Friday, February 14, 2025

#2862: Gary Franchi

It has long been a delusion among particularly paranoid conspiracy theorists that FEMA is constructing or on the verge of constructing a set of concentration camps – potentially death camps – to facilitate a mass internment of good patriots, Christians or whatever group the particular conspiracy theorist promoting the conspiracy theory feel that they belong to, in preparation for some (always immanent) government declaration of martial law.

 

Gary Franchi began his rise to fame in conspiracy circles as a leading promoter of the idea. In 2009, for instance, he produced the video Camp FEMA: American Lockdown, arguing precisely that FEMA – a notoriously bureaucratic and chaotic government institution completely unsuited for secretive conspiracies – is building such camps to house political dissenters. The camps are located “on existing military bases now,” said Franchi – adding that “it’s not a big secret” (it is, in fact, not a big secret, but not for the reason Franchi thinks) – but that FEMA was ready to utilize other structures as well, including airport hangars and vacant office buildings; even “[y]our local church may have already signed a deal with the devil.” And then, of course, his rhetoric turned ominous: “If you believe in the 2nd amendment, if you believe in the right to self-defense, then perhaps you will have a different decision to make than the person that will let them kick your door in and drag you out.”

 

Franchi was at that point (and probably still is) national director of RestoreTheRepublic.com, a group (website) dedicated to eliminating the Federal Reserve and the IRS, to making it illegal to implant microchips in people, and ro end globalization since globalization is a means to a one-world government. He also ran the Patriot social networking site RestoreTheRepublic.net and appeared as a host of the ‘Reality Report’ on Freedom.TV and as editor of Republic Magazine, and was a mainstay at various Patriot conferences where he would lay out his conspiracy theories about global elites: “There is a global elite structure of bankers and organizations that are pulling the strings of the parties, pulling the strings of the president, the speaker of the House,” contended Franchi.

 

In the 2010s, Franchi’s media conglomerate evolved into the Next News Network (NNN), an infamous online operation “that recycles stories harvested from far-right publications, fake news sites and Russian media outlets” particularly targeted at exploiting youtube’s algorithms to generate as many views as possible. Prior to the 2016 election, for instance, YouTube’s algorithms “consistently amplified” the NNN’s anti-Clinton conspiracy videos, and in the 2020s, NNN’s COVID-19 conspiracy videos racked up more than a billion views – despite YouTube’s promise to crack down on COVID-19 misinformation. Indeed, YouTube instead gave Franchi a gold “creator Award”. As for the 2016 election videos, the top-performing NNN video was apparently one claiming that Bill Clinton raped a 13-year-old (Franchi is more or less open about the claim being simply made up out of thin air); data show that three quarters of the traffic to such videos were due to YouTube recommendations – external traffic accounted for almost nothing.

 

As for COVID, NNN produced much-viewed videos covering the whole gamut of conspiracy theories (with no apparent regard even for coherence), claiming that COVID is a “false flag” to force mandatory vaccines and microchips on people and that Bill Gates and 5G cell phone towers were somehow involved – indeed, NNN was to a large extent responsible for popularizing such conspiracy theories among paranoid, reason-challenged low-information groups. Their video “EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Rashid Buttar BLASTS Gates, Fauci, EXPOSES Fake Pandemic Numbers As Economy Collapses”, featuring discredited osteopath and hysterically deranged conspiracy theorist Rashid Buttar, received nearly 7 million views and 1.2 million Facebook engagements before being taken down. In the video, Buttar claimed that Anthony Fauci had the COVID-19 virus created in a North Carolina lab before outsourcing it to China in a deliberate attempt to cause a pandemic for not-entirely-coherently-explained purposes but also that not a single death had actually been demonstrated to be caused by the COVID-19 virus – the plan, of course, was to use an entirely benign virus to introduce vaccines that would then kill everyone, in line with Bill Gates’s depopulation agendathat the activity at hospitals was all fake, that hydroxychloroquine had “at least 99% efficacy” in treating COVID-19, and that 5G and chemtrails were involved; Franchi himself concluded that Buttar had showed (Franchi doesn’t distinguish showed from claimed without justification whatsoever) that there is fraud “being perpetuated across the world by the World Health Organization, the CDC, Bill Gates, the deep state, the mainstream media”.

