#1992: Eric Merola

Merola being interviewed.
I do not know who the interviewer is.

Eric Merola is a writer, director and producer of silly and often angry conspiracy “documentaries”, especially denialist ones aimed at promoting one or another preposterous form of quackery. His “breakthrough” might have been his involvement in the fantastically idiotic low-production-value conspiracy flick Zeitgeist, which was cleverly and apparently somewhat successfully marketed to the significantly critical-thinking challenged segments of the population. He is probably most famous, however, as an ardent champion of the cancer quackery of Stanislaw Burzynski; Merola’s got not one but twoconspiracy-suffused propaganda pieces promoting Burzynski’s magic elixir treatments for cancer: Burzynski: The Movie (reviewed here), and Burzynski The Sequel (reviewed here).

Burzynski: The Movie predictably portrays Burzynski, a man whose career consists of pushing appallingly expensive, unproven treatments to people in desperate situations, as a brave maverick doctor persecuted by the establishment. It was endorsed by crackpots and conspiracy theorists like Joe Mercola and Mike Adams. Apart from conspiracy mongering, the propaganda piece offers testimonials (some discussed here; needless to say, they’re underwhelming) and encourages viewers, who have no medical expertise and no background knowledge to assess evidence for medical claims, to think for themselves. The movie was unsurprisingly met with little enthusiasm among those who actually know how cancer, medicine, evidence and science actually work, so Merola subsequently engaged in a rather aggressive campaign to demonize “The Skeptics”, ostensibly a shadowy organization of people dedicated to protecting Big Pharma and making sure patients don’t have access to the magic hands and potions of Burzynski’s, based on the fact that when someone criticize you for your shoddy work they are always in a conspiracy to hide the truth (also Big Pharma). Having suggested that critics are in a conspiracy to silence him, Merola responded by using a (possibly bogus) DMCA takedown notice to silence his critics. Here is a good discussion of the kinds of tactics Merola engages in to silence critics. Rather predictably, the documentary (extended ad, really) landed Merola an interview on the Dr. Oz show. A new edition, discussed here, was released in 2016.

The sequal was, if possible, even more unhinged, (relying for instance on this one), but then again: it istargeted at i) already converted altmed conspiracy theorists and ii) people in desperate situations, remember.

Merola’s defense of quackery doesn’t stop with Burzynski, however. In 2014 he released “Second Opinion: Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering”. No, yes: Merola defends Ralph Moss’s silly old idea of pushing laetrileas a cure for cancer, no less, which is, by now, in roughly the same category as pushing expulsion of blood demons by bloodletting as a cure for cancer (and make no mistake: laetrile touted as a cancer cure is quackery). Anyways, the leadership at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is apparently running the vast conspiracy to suppress this magic cure. (More details here). It would have been interesting to hear Merola or Moss explain precisely why MSKCC would want to cover up evidence of a highly effective cancer treatment, but conspiracy theorists don’t usually think too hard about such tangential details.

Diagnosis: Aggressive conspiracy theorist and promoter of the most egregious forms of quackery and pseudoscience. He is pretty productive and, not the least (as mentioned), aggressive enough to successfully make the world a worse place. Dangerous.

#1991: Al Melvin

That there is a strain of anti-science and anti-reason in some state legislatures is hardly a surprise, and the Arizona State Senate is an example. The Arizona State Senate used to feature Al Melvin (2006–2014), who had – note – also teaching background from the University of Arizona. In 2014, Melvin voted against implementing Common Core in Arizona public schools, because (he had heard that) some of the reading material is borderline pornographic, and that the program uses fuzzy math, substituting letters for numbers in some examples. That’s right: Math with letters is a liberal conspiracy (presumably because letters often don’t have fixed values).

The same year he received some attention for his interview with Anderson Cooper regarding his support for Arizona SB 1062 (passed in the Senate but vetoed), designed to allow religious people to discriminate against others (particularly the LGBT community) if they felt offended by the existence of those people. Melvin was unable to come up with a single example to justify the bill, which was ostensibly introduced to protect “religious freedom” (with Melvin being presumably dimly aware that citing bigotry on its own wouldn’t rub well with his audience), but instead tried to reassure his audience by stating that he was himself unaware of anyone in Arizona who practiced discrimination against gay people, which is, needless to say, not particularly reassuring.

