#628: Michael J. Dochniak & Denise H. Dunn

Michael J. Dochniak and Denise H. Dunn are antivaxxers. Indeed, they belong to the fluffy murkiness of the fringes of the already rabidly moronic antivaxx movement. In particular, they are the authors of Vaccine Delivery and Autism (The Latex Connection) (do take a look the comments in that link, in which Dochniak himself shows up; continued here), in which they blame “the latex rubber often used in vaccine packaging and delivery systems,” for what they perceive as an increase in autism rates). The guiding idea is that the dismal failure of previous attempts to link autism to vaccines cannot possibly mean that vaccines are off the hook – the antivaxxers have invested too much in that hypothesis, so instead of rejecting it they need to look for a different kind of connection, and Dochniak’s and Dunn’s attempts are among the desperate results (no, they have no independent evidence for the link).

According to the blurb on the book Dochniak and Dunn are leading experts in the etiology of allergy-induced regressive autism. This is apparently granted them in virtue of having written a book together before called Allergies and Autism, not because they have any real expertise in any related field (Dochniak does point out that he has a publication in the pseudojournal Medical Hypotheses, though, as if that should count for anything). Their work is reviewed here, here, and here, and summed up by commenter Lawrence as “a guess, inside an idea, wrapped in a layer of ‘no evidence.’” Apparently the authors cite Schopenhauer’s infamous (though possibly spuriously attributed), idiotic quote “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” That quote alone should be ample evidence that we are dealing with some serious pseudoscience. And apparently that quote is pretty much all they have to back up their hypothesis.

Diagnosis: Crackpottery, through and through.

#627: Joseph "Joe" Dispenza

Joseph Dispenza is an author of several fluffy New-Age snowflake bullshit self-help books, and is particularly notable for his appearance in the deranged piece of pseudo-science delusion “What the Bleep do we know”. Dispenza, who presents himself as "Dr. Dispenza", is the proud possessor of a “Doctor of Chiropractic degree” from Life University, and currently seems to be in the “miraculous healing” business. He is also a follower of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, and has produced several Youtube videos in which he talks about quantum physics the way he sees it, which has nothing to do with quantum physics (Dispenza really doesn’t even have the faintest idea what quantum physics is), but a lot to do with gibberish centered around various ridiculous forms of woo and crackpot spirituality crap.

If you enjoy torturing yourself with fluffy fogbanks of pink-tinged drivel, you may check out his DVD series “Your Immortal Brain,” which allegedly “looks at the ways in which the human brain can be used to create reality through the mastery of thought” – which does not mean anything (alludes to the Secret), but that doesn’t seem to matter much to Dispenza; like quantum physics linguistic meaning appears to be just whatever Dispenza fancies it to be at any given moment.

Diagnosis: Pretentious, delusional puddinghead who is apparently convinced that what he thinks becomes reality in virtue of him thinking it. Otherwise Dispenza doesn’t care too much about reality.

#601: Jack Cuozzo

Jack Cuozzo is a dentist and Young Earth Creationist whose main contribution to the lunacy movement is his belief that Neanderthals were ordinary humans who lived for hundreds of years (as in the Bible) causing their skulls to continue to grow and morph – despite, of course, the fact that the age of fossilized individuals can be determined (and has been determined not to be hundreds of years) by other means, for instance by examining tooth development (as in here), which suggests that Cuozzo missed some classes during his training as a dentist. Cuozzo spelled out his view in his book Buried Alive, and used it to argue for the ridiculous idea that creatures have undergone devolution since the Fall, i.e. “a gradual loss of genetic information due to mutation” (Adam and Eve were genetically perfect, and it is a standard creationist canard that mutation can only lead to poorer functioning, never mind that they don’t have a clue about what the technical term “information” means). Hence, Neanderthals were just superior human beings. It should be unnecessary to point out that the whole creationist notion of devolution, which is based on medievalistic teleological assumptions about directions of evolution, has nothing to do with science. You can find a rebuttal of some of the falsehoods and dishonesties of Cuozzo’s book here, and a general review here.