 

The audiences for NNN’s massive promotion of evertyhing conspiracy include people like the 87th United States attorney general Attorney General Pam Bondi and Rudy Giuliani, and it has proved to be a threat to civilization also far beyond the US.

 

Diagnosis: Although it would be natural to suspect Franchi of being merely a scrupulous entrepeneur, evidence shows that Franchi has been a deranged conspiracy theorist from the start. Whatever the case may be, as one of the most influential producers and promoters of fake news and misinformation in the US, Franchi is a major threat to civilization.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

#2861: Michael W. Fox

Few scientific conclusion are better established, despite protestations from loons and conspiracy theorists, than the conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. The Washington Post’s veterinary advice “Animal Doctor” columnist and former vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, Michael W. Fox, is, however, one of those loons and conspiracy theorists who disagree. Indeed, not only does Fox believe, contrary to all evidence, that there is a connection between vaccines and autoimmune diseases and that the medical establishment is in a conspiracy to deny it and discount antivaccine rants and anecdotes suggesting a different opinion: Fox also believes that vaccines cause autism in animals – that, at least, is the delusional idea espoused in his 2016 Local Living column When cats are very needy, they often knead a lot, where he also promote the silly book Vaccines and Autoimmunity compiled by familiar anti-vaccine stalwarts like Yehuda Shoenfield and Lucija Tomljenovic.

 

Now, Fox is in fact one of several sources for the notion that pets can get “autism”, an idea that has apparently become popular among some groups (no serious science suggests quite that). But Fox’s championship of the idea should probably be seen in light of his having built a significant part of his career on producing eccentric papers on attempts to apply pop-psychology and Freudian concepts to pets, e.g. a paper on the ‘evidence’ of the Oedipus complex in dogs, and similarly eccentric columns for the Washington Post on e.g. post-traumatic stress disorders in cats and obsessive-compulsive disorders and panic attacks in dogs, and so on. It’s all gibberish, but it makes his current notability as a leading advocate for anti-vaccine nonsense to pet owners not entirely surprising.

 

Now, Fox may, in fact, be British, but given his stint as vice president of the Humane Society of the United States (and because we didn’t discover his nationality until writing this post), we’ll grandfather him in here.

 

Diagnosis: Do not listen to this delusional lunatic about anything. Keep a safe distance, and make sure to keep your pets at a safe distance, too.

Monday, February 10, 2025

#2860: Megan Fox (II)

Megan Fox is an actress who has made several stalwart efforts to confirm the myth that people with marketable looks are empty-headed morons. In particular, Fox produced and starred in her own show Mysteries and Myths with Megan Fox for the fake news and conspiracy theory outlet The Travel Channel, the purpose being to try to argue, by omission, misunderstanding and misrepresentation, how archaeologists are in a conspiracy to hide ‘the truth’ about history from all of us. (“History only gives us a one-sided view of the truth,” says Fox.)

 

And Fox is, as she sees herself, supremely well-positioned to take on such a task: having no background in, interest in, or understanding of the processes or role of evidence in disciplines such as history and archaeology: “I haven't spent my entire life building a career in academia so I don't have to worry about my reputation or being rebuked by my colleagues, which allows me to push back on the status quo. So much of our history needs to be re-examined.” I.e., her lack of understanding, knowledge or background makes her more qualified than the experts. In fact, Fox’s credentials stem not only from her lack of background in archaeology or history: Fox “just hated school, period. I wasn’t interested and I wasn’t getting anything from it. I’ve never been a big believer in formal education,” she says, and “to get caught up in something that you don’t feel totally right about or that doesn’t make sense to you is a really, really bad idea.” Her status as a maverick outsider – a veritable Galileo, even – should in other words be ensured. (It does admittedly seem correct that she didn’t get anything from her stints in formal education and that the contents didn’t make sense to her.) And though she doesn’t fancy ‘formal education’, she has ostensibly been long obsessed with “the history of ancient cultures, people and places, always questioning their ‘documented’ story,” according to a Travel Channel spokesperson, and she is a great fan of shows like Ancient Aliens.

 

The series, “an epic and personal journey across the globe” that will challenge “the conventional wisdom that has existed for centuries”, was apparently set to delve into silly and nonsensical questions like “whether Amazon women really existed or if the Trojan War was real” – the target audience presumably being in particular people who would assume that the fact that her journey was “personal” adds credibility to whatever nonsense Fox comes up with.

