#2958: Bob Hall

Dingbat morons in state legislatures is nothing new, and Texas has been riddled with them for a long time; these days, however, state legislative dingbattery seems to be a potential pathway to the national political scene. Now, we don’t really think Robert Lee Hall III, a feeble Tea Party candidate who has been serving in the Texas state legislature since 2015, is in any way bound for Washington, but his ideas have travelled. Bob Hall is primarily associated with promotion of misinformation and debunked conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, including pushing the nonsense idea that COVID-19 vaccines skipped animal testing, and encouraging people to forego the vaccine. Instead of protecting yourself by taking the vaccine, Hall predictably recommended worthless bullshit such as hydroxychloroquine.

 

Indeed, Hall – who of course has no medical background – introduced a proposal to ban any entity, public or private, from requiring vaccination of their employees (the proposal would prohibit “discrimination” based on a person’s vaccine choices). According to Hall, and completely contrary to reality, “the mere fact that a person has not received a specific vaccine does not make them a threat to others’ health and safety”; moreover, “in contrast, vaccines they have elected not to have may very well be a threat to their own health and safety” – as Hall, like many other anti-vaccine activists saw it, because he and they are confused morons, the COVID vaccines were “experimental” treatments. Hall supported his proposal with testimonies from people like legendary pseudoscientist and quack Ben Edwards.

 

But Hall was antivaccine before COVID, too. In 2019, for instance, Hall sponsored Texas Senate Bill 2350 (SB2350), which sought to prohibit the administration of vaccines that did not meet criteria Hall had copypasted from various anti-vaccine websites; the bill tried for instance to tell the FDA what criteria they should use for approving new vaccines, it perpetuated standard antivaccine falsehoods about vaccines potentially causing cancer and infertility, and it tried to parrot false antivaccine myths to the effect that vaccines aren’t sufficiently tested for safety. The bill died in committee, but only after it had been widely championed by various anti-vaccine groups in Texas and beyond.

 

Part of the popularity of Hall’s efforts among Texan antivaccine activists was due to the (alleged) fact that it was (purportedly) “rejecting the federal narrative” (Davis Taylor of the conspiracy theory hub Tenth Amendment Center). And indeed, Hall is very much worried about federal narratives and federal other things: in response to the disastrous winter storm that left millions of Texans without power or water for days in 2021, for instance, Hall was quick to declare that “the absolute worst [mistake] that we could make would be to join in with the national grid. That would put us back underneath federal control. And the last thing we need is additional federal government messing with Texas.”

 

In 2021, he tried again, with a bill that “would require physicians to disclose the excipients contained in a vaccine” in order to scare as many as possible from getting the vaccine by the familiar antivaccine gambit of listing alien-sounding chemicals (the bill would not require physicians to mention risks associated with foregoing vaccines). Among the ingredients Hall mistakenly believes vaccines contain are, in addition to aluminum and MSG, “fetal parts […] that people for religious reasons might not want to take that vaccine”. According to Hall, the motivation for the bill was “just a matter of making an informed consent knowing what is being done to them”; Hall is apparently so practised at anti-vaccine talking point parroting that he can’t even construct meaningful sentences, but he does, strikingly and unintentionally, reveal a bit about what these kinds of people mean by 'informed' (it’s not informed). In his presentation of the bill, Hall notoriously also kept repeating the myth that vaccine manufacturers have no liability; based on that piece of misinformation, the extra level of ‘informed consent’ is needed because “we are doing something so dangerous that the federal government has put up a barrier relieving the pharmaceuticals and doctors of any responsibility for any adverse affect [sic].”

 

For his efforts on behalf of wingnuttery and conspiracy theories, Hall was invited to speak at Michael Flynn & Clay Clark’s Reawaken America Tour. Hall was also a speaker at Richard Mack and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association’s training event for Texas law enforcement officials in Houston in February 2021.

 

Diagnosis: Dingbat moron with little or no grasp of what goes on in reality, but with strong feelings about it based on paranoia, fanaticism and conspiracy theories. Still very dangerous, though.

#2957: Wolfgang Halbig

One of the craziest conspiracy theorists and most despicable pieces of garbage currently in operation in the US, Wolfgang Halbig is primarily famous for his relentless promotion of Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, for his harassment of parents of victims of the massacre, and for his contributions to Infowars on the topic. He was finally arrested in 2020 and charged with unlawful possession of the personal ID of one of the fathers he had tormented and for releasing the father’s social security number “to hundreds of people via email” to enable and encourage other deranged conspiracy theorist to harass the families of the victims as well.

