#588: Gabriel Cousens

Gabriel Cousens is a health writer who describes himself in the following manner:

“Dr. Sir Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), D.D. (Doctor of Divinity), Diplomate of American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, Diplomate Ayurveda, a physician of the soul, teaches and lives the sevenfold peace. To the process of awakening and healing, Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), weaves a background as a holistic physician, medical researcher, world-recognized live-food nutritionist, psychiatrist, family therapist, homeopath, Rabbi, acupuncturist, Ayurvedic practitioner, expert on green juice spiritual fasting and detoxification fasting, ecological leader, Reiki master, internationally celebrated spiritual teacher, author, lecturer, culture-bridger, world peaceworker, to give a unique holistic approach to nurturing the hungry soul.”

That ought to tell you quite a bit about what kind of cretin we are dealing with here. Cousens’s work, in all its glory, centers around New Age woo and bullshittery (a mixture, it seems, of sycophancy and criticism of those whose unsupported claims differ from his own – e.g. Johnny Lovewisdom (criticism) and Adi Da (endorsement)). A mainstay of his particular kind of woo is Raw foodism, and he employs a wide arsenal of crackpottery (particularly the Gerson protocol) and New Age religious fluffery to prop up his advice, as well as primitive medieval vitalism: the uncooked baby carrot is “alive”, while the cooked carrot is “dead”; Hence, cooking and pasteurization “kill” food, and raw food is “living”. Why it would be an advantage that the carrot is alive is not entirely obvious, but Cousens does at least have pictures of the auras of energy surrounding the food to prove it. His rainbow diet is aptly featured here.

Apparently Cousens is the founder of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, “the world's leading spiritual, vegan raw and live food retreat center,” and the author of Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days, in which he claims that enzymes are food-qi and that treating diabetes is easy. It is discussed here. He’s got … anecdotes to back it all up, endorsements by one Joel Fuhrman – who appears not to know the first thing about reality – and plenty of thoroughly false and rather random-sounding assertions. In the accompanying video he does tone down the woo a little to make it more mainstream (without making it anywhere near reality-based), but both the video and the “Raw for Life” Encyclopedia on his website feature “expert” commentaries from Morgan Spurlock, Mike Adams and Gary Null, which shouldn’t exactly confer much authority to his claims.

Cousens has been involved in a lot of nasty bullshit over the years, including raising some controversy over his fantastically crankycellular therapy, and he has been responsible for at least one death, though according to Arizona’s board of homeopathic medicine (yes they have one) Cousens wasn’t guilty of malpractice by their standards – “standards of homeopathy” aren’t much to write home about, though.

With one David Wagner Cousens has also written Tachyon Energy: A New Paradigm in Holistic Healing. No, it is not evidence-based; and yes, it is quantum woo taken just a few steps further.

Diagnosis: A staunch enemy of humanity, Cousens is a monstrous supercrank who unabatedly continues his campaign to fool people into ruining their own lines. Repugnant.

#230: Marcus Laux

Not exactly a household name, Marcus Laux is in any case a very typical example of how woo is peddled. He is “a licensed naturopathic physician who earned his doctorate at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon. He has been clinically trained in acupuncture, homeopathy, physical medicine, among other healing modalities.” His biography is here.

It’s all there. He chose the woo route because “[science-based medicine] doctors seemed more interested in money than their patients” and – predictably – because naturopathic medicine “looks beyond the symptoms to the source, treating you as a whole person rather than a bunch of separate, unrelated symptoms”. But of course, Laux initially thought naturopathic medicine was quackery, However, he “knew in [his] heart [i.e. rather than by evidence] that the natural path was the right path” (in short, he found fallacious appeals to nature extremely intuitively compelling). He is also coauthor of “Natural Woman, Natural Menopause” (with Christine Conrad) and “Top Ten Natural Therapies” (with Melissa Block).

His web page is here. Now, Laux is the founder of Qivana, a network marketing company peddling all sorts of wellness products (woo-based, of course – no, you don’t get a link) in what they call the “Qivana Qore” series (it even has “Qi” in the name to give them away).

Diagnosis: This is how great woo is done; while Laux may be a fraud, it's more likely he is completely oblivious to the fishiness of his approach to medicine or business. Not very influential or likely to become very influential, but he is still not unlikely to cause some harm.

#217: Dennis Paul Knicely

Dennis Paul “Dr.” Knicely runs a website called “Healingnews”, which is, basically, exactly what you think it is. Knicely claims to be able to heal pretty much every ailment known to man with fluff, woo and positive thinking (a remarkable remedy – if you didn’t get well, you just didn’t think positively enough). The website has some original content, but for the most part it collects links to all sorts of health-related new age fluff, preferably of the less reality-affected kind.