 

We admit that we cannot be bothered to watch the results – they seem, based on reports from people who actually bothered to watch them, to have been rather blander than they were initially supposed to be, but still full of misinformation, nonsense and desperate attempts to portray well-established facts as somehow novel and game-changing.

 

Diagnosis: Being uninformed and a know-nothing doesn’t make you a loon. But when you add in some self-delusion and delusions of grandeur, like the idea that you nevertheless (or, in this case, because of your status as uninformed) have anything to contribute are in a special position to reject the claims and views of those who really do know something, things change. And Megan Fox certainly combines her complete lack of insight or understanding with serious confidence in the value of her perspectives on issues.

 

Hat-tip: Sciencealert

Friday, February 7, 2025

#2859: Megan Fox (I)

No, not the actress – she’s up next – but yet another dense fundamentalist and creationist. This Megan Fox is (or at least used to be back in 2015) “a homeschooling, Tea Partying, conservative mother of two (with another on the way!) out and about in the suburbs who is also a popular columnist for PJ Media.”

 

A fine illustration of the kind of person we’re dealing with is the video she made of her visit to the ‘Evolving Earth’ exhibit at the Chicago Field Museum in 2015 and her interpretation of the exhibit as a showcase for the silliness of evolutionary biology and of how stupid the scientists are (indeed, Fox is a self-proclaimed specialist in “exposing” liberals and scientists – apparently, scientists and liberals are much the same thing): For instance, at the start of the exhibit, Fox reads a panel saying “At first, all eukaryotes were single-celled, and many still are today”, to which her response is “this makes no sense. No sense” (she hasn’t heard the term ‘eukaryote’ before); then she reads a panel reading “every organism, living and extinct, that is not single celled – including you – is made up of eukaryotic cells”, which she thinks is scientists admitting that evolution doesn’t happen: “doesn’t that suggest that every thing was made up of eukaryotic cells in the beginning, that they weren’t something else that became eukaryotic cells, that they were always and have been eukaryotic cells?” (Hint: no, it doesn’t suggest that). So when the panels start talking about things like mitochondria and evolution, Fox can immediately point out that “None of this makes any sense. It doesn’t make sense to a 5th grader, it doesn’t make sense to a 3rd grader, it doesn’t make sense to a 30 year old. None of this makes any sense.Therefore evolution is bunk – i.e., since Fox doesn’t know basic biology and hasn’t heard about most of the stuff biologists are doing, the scientists are, just like her, confused and evolution is false: “This is not good thinking. This is muddled thinking. This is thinking from like Darwin’s thinking from a hundred years ago, and we should know better by now.” She does think, however, that “Darwin once said that if the single cell is more complex than I think it is, then all of my theories … I’m going to have to start all over again,” which is … not remotely a Darwin quote but a misunderstanding of a common creationist misunderstanding of Darwin. And to a panel dating the evolution of land plants, her response is, predictably, “sounds dumb. How do you know this? It’s just a fairy tale. It’s all a guess. No one knows. It’s all an opinion. Did they have a video camera then? Show me the video. There are no transitional forms. They made it all up.” Yes, it’s a familiar pattern: Fox is ignorant and stupid, and being confronted by facts and things she doesn’t know makes her angry, therefore all the things beyond her grasp is all bollocks and lies. But there is a teaching moment here: You see, reasonable people would use an exhibition like this to try to learn something; not creationists like Fox, though.

 

Fox’s own conclusion from the trip was that she “found many examples of inconsistencies” (i.e. things she thought were “dumb” – she is unclear about what ‘inconsistency’ means), and she accused the Field Museum of pushing “certain theories as if they are absolute proven law when that is not how the scientific method works” (no, she doesn’t grasp the difference between theories and laws – what did you expect?). Indeed, she “found enough bias” toward facts and evidence (not her words) to conclude that “the Field Museum pushed an agenda with quasi-religious overtones: the cult of ‘science’ where the ‘scientists’ are more like high priests pushing a religion instead of using the correct scientific method.” There is a decent response to Fox’s confusions here.

