#2743: Hannah Pearl Davis

Though we don’t have the attention span to sit through confused TikTok and YouTube videos, it’s hard to avoid to, at some point, notice the existence of Hannah Pearl Davis, or, as she is known online, JustPearlyThings. Davis is a genuinely stupid wingnut activist who rose to prominence (in part because a lot of TikTok users are suckers idolizing mediocre extremist conspiracy theorists who, like themselves, are genuinely stupid and angry) in the manosphere due to her criticism of the perceived censorship of Andrew Tate and due to her general rantings about “feminism”. Davis was banned from TikTok in 2022, but is, as far as we can tell, still present on YouTube. She also runs the Pre-Game Show podcast.

As a self-declared “anti-feminist” activist, Davis has indeed frequently been described as 'the female Andrew Tate'. She claims that “women should not vote” and that “the courts, the legal system, all of society is basically pandering and simping for women.” In an attempt to clarify her views, she also tried to argue that “only five per cent of women wanted the right to vote” and that “if feminists want the right to vote, right, then it should come with the draft”, and seems as unaware about the status of the draft as she is about most other things going on around her. She also thinks that divorce should be illegal (“tHAt’s JuST mY OpIniOn”).

 

And as with a lot people with the inclinations and mental abilities of Pearl Davis, things quickly ended up in antisemitic conspiracy theories. Indeed, her video (since deleted) in which she performed her song “Why Can’t We Talk About the Jews?" (including phrases like “Now I'm not saying Hitler was a good guy, but I just wanna know why” and “now there’s all these conspiracy theories, and the more they talk, I think maybe they're right”) seems to have made even erstwhile fans somewhat uneasy. In an interview with Piers Morgan (an erstwhile fan who was not impressed with said video), Davis tried to claim that the song was about cancel culture and free speech rather than anti-Semitism – though she also asserted that “I don't really have a strong opinion either way” about the Holocaust. Then she claimed that Piers Morgan was censoring her by criticizing her. Ironically, Davis often claims that she just wants to have all claims on the table for debate; as she amply demonstrates everywhere else, however, she doesn’t really mean debate; Davis has no aptitutde for or wish to engage in debate.

 

She also, probably unaware that it is relevant to judgments about the state of her anti-semitism, praised Nick Fuentes: according to Davis, Fuentes is a “good person” and based on looking at his Wikipedia page before having him on her show, she didn’t believe he was antisemitic or racist, despite Fuentes explicitly denying the Holocaust and promoting white supremacism. (Her reasoning seems to be based on the currently popular reasoning pattern “I agree with X; I am a good person (presupposition); racism is somehow associated with being a bad person; hence, X is not racist”)

 

Diagnosis: Ultimately, Davis is possibly best categorized as an extension of the boogaloo movement and the post-truth movement popularized the last decade or so: She’s just saying stuff, without the slightest care about facts or reason, and without recognizing why facts and reason matter to the topics she discusses – partially because she seems unable to grasp facts or employ reason. And her popularity is unsurprising, insofar as a lot of people share those traits and are desperate to sympathize with and pander to someone who shares their ineptitude for and dislike of details, fact-checking, consistency or serious analysis, and someone who can help channel their rage at “elites”, i.e. those who do care about and are able to engage with such things.

#2742: Devra Davis

There is no credible evidence that cell phones increase the risk of brain tumors or any other forms of cancer, and no plausible mechanism by which they could be doing so – there is, in other words, evidence of neither correlation nor causation. But the myth that there is an association is a persistent one – fear sells, even though the basis for the fear-mongering is nothing but speculative pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, now matter how crazy the conspiracy theory or brand of pseudoscience may be, it is possible to find some authority figure that can lend the idea, however outlandish, a sheen of legitimacy by virtue of their credentials (without, of course, having any more credible evidence than their usually less coherent followers).

