Mike Adams
oracknows | July 16, 2014
One of the most common criticisms launched at defenders of science-based medicine by believers in pseudoscience and quackery is that we are “pharma shills.” The assumption, or so it would seem, is that no one would defend science, reason, and medicine unless he were paid off by pharmaceutical, chemical, and/or agricultural companies. The further assumption is that, in contrast to our greedy grasping selves, they are not motivated by such base concerns as money. That is their self-image, that of pure-hearted warriors against evil, the evil being big pharma, big agriculture, big chemical,…
oracknows | June 20, 2014
It's been three days since America's quack, Dr. Mehmet Oz, had his posterior handed to him by a wily old prosecutor who is now a Senator, Claire McCaskill. The beauty of it is that, not only was Dr. Oz called, in essence, a liar to his face and not only was he called out for his irresponsible and hypercaffeinated promotion of various diet scams on his show, which is seen by millions every day, but he didn't see it coming, and his public spanking as he testified in front of Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance, chaired by Sen. McCaskill, made instant news, with…
oracknows | June 3, 2014
It's always jarring when I go to a scientific meeting, in this case the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, imbibe the latest clinical science on cancer, and then check back to see what the quacks are doing. On the other hand, there was a session at this year's ASCO on "integrative oncology" (stay tuned for an...Insolent...discussion of it sometime in the next few days after I get a chance to watch the videos again and look up the papers cited in support of woo), so maybe it isn't as jarring as it once was to come back into the real world.
Thus I saw in my Google Alerts…
oracknows | May 18, 2014I hadn't really planned on writing again about everyone's favorite conspiracy theorist and promoter of quackery, Mike Adams, at least not so soon after the last time I did it, which was only last week after Adams appeared on Dr. Oz's daytime television show to push his "laboratory." Adams, as you might recall, goes by the Internet moniker the "Health Ranger" (which would really more appropriately be "Health Danger") and is the man responsible for one of the quackiest sites on the Internet, NaturalNews.com, a repository for nearly every form of medical pseudoscience known to humans, mixed in…
oracknows | May 14, 2014Sometimes, when you're blogging, serendipity strikes. Sometimes this takes the form of having something appear related to something you just blogged about. Yesterday, I discussed one of the biggest supporters of quackery on the Internet, Mike Adams, a.k.a. the Health Ranger, proprietor of NaturalNews.com, one of the quackiest, if not the quackiest site, on the Internet, NaturalNews.com. This time around, I was simply using one of Adams' wonderfully incoherent defenses of alternative medicine thinking to demonstrate how much magical thinking exists at the core of alternative medicine and how…
oracknows | May 12, 2014Over the years, I've often likened alternative medicine to a religion—or even a cult. Basically, it requires belief in a set of precepts that have at best little and more commonly no evidence to support them that is often accompanied by magical thinking that a god-substitute, be it nature, one's body, or, of course, the magically mysterious "quantum," possesses magical powers that will protect one from all harm if one simply believes and acts on that belief. The belief systems that undergird various forms of alternative medicine are every bit as ridiculous from a scientific viewpoint as the…
oracknows | May 2, 2014I've often written of "black holes of stupid" that threaten to rupture the fabric of the space-time continuum, so dense and full of stupid are they. Such black holes tend to come from places like the wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery known as Age of Autism, the wretched hive of scum and conspiracy quackery known as NaturalNews.com, and various other sites loaded with pseudoscience throughout the web. I've often also joked about some post or other from such people "frying my irony meter." Usually such comments are deserved when particularly clueless quacks write something that is…
oracknows | March 16, 2014I'm sure that a lot of you, like me, are watching the rebooted version of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, with Neil deGrasse Tyson taking over the hosting duties originally handled so ably over 30 years ago by Carl Sagan. I definitely enjoyed the first episode and am looking forward to additional episodes. The only thing that annoys me is that Cosmos is on at the same time as The Walking Dead, but that's what DVRs were made for. The first episode, which is all I've seen thus far at this writing, was quite impressive, and the segment at the end in which Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about the time he…
oracknows | February 21, 2014Back in December, I was excited. The reason I was excited was because everybody's favorite über-Libertarian, New World Order conspiracy theorist quack, Mike Adams, a.k.a. The Health Ranger, had made an announcement. That announcement was that on January 6, 2014 Adams would announce astonishing "scientific findings" about food that would "revolutionize" nutrition and health. Given Adams' past history of doing hilariously off-base things with scientific instruments, such as putting Chicken McNuggets under a microscope and being amazed that things look a lot different when highly magnified,…
oracknows | December 6, 2013Well, wouldn't you know it? Mike Adams thinks he's an actual scientist!