 

She later had a somewhat similar quarrel with the local library, which aroused her ire because it provided open internet access to the public, which could be used to watch porn! (She was also furious because they wouldn’t let her use the computers reserved for children in the children’s section, because they made her fill out a form to get a library card, and because the librarian was helpful and helped her get online since him being helpful to her suggests he would also be helpful to pedophiles). That quarrel ultimately landed her in court after an intense period of stalking and harassing librarians (including taking photos of their homes and falsely accusing them of drunkenness), filing hundreds of FOIA requests (with Kevin DuJan and dozens of moronic complaints with the Illinois attorney general, and disturbing library board meetings. She and DuJan published their account of the events in a book, Shut Up!: The Bizarre War that One Public Library Waged Against the First Amendment.

 

Thing is, though: Megan Fox isn’t just a local moron. She has written for David Horowitz at FrontPage Magazine and NewsRealBlog, and extensively for PJ Media. She is also a podcast host for The Fringe. In other words, she seems to have readers and listeners who consume her nonsense and nod in agreement with what she says! Flabbergasting.

 

Diagnosis: Megan Fox is stupid and ignorant, and her ignorance is a militant kind of ignorance: if she doesn’t know, then no one does, and any information about a topic she doesn’t know must be false. She is also quite clearly (and at least partially as a result of her ignorance) a weapons-grade asshole. That she also homeschools kids is a tragedy.

 

Hat-tip: Pharyngula

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

#2858: Judith Fouladbakhsh

Integrative oncology attempts to integrate pseudoscience, woo and pseudo-religious quackery with science-based oncology on the false premise that integrating bullshit with reality-based measures will improve the outcome for patients and the true premise that such integration might be financially lucrative. An important component in marketing such efforts is to recategorize science-based techniques, such as diet and exercise, as “alternative” to justify the conclusion that “alternative” treatments work and then use that conclusion to market pure bullshit such as reiki or TCM. Another important marketing component is pointing to the opioid crisis and concluding that we need alternative treatments of pain, neglecting to mention that the alternatives suggested don’t do shit for pain. Though it is dishonest, the marketing is effective, and centers that offer “integrative” treatments to patients and courses designed to indoctrinate healthcare practitioners have popped up all over the place.

 

The Integrative Oncology Program, for instance, was one such effort, funded by a National Cancer Institute R25 grant and designed to offer training of healthcare personnel through an online eLearning component and in-person sessions at the University of Michigan. And yes, it would promote homeopathy, as well as Ayurvedic medicine, naturopathy in general and high-dose Vitamin C. And it would be promoted precisely in the way proponents of integrative oncology usually do it: Co-opt some science-based diet and lifestyle modalities (diet, exercise), and use them as cover for the quackery.

 

Judith Fouladbakhsh was one of the instructors affiliated with the program, and an entirely typical specimen. Fouladbakhsh is an advanced practice nurse and Associate Professor at Oakland University, but she also holds “advanced clinical practice certifications” [certified by whom?] “in Community Health and Holistic Nursing, Healing Touch, Reflexology and Reiki” (i.e. various variants of energy medicine). She is apparently also faculty member at the Beaumont Health System School of Yoga Therapy and can report “extensive experience in complementary and alternative (traditional) medicine, integrative oncology, pain management, public health and cancer nursing”. (Her actual research, however, consists of things like investigating “effects of yoga on breathing, mood, sleep and QOL of lung cancer patients”, which can’t really be deemed obviously “alternative”). Fouladbakhsh is also on the board of trustees of the Society for Integrative Ontology (SIO) and, apparently, developer of the CAM Healthcare Model©. She is also coauthor (with e.g. Lorenzo Cohen, Dugald Seely and naturopath Heather Greenlee) of the miserable failure of a wishwashy, market-jargon-laden infomercial that is the SIO updated clinical guidelines for breast cancer care, which was somehow endorsed by the American Society of Clinical Oncology but which strikingly, and predictably, neglects to try to explain what integrative oncology even is (answer: it is a brand, not a medical specialty).

 

Diagnosis: One of a scary number of genuine medical providers who have conflated market-friendly with safe and efficacious … and that’s the most favorable attribution we could come up with. There are darker and scarier diagnoses that are probably correct, too.

