#2423: Judy Wood

Judy Wood being her usual silly self

Judy Wood is a materials scientist and former assistant professor of mechanical engineering, as well as one of the leading figures in the 9/11 truther movement. Since 2006 she has been an independent researcher and author.

 

Wood believes the World Trade Center towers were destroyed by a directed energy weapon from space, which ostensibly hit said towers at the same time the planes did. She also coined the term “dustification”, a central term to her theory, as laid out in detail for instance on Coast to Coast AM (notably, even George Noory seemed skeptical) and in her essentially self-published 544-page book Where Did the Towers Go? Evidence of Directed Free-energy Technology on 9/11 (yes, there are free energy conspiracies in the mix, too. And HAARP). Her theories have been thoroughly rebutted – there is a detailed rebuttal here, and another review of her book here (follow-ups here and here) – even by other truthers. Her writings are notable for making elementary mistakes on issues related to materials science and mechanical engineering, her own putative fields of expertise. Some other pieces of insanity from her book are discussed here.

 

According to Wood, dustification involves molecular dissociation and transmutation, and the term is introduced mostly because according to Wood, the debris pile on 9/11 was nowhere near tall enough to account for the aggregate mass of the towers and their contents (when confronted with the fact that it took a year to haul away the debris, which included more than a million tons of steel and concrete, Wood claims that “they were hauling in dirt, dumping it, then hauling it out again” because otherwise the observation would falsify her theory and using observations and facts to falsify her theory would be offensive). There is a decent criticism of her dustification idea here and the lengths she goes to in order to disregard obvious empirical data here. Anyways, the only available alternative is thus, as Wood sees it, that the towers were pulverized in mid-air and simply blew away on the breeze. The current go-to site for her ideas is her website Where Did the Towers Go – down isn’t good enough for Wood: “the majority of the material went up rather than down”, says Wood. The idiocy of the idea is worth a moment’s reflection.

 

As for the space beam, Wood consistently declines to speculate about its exact nature, where it was situated or who operated it. Apparently this is because he considers herself a scientist and trying to account for the claims in her idea that are supposed to do the explanatory work – notably: the whole point of scientific investigations by way of hypothesis forming and testing – would be to engage in political questions.

 

Wood has also instigated a number of legal actions and petition, including a 2007 qui tam petition to The United States District Court, Southern District of New York, ostensibly on behalf of the United States of America, where she named a number of scientists she claimed acted fraudulently in giving advice to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) during their investigation of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. The petition was dismissed, of course, as was her 2009 petition for a writ of a certiorari. It is worth noting that Wood would have stood to cash in a lot of money had the petitions succeeded.

 

Diagnosis: Dingbat nutter. Her ideas are so ridiculously nonsensical that even most truthers want nothing to do with her. Probably more of a liability to the truther conspiracy theory movement than anything else.

#2422: Jeffrey Wolynski

Jeffrey Wolynski is a physics crank who, despite being obscure to most people (especially scientists, his claims to be a “top dog in astronomy” notwithstanding), has had some influence on certain groups of conspiracy theorists and pseudoscience dabblers, including UFO groups, proponents of (various forms of) the electric universe and aetherometry, and Zecharia Sitchin acolytes.

Wolynski’s pet pseudoscientific theory is something called stellar metamorphosis, a theory that claims to solve and explain the mystery of star and planet formation, which was ever only a mystery to proponents of stellar metamorphosis. The main idea is that stars slowly evolve into planets and that planets are just ancient (possibly trillions of years) stars. Wolynski offers a lot of strange interpretations of ancient texts as well as other forms of bizarre wordplay to back up his theory, as well as, predictably, a dearth of empirical evidence.

 

As for the theory itself, it is not a quantitative model, there is no peer-reviewed support for it and its proponents aren’t really engaged in testing it using simulations, calculations or quantitative observations. Rather, Wolynski states principles with no intention to derive predictions or make observations to confirm or disconfirm them – here), for instance is a full Wolynski paper; take careful note of the design and observational data sections. (He doesn’t hesitate to just reject observations that don’t fit, however.) His research is published primarily on youtube and viXra. Ultimately, the theory is interesting primarily as a study in how not to do science.