Diagnosis: One might wonder what effect Melvin’s approach to math might have had on Arizona’s budget discussions (or perhaps he doesn’t want the good people of Arizona to be able to double check his numbers). But as much as he is a moron, Melvin is at least equally a bigot. Fortunately he got knocked out in 2014, but you never know when and where people like him might reappear. 

#1990: Janet Mefferd

Janet Mefferd is the host of two delusionally deranged fundie extremist radio talk shows, Janet Mefferd Today – A Christ-Centered Look at Life, and Janet Mefferd Live, which seems for all purposes rather similar. The latter is on American Family Radio, an outlet for the hate group The American Family Association. As you’d expect, Mefferd herself runs mostly on hate and fuming bigotry, and is currently the go-to radio host for other insane anti-gay bigots and conspiracy theorists, such as Scott Lively and Peter LaBarbera (a regular), Brian Camenker, Randy Thomasson, and representatives from hate groups like the Pacific Justice Institute, The Family Research Council and Liberty Counsel.

Zeh Gays

“I think the homosexuality issue is … an excuse of the pagan mind to begin what they have wanted to do for a very long time and that is to wipe out Christianity. Maybe that’s overstated, maybe I’m being a little bit over the top, but I really don’t think so. I think it’s an excuse. I think it’s the pagan who doesn’t want to hear about sin. I think it’s the pagan who doesn’t want the word of God to be believed by anybody because it’s an offense. And I think homosexuality is the perfect issue for them to use to shut Christians up.”

-      Janet Mefferd (“think” is not the right word here)

The LGBT movement is, according to Mefferd, part of a pagan effort to “wipe out Christianity” (gay Christianity, then, is a “Trojan horse”), and anti-discrimination policies have lately moved us closer to becoming a “tyrannical culture.” An important player in this process has of course been Obama, who Mefferd views as “more like Stalin”, partially also because of Obamacare, which is apparently “cultural Marxism”; one is excused for suspecting that Mefferd neither understands what that expression means, nor what she herself is trying to mean by it.

In 2012 she had to warn her listeners that they might vomit like a sick child with a stomach ache to read her report of Anderson Cooper coming out of the closet. She emphasized that his relation to other men could not be love, but “a lie from the pit”. Then she argued that legalizing pedophilia is the next step, mostly because she would be unable to draw a relevant distinction if her life depended on it, and asserted that the American Psychological Assoction is (conspiratorially) already working on that.

Mefferd has defended Nigeria’s right to have a law criminalizing homosexuality and punish gay couples, and dismissesconcerns about persistent violence against gay people in Africa: “Let’s get our priorities straight here, in other words, why are we even focusing on this?” asked Mefferd, who focused on this; youshouldn’t, though – indeed, critics are bullying Nigeria, according to Mefferd. She then defended Nigeria’s right to make their own decisions on the issue since morality is relative. Unless she disagrees with a decision, of course. Then morality is universal. When discussing the lawsuit against Scott Lively – one of the vilest and most morally bankrupt monsters to walk the face of the Earth – over his role in Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, she “found it interesting” that the Center for Constitutional Rights (representing Sexual Minorities Uganda in the case), is located at 666 Broadway, New York, wondering whether the organization “sought out the address.” “Not that that means anything,” said Mefferd, who clearly thought it meant something, at least to her listeners.

She has elsewhere asserted that violence against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is not a problem – she is very well aware that it is widespread, so the reason it’s not a problem can’t be that it doesn’t happen; you do the math on that one. In a later show she wistfully dreamed that the US would be more like Senegal, or – presumably – one of the other countries, most of them Muslim, that currently ban homosexuality. 

Mefferd has long tried to argue that gay rights should not trump the right of Christians not to see gays. For instance, it is for this reason perfectly fine for a school to arrange a prom where gay and lesbian students are prevented from attending. (Also, public schools are “morally bankrupt.”) Schools that have tried to do exactly this have been subject to some criticism, which has led to Mefferd complaining that bigots are, in the future, going to be ostracized and forced to wear badges “like the Jews in Nazi Germany” (and the homosexuals, but Mefferd didn’t mention that.) Presumably because that’s how she would like to react to people she disagrees with and cannot imagine others being of less inclination to oppress and subjugate others than she is. She cited the Holocaust in her criticisms of attempts to regulate reparative therapy, too, being apparently under the delusion that shehas the moral high ground in these matters.