 

Hat-tip: David Gorski @ sciencebased medicine

Monday, February 3, 2025

#2857: David Kyle Foster

It’s starting to get old, but David Kyle Foster is still around, so here we go: David Kyle Foster is an anti-gay activist who characterizes himself as “ex-gay” (he insists that he changed his own sexual orientation after “sleeping with 1,000 men”) and a champion of reparative therapy. He even made a movie, Such Were Some Of You, back in 2014 describing his delusions about stuff – in particular the temptations of the “homosexual lifestyle” – with backups from experts like Michael Brown and Anne Paulk, and which was featured e.g. on The 700 Club. In the movie, Foster warns that young people are especially vulnerable to such temptations because “Satan is in their little minds, planting all sorts of doubts and fears,” and that schools are under the sway of dark forces pushing the gay agenda through manipulative messages of LGBT acceptance, which, according to Foster, is “child abuse as far as I’m concerned”. He also has some notably weird views about what is actually being taught in elementary schools around the country.

 

Foster has also warned about the danger of divine punishment for gay rights; according to Foster, sexual immorality” such as homosexuality amounts to “idolatry” because it involves “worshipping the creature rather than the creator.”

 

Foster must have been ex-gay for a while, insofar as he founded his Mastering Life Ministries back in 1987. He is also producer and co-host (with one Jayson Graves) of “Pure Passion”, a “televised outreach designed to equip the church to redemptively minister to those who are trapped in sexual sin and brokenness”. You can read more about that one if you wish here. DK Foster is however probably not identical to the David Foster who ran as an independent candidate in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District in 2022 on the platformTRAITORS PEDOPHILES TO THE GALLOS...ANY QANON QUESTIONS????

 

Diagnosis: We’re hopefully mostly done with David Kyle Foster’s brand of dingbat bigotry and delusions, but who knows what the conspiracy and religious fundie fraction of the MAGA cult may end up resurrecting?

Thursday, January 30, 2025

#2856: Bill Foster

David William “Bill” Foster is an attorney and former mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, from 2010 to 2014. Foster is also a creationist. Indeed, Foster has explicitly endorsed the young-earth creationist tenet that the world was literally created in six days and that dinosaurs and humans co-existed (“dinosaurs are mentioned in Job so I don’t have any problem believing that dinosaurs roamed the earth,” says Foster, referring to a passing reference to the “behemoth” in the Bible), and he was prior to being sworn in as mayor of St. Petersburg on record heckling and complaining to school officials when his own children were exposed to facts and science incompatible with his delusions in school.

 

Indeed, Foster once wrote a letter to the Pinellas County School Board regarding their teaching of evolution, claiming, without basis in history and completely irrelevant to its scientific status, that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution helped Adolf Hitler rise to power in Nazi Germany, and also blamed the teaching of evolution for the Columbine massacre – a standard claim in Discovery Institute rants after having been promoted by Tom DeLay) – citing (of course) his spectacular failure to grasp the is–ought distinction: [e]volution gives our kids an excuse to believe in natural selection and survival of the fittest, which leads to a belief that they are superior over the weak,” said Foster.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, even people in Florida’s Bible arc voted him out after one period, and he doesn’t seem to have enjoyed any significant political career since 2014. Still.

Monday, January 27, 2025

#2855: Francine Fosdick

It’s not like there is a shortage of hysterical fanatics in the US to cover, but Francine Fosdick (and her husband) Allen manage to stand out a bit in terms of sheer lunacy and small-minded, degenerate wickedness. The Fosdicks, self-declared healers and prophets, are the founders of People of Prophetic Power Ministries in Gettysburg, and also host a radio program called Up Front in the Prophetic, ostensibly devoted to bring truth and solid biblical answers to the issues of our day.” They also claim to have  Jesus as their model and a servant’s heart,” which is a spectacular failure of self-awareness and really indicative of how far off the mark their views on how reality hangs together tend to be.

 

What is most notable, however, is that the Fosdicks have become a pair of unofficial leaders of the effort to synthesize dominionist religious fundamentalism and QAnon conspiracy theories: Their radio program has served as something of a cornucopia of conspiracy theories, and the Fosdicks – Francine, in particular – is currently a major figure in the QAnon movement. On their program, the Fosdicks have for instance claimed that then-President Joe Biden was executed and replaced by a masked imposter (based on the fact that some photos of him at a beach don’t match some – explicitly – fake images created by The Onion), and Francine Fosdick has hosted a call to pray for the exposure of former President Barack Obama’s supposed involvement in child trafficking and for the uncovering the “true identity” of Michelle Obama as a man. For some further examples:

 

-       Here is Bishop Larry Gaiters asserting, on the Fosdicks’ show, that the deaths of Joe Biden’s wife and daughter in 1972 and the death of his son Beau in 2015 were a “satanic sacrifice” to boost Biden’s political career.