 

As a grand, unifying theory, proponents of the idea, like Wolynsky, also have to adopt an impressive range of novel ad hoc explanations of a wide range of phenomena: that matter is the real vacuum, that the Big Bang never happened, that red giant stars are way closer than parallax measurements allow for (so they’re not giant stars but really close red dwarfs), alternative interpretations of the rock cycle and Earth’s formation (physical vacuum vapor deposition inside of a young star, which means that stars are not fusion reactors, but electro- or thermochemical), and so on. Perhaps most significantly, Wolynski thinks that the Sun is hollow, which means that it will shrink in size and, in the future, become a life-hosting planet. Yes, it’s all egregious nonsense. Wolynski is also a member of the crackpot Natural Philosophy Alliance, where his profile lists his occupation as “Scientific Revolutionary”.

 

Oh, and he is also a UFO nut who claims that extraterrestrial life forms are regularly visiting Earth using technology far superior to ours.

 

Diagnosis: Ridiculous nonsense, but it does offer a good case study of the strategies and intellectual trappings of pseudoscientific ramblings, at least.

 

Hat-tip: rationalwiki

#2421: Scott Wolter

One of the most versatile cranks in the US, Scott Wolter is a self-proclaimed forensic geologist and former host of the television series America Unearthed, a popular hit series where Wolter would “investigate” and engage in JAQing off about mysteries and artifacts that he believes reveal an alternative history of North America before the United States. “There’s a hidden history in this country that nobody knows about,” says Wolter, failing to address the most obvious reason no one knows about it.

His show is based cherry-picking “evidence” from all manners of nonsense, including secret symbols, alleged secret societies, hoaxes, alleged coverups, vague coincidences, testimony from other cranks and complete fabrication, in order to shoehorn it into his own, grand unified conspiracy theory. For the most parts, he completely ignores the facts before him (as well as the claims of the other conspiracy theorists and crackpots he cites) to invent his own.

There is a comprehensive review of his TV series here. The episodes of season one (link to reviews in the titles) are:

• 1.1. “American Maya Secrets” (more here), which discusses the supposed end of the Mayan calendar in the context of what Wolter, together with local cranks Jon Haskell and Richard Thornton, suggests is a possible Mayan village in Georgia, while conspiracy theories and incoherent attempts at pseudoscience fly.
• 1.2. “Medieval Desert Mystery”, wherein Wolter investigates a burial site in the mountains of Arizona that he claims belongs to a medieval Englishman whom Wolter believes taught the art of building cliff dwellings to the Native Americans. His conclusion is primarily based on an obviously newly made rune stone that was recently placed at the site (the inscription is gibberish but Wolter finds a message): a local archaeologist points out that the stone wasn’t there when the site was recorded by the state in 1984, which leads Wolter to conclude not that it is recent but that the local archaeologists intentionally did not record the stone and are thus involved in a nefarious cover-up. (Wolter doesn’t like people who knows anything about an issue telling him anything about that issue.)
• 1.3. “Great Lakes Copper Heist”, where Wolter suggests that old Michigan copper mines are connected to the Minoan civilization and the Bronze Age.
• 1.4. “Giants in Minnesota”, in which Wolter visits a Minnesota farmer, Roger Saker, who believes some bones found by professional dowser Leonard Engen may stem from a 9-foot tall Norse giant. They find no evidence whatsoever, leading Wolter to conclude that Norse giants settled the area in the Middle Ages.
• 1.5. “A Deadly Sacrifice”, featuring Wolter investigating a large boulder from the Arkansas River inscribed with a bull symbol, which could either be very old or recent. It’s recent. Wolter concludes otherwise.
• 1.6. “Stonehenge in America”, where Wolter claims that the 20^th-century structure known as “America’s Stonehenge” is New Age-related to England’s Stonehenge and has something to do with ancient Phoenicians – apparently Phoenicians arriving in North America to move rocks and carve in them didn’t know their own culture very well.
• 1.7. “Mystery of Roanoke”, in which Wolter determines that a series of clues that are usually considered frauds may be related to the Lost Colony of Roanoke. They’re not. They’re frauds.
• 1.8. “Chamber Hunting”, where Wolter claims that an underground stone chamber in Pennsylvania may have been a ritual bath chamber for a secret society.
• 1.9. “Motive for Murder” (follow-up discussions here, here and here), where Wolter and retired local tv anchor Don Shelby investigate the death of Meriwether Lewis and rejects any established narratives, since who wants the simple and correct explanation when you can spin a yarn that is incoherent, complicated and wrong? (Wolter suggests Lewis was murdered because he, through his explorations, had come to know too much about what Wolter thinks happened in prehistoric North America.)
• 1.10. “The Desert Cross”, where Wolter teams up with his son Grant to investigate the infamous Tucson artifacts (an obvious hoax). Interestingly, Wolter tries to shoehorn the nonsense into a mythology of his own making, thereby contradicting both the claims the hoaxsters were trying to make as well as the facts about the items. (Follow-up on some claims here.)
• 1.11. “Tracking the Templars” (follow-up here), where Wolter finds alleged evidence of the Knights Templars (and Freemasons) in the US, including the “hooked X” symbol, which Wolter has written a book about (he has also trademarked the phrase “hooked X”). The Knights Templars are central to Wolter’s grand unified conspiracy (an interesting side note on that here).
• 1.12. “America’s Oldest Secrets”, in which The Newport Tower, too, is connected to the Knights Templar. Prior to getting his own show, Wolter was perhaps best known for his 2009 two-hour special “Holy Grail in America”, which aired on the very nexus of all pseudohistory drivel promotion, History Channel, and where he explores, in brilliantly crackpot pseudoscience fashion, the idea that the Kensington Runestone is evidence that the Knights Templar sailed to America about one hundred years before Columbus’s voyage. There is a review of a talk Wolter gave on the Kensington Runestone (including its connection to Oreo cookies) here.
• 1.13. “Hunt for the Holy Grail”, where Wolter hunts for – you guessed it – the holy grail.

