#2900: Rudy Giuliani

 

“Truth isn’t truth.”

-       Giuliani defending his client, Donald Trump, on NBC

 

“Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do”

-       Another brazen Giuliani attempt at Newspeak

 

Good grief! And yes, that could basically be the complete entry, but OK: Rudolph ‘Rudy’ Giuliani is the former Mayor of New York City, one-time World Trade Center Hero – few careers have gone more thoroughly and embarrassingly to shit than Giuliani’s – failed 2008 presidential candidate and recent Donald Trump sycophant, shill and indicted criminal. Now, Giuliani is indeed best known for his performances as a disgusting, ratfucking, groveling disease. That behavior, however, has been duly covered elsewhere (e.g. here ); we’ll skip it – and skip biography – and concern ourself with some of the stuff that qualifies Giuliani as a loon, and there’s plenty to choose from, such as:

 

Covid nonsense

Giuliani was a seminal promoter of Covid-19 conspiracy theories, starting with a 2020 Fox News interview where Giuliani happily (and coughingly) pushed denialism on the science on using facial masks. As a self-appointed science advisor to the president, Giuliani also tried to convince Trump about the alleged benefits of hydroxychloroquine, and promoted a range of quackery, including the use of “placenta killer cells” in a stem cell treatment as well as Didier Raoult’s quack cocktail (plus zinc), on his podcast and on social media.

 

Stop the Steal antics

Immediately in the wake of Biden’s 2020 victory, Giuliani arranged a press conference denying the results; the press conference was held at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping business site in an industrial area rather than at the location of the Four Seasons hotel chain, obviously because someone in Giuliani’s gaggle made a mistake – Giuliani, characteristically, vigorously denied that any mistake had been made and that the location was the plan all along. Trump promptly put Giuliani in charge of all election lawsuits speculating that massive fraud had taken place and that Trump himslf should be president, and Giuliani immediately went to work promoting demented conspiracy theories and wild accusations:

 

-       At a November 19 news conference, Giuliani baselessly presented a number of idiotic conspiracy theories, including a conspiracy theory that “votes (were) counted in Germany and in Spain by a company owned by affiliates of Chavez and Maduro” because Smarmatic, which produced voting machines for one single California county in the 2020 election, was founded by immigrants from Venezuela; also “Soros” – the conspiracy theory seemed, due to its incoherence and level of nonsense, ad-libbed, but it had in fact already been promoted by Giuliani’s associate Sidney Powell. (This was the infamous hair dye meltdown press conference).

-       On November 21, Giuliani showed up in a Pennsylvania courtroom to argue one of his ridiculous fraud lawsuits e.g. by citing an affidavit (from one Russell Ramsland) falsely claiming that several precincts in Michigan had over-votes (“of 150%, 200%, and 300%”) using data from Minnesota counties. The judge was not impressed.

-       Later, Giuliani tapped Mellissa Carone as a star witness at a Michigan House and Michigan Senate Oversight Committees panel concerning Trump’s fraud allegation. That’s a tale in itself.

-       On December 18, Giulani famously led a group of kooks (Powell, Michael Flynn, Patrick Byrne) to quarrel with White House lawyers and convince Trump that by various connivances the election could be overturned. They succeeded.

-       On January 6, 2021, Giuliani tried to rile crowds up by arguing that there should be a “trial by combat” to settle the election. Afterwards, he blamed the coup attempt on “fascists” in the “Democrat party”.

 

Giuliani was also, with the help of the Trump administration, the primary coordinator in the December 2020 campaign to steal the election by disrupting the Electoral College process: the scheme was to have illegitimate electors from seven battleground states that Biden won sign fake certificates falsely claiming that Trump was the victor, and then attempt to persuade governors to sign the bogus certificates, in order to put pressure on Vice President Pence to admit that no winner could be declared in these states due to the existence of the bogus certificates. The scheme was so obviously bullshit (and illegal) that even many of the appointed fake electors refused to go along.