 

According to Halbig, the Sandy Hook massacre was a government-perpetrated hoax to give authorities an excuse to take away Americans’ right to bear firearms (how exactly that was supposed to work is unclear in light of the aftermaths of earler mass shootings) employing crisis actors as purported victims. And in the wake of the event, he quickly became a leader of the ragtag mass of insane clowns pushing ludicrous conspiracy theories through his website. In particular, Halbig had a set of 16 questions that he claimed that the authorities could not answer and that he therefore argued proved that the event was staged. Of course, answers to his questions, like why paramedics and EMTs weren’t allowed to enter the school (they were) and why victims weren’t transported by helicopter (because the few wounded individuals could be more effectively transported by ambulance and the rest of the victims were dead), were readily available e.g. in the Connecticut State Police report on the shooting, but Halbig and his followers claimed that those answers were fictions because after all people who commit such hoaxes can’t be trusted. So it goes. The website also touted Halbig’s “credentials” as a former security director for schools in Seminole County, a position from which he claimed to have worked on the official investigation into the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999 (a claim for which there is not a shred of evidence), something helped him solicit tens of thousands of dollars to his GoFundMe account.

 

Of course, Alex Jones presented Halbig as a “leading expert” on Sandy Hook on his show. Indeed, Halbig was largely responsible for concocting the Sandy Hook conspiracies that was pushed by Alex Jones, and he was thus, unintentionally, instrumental in Jones’s downfall. That, of course, does not mitigate our assessment of him as pollution incarnate.

 

In 2019, Halbig’s efforts paid some dividends when he was approached by the National Rifle Association – specifically NRA training coordinator Mark Richardson – to help sow doubt about the Parkland shooting.

 

Diagnosis: A disgusting piece of filth and a disgrace to humanity, Halbig has turned being evil and being a moron into his retirement hobby; the nasty clowns and groups of trash morons that follow him presumably provide him with the attention and feeling of doing something meaningful that this otherwise pitiful abomination presumably feels he needs and deserves. And keep in mind that the NRA is even worse rot than Halbig since they don’t even have the lunacy card to play.

#2956: Paul Hair

Paul Hair is a fundie wingnut conspiracy theorist and a reasonably prolific writer for Matt Barber’s website Barbwire while that one was still running. We don’t know what he’s up to these days, but it’s unlikely to be anything good. 

 

Like most fundie wingnuts, Hair was deeply concerned with LGBT rights, and issued a fair number of dire warnings about the way America was going (“That people still don’t fully grasp how important sodomy is to autotheists, and how they have damaged society with their promotion of it, shows how successful they have been in their manipulation. It also shows why America is doomed”). And like most fundie wingnuts who don’t get their will, Hair would see Christian persecution everywhere. When Sonny Hernandez of Reforming America Ministries was criticized for claiming that Christians should stop defending the rights of people to practice other faiths, for instance, Hair portrayed him as a victim of anti-Christian persecution – and no, he didn’t see the irony. And in Hair’s case, like in so many other cases, his persecution complex is of course fuelled by conspiracy theories. So, when Obama (an “authotheist” and “Satanist” – Hair didn’t like Hillary Clinton either) met with leaders of other faiths, as was his job, Hair would straightaway assert that the agenda of the meeting was to coordinate attacks on Christians.

 

Upon Trump’s election in 2016, Hair immediately called upon him to “nominate Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore to be the next secretary of state.”

 

Diagnosis: Whatever

#2955: Noel Hadley

Noel Hadley is a rabid fundie and a flat-earther with a number of self-published books to his name, perhaps most notably AVOID SCIENCE FALSELY SO-CALLED: Flat Earth, the Reformation, and the Science Delusion. We haven’t read it but wager a guess that the title tells you a lot about the book also beyond the case he is trying to make and how (nor have we read any of his other titles, such as Milennial Kingdom + Mud Flood). Hadley, who apparently used to be a professional wedding photographer, seems to be something of a mainstay at various flat-earth gatherings, and his presentations appear to make numerous fascinating and largely unintelligible claims also about other science-echoing issues. Did you know that Francis Crick’s discovery of the DNA was informed by ancient Egyptians because “did Pharaoh not wear a cobra on his crown as a symbol of the divine word and third eye – the pineal gland – by which true hidden knowledge might be discovered to the devoted initiate?” and cobras look a bit like DNA. Sort of. Also other cultures, like the Aztecs had ideas about DNA, since they talked about ladders going between heaven and Earth so gods could go up and down – yeah, we don’t quite follow the thread here but neither, we suspect, does Hadley; coherent chains of reasoning is not his style. Even young-earth creationist Danny Faulkner seems to have been somewhat baffled by Hadley’s presentation at a flat-earth conference he attended.