And that, of course, was only the start. Later seasons are even lighter on research and go into even sillier territory, with Wolter investigating for instance whether the Ark of the Covenant could be in America (as per a well-known documentary; Wolter doesn’t find it), whether the New World Order was behind the Denver International Airport and the Georgia Guidestones, and Bigfoot). There is a sample review of one of the episodes here.

Wolter’s rantings are endlessly silly, of course, but if you lean toward thinking that the alt-history of people like Scott Wolter is just harmless fun, we encourage you to read this.

Diagnosis: Absolute rubbish, and calling it “pseudoscience” is a stretch – “incoherent conspiracy theories that Wolter doesn’t even try to back up” would be closer. And again: if you think the stuff people like Scott Wolter is doing is just harmless fun, it isn’t.

Hat-tip: Jason Colavito

#2420: Ben Wolfinger

Ben Wolfinger is the Sheriff of Kootenai County, Idaho, and he espouses a, shall we say, “American traditional” view of what his role involves. He is tough, independent, likes to lock people up, and has only a relatively dim idea of the distinction between the law and what he’d like the law to be, perhaps in particular when it comes to being gay and other wussy activities.

 

So in 2013 (Wolfinger has been in office for a while), Wolfinger decided to drop his agency’s sponsorship of a Boy Scout troop because the group is now “promoting” sodomy, which according to Wolfinger is illegal. “It would be inappropriate for the sheriff’s office to sponsor an organization that is promoting a lifestyle that is in violation of state law,” said Wolfinger. “Sodomy is against the law in Idaho,” he added. It isn’t. But what can one really expect a chief law enforcement officer of the county to know, right?

 

Diagnosis: Old-fashioned fundamentalist. He’s apparently retiring in January 2021, at least, though given the ideas and behavior of other Idaho sheriffs (Bonner County Sheriff and Covid-denialist Daryl Wheeler, for instance) and candidates for replacing him (Oath Keeper Richard Whitehead and tireless promoter of fake news related to Covid-19 John Grimm, for instance), we’re not particularly optimistic about the future either.

#2419: Steve Wilson

Steve Wilson is an investigative reporter who became a bit of a celebrity in the early 2000s for his attacks on Monsanto and for painting himself as a whistleblower and victim when his then-employer WTVT refused to run the story the way he wanted: the conflict that led to Wilson’s contract not being renewed and several court cases (that Wilson lost). His story was picked up and portrayed as a conspiracy e.g. by antivaccine star Robert F. Kennedy jr. Until 2010 Wilson also served as Chief Investigative Reporter for WXYZ-TV, Detroit.