Due to her inability to reason and her (unsurprising) problems with finding a rational, moral or humane basis for her anti-gay bigotry, Mefferd often reverts to claiming that God will punish us if we don’t do what Mefferd He wants. In fact, God already has a “bow and arrow pointed at us.” Like Cupid, in fact.

Mefferd has also argued that gay people are overrepresented among federal judges since seven out of 824 federal judges (2013) are gay and gay people constitute only 2–3 % of the population.

Religious freedom and tolerance

As Mefferd sees it, homosexuality is a conspiracy against Christianity. But Christianity is under siege from other quarters, too (the opposition to God is all united through Satan, of course). She has for instance suggested suing government for violating the First Amendment by establishing atheism as the state’s official religion – “establishing atheism” here meaning the fact that there is some limitations to what measures she herself can use, in line with the Constitution, to force others to agree with her on religious issus.

She is quick to emphasize, however, that evangelicals have no bias. For instance, in 2012 she denied that any evangelicals have a “bias” against Romney because of his Mormon faith, insisting instead that if anyone has a bias against anyone, it is Romney who has a bias against Evangelicals. She then went on to criticize Romney for failing to address questions from the Religious Right because  Romney’s Mormon belief that he’ll “one day rule [his] own planet as a god” means he thinks he is above having to answer questions while running for President. “Being biased”means disagreeing with her– you should have figured out that by now, shouldn’t you?

When  Lowe’s pulled their ads from the TLC reality show All-American Muslim, Mefferd was one of several rightwing activists to rally to the company’s defense. According to Mefferd, Lowe’s decision had nothing to do with anti-Muslim sentiments, but due to the fact that the show was obviously “controversial” for featuring Muslims. “Not everything is religious bigotry!” said Mefferd. It might have been interesting to hear her try to explain why, then, the show was controversial, but probably not.

Creationism

Science, too, is a pro-gay conspiracy orchestrated by the devil, and Mefferd has argued (well, asserted) that teaching science in public schools is a violation of the rights of Christian students (it is “crazy” to think that public schools could be allowed teach science to Christian students), and that courts must accordingly block science curricula for public school use.

In particular (of course), Mefferd thinks fairness demans that creationism be taught alongside evolution: “It’s clear that there are lots and lots of people who hold to the biblical account of creation or at the very least a view of intelligent design, share it as a perspective, evolution is not the only perspective out there,” said Mefferd, who unsurprisingly experiences some difficulties distinguishing science from arbitrarily chosen and dogmatically maintained opinion. Apparently creationists deserve equal time on Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s remake of Cosmos, too.

Her attitude to science is brilliantly displayed in her attempts to refute a 2012 study on gender identity showing that epigenetic influences in the womb are a primary cause of homosexuality (because she didn’t like those results, of course.) Her primary reason for rejecting it was, of course, that it ostensibly contradicts the Bible (chapter and verse not offered), and her conclusion was bolstered by noting that the researchers included an evolutionary biologist at the University of California Santa Barbara; “right away I saw ‘evolutionary biologist’,” and knew that the study must be wrong. Evolutionists are already in cahoots with the gays and thus biased. Only evangelicals like herself, as established above, are unbiased in these matters.

Miscellaneous

A nice illustration of Mefferd’s approach to things is her furious criticism of RightWingWatch, a “nasty, vicious, Christian-hating hack site” that lied about the Benhams (by reporting accurately on them) and “needs to be sued for libel, defamation” – an illustrative example of the “out-of-control power of the LGBT agenda to smear and marginalize decent Christians and force them out of their jobs” – after their coverage of the Benhams’ anti-gay, anti-choice, and anti-Islam activism got the Benhams’ show cancelled by HGTV. Thing is, of course, that Mefferd at the same timepraised Matt Barber for succeeding in getting Christian publishing company WaterBrook Multnomah thrown out of the National Religious Broadcasters after publishing the book “God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships”.

Here is Mefferd on Sandra Fluke. 

In 2013, Mefferd caught fundie superstar Mark Driscoll plagiarizing. She later apologized for catching him, presumably because Driscoll was plagiarizing for Jesus, and Mefferd committed the grave sin of lapsing into recognizing and mentioning the moral transgression of people on her side of the war.

