#1537: Paul & Gail Dennison

Brain Gym® is a set of movement activities – “crawling, drawing, tracing symbols in the air, yawning, and drinking water” – that, according to their website, will help children, adults, and seniors to: “[l]earn ANYTHING faster and more easily, [p]erform better at sports, [b]e more focused and organized, [s]tart and finish projects with ease, [o]vercome learning challenges, [and r]each new levels of excellence.” It does so because it “[b]uilds, enhances or restores natural neural pathways in the body and brain to assist natural learning,” and features excercises that are e.g. supposed to improve blood circulation in certain parts of the brain (in particular, rocking your head back and forth will get more blood to your frontal lobes “for greater comprehension and rational thinking”). For instance, the exercise “hook-ups” is supposed to “shift electrical energy from the survival centers in the hindbrain to the reasoning centers in the midbrain and neocortex, thus activating hemispheric integration … the tongue pressing into the roof of the mouth stimulates the limbic system for emotional processing in concert with more refined reasoning in the frontal lobes.” That’s the kind of stuff the word “technobabble” was invented to describe.

Brain Gym was developed in the 1980s by Paul and Gail Dennison, who called it “educational kinesiology” (or “Edu-K”), and it is pseudoscientific drivel. In fact, Brain Gym is a version of applied kinesiology, a familiar branch of rank woo, and may perhaps be described as a type of “alternative chiropractics”. The practitioners have, predictably enough, rejected the conclusions of double-blind randomized tests of their work because the tests consistently show AK does not work since that conflicts with what they have convinced themselves is correct based on no evidence or anecdotal results that may easily be explained by well-known phenomena such as ideomotor responses). 

That said, Brain Gym has an international market and remains pretty popular – even in the US it continues to be a (justified) source of fear for elementary school kids because it is loved by many of their teachers. And the Educational Kinesiology Foundation (Ventura, California) does cite a lot of research, most of it “academic papers” published in Brain Gym’s own journal that you, too, can read if you pay for them. Several of the papers appear to concern work with learning-disabled students and nebulous suggestions of positive results in students with ADD. The abstracts give little detail about methods or results, however, and it is pretty telling that the only publicly available studies show no effect whatsoever. One of their own studies did, admittedly, hypothesize “that Brain Gym movements can eliminate or greatly ameliorate the symptoms of hyperactivity, learning disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorder, emotional handicaps and even Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,” another that it improved hearing. It doesn’t.

As much other pseudoscience Brain Gym relies on giving the false appearance of being based on sound neuroscience. It is, however, firmly based on refuted ideas about the brain (see here for details), such as motor patterning and perceptual-motor training as an academic intervention.

There is a good overview here (we used that one extensively for this entry).

Diagnosis: Pure bullshit, and the Dennisons remain influential. Their activities are hardly harmful (though I wager there are plenty of kids in school systems around the US who are inclined to disagree), but it still feels pretty iffy when people use bullshit like this to make money.

#1536: Billy DeMoss

Billy DeMoss is a California-based chiropractor who seems to have an unconditional love for all things pseudoscience and free of evidence, from cleansing to antivaccine conspiracies. He is, in particular, a big fan of Andrew Wakefield, going so far as to calling Wakefield his “mentor”. For that, DeMoss argues, he is targeted by Big Pharma. They are desperate to hide the truth and deliberately poisoning us (oral contraceptives, for instance, is a conspiracy to give women breast cancer), and they are out to get him, and … oh, well – let’s just let him tell us in his own words:

“… do you always believe the official story spoon fed to you by the ‘big brother’ controlled media?...I was just thinking still to this day that no one has ever shown US a video of a Boeing hitting the Pentagon?...especially with all the surveillance around the area and people's video prowess... and I am sure a terrorist could definitely fly a jet with such precision as to not even scrape the ground at 500mph...and of course the plane evaporated on contact...Oh yes I am sure a Boeing could fit in that huge hole and what happened to building 7?...one of 3 steel framed buildings that collapsed(were actually demoed) from fire when not one steel frame building has EVER collapsed in history...so go ahead and believe that EBOLA is coming to the US just like H1N1,SARS,BERD FLU caused massive epidemics that we prevented by yet another moronic vaccine...believe the CDC that vaccines DON’T cause Autism and that vaccines REALLY make you healthier...keep chanting the mantra ‘vacines DON’T cause Autism,vaccines DON’T cause Autim,vaccines DON;T cause Autism...believe in Sandy Hoax and so many other stories that are sold as REAL news to create FEAR and sell an AGENDA for the NWO...keep vaccinating yourselves,use that fluoride for you dental health,eat GMO fake food,watch lots of TV,do as your doctor says and take your dope and NEVER change your lifestyle because ALL your problems are genetic...keep it up the agenda is working very well at dumbing you dumber!!!”