-       Here is Francine Fosdick warning us that infrared thermometers are a tool for mind control and possibly the Mark of the Beast.

-       In 2022, the Fosdicks spent quite a bit of effort promoting a pillow supposedly “infused with silver technology” (whatever that is) that could ostensibly protect users’ brains from electromagnetic fields.

-       Here is Francine Fosdick once again having a conversation about whether Joe Biden has been replaced by a clone, this time with Trump lawyer Christina Bobb.

-       Here is Mark Burns declaring that Rep. Maxine Waters is “activating Satan’s pastors” to attack (then-)President Trump.

-       And here is Fosdick and the late former actress and QAnon champion Cirsten Weldon talking about how Hillary Clinton died in 2020 of kuru, a brain-wasting disease associated with cannibalism.

 

You get the drift.

 

In 2022, it was the Fosdicks who arranged the major, two-day QAnon conference Patriots Arise, which was attended by a number of candidates for office such as Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano, lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania candidate Teddy Daniels, state Senate of Maryland candidate Rick Bowers, and Maryland governor candidate Dan Cox, as well as neo-Confederate attorney general in Maryland candidate Michael Peroutka; their speaker lineup included Jenna Ellis, Scott ‘Patriot Streetfighter’ McKay (who, as usual, threatened to kill those he believes to be responsible for “child satanic trafficking and abuse of children” – i.e. everyone he disagrees with on politics), Elizabeth Eads (arguing that vaccines are “all part of turning you into an AI transhuman”), Shane Vaughn, and Trump spokesperson Liz Harrison. Francine Fosdick launched the whole event with a 6-minute promo video managing to cram in an impressive amount of QAnon imagery, symbolism and code words; later in the event, she had a sit-down with fellow QAnon conspiracy theorist Sheila Holm to discuss how the government worships Lucifer and is controlled by “The Order of Paladin,” “The Wiccan Order of Knighthood” and the New World Order. The conference ended with the Fosdicks presenting Doug Mastriano with a “Sword of David” because, as they put it, “you are fighting for our religious rights in Christ Jesus.”

 

As what might, in this context, appear as something of an afterthought, Francine Fosdick has weighed in on Covid vaccines, too. As Fosdick, true to form, sees it, COVID-19 vaccines are turning people into “zombies” and “AI fighting machines”; indeed, “those that took this shot are unfortunately no longer human.” Here is Fosdick insisting, in an attempt to straighten out some obvious sources of cognitive dissonance, that Donald Trump and Melania, despite their own claims to the contrary, never took the COVID-19 vaccine: “They never got the shot ... Come on, they’re not that stupid.”

 

Diagnosis: Good grief. The fact remains, however, that the Fosdicks wield some real and serious influence in rightwing circles.

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

#2854: Mario Fontes

Mario Fontes is a member of the State of Arizona Acupuncture Board of Examiners and clinic director of Natural Medicine & Detox in Phoenix, which offers a board-approved chemical dependency program. Fontes is, as his profession and position might indicate, somewhat famous for his defense of acupuncture, including auricular acupuncture. Now, acupuncture is theatrical placebo, but Fontes believes otherwise, and will quickly dismiss his critics as pathological naysayers: Anytime there’s something that’s not mainstream, eventually, it becomes integrated, and there’s always going to be the people opposed to that.” And also: why should critics even care? “The people who want our help, we’re here for. The people who don’t, that’s OK.” As for efficacy, Fontes claims – falsely, as it turns out, in addition to irrelevantly – that acupuncture has been practiced for millenia; he also, like many defenders of acupuncture, like to point to troubles in conventional medicine, such as antibiotics resistance, which are of course irrelevant to the question of whether his favored woo actually works – indeed, the State of Arizona Acupuncture Board of Examiners have taken it upon themselves to combat the opioid crisis by approving chemical dependency programs for auricular acupuncture (i.e. Fontes’s own venture), predictably focusing on emphasizing that ‘opioids are bad’ and systematically neglecting the question of whether auricular acupuncture works, which it doesn’t . Then Fontes challenges the establishment: “It’s the predominant belief that the true path to health is drugs, radiation and surgery,” says Fontes, answering that “I just don’t believe that,” since who would have the audacity to challenge a sincerely held belief? (And yes, he argues both that acupuncture is mainstream and a minority of skeptics should be dismissed, and that he is a brave maverick doctor taking on the establishment; we suppose you’re not supposed to notice the tension.)

