His evidence amounts to a series of anecdotes such as this one:

Like many mothers who feared for their family’s safety during World War II, Mona Miller was evacuated from London to the peaceful seaside town of Babbacombe in Devon.

It seemed like a wise precaution but, shortly after her arrival there with her young children, Mrs Miller became increasingly uneasy.

‘I had a feeling that I must leave Devon and return home,’ she told me.

‘At first I dismissed the idea; why leave when I was so happy and contented despite the war going on around me?

‘But the feeling increased. The walls of my room seemed to speak to me: “Go home to London.” I resisted the call for about four months then, one day, like a flash of light, I knew we must leave.

‘On a Saturday in late 1942, we travelled back to London and a few days later I received a letter from a friend in Devon.

‘“Thank God you took the children on Saturday,” she wrote. “Early Sunday morning, Jerry dropped three bombs and one fell on the house where you were living, demolishing it, and killing all the neighbours on either side.”’

I am fond of saying that anecdote is not evidence but it’s a bit more complicated than that – an anecdote is evidence but it is a single data point – and a single measurement rarely proves a hypothesis true. However, Sheldrake provides more than one anecdote/data point so do these prove anything?

I’m not convinced that they do. An important principle in science is that one should not cherry-pick ones data – one should include all reliable data, not just that which supports ones hypothesis. Sheldrake is not deliberately cherry-picking here but a selection process is going on none-the-less. For example, we do not have any anecdotes from people who were killed because acting on their premonitions actually took them into harm’s way, for the obvious reason that they’re too dead to do so. Similarly, I doubt many people contacted Sheldrake to tell him about premonitions and feelings of foreboding that came to nothing.

So I remain unconvinced that psychic abilities exist. But I suspect you knew that.

The first time I recall encountering whataboutery was off-line. I plonked myself on a bus-seat and noticed some hand written notes had been left there, so I read them as you do. Turned out they were some fascist’s notes for a speech criticising a documentary’s coverage of their activities in Welling. One phrase still sticks in my mind: “The Reds go on about Stephen Lawrence but what about Yvonne Fletcher?”

The writer went on at great length about how terrible lefties were for not making the programme about the activities of Gadaffi’s thugs instead of BNP thugs in Welling. The point being to get away from a point the writer had difficulty defending (one not widely supported) to one (widely supported) that they felt comfortable attacking. The sentence also contains an ad hom – claiming that all the BNP’s critics are ‘Reds’ a term commonly used for communists by people who are unable to spell the word. I am not saying that Stephen Lawrence’s murderers were BNP members incidently, just that BNP propoganda and activity in the area could have encouraged racist thugs.

Whataboutery is not in short supply in the comments on this blog. Helen PHillips-Batman, in slagging off my criticisms of the UCKG reminded me of the above fascist:

“these opinions are pathetic, banging on and on about little Victoria Clumbe is the only thing you can think of really, when 4,000 attempts at downloading child pornography is attempted in England everyday and 3 children die of neglect every week, outside the church dear”

Or, paraphrasing: “Because you don’t mention child porn and child neglect you don’t care about her really”. The obvious answer here is that the existence of child porn and other child killings does not mean Victoria’s murder should be ignored. Plus there is world-wide police action against internet porn and precious little against the activities of the likes of the UCKG so my publicising the activities of the latter is a useful contribution I can make whereas there is little if anything I can do personally about child-porn.

‘alvaro’ also employs whataboutery against criticisms of the amount of money the UCKG retains:

“Why don’t you give a Glance to Vatican? Do you know how many Trilions they have, in name of Social Care, and Benefecial Institutions? What about Church of England?”

He would much rather talk about wealth the older churches have accumulated over centuries than the wealth the UCKG is accumulating in mere years.

The most irrelevent bit of whataboutery has to go Krishna who seemed to think that because astronomers changed the definition of planet in such a way that excluded Pluto from the list, doctors must be wrong about homeopathy. This example demonstrates that ‘whatboutery’ is a sub-class of the non sequitur (does not follow) logical fallacy.