 

Hadley also appears to be a recurring feature on the youtube channel The Earth is NOT a globe, which purportedly offers “A Flat Earth versus the globe debate whether it be biblical or scientific or hopefully a little bit of both”. The adverb ‘hopefully’ seems to be doing some work there.

 

Diagnosis: As if all the nuts and bolts that hold ordinary reasoning together got unscrewed and the disparate elements rather got stuck together randomly with glue. His rants are somewhat fascinating at first, but one tires quickly. We wish we could dismiss him as harmless, but in these times …

#2954: Michelle Guppy

Michelle Guppy was at least at one point coordinator of the Houston Autism Disability Network and has spent some years tirelessly promoting anti-vaccine nonsense in Texas. Guppy is in particular notable for her defense of and advocacy for the work of discredited fraud Andrew Wakefield; Guppy, who believes that her own son is vaccine injured (her list includes PANDAS, which is, needless to say, not a vaccine injury) because he is autistic, something Guppy falsely attributes to vaccines, also thinks that her own son har benefited from Wakefield’s fraudulent nonsense. In 2011, for instance, Guppy received some attention for organizing conference at the Baptist Church in Tomball, Texas, with Wakefield as a keynote speaker; for security, Guppy hired armed guards to intimidate critics, and to journalists there to write about Wakefield, she had some admirably clear instructions: “Be nice to him, or we will hurt you.” So there.

 

Diagnosis: Antivaxxer with an average antivaxxer ability to identify and evaluate causal relationships, and she fails with precisely the kind of zeal and paranoia that so characterizes her movement. Somewhat dangerous, perhaps, but it is unclear whether her influence extends much beyond the Houston area.

#2953: Lalo Gunther

Lalo Gunther is the Director of Online Community and Conference Ministries, specializing in “Youth Ministry”, and (currently) Special Events Coordinator for the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). As such, Gunther is the head of the ICR’s conference series and blog Your Origins Matter (YOM), and coordinated e.g. YOM’s launching conference in Dallas in 2012, where they e.g. got former astronaut Colonel Jeffrey Williams to present some pretty pictures of space and provide some sort of sheen of legitimacy to the stock creationist presentations by creationist stalwarts like Jason Lisle, Nathaniel Jeanson, Henry Morris III, and Randy Guliuzza. The YOM blog consists primarily of regurgitating creationist materials already published by the ICR – though, since the purpose is outreach (the YOM is purportedly a platform for “conversation” and “tools to dig deeper into the study of origins”), they tend to remove any ‘technical’ or ‘scientific’ content (which does not require much effort given the nature of the originals) – and videos of interviews with ICR members.

 

YOM also helps you arrange a Demand the Evidence Conference at your local church. Neither they nor their clients actually want the evidence.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, this one was brief, and brevity will do. Fundie denialist.

#2952: Steven Gundry

Steven Gundry is a pseudoscience-based wellness guru who has, apparently, managed to achieve something close to stardom in the wellness community. One thing that has presumably contributed to his success is the fact that Gundry is, indeed, a (former) cardiothoracic surgeon, something that presumably gives his nonsense a sheen of legitimacy to people with no background or knowledge in medicine and who don’t bother to look too closely. He does apparently have little or no scientific background in the fields to which he currently tries to contribute copious amounts of nonsense – Gundry is a nutritionist, not a dietician; his audience consists of people who don’t know the difference.

 

Gundry is probably most famous for promoting the pseudoscientific lectin-free diet, e.g. in his apparently quite popular book The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in “Healthy” Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain, which appropriately made this list. The supposed paradox of the title is the idea that consumption of grains, legumes and fruit (Gundry calls it “toxic candy”) leads to obesity and weight gain, a delusion that is not supported by any evidence but is contradicted by massive amounts of research demonstrating an inverse association (example, if needed; here’s another; meanwhile, Gundry’s own research to contradict consensus is … a poster at a conference). According to real scientists who care about integrity and nevertheless bothered to read the book, “even more egregious [than his well-worn quack gambit of referring to articles that don’t remotely say what he claims they say] are the wild claims he makes with no referencing at all, which is most of the text ... Sometimes it almost seems like this author is just making things up that sound good”. Examples include random assertions that “Up until 10,000 years ago, the average human stood about 6 feet tall” (patently false) and that most of his stage 3 and stage 4 cancer patients got better (no publication or study cited). The book does check every box on the standard pseudoscience gambit list, however. There is a decent review here.