 

Now, Fontes’s interest in alternative medicine isn’t limited to acupuncture. Indeed, his interest in alternative medicine “began with homeopathy, and later he expanded into acupuncture.” Oh, yes. Fontes is a “clinical instructor” at the American Medical College of Homeopathy and the Phoenix Institute of Herbal Medicine and Acupuncture, where he will tell customers about how the energetics of acupuncture can be applied to the “energetics” of homeopathy and how homeopathy is safer even than herbal medicine, which is probably correct since homeopathic remedies are just water and herbal remedies may contain powerful chemicals in unknown dosages and combinations (they’re natural, after all). His center also offers – among a slew of other nonsense treatments – colon hydrotherapy, detox foot baths, “nutritional IVs”, and chelation therapy.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, more of the same, and we wish we could say ‘just stay away’, but the Arizona Acupuncture Board of Examiners might actually have some sway over policy decisions and resource allocations, so things might end badly no matter what.

 

Hat-tip: Sciencebased Medicine

Friday, January 17, 2025

#2853: Bruce Fong

Bruce Fong is an insane quack and the medical director of the Sierra Integrative Medical Center in Reno, Nevada, most famous for being the guy who administered nonsense treatments to Chuck Norris’s wife Gena when she and Chuck convinced themselves that she suffered from gadolinum poisoning – gadolinum being a contrast agent commonly used for MRI scans that has in recent years been championed, contrary to available evidence, as a cause of a slew of vague and unspecific symptoms that has given rise to a whole cottage industry of alternative providers (quacks) who advertise and claim to treat it by various nonsense detoxification treatments, acupuncture, hyperbaric oxygen chambers and whatever the individual quack decides is most convenient or profitable (medically, the choice of treatment probably doesn’t matter since none of them are likely to work even if gadolinum toxicity were a correct diagnosis, which is at best unclear (and vastly unlikely) given that the diagnostic tests are garbage).

 

Bruce Fong, however, is the kind of person who is willing to diagnose you, treat you and bill you for whatever you think (or he can entice you into thinking) you suffer from, regardless of whether you actually suffer from it or whether his treatments have the faintest chance of addressing it even if you did – even the Norrises emphasize that he “quickly was able to confirm our theory”, because of course he was. According to his bio, Fong was “introduced to natural medicine and homeopathic medicine as a young child and continues with that tradition today”, specializing in “immune related diseases, including special treatment plans which combine the best options from a broad array of homeopathic, internal, Chinese and traditional medicine”. Indeed, he is, according to himself, “focused on solving root causes, not treating symptoms or masking issues falsely with compounded prescriptions”. Yes, he’s a quack, and he offers the whole gamut of quackery, from chelation therapy and homeopathy to lymphatic massage and detox” footbaths. (The Norrises, by the way, also employed the services of one Alfred Johnson, another quack who promotes e.g. homeopathy and breast thermography).

 

And the Sierra Integrative Medical Center is not a place to seek out if you are actually suffering from anything. Note for instance how they approach patients with MS: “[p]atients at SIMC, even those with the same ‘diagnoses’ are treated differently. For example, a patient may have a ‘diagnosis’ of Multiple Sclerosis. The cause(s) of this disease can vary from viral infections, bacterial infections, from hyper sensitivities to vaccinations, Toxoplasmosis or ParvoVirus from ones pets [nope] or even Lyme Disease from a tick bite.” Yes, their characterizations of the causes of MS are idiotically wrong, but note the quotation marks: The Sierra Institute doesn’t even really recognize the diagnosis! So much for ‘integrating’ conventional and pseudoscientific ideas about medicine – or for the willingness to identify root causes. Note, too, the reference to ‘vaccine hypersensitivity’: yes, the Sierra Center is anti-vaccine as well (and no: vaccines do not cause MS). And if someone claims your MS symptoms were the result of Lyme Disease, they would be talking about chronic Lyme disease, which is a fake diagnosis, but one for which quacks have developed a number of meaningless and fraudulent tests so it’s an easy scheme to make money off of if you have no concern for your victim’s well-being.