 

It is worth mentioning, as the Dominion Voting System lawsuit against Giuliani does, that much of his antics also had a commercial side: After hitching his wagon to Trump’s, Giuliani has become a prominent product ‘influencer’, selling gold coins, silver, nutritional supplements, cigars, a “conservative alternative” to AARP, and protection from ‘cyber thieves’. Due to his multiple false statements about the 2020 election, however, he also had his license to practice law in NYsuspended and was ultimately (July 2, 2024) formally disbarred. At some point before Trump left the White House, Giuliani requested but was not granted a presidential pardon for unspecified criminal acts.

 

It is also notable that when Trump, Giuliani and others were indicted in August 2023 for involvement in a conspiracy to circumvent the democratic process in Georgia, Giuliani was charged with RICO offenses – mob laws he himself has spent decades claiming credit for. He didn’t particularly enjoy the irony. His antics in Georgia included bald-faced lying to the State Legislature in order to promote a conspiracy theory that accused two (named) poll workers of stuffing ballots from “suitcases” hidden under a table covered by a black cloth (a claim picked up by a number of fake news and conspiracy theory outlets, including Trump himself) and of hacking into Georgia’s voting machines while passing USB thumb drives between them “as if they’re vials of heroin and cocaine”. The incident didn’t turn out the way Giuliani had (presumably) hoped.

 

In April 2024, Giuliani was also indicted for his involvement in the conspiracy to circumvent the democratic process in Arizona, after having spent some time desperately trying to evade agents tasked with serving him the indictment.

 

Diagnosis: Maggot.

 

Hat-tip: Rationalwiki

#2899: Ann Louise Gittleman

A.k.a. the First Lady of Nutrition (self-proclaimed)

 

Before the Food Babe and a slew of other silly fad diet and nutritional pseudoscience promoters, there was Ann Louise Gittleman and a slew of other silly fad diet and nutrional pseudoscience pomoters (there’s lots and have been lots of them for a long time and they won’t go away anytime soon even if the cast changes). Now, Gittleman is a general promoter of various kinds of woo and quackery, but fad diets have been her mainstay, and she has written more than two dozen books recommending nonsense based on nonsense – the most influential of which being probably The Fat Flush Plan, which recommended a much-criticized “detox” and exercise program. Gittleman considers herself a ‘nutritionist’ and can boast a Ph.D. in holistic nutrition from Clayton College of Natural Health, an unaccredited and now defunct diploma mill – her degree is basically spam.

 

Gittleman apparently rose to general attention back in 1994 for her appearance in a campaign promoting Rejuvex, a quack dietary supplement for menopause symptoms that is not supported by scientific or clinical evidence. It was, however, her 2001 The Fat Flush Plan that really established her as a pseudoscience guru; the book was a New York Times best seller and landed her appearances on a variety of TV programs, such as 20/20, Dr. Phil, Good Morning America, and The Early Show. It is fraudulent garbage through and through, but its commercial success put Gittleman on her path, and loads of related nonsense followed in its wake.

 

Her 2010 book Zapped, for instance, tried to make a rather blunt case of alarm about electromagnetic radiation. It did so through frightening-sounding anecdotes about people who claim to find themselves battling unexplained ailments, some references to shoddy studies and pseudostudies, carefully avoiding mention of real science on the issues (which of course fails to support her case), and featuring the pronunciations of familiar pseudoscience promoters like George Carlo. Worst, as Gittleman sees it, is that “cell phone radiation has been associated with many types of cancer, the best known being brain tumors. The longer the hours of use, and years of use, the greater the risk,” a claim that is demonstratively false and, for someone who has written a book about it, tantamount to baldfaced lying. But she’s good at tapping into zeitgeist scares: “And a new condition is emerging in children called ‘digital dementia’  from overuse of RF-emitting technologies.” Even Gittleman has to admit that the condition is (always) ‘emerging’; digital dementia is not a real thing. Her claims about cell phones and radiation eventually got picked up by Goop, which is, we suppose, precisely where they belong.

