Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Seth Mnookin: Bald-faced Liar, Utter Hypocrite, or Both?

I thought I’d give Gorski a small break. I mean, how often can you comment on his narcissistic ego masturbation and mind-numbing hypocrisy without it growing stale?

Instead, I thought I’d focus on an article I read by Seth-not-a-doctor-not-a-scientist-Mnookin.

Seth doesn’t like Dr Bob Sears. Not at all. Seth accuses Dr Sears of being a “first-rate huckster” who is only motivated by greed, not by the genuine concern for his patients. All while Seth makes money from his book.

I won’t go into too much detail about the article itself. Seth mainly pulls a Gorski and pats himself on the back about how “sciency” he is. He goes on to mention an exchange between him and Dr Sears concerning child zero in the killer California measles epidemic of 2008, where a whopping 17 children were infected and recovered with absolutely no adverse effects from a relatively benign (here in the US) childhood illness.

Dr Sears responded to this accusation, saying that he was not patient zero’s paediatrician, and that he never spoke with Seth-not-a-doctor-not-a-scientist-Mnookin. Seth responds that he did, indeed, have a discussion with Dr Sears, and links to a recorded exchange between he and the doctor from 2008…almost 4 years ago. Then he goes on to mention an email exchange back in 2009…almost 3 years ago.

Could it be absolutely reasonable that Dr Sears may not recall a brief exchange that he had with some hack journalist that he never actually met in real life? Nah…couldn’t be possible.

Instead of accepting this very real possibility, Seth-not-a-doctor-not-a-scientist-Mnookin accuses Dr Sears of lying. He links to newspaper articles showing that Dr Sears’s office was the origination point for the deadly Measles epidemic of 2008.

According to one of their own Vaccine defenders, Science Mom, the index case was from a Children’s Clinic in La Jolla. Dr Sears’s office is in San Diego. So, it would appear as if Dr Sears was telling the truth about the index case. Curiouser and curiouser.

Going to Seth-not-a-doctor-not-a-scientist-Mnookin’s site and perusing his comments on this article, I see the commenters, and Seth, continuing to repeat this lie. So, being the trouble maker I am, I left a comment, shown below:

Mnookin

Click to embiggen

If the comment is too difficult to read, here it is again;

“And the proof that the child wasn’t one of Dr. Sears’s patients is here:

http://justthevax.blogspot.com/2012/04/retraction-of-sorts.html

Now, will Seth be honest and retract his defamatory statement about Dr. Sears, I wonder? I have my betting pool ready…”

Now, you’ll notice that the comment was left on Seth-not-a-doctor-not-a-scientist-Mnookin’s site two days ago. My comment has still not shown up, so I can only assume that it is either still in moderation, or it has been removed. Remarkable.

Which is outright hilarious when you take into account a comment that Seth-not-a-doctor-not-a-scientist-Mnookin (hey, don’t laugh…Gorski uses this trope all the time...just returning the favor) left on his site:

“Example #10882 of why it’s so much easier to prove your point when you don’t censor comments and let people show themselves to the world.”

I will give him a few more days to see if my comment shows up. But for now, it is pretty clear that Seth-not-a-doctor-not-a-scientist-Mnookin is both a liar and a hypocrite.

I’ll let you, my dear readers, decide.

Addendum: So finally, 3 days later, my comment shows up. Interesting that it didn’t show up until after I made this blog post. Also, I still don’t see him retracting his statement about Dr Sears. So, my assessment of Seth-not-a-doctor-not-a-scientist-Mnookin remains unchanged.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Can Anyone Say “Hypocrite”?

I’d been meaning to discuss this previously, but got entirely too busy and had to put my thoughts concerning this on hold for a while. So, here it is for everyone’s amusement.

One thing that never fails to amuse me about the false skeptic community and the “Science-based” bloggers and their squealing groupies is the laughably outrageous hypocrisy they spew. In fact, this is the very reason that my predecessor created this site, and the very reason that I continue it. What better to show just how unreasonable, unscientific and un-skeptical a group is? Point out their hypocritical and non-scientific behaviours to show the world just exactly what they are dealing with.

This remains true in David Gorski’s rant, A school board president abuses his position to promote an antivaccine movie. Honestly, it’s nothing new that anyone who is familiar with Gorski’s odious verbal butt drippings would be in the least bit surprised about. In it, he injures his arm trying to pat himself on the back. In fact, the majority of his rant is a recant of a post he made several months ago. The man is so caught up in his narcissism that he has to link to his own drivel to stroke his already enormous ego. Really, I’m not kidding. The man is just that caught up in his own self absorption.