Regular readers are all too familiar with Mike Adams, a.k.a. The Health Ranger, arguably the most quacktastic site on the Internet. Sure, Joe Mercola is probably the most trafficked quackery site on the Internet, but, being number two (or number three or four, I'm not sure), Mike Adams definitely tries harder. In addition, Joe Mercola steers mostly clear of politics and non-medical pseudoscience. Sure, he promotes just as much quackery as Mike Adams does, if not more, but he doesn't delve into Tea Party-drenched New World…
oracknows | November 5, 2013This one's too brief to be worth a full Orac-ian deconstruction, but it's so juicy that I can't resist mentioning. Regular readers know that Mike Adams, the all-purpose crank who founded NaturalNews.com, is a frequent target topic on this blog. The reason is obvious. Whether it be his support of quackery, his rants against vaccines, his vile attacks on cancer patients, or his New World Order conspiracy mongering and support of the radical fringe in US politics, no one brings home the crazy quite like Mike Adams, and no one brings home such a wide variety and vast quantity of crazy, with the…
oracknows | October 23, 2013One of the things that I've noticed over the last (nearly) nine years blogging about pseudocience, quackery, and conspiracy theories is that a person who believes in one form of woo has a tendency to believe in other forms of woo. You've probably noticed it too. I've lost count of the examples that I've seen of antivaccinationists who are into other forms of quackery, of quacks who are 9/11 Truthers, of HIV/AIDS denialists who are anthropogenic global warming denialists, and nearly every combination of these and many other forms of pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and denialism. Several years…
oracknows | October 11, 2013One type of story that I've fairly frequently commented upon since the very beginning of this blog is the story of children or teens with cancer whose parents decide to pursue quackery instead of effective therapy or children with other serious diseases whose parents reject effective therapy for them. Think way, way back to Katie Wernecke and Abraham Cherrix back in 2006. (Cherrix is still battling his lymphoma seven years later, having blown his best chance at cure back in 2006; I do not know how much longer he can continue.) More recently, there was Chad Jessop and Daniel Hauser. Just in…
oracknows | October 6, 2013For some reason, I can't seem to escape Chicken McNuggets. About a month ago, I expressed my complete amusement over an "investigation" of Chicken McNuggets done by everyone's favorite crank and quackery promoter, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com. I'm tellin' ya, it was like Inspector Clouseau with a microscope when Mike Adams expressed amazement that Chicken McNuggets looked strange and alien when viewed under a microscope. Hilariously, he's at it again:
The Health Ranger's forensic food investigation of Chicken McNuggets two months ago is making new waves…
oracknows | October 2, 2013Things have been a bit too serious around here lately. After all, yesterday I wrote about obesity and chemotherapy, while the day before that I did an even lengthier than usual deconstruction of some claims by anti-Obamacare activists, which seemed particularly appropriate to me given that a group of wingnuts has just succeeded in mostly shutting down our government because they are opposed to Obamacare. Come to think of it, given the nastiness that's going on in Washington right now, I could use something light, an easy target even. And who better to serve that role than everyone's favorite…
oracknows | September 24, 2013Does anybody remember the Canary Party? As I described two and a half years ago when I first became aware of it, the Canary Party is a weird mutant hybrid of antivaccinationists convinced that there are "toxins" in vaccines that are making all our children autistic, "health freedom" activists, and, more recently, Tea Party activists. The name of the party was chosen based on the old story about how miners would keep canaries in the mine because they were more sensitive to toxic gases. The idea was that, if the miners saw their canary collapse, they knew they'd better get out of that shaft…
oracknows | September 2, 2013I don't know how I missed this one, given that it's over two weeks old, but I did. Since yesterday was a holiday in the US and I had done a long post the day before because something that happened on Friday had really irritated me, I figured I might as well take a stab at this because it represents one of my "favorite" quack apologists at his most over-the-top quackiest. More importantly, it won't take too much brain power to deconstruct, but could be entertaining nonetheless. I'm referring, of course, to Mike Adams, the "Health Ranger," of NaturalNews.com. Of course, nothing by Mike Adams is…
oracknows | July 22, 2013Mike Adams (a.k.a. the "Health Ranger") has been a regular blog topic for several years now. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that, among supporters of quackery, no one quite brings the crazy home the way Mike Adams does, be it writing antivaccine rap songs, abusing dead celebrities by claiming they would have survived if only they had used whatever quackery Adams supported at the time or painting them as victims of big pharma, or conspiracy mongering on a level that make Alex Jones blush. Truly, Mikey has a special talent among woo-meisters. Joe Mercola might have…
denialism | April 17, 2013And Alex Jones and Mike Adams are their Fred Phelps. It's a wonder that Anonymous doesn't retaliate against these ghouls as well as against Westboro who are planning to picket the Boston Marathon funerals.
Why are the the same thing? Because they're all ghouls, and they all use any tragic event to bolster their warped, abhorrent world view no matter what the facts are, and no matter how offensive to the victims.
Within minutes, with no one knowing any facts, Jones claims this is a false flag attack. The only appropriate response to an event like this, within the first minutes and hours,…
denialism | April 5, 2013And it may even be more when one considers that there is likely non-overlap between many of these conspiracies. It really is unfortunate that their isn't more social pushback against those that express conspiratorial views. Given both the historical and modern tendency of some conspiracy theories being used direct hate towards one group or another (scratch a 9/11 truther and guess what's underneath), and that they're basically an admission of one's own defective reasoning, why is it socially acceptable to espouse conspiracy theories? They add nothing to discussion, and instead hijack…