The internet has popularized debate. It has also popularized the rules of debate, i.e., the avoidance of using logical fallacies. The trouble is, a lot of the people who harp on the logical fallacies of others are inclined to use fallacies themselves. The worst case of this by far was a man named Jonathan Safarti. Safarti is a physical chemist who posts at a Christian apologetics website called Answers In Genesis. The website specializes in scientifically proving creation and rebutting atheists. I read it for quite a while. The information there was convincing to me, but there was something that ate at me: I knew that I was potentially easy to convince because I don’t have a background in the relevant sciences. I had to take the words of the men who wrote articles there, but I didn’t really have a whole lot to prove to me that they had enough integrity to justify my faith in what they said. Safarti was extra convincing because of his strict adherence to pointing out the logical fallacies of others and presumably, having the unwavering insistence of avoiding illogic himself. But the only way I’d really know is if I could somehow engage him in a topic that I was familiar with. Enter politics and foreign policy.
Foreign policy is a subject that I’m familiar with, though my awareness has waned a bit recently. I went to the Answer In Genesis facebook page and found some of the followers there posting the typical Christian American fearmongering and lying about foreigners. I joined in. Sure enough, Safarti joined in as well. This guy proceeded to indulge in the fallacy that he points out the most in others: elephant hurling, which is the introduction of any and everything that randomly pops into one’s mind because one is getting buried with facts from one’s opponent. I was floored at how desperately this guy was throwing topics around but more worrisome: at how wrong and unChristian his venomous hatred was. I responded very specifically to what he posted. I didn’t stray. But that didn’t stop the moderator, Carl Weiland, from stepping in and deleting some of my posts. His claim was that I was going off topic, which was preposterous, because I was just responding to what his minion was posting. The truth was that I was burying Safarti in the debate. He was pathetically ill-prepared for it. Sadly, some of the followers of the page were posting comments about me suggesting that I was a Satanist. I was arguing from the point of Christ-like love. From his command that we love everyone. From God’s COMMAND that we not lie about people. They objected to the fact that I was saying that we have no business of killing other people and that we must take a good hard look at ourselves in the mirror and stop engaging in policies that violate Christian principles.
It was disgraceful and disappointing. I could no longer use Answers In Genesis as a reliable source of information. Whether they are right or they’re wrong, I just don’t have the expertise to know and they proved themselves to be willing to lie and fabricate until the cows came home.
Now onto a subject that is more relevant to the problem of MCS: Stephen Barrett, from Quackwatch. Most people already know about this cretin’s vicious campaign against the victims of MCS and a host of other sufferers of disease. It’s worth pointing out that sufferers of fibromyalgia have escaped his abuse because his daughter has the disease. And the apple didn’t fall far from that tree because his daughter is just as disgustingly cruel as her father. It’s worse of course, since as the sufferer of a life-destroying disease, she’s willing to cast doubt and aspersions on the sufferers of other diseases. They’re really despicable creatures.
So in addition to lying in books, on the internet, and in public forums, Stephen Barrett has lied in numerous courts of law and been thrown out as a result. In fact, there are so many facts that point to Barrett as catastrophically ill-suited to being the self-proclaimed gate-keeper of medical science that he is, that one wonders how anyone with any brains is willing to sully his reputation by associating with him in any way. One of the ways Barrett manages to keep followers is by using a certain amount of factual information in his writings. That isn’t hard to do. I can proclaim the blueness of the sky, the fact that breathing helps keep us alive, and that getting a broken leg fixed at a hospital are reasonable things to do. Keeping his writing chock full of facts leads people to believe that he slavishly adheres to fact with EVERYTHING. But he doesn’t. He slavishly avoids facts when lying about other people. The trouble is: do we address his writing? That’s very easy to do. Just read the first page of his ridiculously poorly researched book, “Chemical Sensitivity: The Truth About Environmental Illness ”. It is so unprofessionally written that it would be laughable if he didn’t constantly pay search engines to keep it at the top of search results, helping to keep our disease “controversial” in the process.
So again: do we address his writing or HIM? When attacking HIM, I’ve been accused of the logical fallacy of ad hominem attacks. Well, my attacks are ad hominems, but they’re not logical fallacies. That’s because ad hominem attacks are not always logical fallacies. Sometimes they are very appropriate points of argument. Take Barrett for instance.
Barrett fashions himself as “the media”. He fashions himself as THE gate-keeper of medical science. The problem is, he has proven himself willing to lie. That is a valid reason to distrust what he says, but it doesn’t discount what he says automatically. After all, he’s a physician, right? Wrong. He gave up his medical license long ago. Now why would a doctor give up his license? Because of the expense of keeping it current. But don’t doctors make a lot of money? Well yeah, if said doctor can maintain a job. Trouble is, in his history as a physician, Barrett has been unable to keep a full-time job. Have you ever heard of a doctor who couldn’t hold a job? Me neither.