Diagnosis: Let’s get up for Billy DeMoss, shall we? Thank you for playing.

#1535: David Deming

David Deming is a geologist, geophysicist and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. He is also a staunch wingnut and adjunct faculty member at two wingnut think tanks, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and the National Center for Policy Analysis. He is probably most famous for his anti-environmentalism, partially based on the idea that “sustainability” is a misleading concept – technology will save us anyways, so it’s nothing to worry about (he is nevertheless opposed to investing in renewable forms of energy instead of oil and natural gas).

Of course, to run these kinds of arguments, Deming needs the convenience of global warming denialism. And indeed; according to Deming global warming is “media hysteria … generated by journalists who don’t understand the provisional and uncertain nature of scientific knowledge.” There is, according to Deming, “not one person on Earth who has ever been killed or harmed by global warming.” Besides, global warming is driven by natural forces and we can’t really know what’s driving it. And it isn’t even happening. At least not since 1998: “the mean planetary temperature hasn’t increased significantly for nearly nine years [2007].” (And “the last two years of global cooling have nearly erased 30 years of temperature increases. To the extent that global warming ever existed, it is now officially over.”)  Pick whichever is most convenient. At least he impressed senator James Inhofe, who included him on his list of 650 scientists who supposedly dispute the global warming consensus

But there sure is a conspiracy! “A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said ‘We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period,’” after Deming had managed to gain acceptance in the club by pretending to be one of them. Of course, he offered no evidence, name or elucidation of “major” (context here). Seems a bit like all those unnamed physicists and biologists Kent Hovind ends up sitting beside on planes and who confidentially admit to him that cosmology and biology is really bunk.

Deming is also a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism, though he does accept evolution and has claimed that Intelligent Design cannot be formulated as a scientific hypothesis and is scientifically useless. Political alignment and expedience seems to be the best explanation in this case, as it frankly seems to be for most of the views he has been caught defending.

He’s also into MRA stuff, backing up his arguments by pseudo-biology. Go figure.

Diagnosis: A good example of what happens when otherwise intelligent people start viewing reality as supervening on political expedience. Zealous denialist, and dangerous.

#1534: James DeMeo

James DeMeo is the director of the Orgone Biophysical Research Lab. Yes, orgone, the imaginary, vitalistic “life positive” (think the Force) energy ultracrackpot Wilhelm Reich claimed to have discovered in the 30s and which would promptly herald the New Age and a Cure for All Diseases and so on and so forth. And then you know that what kind of “research” they are doing at the “lab”.

Of course, the name may sound legit to people who are scientifically illiterate, and one of DeMeo’s main moments in the sun occurred when he appeared on scientifically anti-literate senator James Inhofe’s list of scientists who allegedly dispute global warming. Well, DeMeo does in fact, as opposed to many of the entries on Inhofe’s list, deny the mainstream explanation of global warming. Instead, DeMeo claims that prana orgone energy is the cause.

So, orgone energy is the real explanation for global warming: “However, cloudbusting [oh, yes – it can drive away aliens, too] is definitely not ‘magic’, but a combination of both natural science and empirical art [don’t know, but suspect it means, precisely, magic], requiring the practitioner to know much about modern science, climate and technical matters. They must also have the capacity to feel the atmospheric orgone energy via organ sensations, and to see the expressive language of the living which appears across the whole of Nature, if one knows what to look for, and has the eyes to see [yes, in order to verify the existence of orgone energy, you have to believe it is there; how convenient]. It helps us to understand previously inexplicable things such as the relationship between desert-spreading and the subsequent appearance of droughts and heatwaves, both of which fuel the misunderstood ‘global warming’ and ‘El Nino’ effects, which in fact are regional in nature, and always connected with outbreaks of expanding Saharasian desert atmospheres.”

DeMeo is also a signatory to this list of HIV/AIDS “rethinkers”.