 

Meanwhile, her otherwise fabulously nonsensical drivel book Get the Salt Out tried to distinguish good and bad salt, and even suggested a test: “Put the salt you now use to a test to determine its metabolic acceptability: add a spoonful to a glass of plain water, stir it several times, and let it stand overnight. If the salt collects in a thick layer on the bottom of the glass, your salt has failed the test: it is heavily processed and not very usable by the body. To give your body salt it can use, switch instead to an unrefined natural salt that will dissolve in a glass of water as well as in bodily fluids. This experiment gives you a visual example of what refined salt can do to your system: collect in body organs and clog up the circulatory system.” This is … incorrect; Gittleman evidently relies on her customers not actually performing the test.

 

More recently, Gittleman has tried to make a career on the bandwagon of altmed gurus claiming that we suffer from parasitic infections and that this is the cause of a lot of ailments and troubles. At the 2016 Microbiome Medicine Summit, for instance (a self-congratulatory quack orgy that had preciously little to do with medicine), she presented her findings in the talk Parasites May be the Hidden Cause of Your Health Issues, revealing for instance that although most real tests won’t usually detect said parasites, they’re nonetheless there (indeed you’ll most easily detect them yourself “4 days before and after a full moon”). But fret not! There is help to be found: If you visit her website, you can purchase “My Colon Cleansing Kit” – conveniently on sale at the time of the conference for just $96 (that’d be three jars of random herbs and probiotics). Does she have any evidence for any of her claims? Well – and this is really a fair illustration of how quacks work – according to her website, “a study in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene found that 32% of a nationally representative sample of the US population tested positive for parasites”. Now, she doesn’t name the study in question, but it’s this one. Does it say, as Gittleman reports, that 32% of a representative sample of Americans tested positive for parasites, you think? According to the study, 32% of sick patients referred to testing because their doctors suspected parasitic infections tested positive for parasitic infections. That’s … not quite how Gittleman frames it, is it?

 

Diagnosis: To be a bit melodramatic: Yes, a lot of Americans are suffering from parasitic infections: shitfuck parasites like Ann Louise Gittleman preying on people who are genuinely suffering to sell them lies, fear and useless and expensive treatments and products. Gittleman is corrupt through and through, and she probably doesn’t even know it herself.

#2898: David Gisselquist

David Gisselquist is a fundie, conspiracy theorist and HIV “dissident”. Gisselquist thinks that e.g. Africa’s AIDS epidemic is the result of HIV-contaminated medical practices – in particular contraception and vaccines – rather than primarily driven by sexual transmission, and has written a number of books (Points to Consider: Responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa, Asia,and the Caribbean) and papers arguing for this claim in a journal called the International Journal of STD and AIDS (the peer review practices of which are … unclear). Gisselquist has of course not done research of his own – he has a degree in economics – but rather selectively reviews past research that he thinks can be twisted into looking like it would support his dingbat denialist delusions.

 

Now, there are plenty of nonsense pseudoscientists out there with home-made theories designed to fit some ideologically motivated presupposition. They become dangerous when people start to listen. And people have listened to Gisselquist – even the World Health Organization (WHO) tied up valuable resources in a multinational investigation into Gisselquist’s claims, finding, of course, that Gisselquist’s ideas were nonsense from start to finish. Also The Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa had to spend limited resources to debunk Gisslequist’s drivel.

 

Despite being a kook, Gisselquist also for a while made it onto the list of reviewers for The Lancet, a position he preditably used to wreak as much havoc as possible on research (and the dissemination of research results) on HIV, e.g. by suppressing good research. It is notable also that distorted versions of scientific articles reviewed by Gisselquist ended up fundie conspiracy sites.

 

Diagnosis: Moronic conspiracy theorist on a crusade – like so many moronic conspiracy theorist – against not only facts but the people who rely on facts in their work. And as opposed to many such (individual) conspiracy theorists, Gisselquist has been causing actual, measurable harm.

 

Hat-tip: Seth Kalichman @ Denyingaids

#2897: Jimmy John Girouard, Cynthia Pitre, et al.

Colonic irrigation is quackery and has no place in prevention or treatment of any medical issue. And although the case of Jimmy John Girouard et al. is so old that we’re unsure what they’re up to these days or if they’re even around, colonic irrigation is still being offered as an altmed regime for people with genuine health problems, so we decided they deserve an entry nonetheless. Girouard, his business partner Alice Coudrain, and his company, Colon Therapeutics, built equipment for and pushed such treatments on victims through the Years to Your Life Health Centers (officially run by one Cynthia Pitre), despite FDA warnings, until the government took action back in 2003; it took at least one dead patient for them to do so.