Why can’t he keep a job? From his dismissive, condescending behavior, I would infer that he didn’t have the greatest of bedside manners. As a psychiatrist, that would be important. That’s just speculation though and with Stephen Barrett, I don’t have to resort to speculation. Let’s talk about another thing he’s famous for: he failed the certification exam that he took to be a board certified psychiatrist. That’s pretty bad, don’t you think? Of all the medical sciences, psychiatry has got to be the easiest, right? Right. His response is this though: the certification exam was not a requirement to be a psychiatrist. Fair enough, but who cares? The guy chose to take the test and he failed it. Why did he fail it? Again, in his own words, he failed it because he did poorly on the neuroscience portion of it. You know, the kind of things he claims to be a gate-keeper about. He failed the science part of the test. That’s a pretty big problem, but even more problematic is the reason why: because it didn’t interest him! Extrapolating from his background then, we can assume that he chose the field of psychiatry because it was the easiest of the medical arts because it was the least scientific.
Very clearly, Stephen Barrett’s arguments don’t need to be addressed; his blatant incompetence and disinterest do. He has embarked on a campaign to destroy the scientific process as it endeavors to understand a devastating illness. And he has even embarked on a campaign to prevent REAL doctors from treating it, as he has contacted the FDA to harass treating physicians like William Rea in Texas. These physicians don’t have patients complaining, but Barrett files complaints anyway. He doesn’t have a problem with unethical physicians as long as they tow the AMA/industry line. How do I know that? His partner in crime: Ronald Gots. Gots co-wrote Barrett’s book about MCS. Gots was also the subject of a television piece about his business. Gots’ business was a company that reviewed disability claims. And wouldn’t you know? Every single claim that the television network got its hands on was a denial. What a coincidence! This guy who puts out a book denying disabling diseases had a company that denied disabling diseases! He was also involved with the bogus Environmental Sensitivities Research Inc. He is also involved in International Center for Toxicology & Medicine. Gots is not a toxicologist, yet he claims to be a specialist in medical toxicology. He is a pharmacologist. Hardly an appropriate background for the claim of specializing in toxicology. Apparently he doesn’t realize that toxicology is its own field of study. His only “qualification” for toxicology is that he is a doctor who gets paid by corporations to deny chemical injury claims. How admirable.
There is an interview online from 2005. At the time, Gots’ ICTM included on its staff two physicians (who knows if Gots is really a physician. How many lies are we expected to believe?). One of the physicians was an internal medicine and occupational medicine specialist and the other was an opthalmologist. And these guys had a company that specialized in toxicology. Why would ANYONE take these guys seriously? Because they want liars. Currently Gots’ bogus company is comprised of himself and two nurses. Apparently there are no toxicologists who are willing to sully their reputations by associating themselves with Gots.
Do you want to know how bad Gots is? Johns Hopkins university once had him co-chair a Continuing Medical Education symposium about MCS. The medical school was investigated, reprimanded, and put on probation for a year just for having Ronald Gots involved. That’s how much of a disreputable scumbag the guy is.
The bottom line is this: as long as these two disreputable con-artists have been involved in this business, they have undoubtedly been exposed to the factual data that proves our disease to be real (as though we should even be having that discussion). Yet despite the fact that they know the disease is real and ruining lives, they choose to take money for ensuring that people suffer more and longer than they need to. This is no exaggeration: these guys are at the bottom of humanity, populated by tyrannical despots, homicidal maniacs, and the like. They have zero credibility and as such, ad hominems are not logical fallacies: they are valid arguments against taking what they say seriously.
As an aside, the man who took Gots to task for that MCS symposium was attacked by a whining, petulant Gots who accused Albert Donnay of “ad hominums” (sic).
As another aside: I did a search about Gots and was taken to a website called atlanticlegal.com. My browser wouldn’t take me there. It said it was “an untrusted connection”!
http://www.mold-help.org/content/view/705/
http://www.injuredworker.org/forums/injuredworker/posts/1078.html
http://www.kospublishing.com/html/quack_busters.html
http://www.remedyspot.com/showthread.php/29628-Albert-Donnay-Reveals-the-Curious-NSF-Connection-With-Ron-Gots-and-ICTM
Thank you for posting this. I’ve developed a special interest in the history of the denial and bastardisation of MCS. Gots and Barret have a lot to answer for yet keep on going, using their outdated and manufactured studies as citations for the lies they perpetually vomit up into the hemisphere of public perception. For instance, Wikipedia—often the first port of call for the average Jane or Joe looking for information—that is polluted with their alleged science-for-hire rotten fruits, that people can read potentially learning false truths. These can and do impact us all, leading to discrimination, the loss of jobs, income, safe homes, credibility, family members, friends who, after assimilating such rubbish, think this is all in our heads… until it happens to them.
Are you interested in this article being published as a guest post by you in this section http://the-labyrinth.com/category/quackbusting/quackbusting-quackwatch-quackheads/ I’ve created so people can see the truth? It fits in perfectly. Anyway, job well done. I hope this finds you well.
The truth never goes away. We are the truth.
Kind regards
Michellina 😷
Thank you Misha and by all means share this post if you wish!