 

Gundry’s guiding, erroneous idea is that lectins – which a lot of plants contain plenty of – cause inflammation (they’re “highly toxic”) and are really the cause of many modern diseases, including numerous autoimmune diseases, cancer, heart disease and some of its risk factors, weight problems, slow infant growth, diabetes, mental health problems, and neurological conditions like Parkinson’s, dementia, and “cramps, tingling, and numbness”. His Plant Paradox diet accordingly tells you to avoid all foods containing lectins altogether. Indeed, a main claim of Gundry’s is that “the continuous availability of fruit is one of the biggest contributors to the obesity crisis”; just think about that for a second (Gundry adds that fruits today are worse than before because they are GMOs, a claim that is false – the only GMO fruit available in the US is papayas – and would anyways have been bonkers crazy, but which probably works quite well with his intended audiences). In reality, by contrast, the evidence of the benefits of high-lectin-containing diets “is so overwhelming as to render Gundry’s arguments laughable”; Gundry, by contrast, has exactly no evidence and no remotely plausible mechanism for the purported effects of lectins on weight. According to endocrinologist and past president of the American Heart Association Robert Eckel, Gundry’s diet advice contradicts “every dietary recommendation represented by the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association and so on”; moreover, it is not possible to draw any conclusions from Gundry’s own attempts as ‘research’ due to the absence of control patients in his studies.

 

Meanwhile, Gundry’s own line of supplements purportedly protects against or even reverse the supposedly damaging effects of lectins and include the Lectin Shield (“to assist the body in the fight against lectins”) and the Enhanced Circulation Formula (“designed to keep your blood flowing smoothly, carrying oxygen to all essential organs, tissues, and muscles”) – it’s notable that his list of ‘yes’ foods in his book consists of mostly expensive and hard-to-obtain products, making his own supplement series an attractive alternative for those who may have bought into his bullshit (he assures his audiences that this conflict of interest shouldn’t undermine his authority, though); and yes, his website does have a Quack Miranda Warning. Ostensibly, he even runs an experimental clinic investigating the impact of a lectin-free diet on health because it might be useful for marketing purposes to be able to refer to something like this. His lectin-free nonsense is apparently also popular with proponents of Dave Asprey’s mostly bullshit bulletproof diet and has moreover been promoted (of course) by pop stars and celebrities.

 

Currently, he is also the host of the Dr. Gundry Podcast on health and nutrition (not recommended) and writes articles for Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop website. That last fact alone should really be sufficient to fully capture the sort of character we’re dealing with here, but just to pile it on: Gundry has even expressed support for Joseph Mercola, claiming that Mercola provides “very useful health advice”. To top it all off, Gundry also pushed pseudoscientific anti-vaccine nonsense (anti-vaxxers called it a “study”) about mRNA vaccines during Covid, because of course he did; the misinformation was quickly debunked by real scientists, but Gundry’s audience isn’t very good at distinguishing good sources from clown train horn honks.

 

His latest book is apparently Unlocking the Keto Code (2022) – yup, Gundry knows to hitch the fad, which is crucial to maintain your success on the wellness pseudoscience idiot circuit. Before moving on to lectins, Gundry had published the book Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution: Turn Off the Genes That Are Killing You and Your Waistline (2008), which we haven’t read and neither should you.

 

Diagnosis: Once Steven Gundry was a respectable medical practitioner; now he is full of shit. His nonsense reads as the worst kinds of spam and content-covering ads and is about as trustworthy. Whether he himself believes the confused rot that falls out of his mouth is not always clear to us (we wish to be charitable, but a principle of charity sort of pulls in two directions here), but people apparently listen. Good f**king grief.

#2951: Zach Guiler

Zach Guiler is a preacher affiliated with the Canal Church of Christ in Waverly, Ohio, and a creationist. In a 2017 letter to the editor of the local newspaper The Pike County News Watchman, he helpfully lays out his reasons for why people continue to believe in the theory of evolution even though Guiler himself has “proven time and again in our Wednesday night apologetics class that the Theory of Evolution is an illogical lie”. The reasons are:

 

1.     that “for the past 50 years, evolution has been the only thing taught in schools”, and not “as an unproven theory, but as scientific fact.”