And do you know what the best part is? The website provides us with the “scientific validation of alternative medicine” as well (Tracy Planinz’s multi-part series, including the validation of homeopathy, herbs, and acupuncture, unfortunately without a trace of science or validation.

In short, his webpage has everything; super-foods, anti-ageing, mind-body-spirit balance, prosperity (law of attraction), detox, drum circles, cancer denialism, mercury dental fillings, Frankenfoods (all modified foods: “There is a systemic illness in modern society: Most are simply so "numb" from constant exposure to chemicals and poisons everywhere they go”), magical plants, anti-vaccinationism (lots), the swine flu was a conspiracy/the swine flu is actually healthy for you (), and so on, and so forth. The most prevalent theme seems to be that prescription drugs are generally killing you, and all serious conditions can really be avoided (and remedied) by veganism (but greedy doctors will of course not tell you that). Knicely’s list of references includes such luminaries as Barbara Loe Fisher, Gary Null and Leonard Horowitz.

It’s all about finding harmony and opening your mind, you see. (The quack Miranda is cleverly hidden.)

Diagnosis: Knicely and his guest writers are, in short, more or less equivalent to healthranger Mike Adams, though the raging insanity is toned down, and while Knicely’s network is probably not unique in any way, it deserves an entry as a representative for this kind of drivel. Knicely is dangerous, of course, but probably not very influential.

#72: Deepak Chopra

A.k.a. The King of woo woo

The arch-bishop of woo himself, and probably one of the most influential (and flaky and zealous) crackpots chugging along today. A prolific author of New Age/self-help books (and a regular contributor to that absolutely abhorrent cesspool of anti-science, Huffington Post), Chopra is famous for using poorly understood (or not understood at all) vocabulary from physics, particularly quantum physics, mixed with “Eastern knowledge”. His writings are usually centered around woo-y claims along the lines of “recognize your inner beauty and the quantum entanglement will cure you”. Ardent opponent of “materialistic science” which hasn't yet recognized the ancient wisdom of Eastern spirituality, reincarnation, homeopathy and such. Earns a lot of money.

His most common inference rule is The Galileo Gambit (“scientist uniformly reject my ideas, but hey! Remember Galileo; his ideas were also reject by the scientific community [well, the church, in fact] back in the days; therefore I am right and everyone else are close-minded). An antidote is available here.

Some examples of his style: Chopra bashing skepticism (that is, Chopra fighting against logic and scientific inquiry – spot the fallacies): ; Chopra being taken on by Michael Shermer; Chopra on ”only spirituality can save the world” (and as Myers points out, Chopra neglects to tell us how); Chopra failing to deal with criticism; Chopra ”proving” that there is an afterlife; Chopra in general (this is part 3; links to the earlier ones); Chopra failing critical thinking yet again.

Well, I guess you get the point. This is a guy so utterly unable to grasp the foundations for critical thinking, so completely out of touch with reason, rationality and the ability to distinguish evidence from wishful thinking, that he must set some kind of record.

Diagnosis: This guy is seriously dangerous; he’s been claimed by Time magazine to be one of the 100 most important people of the 21st century; he has a huge following (Mikhail Gorbachev referred to Chopra as "one of the most lucid and inspired philosophers of our time"). His grasp of reason, critical thinking and reality is more tentative than Jack Chick’s, however, and the lunacy he represents might in the long run be even more dangerous than the Discovery Institute.

In short, he is probably the most influential loon in our Encyclopedia, and among the most dangerous (with Cynthia Dunbar and David Barton and some others).

#22: John Benneth

Our 22nd loon, Benneth is a respected and highly influential homeopath – indeed, one of the staunchest and most prominent defenders of homeopathic remedies in the States. Listen to Benneth explain how homeopathy works and its scientific underpinnings here, and hear one of the most ridiculous abuses of scientific language you’ve heard in a long time. It’s all there, from classic phrases like “more and more scientists have taken interest…” to “magnetic radiation” (a term Benneth employs as roughly equivalent to “qi” or “chi” or some similar New Age drivel), and the use of a sciency term that sounds like it’ll serve his purpose - in this case "nanocrystalloids", a phenomenon he thoroughly fails to understand (instead relying on the assumption that his listeners don’t understand it either). Pure nonsense and pseudo-scientific babble, in other words. It is deconstructed here.

Benneth also apparently thinks that homeopathy-skeptics are really Nazis who want to set another Holocaust into motion.

Yup – all there; no understanding of science, conspiracy theories, reductio ad hitlerum-mongering, persecution complex etc. Also an ardent youtube poster.

He takes it one step further here.

Diagnosis: this guy is located well beyond lunacy; a zealous madman without a trace of critical thinking skills or understanding of science. A pathological liar and smearer with delusions of grandeur. He seems to enjoy some respect among the kookiest of crackpots, but his total impact is unclear.