 

The Years to Your Life Health Centers had until then advertised colonic irrigations as a “painless” procedure that would boost your immune system, increase energy and help with “indigestion, diarrhea, constipation, weight loss, body odor, candida, acne, mucus colitis, gas, food cravings, fatigue, obesity, diverticulosis, bad breath, parasitic infections, and premenstrual syndrome”; Cynthia Pitre even claimed that colonic irrigations were key to her successful battle with breast cancer.

 

Neither Girouard nor Coudrain had any medical training, of course, and Pitre received her certificate as a “certified instructor” (signed by Coudrain and Girouard) after a training course held in a trailer behind Girouard’s house, which of course failed to inform Pitre about the dangers associated with colonic irrigation (another Years to Your Life and later defendant, Candace L. Stowers, had similarly deficient training).

 

Diagnosis: Fraudulent, malicious and negligent shitfucks. And although this particular case is old, similar fraudulent, malicious and negligent shitfucks are running wild today and should be called out whenever and wherever they’re encountered.

#2896: Samuel Girod

Samuel A. Girod is a Kentucky-based Amish snakeoil salesman and convicted felon. Indeed, Girod is somewhat notable for being a classic snakeoil salesman – looks and all – of the kind parodied in old vaudeville shows in the early 20^th century. His product, a concoction of chemicals called “TO-MOR-GONE” was claimed, without a shred of evidence or substantiation, to cure skin disorders, sinus infections, and cancer, and turned out to be based on bloodroot extract, which makes it a relative of black salve and suchlike, and which is highly caustic, thoroughly dangerous and complete (and potentially fatal) nonsense as a health product.

 

When confronted by legal authorities, Girod, somewhat expectedly, went full sovereign citizen: “I am not a creation of state/government, as such I am not within its jurisdiction,” and “The proceedings of the ‘United States District Court’ cannot be applied within the jurisdiction of the ‘State of Kentucky’”. That argument didn’t exactly fly in court (Girod may for all we know be unaware that American history has dealt with such claims rather … decisively) and Girod ended up with a six-year sentence; it didn’t help that he also threatened witnesses. Predictably, the altmed community came out to support Girod, because “natural” and “health freedom”; his victims be damned. Girod himself later tried to capitalize on his story by shamelessly portraying himself as a victim in his book A Good Life Interrupted (blurb: “When Samuel Girod began selling Chickweed Healing Salve out of his kitchen with herbs grown in his garden and the surrounding fields, little did he know that the business he so loved, which he had literally built from the ground up, would catch the eye of the federal regulators who wanted him out of the way”)

 

Diagnosis: Dangerous and remorseless chiseler and grifter. Avoid at all costs.

 

Hat-tip: Steve Novella @ SciencebasedMedicine

#2895: Tim Gionet

A.k.a. Baked Alaska

A.k.a. Tim Treadstone

 

Anthime ‘Tim’ Gionet, popularly known as Baked Alaska, is an alt-right media personality, influencer, troll and promoter of neo-Nazi nonsense – including neo-Nazi slogans and photoshopped images of people he doesn’t like in gas chambers – and anti-semitic conspiracy theories. Although he has a long history of being banned from social media (from Twitter in 2017 for violating its hateful conduct policy, and from YouTube in 2020 for a video of him harassing store workers over a face mask requirement), Elon Musk reinstated his Twitter account in 2022 – it quickly got suspended again, though, prompting Gionet to assert that now he knows “what it’s like to go thru the holocaust”.

 

Gionet started his online career as a writer for BuzzFeed, and would early on trade in “parody” and “ironic” “jokes” with racist, conspiratorial and Nazi content; at some point, the ironic distance collapsed and Gionet underwent a process of radicalization culminating in his participation in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville – Gionet held a speaking slot – and, subsequently, the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. On social media, Gionet is best known for various gonzo stunts and delusional viral campaigns, but also famous for his often spectacular own goals (his livestreamed videos from January 6 were e.g. used by the FBI to identify other participants).