 

Wilson is an antivaccine crank and conspiracy theorist, and he has a long and notoriously difficult relationship with truth, accuracy and science; several of his “investigative” reports – also when he worked for WXYZ-TV – have been crammed with antivaccine misinformation. Here, for instance, is a deconstruction of one of his “news articles”: Starting from the false premise that autism rates have been skyrocketing, Wilson goes on to quote antivaccine parents and quote-mine statements from doctors to conclude that vaccines (which demonstrably do not cause autism) are to blame – thimerosal, to be specific (which isn’t even in childhood vaccines) – and suggests that “there’s a big incentive for industry and government to cover up the truth” (precisely what that incentive might be is left open, however). To bolster the conclusion, Wilson cites Boyd Haley, whom Wilson calls “a scientist and pioneer in the study of this issue” (Haley has no relevant credentials or scientific or research background on the issues), and pulls an impressive array of antivaccine canards, including Andrew Wakefield’s infamous “monkey study”, the claim that the Amish don’t vaccinate (false) and have a much lower incidence of autism (false) and the Hannah Poling case. There is a detailed breakdown of Wilson’s antivaccine reporting and the canards he employs here; also here.

 

And lest you make the mistake of thinking that Wilson is just a naïve journalist JAQing off or trying to present “both sides”: Wilson is hardcore antivaccine, and doesn’t respond particularly well to criticism of his errors. The argument that “yes, there are studies suggesting that vaccines are safe, but those are criticized by anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists have their own lists of irrelevant, terrible and refuted studies, so therefore the science isn’t settled, so therefore vaccines are dangerous” does not qualify even as a balance fallacy.

 

Diagnosis: The kind of crank who gives “investigative reporting” a bad name: promoting conspiracy theories and pseudoscience as news is not investigative reporting.

#2418: Mike Wilson

State legislatures, again. Mike Wilson is the General Manager of the WCVK Christian Family Radio and has been a member of the Kentucky Senate representing District 32 since 2011, where he has served for instance as chair of the Senate education committee. As chair of that committee, he vehemently objected for instance to adopting the suggested Next Generation Science Standards of 2013, on the grounds that the standards included material on evolution and climate change, topics on which Wilson, as so many others (remember that Kentucky is home to the Creation Museum), chooses to reject the science completely and accordingly doesn’t want that science to be taught to children either.

Now, the Kentucky Board of Education had actually already voted, unanimously, to adopt the standards; but to finalize them, they would also have to go through the state’s regulatory process, which involves public hearings and a review by the state legislature’s House and Senate committees on education. And that’s, of course, where Wilson stepped in to proclaim his ignorance and denialism under the slogan “[p]olitical correctness bears watching and should never be the arbiter of learning.” Of course, he really claimed that correctness shouldn’t be the arbiter of learning; it just became “political correctness” because Wilson’s denial of the science is certainly political and therefore science is politics. Instead of science, evolution and climate change, Wilson has advocated for Bible classes in Kentucky public schools.

Diagnosis: Denialist religious fundamentalist. Kentucky is a fertile breeding ground for such.

#2417: Melissa Wilson

It seems almost quaint these days, but back in 2013 Melissa Wilson, wife of Missouri State Representative Kenneth Wilson, gained some notice for testifying before a state committee that the state’s divers license bureau, which was also tasked with overseeing concealed-carry permits, is part of a plot to impose United Nations policies in the US. According to Wilson, “I have been doing some study on U.N. Agenda 21,” and by bringing this information before the state committee, she “feel that I will be a target. With Agenda 21, I will be someone who will be put on a watch list,” adding that Agenda 21 was being pushed through in part because of a mass brainwashing known as the Delphi Technique. Similar ideas were already then being mainstreamed in the GOP by people like Louie Gohmert. It belongs to the story that the state legislature voted to cut funding for the bureau.

 

Diagnosis: In current QAnon-times, Wilson’s delusions seem almost moderate. Still, Melissa Wilson is an utterly deranged loon, and she belongs in our encyclopedia. We wager a bet that she is currently into QAnon nonsense, too.