What these examples, and many others, show is that the employers of whataboutery are uncomfortable with the subject under discussion and wishes to shift the argument elsewhere; at the very least to where they are on more comfortable grounds and prefereably to where their critic cannot possibly disagree.

A story by the METRO’s Fred Attewill was headlined “Stem cell jabs hold secret of eternal youth” in the print version. The online version tells us that

“Eternal youth could be just around the corner as new research on laboratory mice showed the animals lived three times longer than normal after being given stem cell injections. And humans could be next to benefit from this ‘shot of youthful vigour’ – the holy grail of modern medicine.”

The Daily Mail claimed that “Stem cells could hold key to ‘stopping ageing’ … after trial triples mouse lifespan”

The Daily Express story was headlined “NEW JAB IS ‘ONE STEP CLOSER’ TO UNLOCKING KEY TO ETERNAL YOUTH” and opened with “SCIENTISTS have unlocked the secret of how people could live for three times longer.”

Anybody who skim reads by reading the headlines and opening paragraphs of a story cannot help but think that eternal youth could be theirs. Reading further, however, gives a somewhat different story. For example, from the METRO:

The rodents, engineered with the premature ageing condition progeria, developed new muscles and blood vessels in their brains after being given shots of stem cells from their younger, healthier counterparts.

Injecting the cells into 17-day-old mice saw an increase in their lifespans from an average of 21 to 28 days to more than 66 days. It is thought the healthy stem cells helped correct abnormalities in the cells of the mice.

At this point it seemed to me that it was a bit of an over-interpretation to claim that this procedure would prolong the lives of normal mice, let alone humans. The METRO article did not give a link to the research and my google-fu was too weak to find it. However, it did find me the email address of researcher Dr. Laura Niedernhofer so I thought I would ask her. Stem cell research is more than a little outside my comfort zone anyway:

I am a UK based science blogger (http://jaycueaitch.wordpress.com) and am intrigued by the reporting of your research into the slowing of aging in lab mice by giving them stem cell injections in the UK press

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/886330-stem-cell-injections-the-secret-to-eternal-youth

The article claims that “eternal youth” for humans “is just around the corner” on the basis of your research but that seems a bit of a stretch to me as the article then states that the mice concerned had been engineered with progeria and the injections tripled the life expectancy of these specimens.

1. If this procedure were tried in normal mice, would you expect a similarly dramatic increase in life expectancy? Are there any plans to try this?

2. How far away are you from human trials of this procedure?

3. Is your research available online? I could not see it on the University’s website.

Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerely

John Hawcock

Of the “eternal youth” claim she said:

“That is a stretch.

The mice we tested were engineered to have progeria. We started with progeroid mice because they age rapidly. Also the mice accurately mimic human aging, developing many of the common aging-related chronic disease humans experience such as osteoporosis, muscle wasting, neurodegeneration and spine degeneration.

Much of the press is focused on the finding that in a severe model of progeria, stem cells extended lifespan. But an equally exciting finding was that in a less severe model of progeria (with a lifespan of 7 months), stem cell therapy delayed the onset of 75% of their aging-related symptoms (e.g., muscle wasting, low activity, hunched back due to osteoporosis).”

To point 1 she said:

“We would like to test normal mice in the near future. But this is a much more difficult experiment. It is hard to predict when to start treating mice and how often to treat them. Then we have to wait several years to see if our prediction was correct. But my expectation is that, like in progeroid mice, osteoporosis, loss of activity, muscle wasting and impaired gait would be improved.”

To point 2 she said:

“Clinical trials to evaluate therapies aimed at extending healthy aging in the elderly are tricky since “aging” is very individual. Therefore it is difficult to measure success. However, Cook® MyoSite is considering clinical trials to evaluate the use of muscle-derived stem-progenitor cells for autologous treatment of various disease end-points (e.g., urinary incontinence, cardiac disease, muscular dystrophy).”

And in answer to point 3 she supplied a link to the research paper.

It seems to me that the real story here is potential treatment for premature aging in humans, wasting diseases and some of the frailities of old age. This is actually very interesting but it has been lost in media fantasies of rejuvination and eternal youth.