 

Gionet has views on Jewish people (“I was JQ’d long ago — pay attention!”). For instance, “Jews do control the news”, which is demonstrated by the fact that Gionet can’t spout anti-semitic conspiracy theories or call for genocide without someone criticizing him. Indeed, evidence of the Jewish conspiracy are everywhere: for instance, in 2016 “Trump got 304 electoral votes”, is the “45th President of the USA” and “saved 800 jobs from Carrier”, and “304 ✖️45➕800 = 14,880”, which “really makes you think” – 1488 is a number of apparent significance in neo-Nazi circles; and though it is not the most idiotic part of Gionet’s reasoning, it is worth pointing out, if you didn’t notice, that his math is wrong as well. And although Gionet is an ardent fan of Trump (Trump himself signed Gionet’s arm next to where he had Trump’s face tattooed), he isn’t necessarily a fan of all of Trump’s associates – he has for instance tweeted cartoonish images depicting Trump-associate and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who is Jewish, in a gas chamber.

 

Of course, Gionet has views on race issues in general, a mainstay being attempts to interpret anything having to do with the topic of racism as being an attempt to commit or justify “white genocide” and chanting things like “You will not replace us”, “White Lives Matter” and “I’m proud to be white” at various protests such as the Charlotteville Unite the Right rally. Following Roy Moore’s loss in 2017, Gionet urged white people to have more children and “form some sort of coalition” because white people are “the ones that are picking the right people” (the loss was apparently a “blacklash” against MAGA, and also “maybe women shouldn’t vote”). In 2018, he supported Paul Nehlen’s congressional campaign.

 

At the beginning of 2019, Gionet claimed to have changed his views and ways and tried to rebrand himself by condemning alt-right nonsense, but he quickly allowed himself to be sucked back in, professing his adherence to Groyper ‘ideology’ and posting videos of himself harassing bystanders and doing stupid stuff, ending in a new string of own-goals as well as an assault charge. Of course, his waffling has drawn some criticism from other wingnut groups; Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit, for instance, which has relentlessly pushed false flag conspiracy theories about the January 6 insurrection, accused Gionet of being an undercover federal agent at the event who deliberately sought to incite violence to frame Trump and his allies; Gionet, in turn, responded, predictably, by accusing Hoft of working for Biden and being a pedophile.

 

There’s a decent Tim Gionet resource here.

 

Diagnosis: A crazy, dysfunctional but apparently central node in the chaotic network of nonsense hate and conspiracy theories that is the current wingnut fringe. And though he is a champion of neo-Nazi conspiracy theores and white supremacy, the characterization by a former employer of his may be apt: “I don’t think Tim believes in anything. I think Tim just wants someone to love him.”

 

Hat-tip: Rationalwiki

#2894: Howard Gillman

Howard Aaron Gillman is an American scholar of political science and currently serving as the 6th chancellor of the University of California, Irvine since September 2014. Whatever else he might have done, in virtue of his position as chancellor, Gillman is formally responsible for the dismantling of reality- and science-based medicine at UC Irvine in favor of pseudoscience and quackery. His and Irvine’s motivation for the move from science to quackery was, of course, that quackery is where the money is – in particular, Irvine and Gillman couldn’t help but accept a $200 million from Susan and Henry Samueli to establish the Susan and Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences, which would  “incorporate the university’s medical school” and the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute (SSIHI), and which was marketed as “the first university-based health sciences enterprise to incorporate integrative health research, teaching and patient care across its schools and programs”. “This gift catalyzes UCI’s belief that human health and well-being requires a science-based approach that engages all disciplines in caring for the whole person and total community,” said Gillman: “Susan and Henry Samueli’s dedication, their vision for what is possible and their deep generosity will help UCI set a standard that, over time, other medical centers in the U.S. can follow.”

 

Note that Gillman emphasised ‘a science-based approach’. It is important to say that, of course, for looking at what the SSIHI actually offers, you’ll find precisely what you expect: acupunture, traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathy, functional medicine, IV infusion therapy, and – yes – homeopathy. 