More recently, she claimed that the NFL protests during the national anthem couldn’t possibly be about white supremacy because the United States “had a little thing called the Civil War” that “corrected” the issue of white supremacy.

She has also followed up on claims made by deranged conspiracy theorist Donald Trump trying to cast doubt on whether Obama was, in fact, a member of an Indonesian equivalent of the Boy Scouts as a child. Mefferd called for a serious investigating, based on her disbelief that Obama could possibly have been involved with such an organization amidst “all the communist influence” and the influence of “his mother and Frank Marshall Davis.” No, she doesn’t know how any of this works.

There’s a good Janet Mefferd resource here.

Diagnosis: Neither a minimal capacity for rational thought, nor a moral fiber; so Mefferd tries to compensate with copious amoutns of hate, bigotry and paranoia. She is accordingly rather popular among certain groups and has become the go-to person for broadcasting the most delusional anti-gay drivel. Dangerous.

#1989: Jim Meehan

Jim Meehan is a dangerous crank and conspiracy theorist – he has been caught promulgating the craziest fake news – heavily involved in the anti-vaccine movement. Now, Meehan is an MD. That, of course, doesn’t mean that he knows anything about research or rational or scientific assessment of evidence (Meehan demonstrably does not), but the distinction between MD and medical researcher is one not generally recognized by conspiracy theorists, who’ll take anything whatsoever that looks like it can be promoted as an “expert” or authority supporting their side of things. Meehan has no background or expertise in vaccination or immunology – he is actually an ophthalmologist by training – but he is into functional medicine, which is as ridiculous as quackery comes. Currently Meehan operates a “wellness” center in Oklahoma.

He also doesn’t have the faintest idea how the VAERS database works. Meehan has tried to argue that the HPV vaccine is confirmed to have caused 144 deaths (by 2013), because there are 144 reports of death associated with the HPV vaccine in the VAERS database. This is not how the database works (indeed). “It absolutely is evidence,” says Meehan. It isn’t evidence.

But he does know how to parrot standard anti-vaccine claims, and his rants have been relatively widely distributed on social media by people who do not know anything about vaccines or actually bother with the evidence either; most of them is a combination of the claim that infectious diseases aren’t dangerous, toxins gambits – admittedly effective on the chemically illiterate – and conspiracy mongering: the science behind vaccines is untrustworthy because scientists are uniformly corrupt and bought by Big Pharma, who would actually benefit vastly more from hospitalizations due to vaccine-preventable diseases than from vaccines, but like all good conspiracy theories this one requires that you don’t look too closely. There is a thorough takedown of his claims here. Meehan has also been caught supporting the debunked idea that physical trauma and child abuse are “vaccine injury”.

Diagnosis: Aggressive lunatic and unhinged conspiracy theorist. Stay far away.

#1988: William John Meegan

William John Meegan is a fundie, conspiracy theorist, astrologist and author, for instance of the book The Sistine Chapel: A Study in Celestial Cartography. “From the brilliant mind of researcher-author William John Meegan, The Sistine Chapel … is a highly mystical and contemplative inquiry into The Mysteries and Esoteric Teachings of the Catholic Church,” says the description on Meegan’s website, apparently written by himself. (We do wonder how calling your inquiry “mystical” would be a selling point; not that the intended audience is likely to notice.) Apparently it’s the third of a series, following The Secrets & the Mysteries of Genesis: Antiquity’s Hall of Records and The Conquest of Genesis: A Study in Universal Creation Mathematics, which we haven’t seen but sounds suspiciously like it might deploy some serious numerology – Meegan is heavily into what he calls “esoteric science”, which is as far removed from science as numerology and astrology, which, by the way, is what his esoteric science apparently is (gematria, to be precise), with a heavy sprinkle of sacred geometry. 

You can read Meegan’s own description here. Senseless babble comes no less sensible than that. Illuminating sample: “Each letter of the world’s sacred literature is symbolized and alphanumerically structured, which makes the interpretation of each word far more important than the sum of its letters;” one would think that the interpretations of words go beyond the sum of their letters in ordinary conversation (insofar as there is a difference between seeing a string of letters you understand and seeing one you don’t understand), but we nevertheless have our doubts that they do in the rants and ravings of William John Meegan.

Despite their contents, Meegan’s books seem to be marketed as non-fiction.

Diagnosis: Small fish, but fantastically weird, colorful and insane. Probably harmless.