 

For the purported association between cell phones and cancer, perhaps the leading “authority” on the conspiracy side is Devra Davis, an epidemiologist, toxicologist, author, founder and director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, and former professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh. Davis has also served on several governmental and non-governmental organizations, before founding and assuming the position of president of the insane pseudoscience group the Environmental Health Trust, an organization devoted to trying to argue that (and pushing pseudoscience apparently indicating that) mobile devices, WiFi, 5G, and other radio-frequency systems pose a health risk to humans and a risk to the environment, despite being in direct conflict with all credible evidence, scientific consensus, and reason. Indeed, Davis has a history of being careless with facts and evidence in her other works, too, and even of engaging in other straight-out conspiracy nonsense.

 

Her views on cell phones are summed up in her book Disconnect: The TRUTH About Cell Phone RADIATION, What the INDUSTRY Has Done to Hide It, and How to PROTECT Your FAMILY (capitalization in the original). In the book, Davis focuses on studies (mostly shoddy) that appear to support its alarmist conclusions while deliberately ignoring or falsifying information about studies showing no harm and dismissing them as products of a vast, industry-led conspiracy on the grounds that they reach a different conclusion than the one she is looking for. And accuracy really isn’t Davis’s strong suit: “if you examine only those studies that have analyzed people for a decade or longer you find one thing: Every single one of them shows that long-term heavy use of cell phones has increased the risks of brain tumors”, says Davis, citing the rantings of one infamous Swedish alarmist (Lennart Hardell) as well the large-scale Interphone study, whose conclusion, in direct contradiction with how Davis describes it, was that “[o]verall, no increase in risk of glioma or meningioma was observed with use of mobile phone”. And that example is merely one illustrative example of her style, and not the most egregious one. Here is an even-handed review of the book.

 

So Davis is aware that the current science is pretty clear that there has been no increase in brain cancer after cell phone use becamewidespread. In response, Davis claims to have unpublished research “taking a more sophisticated look” and that you should trust instead. And perhaps because dimly aware that appealing to mysterious unpublished studies is less than convincing, and because the massive lack of evidence for the purported association (and the clear and unambiguous evidence for no association) is a sore point for Davis, she tends to just lie about the existing evidence: In a 2016 episode for the Australian TV program Catalyst, for instance, she brazenly and completely falsely just asserted that “every single well-designed study ever conducted finds an increased risk of brain cancer with the heaviest users [of mobile phones]”. The claim was quickly refuted by real scientists, but some damage to the public was likely already done: despite being full of nonsense, Davis and her rants are frequently cited by people who don’t know much about the science or evidence, including major media outlets.

 

In her book, she also tries to defend, by inventing an elaborate conspiracy and appealing to a putative frame-up, the results of Hugo Rudiger, who was found guilty of scientific fraud and whose results could, once the fraudulent parts were removed, not be replicated. A signifant part of the book is also devoted to desperately pushing the decidedly evidence-anemic idea that cellphones are a threat to male fertility, discussed in some detail here (the few studies that ostensibly supports the idea have notoriously failed to replicate). She falsifies physics, too: “[e]lectromagnetic waves ability to travel depends on how long they are. The faster a wave oscillates and the smaller it is, the shorter the distance it can reach”, says Davis.

 

Davis’s ideas had, not surprisingly, a significant impact during the Covid pandemic. Though not herself explicitly linking 5G to Covid symptoms, Davis vocally asserted, without evidence, that 5G wireless technology poses health risks. Her nonsense was used as an alleged source of authority e.g. in Sacha Stone’s new-age conspiracy film 5G Apocalypse: Extinction Event.

 

Diagnosis: Though she lacks the wild-eyed incoherence of most anti-cellphone activists, Davis has plenty of paranoia and conspiracy allusions to offer. What she doesn’t have, is evidence, science or a care for facts, accuracy or accountability. It is probably no exaggeration to call her one of the leadings proponents of pseudoscience in the US, and her influence is disconcerting.

 

Hat-tip: Lorne Trottier @ Sciencebased Medicine

#2741: Zach Dasher

Though he is perhaps not considered extreme by 2024 standards, Zach Dasher was generally considered a notably colorful candidate when he ran for Congress in Lousiana in2014. He didn’t win that one, but he did get to serve as an at-large delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention. Dasher’s hopes were mostly based on his Duck Dynasty reality TV fame – Dasher is the nephew of Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson, an anti-gay conspiracy theorist and defender of Jim Crow. And Dasher has stated that “We share a very similar background and philosophy, and our spiritual beliefs are the same as well.” (His wife, Jil, is an advocate for conversion therapy.)