2.     that “it has been portrayed in popular culture and the media that the most intelligent people believe in evolution”; therefore “people claim to believe in evolution, not based on facts and evidence, but because it will make them appear to be in the same league as those who are educated and intelligent”.

3.     that “it is claimed that the vast majority of scientists believe in evolution”; it is unclear whether Guiler actually believes they do (they do), but in any case “even if the majority of scientists believe in the theory of evolution, that doesn’t make evolution any less of the lie that it is”. Don’t be “a sheep following the masses” or, as the case might be, those who actually know anything about the subject matter. Cynics might also wonder whether he advocates the same attitude in other contexts.

4.     that many accept evolution because they “[t]don’t want there to be a God”. That must be a significant motivation since “[n]o one believes in evolution because of the evidence”. Why not? Because “there is virtually no evidence to back the theory up!” – Guiler hasn’t bothered to try to look up any of it: and indeed, “[E]ven those who believe in evolution must admit this.” It is presumably the influence of Satan that prevents them from voicing this admission.

 

Or in short: “Creationism has evidence while evolution is void of any” and “Creationism is logical while evolution is improbable”. He doesn’t mention any of the evidence; we suppose he means that you should take his word for it.

 

Diagnosis: And just like that, Zach Guiler demolished the core tenets of modern public school science curricula. Why won’t those darned scientists listen? It must be Satan, mustn’t it?

#2950: Anthony Gucciardi

Anthony Gucciardi is the co-founder of Natural Society, a group and website devoted to health-related pseudoscience, misinformation and conspiracy theories in a manner reminiscent of NaturalNews and guided – like so many other similar websites and groups – by the pseudoreligious tenet that the vaguely defined category of being natural is a reliable guide to the good. The website pushes all manners of denialism and anti-medicine conspiracies (scientists aren’t just wrong but actively trying to harm you because money), including anti-vaccine misinformation, chemtrails rants and geoengineering nonsense; fortunately, and predictably, they themselves have a prominently placed store where you can buy information materials on e.g. nonsense like detox regimes, as well as a range of useless and expensive supplements instead. (A perhaps illustrative example of their standards is discussed here: Gucciardi’s post “Fifteen Companies Whose Products Contain Wood Pulp” lists fifteen companies with products that contains cellulose, which according to Gucciardi is an indigestible useless filler and therefore shows that these companies are corrupt and willing to sacrifice your well-being for money; do you think he mentions that Natural Society’s own useless and expensive supplement line Slimfy is cellulose put in a bottle and marketed as a diet aid?)

Gucciardi gained some attention for himself in the early 2010s in particular for his anti-GMO activism based on anti-GMO conspiracy theories and pseudoscience (he was e.g. a promoter of the laughable and infamous ‘Seralini study’), and he was a speaker at various conspiracy theory rallies like those organized by March Against Monsanto. Gucciardi has no discernible background in any relevant scientific discipline, of course, but his ability to pull nonsense out of his ass in alarmist, conspiratorial rants nevertheless earned him the status of ‘expert’ at other, similarly conspiracy- and denialism-oriented media outlets.

 

Now, we don’t actually know Gucciardi’s level of involvement in Natural Society at present – most recent posts there seem to be penned by one Mike Barrett, and it is unclear whether any new material has been published the last few years. However, we assume this entry’s Gucciardi is identical to Anthony Gucciardi, President of Gucciardi Creative and a “self-made entrepreneur and seeker of knowledge” who these days writes about spirituality and how to achieve a “higher quality life” (i.e. a self-help guru) and who “releases content on business, leadership, philosophy, development, and life to nearly 1 million social subscribers across his platforms”. This Gucciardi also highlights his work with “FDA-Registered [a weird thing to highlight for anyone aware of some crucial distinctions] dietary supplement and wellness product manufacturers in the United States, formulation experts, multi-generational herbalists, and nutritional scientists” and is the founder of “Of The Ancients, an herbal health supplement line that features high quality herbal formulations traditionally used by ancient cultures for a variety of health benefits.”

 

Diagnosis: He seems to have honed away some spikes over the years, presumably because soft, vague, positive fluff makes it easier to market his nonsense to the intended audiences. But even if the explicit conspiracy theories is town down, what he produces remains nonsensical drivel. Needless to say, you really shouldn’t bother to listen to any of it.