 

Diagnosis: We suppose Howard Gillman believes his MAHA-adjacent actions are ultimately good for medicine and that what UC Irvine recommends and teaches its students to recommend is, in fact, science-based – large sums of money can get people to believe anything. And although Gillman is probably not personally anti-science, the fact is that he is among the major enables of quackery and pseudoscience in the US today.

#2893: Amber Lynn Gilles

Amber Lynn Gilles is a local San Diego mother, antivaccine activist and generally terrible person. She received some attention in 2020 after she was denied service at a Starbucks for refusing to wear a mask – Gilles claims that masks are ineffective and that she was medically exempt from wearing them (without specifying why). She promptly threatened the barista with the police and went on to try to shame him (with picture and name) on social media; in addition to yelling at him, she predictably also accused other customers who complied with the rules of being sheep. “It starts with coffee but it ends with digital certificates and forced vaccinations,” said Gilles. It does not.

 

Now, similar events presumably played out a lot of places in the US in 2020; the story here got wider attention after someone set up a GoFundMe account to support the barista. Gilles promptly went public claiming that she was entitled to some of the money raised and sued the GoFundMe creators for defamation and slander. Later the same year, Gilles also sued Sprouts after having been denied entry to one of their stores for not wearing a mask; Gilles explicitly argued that her rights were violated under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (they obviously weren’t) and the state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, but failed again to specify any medical condition that prevented her from wearing a mask. The courts were not impressed.

 

Then she tried to capitalize on the attention she received by hosting a local “Burn Your Mask Bonfire” with (according to herself) leaders of the anti-vaccine movement; “the bonfire is to bring awareness and to stop the discrimination, leading to COVID digital vaccine and digital currency,” said Gilles, without explaining what a digital vaccine might be or what digital currency would have to do with it. That event, which is covered here, involved the participation of Joshua Coleman and a number of colorfully paranoid local dingbats, including (we note their names here in case they pop up in positions of power in the future):

 

-       Brandon Ross, the event’s co-host

-       Genevieve Peters, who herself had a history of trying to capitalize on being denied service for not wearing a mask. “For millions of years, we have had viruses. … We have had bacteria. And all sorts of … microorganisms,” said Peters, and “God gave us our immune system” (and how well did people do relying exclusively on God’s immune system back in the days, Genevieve?) She also touted hydroxychloroquine as a preventative means, urged the crowd to follow the advice of the insane group of loons known as “America’s Frontline Doctors” and likened Americans obeying mask rules to Jews following Nazi edicts amid the Holocaust (indeed, anyone criticizing her are just like the Nazis: “When people (say) I’m not being kind and … thoughtful — I might as well get on that train in Germany as well”)

-       Carmen Estel, a local “Holy Fire Reiki Master Practitioner” who ostensibly channels healing methods from Jesus and angels. “I am not dying in my time. I am dying in God’s time. … If God wants me to die of the virus, I will die of the virus,” said Estel, which is a funny way of marketing your healing services.

 

Participants would toss masks into a bonfire while claiming the masks were “tools of terror” and a “precursor to adult mandatory vaccination”. Messages on the burned masks included the usual paranoid conspiracy drivel (“Lies by the mainstream media”, “Nice try, Satan”), and participants claimed to be “ready to die for this mission” and that the masks can’t protect anyone since “Jesus and only Jesus can save.”

 

And Gilles, who calls herself a yoga teacher and is a promoter of the delusions of Earthing (“Not wearing your shoes is really healthy. … There’s magnetic energy in the ground”), really went all in on Covid conspiracy theories, suggesting that Covid itself wasn’t that dangerous: all those dead people really had pre-existing conditions (so they don’t count), and besides: “They’re killing people with respirators. Educate yourself.” Rather, it is the measures to protect against Covid that are dangerous here: “Ya know, the masks don’t protect against COVID. … They cause cancer (and) kidney problems, too.” They don’t, but the idea of using proper means to align your beliefs with reality is as foreign to Gilles as the idea of trying to be a decent person.

 

Diagnosis: Indeed: the idea of using proper means to align your beliefs with reality is as foreign to Gilles as the idea of trying to be a decent person. Instead, Gilles is paranoid, delusional, angry and mean – altogether a hopelessly terrible person.