 

As Dasher saw it, “my platform begins with God. That’s really what this whole thing is about. In Washington, when we look at what’s going on, we see an erosion away from that platform.” Of course, people who believe they are representing God in politics have a tendency to project wildly, and Dasher followed up by accusing the federal government – not himself – of “believ[ing] that they’re God”; government is, according to Dasher, intent on “gain[ing] control over every aspect of our lives” as part of a plan to create a “culture of dependency.” And the “swift drift away from God will usher in tyranny and death”: “Tyranny will get its foothold – if it already doesn’t have it – and in the end, there will be mass carnage and mass death. It’s inevitable.”

 

He then went on to blame the Sandy Hook shooting on atheists and post-modernists (though the shooter “was made in the image of God. But somewhere along the way he believed what the atheist says. He reduced humanity to nothing more than a collection of atoms” – Dasher cited no evidence, of course, since evidence is an atheist post-modernist tool), whom he also accused of “brainwashing a generation” through rap music and general “moral decay” and erosion of liberty (whatever he means by ‘liberty’). He also advocated for schools to “arm the teachers” but warned that government officials intend to repeal the Second Amendment in order to eliminate all other freedoms.

 

Apparently, the disturbingly insane documentary Torchbearer, a “Christian war film” about Phil Robertson directed by Steve Bannon, was the brainchild of Zach Dasher.

 

Diagnosis: Possibly old news. Dasher is a fanatic loon and conspiracy theorist, but might not possess the level of unhinged frenzy that seems required to make it into the limelight in 2024. Still, he does apparently have some powerful allies.

#2740: Mark Dankof

Mark Dankof is an at least semi-regular (we can’t really be bothered to check) contributor to American Free Press, an anti-semitic conspiracy outlet founded by a.o. Willis Carto with a long history of promoting insane conspiracy theories, including 9/11 conspiracy theories in which Jewish people are blamed for being behind the attacks. Dankof also makes regular appearances on Press TV, a conspiracy outlet operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. He also runs a website, Mark Dankof’s America (as well as something called the Dankof Report), where he features articles blaming the Israeli Mossad for, well, more or less anything, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

 

So yes, most of Dankof’s contributions to these outlets consist of free-ranting about various conspiracy theories he has dreamt up or found in the darker corners of the internet and which he has promptly adopted. For instance, his November 2012 Press TV segment “US, Israel plan Assad removal to hurt Iran: Analyst” claimed, without evidence (screw evidence), that “Zionist-affiliated arms dealers, oil consortiums and bankers seek to overthrow the Syrian government …to pave the way for an American and Israeli military attack against Iran.”

 

And make no mistake, the “Israeli regime orchestrated 9/11 attacks”; Dankof is more than ready to rant about “the kinds of forces that some of us think are very much involved in covering up the truth about 9/11, and that includes a disproportionate power that the Israeli lobby has and that Jewish interests have in the United States in our news media that keeps some of this stuff from being discussed”; indeed, “it appears to me that the United States is, as obviously as we know, co-opted by the Israeli lobby, so is the United Nations and Israel is simply using the United States to buy what it wants.” Fortunately, as Dankof wishfully sees it, “The American people are increasingly sick of [Jewish control] they’re sick of the pack of lies that all of this is based on, they’re sick of the Israeli control of their foreign policy and their government and their news media.” In a 2011 article, Dankof even quoted from and wrote that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion accurately reflect the state of the world.

 

Diagnosis: Old-school neo-nazi. It would be somewhat curious to know how he responds to new-school QAnon-related antisemitism, but we frankly cannot be bothered to check or think too much about it.

#2739: Jennifer Daniels

Raymond Damadian was an MD, a pioneer of magnetic resonance imaging, religious fundamentalist and young-Earth creationist) where the latter position was based not on any evaluation of that science (which would not touch upon his area of expertise) but on incoherent religious ramblings and paranoia. But Damadian is also dead.