This can take many forms – one favoured by the alt-med brigade is to accuse their critics of being shills for Big Pharma. For example ‘renrah’ here says “Methinks jaycueaitch is one of the trolls that big Pharma and the FDA pay to dispute anything they can’t control or profit from”. A more recent critic says “Why do you care anyway Jay, you appear to have a chip on your shoulder or big paycheck you are working for. “

Apart from breaking the grammatical rule about not ending sentences with prepositions, these two share a notion that people must be being paid to express opinions. One can only speculate as to why they make this (totally invalid) assumption. I am not alone in being on the receiving end of this one; here roger Coghill of ‘phone masts cause teen-suicides’ fame makes a similar accusation of one of his critics:

“Why I want to identify you Pob, old sport, is to demonstrate to the readers of this thread that your continued anonymity is because your attacks on me are not related to science but simply for commercial interest.. If you have any integrity at all you will tell us your name and affiliations, and give me an even playing field.. Of course you are such a spongiform creature that your paymasters would not let you do such an honest thing, and you haven’t the guts yourself..”

Elsewhere, the likes of Powerwatch make similar accusations – while selling aluminium wallpaper and ‘electrosmog’ detectors to people who have bought into the ‘wifi and mobiles make you ill’ myth.

It also betrays a rather paranoid mindset which envisages telecom firms, pharmaceutical giants and government agencies banding together to silence their critics by buying up bloggers and suppressing data that supports alt-med as homeopath Sue Young does here to explain the lack of positive results for using homeopathy to treat AIDS. She also accused me and other critics of having “vested interests” (I have not), being “part of the Ben Goldacre crowd” (implying that Dr. Goldacre was beind my complaint about her – he was not) and being a “bunch of white males (even the women)”. Part of the attraction of positing such conspiracies could be the feeling of superiority for having seen through the conspiracy. This feeling soon becomes contempt for those who disagree as scenar enthusiast Philip Porter demonstrates by saying “yes you have the opinion of most sheeple who trust modern corrupt science and medicine.” The basic tenet of modern science is that ideas must be tested by evidence. I see nothing corrupt in this. ‘Sheeple’, incidently, is a term coined by the 9/11 Truth brigade to descibe those who would not accept their notions that George Bush and/or Mossad organised the 9/11 terror attacks on the US.

Another whose high opinion of his own perceived cleverness leading to contempt for those who disagree with him is self-styled ‘Health Ranger’ Mike Adams of NaturalNews. In this rant which generally misrepresents the sceptical viewpoint, he claims that it is pointless arguing with sceptics because we are all mindless zombies.

Another way of trying to do down critics is to accuse them of being unqualified and/or ignorant. Elizabeth Flynn says that I am unqualified when I took exception to homeopaths peddling their wares as cures for AIDS and malaria in southern Africa. Funnily enough, homeopaths who themselves lack any kind of medical qualification do not let it stop the denigrating evidence based medicine. Go figure. Similarly, Alexandre Gideon said “Homeopathy is a complete system of medicine whose lagitimacy (sic) is no puzzle to be explained to a self proclaimed anti-civilization frreak (sic) like you.If you want to learn more about homeopathy,GO TO SCHOOL,”

I do not recall proclaiming myself as being against civilisation. Anyone who listens in school science lessons will soon understand why homeopathy is bunk. This individual also accused me of lacking first hand knowledge of southern Africa (while demonstrating his own lack of knowledge of Botswana’s history). When I pointed out that my wife is a black South African and I have spent time in the township where her family lives, he went quiet.

Another who believed that he knew more about my own life than I do myself was Kaviraj who claimed he knew the contents of my degree course when I disputed Mike Adams claim that sceptics do not understand the nature of the electron:

“Oh waht (sic) a load of drivel by you a-skeptics. Your physics clas (sic) you claim to have had also teaches you that matter cannot be destroyed. Something can never become nothing.”

Not true and I doubt that it has been true of any undergraduate physics course since the 1920s.

Sometimes the ad homs are not so much amusing as deeply unpleasant. ‘F. Arseneau’ claimed that scepticism is fascism. This seems to be because we favour ideas that are supported by evidence and do not favour those that are not. This makes us discriminatory because we reject others’ viewpoints if they are not supported by evidence. Ironically, one viewpoint that I reject is the fascist notions on race because the evidence points to them being complete nonsense.