#2892: Carey Gillam

Carey Gillam is a professional fearmonger, pseudoscience promoter, disinformation merchant, conspiracy theorist and “investigative journalist” with the group U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), an “investigative research group” funded by the Organic Consumers Association and conspiracy theorist celebrity Joseph Mercola: Gillam is, suitably, their director of research despite having no background in science. In 2022, Gillam also became managing editor of The New Lede, a “news” organization funded by the activist Environmental Working Group, and she has been a regular contributor to The Guardian, where her work has focused on environmental degradation and the food system. An illustrative example of her work (for HuffPo) is discussed here. She was previously a Midwest reporter for Reuters, but left that position under somewhat unclear circumstances after her opinionated reports on crop biotechnology were exposed by colleagues and scientists as unfounded pseudoscientific conspiracy theories.

 

Like many similar groups, USRTK started out as an enviromental activist organization motivated by a reasonable distrust of corporations and a thirst for accountability, but paranoia (and the usual appeal to nature taken as a guiding creed) soon got the better of them and led them straight into pseudoscience and conspiracy theories – at first mostly about Monsanto, glyphosate and GMOs, but they quickly pivoted to more general conspiracy mongering: The group is perhaps most familiar these days as a resource for conspiracy theories related to covid-19 – in particular the (false and quite dingbat silly) notion that COVID-19 sprang from so-called “gain-of-function” experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – and their nonsense was widely used as a source even by mainstream media that were unaware of their ties to Mercola, The National Vaccine Information Center (“the most powerful anti-vaccine organization in America”) and Robert Kennedy jr. Part of the reason for the media’s error is presumably that the USRTK, as opposed to, say, NVIC, tries to maintain a sheen of trustworthiness and legimitacy and to avoid overt conspiracy mongering – as Callum Hood points out, the USRTK is a “respectable-looking branch” of a vast ecosystem of interlocking anti-vaccine and science denialist groups.

 

Gillam herself has close ties to Robert Kennedy Jr.: excerpts of her book on Monsanto was for instance published on Kennedy’s website, and she has appeared on his podcast. Indeed, Gillam is good at drawing attention to herself, and the book in question, The Monsanto Papers, was widely featured on – and gained her several interviews with – various pseudoscience and conspiracy sites. The book is evenhandedly reviewed here, and does exactly what you’d expect it to do: According to Gillam, both in the aforementioned book and in her other books Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science, Monsanto markets glyphosate while knowing it to be carcinogenic (it isn’t) while not warning users about the danger (because there isn’t); then they attack its critics (Gillam is a victim, of course). For the claim that roundup is carcinogenic, Gillam has plenty of anecdotes; as for the science? Well, through comprehensive and repeated reviews of thousands of studies, 17 national and international regulatory and scientific agencies have found glyphosate to be safe and non-carcinogenic; one single one (IARC) has – for demonstrably dubious reasons – not (discussed here and here). Guess which one Gillam cites as definite proof (the rest are presumably part of a Monsanto-led conspiracy).

 

Diagnosis: Well, categorizing her as a loon is probably imprecise; Carey Gillam knows exactly what she’s doing: She is a profession FUD merchant bent on undermining trust in any institution, investigation or evidence that doesn’t line up with and support the conclusion she has arrived at for ideological and pseudo-religious reasons. But she is extremely influential and has a significant fan base.

 

Hat-tip: Genetic literacy project

#2891: Ashley Gilhousen et al.

There are lots of county school boards in the US, and given relatively few voters and low election participation rates it is perhaps unavoidable that some of them are plagued by loons of various kinds. But religious fundie groups and Christian nationalists have also made concentrated efforts to have science denialists and conspiracy theories elected to these boards over the past decades. We don’t know anything specific about the background for the election of Ashley Gilhousen, who has a degree in nursing and works as a “patient care specialist” at a children’s hospital, to the Clay County, FL, schoolboard, but in 2018, she expressed her dissatisfaction with the county’s selection of science textbooks for grades K-12 because they presented evolution more as fact than as a theory (no, she wouldn’t understand and there probably is little point in trying to tell her). She was also concerned that evolution was the only theory in the textbook used to teach the origin of life and that creationism went unmentioned. As she put it, there “is a whole lot of science that’s been left out of our textbooks”, which is obviously true (we’re talking K-12 textbooks), but Gilhousen was not thinking about science when she used the word ‘science’; she used ‘science’ because she couldn’t use a different word because she also wanted to emphasize that her faith was not a part of this discussion. She also said that her real goal was to have a comprehensive science education that challenges students to think critically and make their own decisions based on empirical evidence and scientific data, which is, as always, a baldfaced lie.