 

Jennifer Daniels is another one-time MD gone rogue, and though she is still alive (as far as we know), she is no longer an MD, having surrendered her license in response to being confronted with the legal dimensions (having her license revoked) of her absolutely batshit nonsense claims about health and medicine; indeed, Daniels had been in trouble with the New York Department of Health over her claims and behaviors for a long time before surrendering her license. According to herself, though, she “had her medical license suspended due to not prescribing enough drugs and truly healing her patients,” which is demonstrably a bald-faced lie. She currently resides in Panama, where she produces books, radio shows, and videos; sells supplements; advises clients as a health coach; and provides “Holistic Mentoring Consultations”.

 

Daniels is perhaps best known for her advocacy for turpentine, no less, which according to Daniels is the Fountain of Youth and able to cure a wide range of conditions (including a number of fake ones) but which according to reality is poison with no recognized or plausible benefit for any condition whatsoever. Among the conditions turpentine was supposed to be able to cure, according to Daniels, was chronic Candida; now, it is technically true that patients after taking turpentine would no longer suffer from chronic Candida, but that would of course be for the reason that none of them had chronic Candida in the first place. Chronic Candida is a fake disease.

 

Daniels allegedly got the idea of using turpentine from asking African-American patients if their slave ancestors had an affordable miracle cure that cured everything. In the beginning, she tried it herself, and it is worth quoting her description of what happened at some length: “I think my IQ went up like 50 points, I could just feel it, all this mental energy and understanding and clarity, just like when I was 10 years old, everything was very clear and focused. I said WOW what a feeling. I did some math problems, I said this is pretty good.” Since she had heard that turpentine could cause seizures, she went on to determine the maximum safe dose: stopping when she felt a little twitch or “even softer than a twitch.” Then she gave it to her family. How Daniels obtained a medical degree in the first place is a very, very good question –Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have things to answer for.

 

As for scientific evidence, Daniels refers to a review study from France that doesn’t at all say what she claims it says. In general, however, Daniels is “not much of a fan of research”. The reason she gives for not being a fan is “because every research project I’ve been involved with, I’ve been asked to falsify data.” Given her general grasp of things (and level of honesty), we suspect that she might have misunderstood some instructions and the distinction between falsifying a hypothesis through testing and making up data.

 

If you are going to use turpentine, you have to follow her instructions, however: First, you take her Vitality Capsules, which according to her “clean out the bile ducts and the gall bladder system as well as the small intestine, large intestine”, promote circulation and contain “no chemicals”. Then you must to follow her diet instructions (organic, and abstaining from GMOs and “dead food”). And then turpentine will be so successful that Daniels, according to herself, stopped using antibiotics in her practice (but if you experience some worries here, Daniels reassures us that “[t]here is no medication that turpentine interacts with”, a claim she pulled directly out of her ass and for which she has no evidence or tests to back it up). She has also recommended turpentine for children; indeed, children should start getting turpentine in castor oil when they reach 30 pounds to prevent Candida and parasites.

 

Moreover, turpentine ostensibly improves eyesight (users were, according to Daniels, able to discard their reading glasses) and resolves tinnitus, and it helps with diabetes by healing the pancreas – it will ostensibly allow Type I diabetics to lower their insulin dose. That said, Daniels’s recommendations aren’t limited to turpentine; she can also give you thicker and less gray hear: “use minerals, small willow flower, and shou wu”.

 

Apparently, according to Daniels, “Liver time is 1-3 AM; lung time is 3-5 AM.” We’ll just leave that there without comment.

 

Oh, and she is of course anti-vaccine: “There is no vaccine or injection Dr. Daniels recommends.”

 

Diagnosis: It’s hard to imagine that she is unaware of the ridiculousness of her claims, but it probably doesn’t matter, since at this level, stupidity becomes indistinguishable from malice. Completely bonkers, but contrary to what you’d probably think: there are people to listen to this kind of stuff.