He is also the author (with one Steve Taylor) of the long pseudoscientific rant The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of A New Era. The main claim of that book is that “[i]t is not natural for human beings to kill each other, for men to oppress women, for individuals to accumulate massive wealth and power, or to abuse nature,” but that human nature changed after a period of intense aridification 5900 years ago (so it is natural, then … oh, never mind). Contrary to what they claim there is of course scant scientific basis for their New Ageish, lengthy fallacious appeal to nature, and knowing DeMeo’s background may be helpful in understanding how he and Taylor deals with scientific data. DeMeo nevertheless has few qualms about claiming that his Saharasia (a follow-up of the book, it seems) “is the largest and most in-depth scholarly study on human behavior and social violence around the world which has ever been undertaken.” Wilhelm Reich himself was a Freudian Marxist who believed that the lack of good orgasms was what kept the working classes from realizing their political potential, and DeMeo’s story of violence contains some disconcerting fascinating observations about the connection between “sex-repression” and warfare.

Diagnosis: Zealous pseudoscientist and crackpot. At present, he has clearly joined the striking-webdesign-with-odd-color-and-font-combinations group of crackpots and will hardly exert influence on anyone not already lost to reason, sanity and reality – but that group evidently also includes certain US senators, so we can’t completely write DeMeo off as completely harmless.

#1533: Dan Delzell

Dan Delzell is pastor of Wellspring Lutheran Church in Papillion, Nebraska, and a regular contributor to The Christian Post, which he uses to share his delusional bigotry and lunatic fundie ravings (this one is typical) with the rest of us. Delzell is an uncompromising anti-gay activist, and, as so many others anti-gay activists, imagines his ways to moronic reasons for why sexual “immorality” in general, and homosexuality in particular, should be combatted. For instance, according to Delzell “the strong correlation between overspending and sexual immorality is beyond dispute”. It’s also incorrect, of course, but that’s not really what makes it indisputable to Delzell. Instead, he justifies the existence not only of a correlation but a causal relationship by invoking the Biblical parable of the prodigal son: “The prodigal son had it good at home. But he wanted more, and he wanted it immediately. His lust for money was fueled by his lust for sensual pleasure, and ‘vice’ versa.” So there you go. And given the quality of the reasoning, I conjecture that there is plenty little those of us who disagree can say to convince those who actually accept that argument.

Following the NAACP’s endorsement of marriage equality, Delzell was one of many who reacted negatively, pointing out that “homosexual acts become like a drug for those who give into this dangerous temptation” and that MLK probably didn’t dream of “little black boys and little white boys” marrying each other, and therefore that Obama is subverting what MLK fought for and is thus anti-Christian.

To get a better grasp of how Delzell views the world, this one is illuminating. Here he laments how Christianity has faded from public discourse (huh) and points out that true Christians should fight to get it back there, where it belongs. You see, according to Delzell you’re either influenced by Jesus or Satan – there’s no third option – so the fact that there are people in the US concerned with other things than (his interpretation of) the Bible is proof that Satan is becoming the dominant force over the majority of the population. And “Satan hates marriage between a man and a woman” … So there you have it: Either you support marriage equality, civil rights and the Constitution, in which case you’re a Muslim atheist, or you’re with Jesus.

Take science, for instance. According to Delzell, the world is currently the battlefield of two “kings”, “King Science” and “King Jesus”, and that’s why many people just accept science and denies the evidence for God (of which he mentions nothing). He doesn’t say it explicitly, but you all know who “King Science” is, don’t you? Apparently, Obama has been ensnared by the dark side: “[I]t is ironic, and yes even tragic, that President Obama would choose to light the White House with a rainbow after the recent Supreme Court decision. It was his loud and proud way of celebrating the sin of same-sex marriage. Obviously, the president doesn’t seem to believe that the Old Testament stories of Noah’s Ark and Sodom and Gomorrah were actual events in history.”

Yes, Satan is everywhere. In a 2013 column Delzell was scared by a British magician who performed a levitation trick, whom Delzell thinks was actually levitating, with the help of demons: “Personally, I think it was legit. I believe this was a paranormal event and an authentic example of levitation. But it’s not like this sort of thing is completely unheard of today.” Kids today! Witchcraft and Harry Potter and rock’n-roll are a very dangerous combo.

Diagnosis: Yes, to Delzell the world really is simple, and everything really is black and white. Either you’re a commie, liberal, Muslim atheist, science-worshipping, gay loving anti-Christian – it’s all Satan’s work – or you’re with Jesus. The choice is yours, and it’s a package deal.