However, surprisingly, this isn’t what I really wanted to talk about. I wanted to discuss a comment made on this article from one of his more ardent and vicious sycophants named lilady. I’ve discussed my encounters with this particularly dim-witted lickspittle previously, so I won’t pull a Gorski and regurgitate it here again for my own self-gratification. Instead, I will replicate her idiocy and then comment on how hypocritical it is, giving examples from her very idol to prove my point.

Here’s the comment:

“Orac, I spent the better part of yesterday looking into this letter writer and confirmed the Mr. Marvel, is indeed, the president of board of the San Ramon Unified School District.

I also sent an email to the District's school superintendent, Steven Enoch, objecting to Mr. Marvel's personal agenda, written on school board stationary.

Mr. Enoch, via return email, requested my phone number, which I provided along with your blog that reviewed "The Greater Good" film, and he called me to discuss the matter.

Mr. Enoch stated he was unaware of the letter and that it certainly did not represent school district policy. I, in turn, provided some information about AoA, its political arm (the Canary Party) and their anti-vaccine activities.

Due to my involvement with many school boards in my State, I offered up my opinion that Mr. Marvel abused his office and should be sanctioned by the California School Boards Association:

http://www.csba.org/

Mr. Enoch will be speaking directly to Mr. Marvel about this letter and I will be following up, either at the district level or with an email to the California State School Boards Association.

I located this website for immunization rates for Contra Costa County, where San Ramon is located:

http://www.baycitizen.org/data/immunizations/

Rates for complete immunizations for school entry are (relatively) high for Contra Costa County, compared to some adjacent counties. I'd like to see that those rates remain high.”

I’ll leave that here for a few moments to discuss something that happened to Mr Gorski a while back. Gorski was (rightfully) appalled at a comment left on Age of Autism where someone encouraged other commenters to contact Mr Gorski’s place of business and discuss with them Mr Gorski’s moonlighting activities. His sycophants moaned and cried about how horrible the people at AoA are for doing something like that. In fact, one of Gorski’s more dull-witted morons that goes by the name of Ren (epi-ren) still cries(almost a year later) about how one of those mean, evil anti-vaxxers tried to get him fired.

Yes, this is horrid behaviour. Yes, I agree with Gorski and Ren that it is disgusting.

Which is why I’m currently laughing myself silly by lilady’s comment. Notice the hypocrisy? Notice that she called the school board in an attempt to get Mr Enoch reprimanded or fired? It goes even further; in a later comment, she encourages other commenters to contact the said school board to file legal action against Mr Enoch:

@ Liz Ditz and the RI Regulars: You are amazing Liz and have been very busy this past weekend.

I just sent the SkewedDistribution link to Mr. Enoch, School Superintendent and requested a time frame for the retraction of that letter, by Mr. Marvel.

IANAL...but I checked legal opinions about school board members' sanctions at the California School Board Association. There definitely are legal precedences concerning cases that deal with a school board member that has either stated publicly...or written a letter, that misrepresents the position of the school board. In fact, the Association has sent amici curiae briefs to various California courts, supporting the ability of a board of education to sanction the person who misrepresented school board policy.”

Do as I say, not as I do, right? Again, I will reiterate how loathesome and disgusting I find this sort of behaviour. In fact, that is the main reason I choose to remain anonymous with my activities, specifically because of what happened to my good friend and because of repulsive little twits like this lilady person.

Here’s a comment that lilady made on Dave’s hate-site that had me laughing so hard, I ruptured something:

“@ Sauceress: You made my day! I love their defense of Wonder Boy Jake's latest foibles by attacking Orac, Marc, Chris, Reuben and me and delight that I am in such company.

The lead in to the blog was a classic about the the little cartoons that they consider "humor" and our indignity about the sheer filth and disgust that any website would even consider publishing them.

No, we don't libel researchers, we don't start letter writing campaigns to destroy anyone's career and we don't encourage people to threaten any of their quack doctors.

Any repercussions to their pathetic careers is an "inside job"...they sow the seeds of their own lack of credibility and their own destruction by their words and their deeds...pathetic.”

Don’t libel researchers? Don’t start letter writing campaigns to destroy anyone’s career? Don’t encourage people to threaten doctors? Oh, my word…I haven’t laughed like that in a long, long time.

If anything, it’s an amusing diversion to laugh at these revolting, small-minded hypocrites.