#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.

#625: Maxine Dietrich

A.k.a. Andrea Herrington (real name)

Maxine Dietrich is the founder of Joy of Satan, which is a noe-nazi satanic UFO cult, and yes, you read that right (the website is here), and off we go. According to Dietrich, her brand of spiritual Satanism differs from other religions in that everything can apparently be explained scientifically, including the astral plane, our souls, telepathy, magic experiences, and the very real, anthropomorphic deity she worships (Satan is not “evil”; “good” and “evil” are “nothing more than cultural concepts; Satan transcends this,” which, though it is a feeble attempt at postmodern relativism, makes no real sense). How does science explain her religion? “Our limited understanding of Quantum Physics has revealed a bit about the human soul.”

Ah, I see.

“How”, you may ask – though you probably won’t, since you probably suspect that you won’t get a particularly informative answer. Anyways, here goes Dietrich”s scientific, quantum explanation of it all: According to Dietrich “Kirlian Photography” reveals “the fact that we have an aura. Kirlian photography is a specialized form of photography, along the same lines as x-ray imaging.” I don’t suppose it really surprised you that Dietrich would be unable to distinguish science from incoherent woo, or distinguish scientific evidence from idle speculation (there is also this)?

Furthermore, according to Dietrich, “the U.S. Government and other world powers are well aware of this ability within humans and the reality of psychic warfare, though they keep much of this from the public.” The Catholic Church, for instance, is a Jewish conspiracy – according to Dietrich, all of their leaders are really Jews, and aliens are behind Christianity – in particular, Christianitly was instigated by a group she refers to as “the Intergalactic Federation (IGF)” (these guys – they don’t seem very nice). Christianity itself was their program “for the destruction of Aryan peoples”. Furthermore “Satan and the Original Gods are from Orion. The IGF is at war with Orion.” I guess that explains a lot. Poor Orion.

I think I’ll let readers rummage through that webpage for themselves (this quote is telling). Its crazy is fascinating in a Gene Ray-sense. It is admittedly hard to find any reliable information about the size of Dietrich’s church or the extent of her brand of theistic satanism, but it doesn’t seem to be too influential.

Dietrich’s husband, Clifford Herrington, used to be the leader of the National Socialist Movement. The connection between Herrington and satanism has at least made Hal Turner uncomfortable, but then Turner was an uncomfortable man to begin with.

Diagnosis: Fascinating, though her webpage design really gives her away from the start.

#623: Harvey & Marilyn Diamond

“Fit for Life” is a fad diet book based on “Natural Hygiene” and on the legendary woomeister Herbert Shelton’s reality-oblivious theories of food combining – if one eats the food in the wrong order they “cause fermentation” in the stomach, and “dead foods clog” the body, whereas “living foods cleanse” it. The ideas have been refuted by research, but this seems not to matter for Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, who have sold millions of books promoting the bullshit. Harvey Diamond has his degree in nutrition from a diploma mill, and it shows – most of the book is firmly based on the ecological fallacy, including the ridiculously false and misleading but exasperatingly common idea that “animals in nature are magnificently healthy in comparison to the health that we humans experience” whereas pets and zoo animals develop “many of the problems of humans” (there are alternative and better explanations for why it is rare to see debilitating diseases in the wild than invoking natural as some sort of white magic). The main claims of the Diamonds are covered here, though see also this admirably comprehensive list of dubious health practitioners.

Diagnosis: There are quite enough of these loons around, and exposing them will probably help little or nothing. Still, we have a duty to try, and the Diamonds constitute yet another scheme to exploit human biases and anecdotal evidence for purposes that have little to do with truth or well-being, regardless of what the Diamonds themselves may believe. 

#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.

#582: Debby & Mark Constantino

Debby & Mark Constantino are a husband-and-wife paranormal research team based in Northern Nevada who also runs the website spirits-speak.com. It is, in fact, a bit unclear to what extent they actually believe that they are uncovering paranormal phenomena – the website is very much consistent with a joke – but at least they claim to be specializing in Electric Voice Phenomena, which they believe is not only a means to achieve closure with the dead, but that it can aid police in crime solving (by boosting confirmation bias, though the Constantinos don’t put it that way). They also work with “haunted items,” and Debby “has the gift of attracting spirits […] she also feels she vibrates on a level to glimpse into the nature realm [no idea].”

Together they lecture at paranormal conferences about EVP stuff, though when you look at the flyers for those events you wonder whether it’s all intended as a joke – and the homepage of Zak Bagans, for instance, doesn’t exactly scream “I take this stuff very seriously”). They also participate in live ghost hunts, and have appeared on “Dead Famous, “Paranormal State” and “Ghost Adventures”.

Diagnosis: Since their whole thing is as tacky as a Key West guided ghost tour, one presumes that the whole thing is a scam to get visitors to buy merchandise (which you can). Otherwise …