fundamentalist organization the Liberty Institute, which “focused solely on protecting and restoring religious liberty in the United States,” (by “religious liberty” they mean, of course, not liberty), and the board indeed accepted their help in hammering out the policy.

Board members in favor of the creationist move included Scott Anderson, the other tea party school member, and Jim Rigano.

The situation was discussed in some more detail here, and some interesting details are discussed here and here. Encouragingly, parents and students in the district were not unequivocally favorable toward Kohls’s et al.'s lunatic attempts to undermine science in favor of their cherished fundamentalist views. Apparently Kohls decided not to run for reelection in 2013, and though we don’t have the full overview things look to have improved significantly in Springboro, Ohio (though Rigano, at least, is still on the board, it seems).

Diagnosis: Stock loons whose lack of competency, intelligence or knowledge is apparently viewed as an asset in some parts of the country. Springboro, however, does seem to have voted for sanity in the end.