 

And to treat the conditions they identify Sierra offers treatment programs “assembled from various disciplines of the healing arts including but not limited to homeopathy, natural and biological medicines, behavioral medicine, nutritional therapies, orthomolecular integration and neurotherapy.” Yes, there are detox treatments and homeopathy. And what evidence does Sierra have to conclude that their nonsense works? Testimonials, of course. Hey, they even got Chuck Norris’s endorsement, and who wouldn’t take medical advice from Chuck Norris?

 

Diagnosis: Yes, we are sure that Fong genuinely thinks he helps. But at this level of insane quackery, stupidity is indistinguishable from malice. Bruce Fong is evil.

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

#2852: Allison Folmar

Allison Folmar, JD, is a Michigan-based lawyer who’s gained some notoriety – especially in antivaccine circles – for representing parents accused of medical neglect of their children. She is also a board member for Parental Rights, an organization that works to “preserve parental rights through a Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as through state and federal legislation that will protect children by empowering parents”, including health freedom and, of course, ‘vaccine freedom’ – indeed, their suggestion would (deliberately) make it almost impossible for states to protect children from medical abuse and neglect: children are, as the organization sees it, their parents’ property to do with as they see fit, regardless of the welfare of the child.

 

But if you wonder whether Folmar herself is antivaccine – she could after all just be deeply concerned with parents’ rights, couldn’t she? – she has also been an invited speaker at a number of anti-vaccine conferences, including the 2018 Vaccine Choice Empowerment Symposium and the 2015 issue of the autism quackfest known Autism One. At the latter, she even talked about one of her cases as involving a daughter having “exhibited autistic-like symptoms immediately after vaccinations”, and you get no points for guessing where that story would be going.

 

Folmar is apparently also a scientologist and has been caught pushing scientology’s views on psychiatry. As for the ParentalRights organization, its board consists of four people, three of whom we’ve already covered: William Estrada, Rick Green, Michael Farris, as well as one J. Michael Smith. Though health freedom seems to be part of it, their main goal is to promote home schooling and ensure that parents can prevent their children from being exposed to things like the theory of evolution or non-condemnatory information about women’s rights or homosexuality.

 

Diagnosis: Dangerous

Sunday, January 12, 2025

#2851: Susan Folkman

 

Susan Kleppner Folkman is an American psychologist, author, and emerita professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. She is – by far – most famous for her writings on psychological stress and coping, and we don’t pretend to have the expertise needed to evaluate those contributions. But Folkman has also, for a long time, been a major champion of medical woo and quackery. Folkman was the first full-time director of UCSF’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, which offers (among other things) acupuncture, herbal medicine, manual therapies and Ayurvedic medicine, and Osher Foundation Distinguished Professor of Integrative Medicine; and from 2006, she was the chair of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine and the North American Research Conference on Complementary and Integrative Medicine. She is, in other words, a major figure in the relentless effort to give woo and quackery a sheen of scientific and academic legitimacy without having the scientific grounding to justify that status.

 

Given her positions, Folkman was also selected to serve on an Institute of Medicine committee to identify major scientific and policy issues in “complementary and alternative medicine” research, regulation, training, credentialing and integration with conventional medicine in 2003, and she’s been a firm defender of, say, the practices of NCCAM, employing the standard misdirection techniques of CAM advocates of rebranding conventional therapies as somehow “alternative” (to make CAM seem more popular and legitimate than it in fact is), appealing to the popularity of CAM to justify spending money on it, and pointing out that although trials of CAM tend to be (when properly carried out) disappointing, that’s the situation with science-based medicine, too (i.e. neglecting the importance of starting with plausible hypotheses or the issue of how you adjust your confidence in the hypotheses when they don't pan out).

 

Diagnosis: A significant and powerful promoter of bullshit, and although we haven’t assessed her contributions to psychology on their own terms, her penchant for bullshit and garbage thinking on other issues might leave one wary of errors and blind spots there, too. That said, Folkman is fortunately retired and probably won’t do much more harm, at least not directly.