 

Her efforts also gained some local support, e.g. by local pastor Scott Yirka of Hibernia Baptist Church who though it was a shame that students can’t have “supplementary material” when teaching the origin of man; he hastened to add that he wasn’t “necessarily espousing that you teach creationism”, but he was in fact espousing precisely that.

 

The board voted to approve the adoption of the advertised science textbooks in a 3-2 vote; Gilhousen was joined in her opposition by one Betsy Condon. As of 2025, Gilhousen is apparently still on the Clay County Schoolboard.

 

Diagnosis: She might, for all we know, come across as reasonable and caring to those who encounter her in real life. But scratch the surface, and Ashley Gilhousen is also a religious fundie denialist who, in a civilized society, would have no business deciding K-12 textbooks on a schoolboard. Come on.

#2890: John Gibbs

John Gibbs is wingnut politician, political commentator (e.g. for The Federalist) and conspiracy theorist. During the first Trump term, Gibbs enjoyed roles in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and as part of the 1776 Commission, and he was acting Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Community Planning and Development. In July 2020, Trump also nominated him to the position of director of the United States Office of Personnel Management, but he was never confirmed by the Senate. Gibbs was also the GOP nominee for Michigan’s 3rd congressional district in the 2022 elections, where he lost in a landslide, presumably because a sufficient number of voters actually recognized him as stupid, evil and insane. He was nevertheless appointed county administrator by the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners in 2023, and was predictably fired a relatively short time later due to gross misconduct (Gibbs had “been dishonest, committed gross misconduct, and/or committed willful malfeasance”)

 

As a conspiracy theorist, Gibbs has been an aggressive champion of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and he made such conspiracy theories a centerpiece of his 2022 Michigan campaign. Gibbs explicitly denied that Joe Biden had been legitimately elected in 2020, and falsely claimed that the 2020 election results were “mathematically impossible”: His reasoning for the latter claim was that Trump won a number of “bellwether states” – states whose results have historically aligned with the general result – yet allegedly fail to win the general election, and the fact that Trump received a larger number of votes in 2020 than in 2016 (“President Trump got something like 15-20% more votes than he got the first time yet still lost, which is probably mathematically impossible”). Gibbs’s understanding of “mathematically impossible”, “probably” and how elections (or anything else) actually work seems to be tenuous at best.

 

It must be pointed out, though, that Gibbs had, even prior to his government appointments, a long history of promoting conspiracy theories, including the ones that would subsequently form the basis for the QAnon movement. For instance, Gibbs has repeatedly asserted that John Podesta took part in a “Satanic ritual” as part of a larger Satanic conspiracy involving numerous politicians and celebrities; during his 2020 Senate hearings, Gibbs said, of his comments, that “I regret that it’s unfortunately become an issue,” which is not only very far from being any kind of apology but in itself a very strange thing to say.

 

During his student days, Gibbs founded a “think tank” called the Society for the Critique of Feminism, where he reached the conclusion that women do not “posess [sic] the characteristics necessary to govern” and that women’s suffrage had made the US into a “totalitarian state.” In a characteristically self-undermining manner, his group also said that men were smarter than women because men are more likely to “think logically about broad and abstract ideas in order to deduce a suitable conclusion, without relying upon emotional reasoning” and concluded that women should not have the right to vote. When Gibbs’s role in the group came to light during his 2022 campaign, a spokesperson quickly claimed that the group was created as a satire to troll the libruls on campus, a claim not supported by anything.

 

Diagnosis: A proud Christian nationalist with the reasoning skills and personal integrity to match. Hopefully gone for good, though there are more than enough similar idiots ready to take his place.