Interestingly, Cuozzo also spends some efforts refuting the claims of fellow creationists that Neanderthals were just ordinary humans that suffered from arthritis or rickets or similar diseases, since that would contradict his assumption that the Neanderthals must have been better than us.

Cuozzo classifies most older hominid specimens as “apes” (rather arbitrarily), which is another piece of evidence that the creationist classifications of these are entirely arbitrary and that the hominids in question are actually somewhere in between present humans and something else (this one is illuminating).

Diagnosis: Standard fare. Though Cuozzo is surely an intelligent guy, his lack of understanding of evidence, combined with an unhealthy dose of confirmation bias, is not going to lead him to anything resembling reality. Sorry.

#593: Michael A. Cremo

A.k.a. Drutakarma Drasa

Benjamin Creme is Scottish but so magnificently insane that you need to check him out. Michael A Cremo seems to try his best not to be overshadowed by said amazing Scotsman. Cremo, a hinduist, is a “vedic creationist”, hardcore proponent of woo, and even more intensely hardcore conspiracy theorist. His most famous book is Forbidden Archaeology (written with Richard Thompson, to be covered later), which promotes his rather idiosyncratic take on creationism: humans (homo sapiens) have lived on earth, unchanged, for billions and billions of years. Of course, given the existence of that branch of scientific inquirey called “archaeology”, Cremo & Thompson’s claim requires a conspiracy. And indeed, we get one – Cremo and Thompson pull it out over 900 pages of what amounts to nonsense and feebly helpless ignorance of geology, archaeology, or evolution, instead pushing an impressive array of pseudo-archaeological and fraudulent “fossil” evidence of the kind that is so stupid that even your stock creationist may stop referring to it after a while because it’s too silly (says a bit). It is discussed here. The abridged version of their book, The Hidden History of the Human Race, is reviewed here.

The general idea, which researchers presumably happily cover up while cashing their fat research grant checks, is that “[w]e did not evolve up from matter; instead we devolved, or came down, from the realm of pure consciousness, spirit.” Cremo suggests that before we ask “where did human beings come from?” we should ask “[w]hat is a human being?” His answer is that it is a combination of matter, mind, and consciousness (or spirit). Which is an assertion displaying little understanding of matter, mind, consciousness, or evidence. At least he predicts that his book will be ridiculed (a sudden dim flash of insight there) since all great ideas always are, despite the demonstrable fact that great ideas have, contrary to popular belief, no more than exceedingly rarely (perhaps never) had to go through a period of ridicule before they have been accepted. Cremo explicitly admits that his governing strategy is confirmation bias here (“[w]hen operating from a different metaphysical perspective, I seem to see the evidence in a different light … was surprised to find there was so much evidence that is consistent with the Puranas”).

Cremo has no scientific education (his credentials are discussed here), and his associate membership of the Bhaktivedanta (“specializing in history and philosophy of science”), the scientific research branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, doesn’t count.

He has, however, appeared on TV –  More precisely in Charlton Heston’s legendary “The Mysterious Origins of Man”.

Diagnosis: Confirmation bias is not rigorous testing or evaluation of hypotheses, but Cremo would never know the difference. His screeds are of the kind that to a rational mind reads as well when the font is set to wingdings. 

#592: Charles Creager jr.

Charles Creager has a bachelor of science degree from BobJones University and is thus a well-qualified creation scientist. His main claim to fame is his publication in the first volume of the Answers Research Journal (the house journal of Answers in Genesis) titled “Mars, a Testament to Catastrophe”. In this delightful article Creager claims to present evidence that Mars had a global flood as well. (Come on: it wouldn’t be consistent with the Bible if God only flooded the humans and not the Martians, would it?) He presents no new data, but insanely twists and tortures existing data from Mars rover missions (see this one) to suit his results. The scholarly references in the article are to press releases and only the pictures on NASA’s website.

Creager doesn’t seem to have contributed much else to science – though he runs his own creationist website, the Genesis Mission and had a paper “Entropy and Applied Energy” published in Creation Research Society Quarterly in 2012 – but the aforementioned paper is alone sufficient to earn him an honored place in our Encyclopedia.

Diagnosis: A rather cute attempt at “we want to do science too” without having the faintest idea what science is.