#558: Rebecca Lee Carley

Honorable mention to Orson Scott Card for his not entirely scholarly understanding of evolution and his call for armed revolution if gay marriage were to be legalized (though in fairness some commentators failed to explain the context of the screed).

Rebecca Lee Carley is fortunately less famous and influential. She makes up for that in terms of levels of sheer crazy. Carley is a former MD and anti-vaccination activist whose licence to practise medicine in the state of New York was revoked in March 2004 as a result of general unhingedness (in fact, she was found ”guilty of practicing while impaired by a mental disability and having a psychiatric condition which impairs her ability to practice medicine;” more here and here) – though she is still cited as an authority among the more batshit antivaxxers. According to herself, Carley doesn’t need that license anyways, and the whole system of licenses and doctors and Big Pharmas is just a conspiracy against her ability to treat cancer.

Her claims about vaccines are the usual ones; vaccines cause autism, cancer, autoimmune diseases, and shaken baby syndrome (and Carley gives you ”personal stories of vaccine damage” to back up her claims). You can read her essay ”The True Weapons Of Mass Destruction Causing VIDS (Vaccine Induced Diseases) An Epidemic Of Genocide” on whale.to (no link). It is spectacularly insane, and includes (plenty of) deranged claims such as ”Bechamp proved that Louis Pasteur's ’germ theory’ of disease was incorrect due to this ability of organisms to transform and mutate based on the body's internal terrain (as Pasteur admitted on his deathbed).” Interestingly, on her website Carley also offers a phone number that you can call to get advice on how to reverse your disease with natural remedies, and she doesn’t even ”need to see you in person,” an admission that suggests that Carley may be semi-aware of the quality of her advice. Discussed here, with some interesting highlights from her problems with the Medical Board. One supporter, Arnold Gore, has his own take on that medical license thing on whale.to.

Diagnosis: The scary thing is that she still got plenty of people willing to listen to here, despite the incoherent insanity and combination of megalomania and paranoia being rather obvious.

#11: Arthur M. Baker

Baker (no photo available) is an ardent proponent of that brand of food woo known as "raw foodism", i.e. the idea that we should ideally only eat raw (even living) food. This new age trend is primarily founded on the naturalistic fallacy (+ confirmation bias and anecdotal evidence) and has little scientific foundation. Not cooking any of one's food might be acceptable (though not recommendable) were it not for pesky food poisoning and bacteria. This by itself might not be enough to merit inclusion in the Encyclopedia - but of course folks like Baker have to take it a couple of steps further.

Baker is the author of "Awakening Our Self Healing Body", and he avoids the problem of bacteria in uncooked food since he doesn’t believe in the germ theory of disease anyway (it’s a conspiracy to support the food industry or something). A central supporter of the Natural Hygiene Movement (no, I won’t provide a link; google it), Baker rejects Western medicine and its theoretical foundation, and in his book “rips apart the notion of viruses destroying your body” (since viruses cannot do that since they are not living things) and similar claims, mostly based on ignorance, lies, bias and the purported fact that raw food is obviously natural and hence good, and Western medicine does not unequivocally recognize that. Parts of his ramblings are, however, semitechnical and well-written, and might to people with little knowledge about the matters look convincing. Support for raw foodism is, according to Baker, also found in the Bhagavad Gita and the Essene Gospel of peace. Another convincing argument he subscribes to is that Methuselah only ate raw food – and he got to live pretty long, didn’t he?

Diagnosis: Loon. Confirmation bias is strong with this one, but he is only one of an almost endless parade of food cranks. The movement seems to have some impact, but Baker’s own influence in particular is uncertain; should be considered dangerous, however.