 

Hat-tip: Skepdoc

#2738: Jim Daly

Focus on the Family is a fundamentalist hate group – presently self-designated as ‘a church’ for tax disclosure purposes – that we’d have had plenty of opportunities to cover already. Jim Daly is its current president (or, since it is now a church: “head deacon and elder”) and as such generally responsible for the group’s efforts to promote in particular anti-gay propaganda and legislation, including fighting restrictions on conversion therapy. He is also the main host of the Focus on the Family radio program.

 

Though Daly is behind efforts to repaint his group’s messages in friendlier and more inclusive terms – mostly just emphasizing how much they love people while denouncing them as being manipulated by Satan and claiming to be nonpartisan while taking explicit positions on political issues – Daly has himself spread plenty of hate against LGBT people. He has, for instance, claimed that same-sex marriage endangers civilization and that Satan himself is behind same-sex marriage since “he hates marriage because it’s a reflection of God’s image” – “the Enemy hates that, it’s disgusting to him,” said Daly, “and with that, he wants to break it down, he wants to destroy it.”. Here is Daly trying to invoke Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel to argue why it is important to denounce the decision to allow “openly practicing homosexuals” in the Boy Scouts, which, as Daly sees it, will undermine “the character and safety of the boys.”

 

In a more conspiratorial mode, Daly has also claimed that “homosexual activists” wish to restrict the speech of anyone opposed to homosexuality, and that campaigning on behalf of LGBT rights “it really is a form of fascism.” On the pseudoscience side, meanwhile, Daly has supported and promoted the discredited anti-LGBT study by Mark Regnerus.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, it’s hate, and hate pinned up by pseudoscience; and trying to portray your hate as something other than hate isn’t going to make it less hateful. But the religious right remains a powerful political force in the US, and Focus on the Family remains more or less in the center of the religious right; Daly’s political influence is, in other words, difficult to overestimate.

#2737: Guggie Daly [pseudonym]

Despite increased popularity of anti-vaccine messaging, antivaccine views are still widely regarded with the suspicion and ridicule they deserve. One tried-and-tested method for changing people’s minds, however, is: Newspeak. If you can’t change the facts, obscure them by inventing a new nomenclature. That, at least, was the motivation for antivaccine lunatic Guggie Daly in an article (‘Vacctivism Terminology: How to Empower Instead of Cower’) she wrote for the insane rot of pseudo-religious pseudoscience and denialism Natural Mother Magazine: Instead of calling your kids “unvaccinated,” wrote Daly, use “vaccine-free” or – to maximize the potential for being misleading – say that your child “has an intact immune system”; and instead of “vaccine-preventable diseases”, use “vaccine-associated diseases” (Daly denies, against all evidence, and all of reality, that vaccines effectively prevent disease). And of course: instead of calling yourself “anti-vaxxers” – a term that media manipulation has made so “negative” – use “vaccine safety advocates”: That, by the way, is an Orwellian ploy as old as the antivaccine movement itself. “I encourage transparency and better ethical standards from pharmaceutical companies,” added Daly while encouraging precisely the opposite for her own group of fervent denialists.

 

Of course, redecorating the map doesn’t change the terrain, and in reality, vaccines were and are safe and effective. But Daly and her ilk have left reality behind a long time ago. As Daly mistakenly sees it, vaccines “are an optional, experimental product based on an unproven theory. Informed, consenting adults can choose to take them if they want. But it’s medical malpractice to force them onto non-consenting children. Instead of people demanding that vaccine companies, doctors and the government prove that this medication is safe, effective, necessary treatment in our children [which we do demand, and the demand has been thoroughly met], we take on undue responsibility to prove that vaccines are ineffective, unsafe and unnecessary. Completely backwards.”

 

As for Daly herself, ‘Guggie Daly’ is apparently the pseudonym of a Missouri-based “mommy blogger” who has, apparently, achieved some popularity in antivaccine movements for her (deranged) posts on vaccines and home birth. There is a brief portrait of her here.

 

Diagnosis: Absolutely insane antivaccine conspiracy theorist who has elevated her antivaccine views and her ‘crunchiness’ to a New Age-religious identity. She is garbage, and anyone who takes advice from her is garbage, too.