The winner of the top insult (on this blog anyway) has to go to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, whose mouthpiece ‘Moses love’ who accused me of being the son of Satan:

“i think u need to see your GP coz u are insane. One thing for sure u are good in nonsense. probably u are a satanist who doesn’t want people to be delivered from your father lucifer demons. ”

I reckon that makes me the Antichrist. Has anyone had an insult that tops that?

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 31,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

As usual, the dominant theme was health quackery of one form or another. The year started with fisdkings of Mike Adams’ misunderstanding of the UK health care system here and here. He also demonstrated his limited comprehension abilities in his misunderstanding of the 10:23 campaign fisked here.

Natural News is by no means the only purveyor of health quackery examined. I looked at Bio-Synergy’s pseudoscientific gobbledygook in support of their allegedly slimming-aid desert. My emails to them and to Tesco did not get me very far so I submitted a complaint to the ASA. Unfortunately I neglected to cache a copy online (though I did save a copy on my computer) so I was caught out when Bio-Synergy amended the online ad and then claimed it had never read the way I said it did. Since the scientific bollocks was removed and an unevidenced claim dropped I am chalking this up as a qualified victory – in future I will cache online copies of pages before submitting complaints.

Other health quackeries examined were divine straightening, the Daily Mail’s continued assault on the HPV vaccine and the return of the detox footbath.

The Guardian demonstrated that publishing medical bollocks is not the preseve of right-wing rags by publishing a blatant advertorial for osteopathy, claiming it could treat asthma. I complained about it as did others but Tim Lusher completely missed the point and got rather stroppy about criticism. Incidently the post about my complaint got the highest ever number of hits on this blog – for something I’d chucked together in about ten minutes. Finely crafted posts that are not linked to by Martin Robbins or tweeted by Ben Goldacre get less than a fifth of the hits. Such is life.

Other subjects covered included GMC incompetence in releasing Stuart Jones’ identity to Sarah Myhill and the CFS/ME activists which resulted in a retaliatory complaint about him to the Health Professions Council. The outcome seemed more about suppressing boat-rocking than justice as it appears to me that the caution order they issued was actually in breach of their own rules. Perhaps when the full transcript is available, more definite conclusions can be reached.

The sellers are Vibrant Health and they make a number of claims for this treatment for which there is little or no evidence:

Improved circulation
Relief from arthritis
Enhanced metabolism
Help with menstrual symptoms
Headache relief
Improved kidney and liver function
Clearer skin
Enhanced wellbeing
Detoxification of heavy metals and mercury
Raised energy levels
Support for a detox diet plan

I complained to the ASA and eventually got this response:

Dear Mr Hawcock

VIBRANT HEALTH

As you may be aware, the ASA has received an unprecedented number of complaints about a range of alternative therapies since it extended its online remit on 1 March 2011. Those complaints have been processed in the usual way; some were not valid, some were valid but did not raise issues we judged to constitute serious breaches and some gave us reason to believe that an investigation was warranted and were passed to the Investigations teams.

The ASA is currently dealing with a disproportionately high number of on-going alternative therapy cases and the amount of work required to resolve these complaints is hampering us from providing a good service to all of our customers.

We aim to ensure that all advertising is legal, decent, honest and truthful and we do not seek to focus our attention on particular sectors to the exclusion of others. As the balance of our attention has been tipped in favour of alternative therapies we have decided to redress that with immediate effect.

We have considered your complaint in this context and have made an operational decision to de-prioritise it in line with our desire to limit the number of on-going investigations we are conducting. We do not feel that these claims warrant the same priority as some of the very well known and more mainstream therapies. In particular, we take the view that the potential for consumer detriment is much lower for this therapy by comparison to others. We therefore feel that we cannot justify allocating resources to this therapy, at this time.

We intend to focus our attention on key mainstream therapies for the time being and we will return to the less popular and less well known ones when sufficient resources are freed up. This will in all likelihood involve one or two key formal investigations followed by compliance action across the sector. If your complaint is one that we decide to investigate we will let you know what we are doing in due course. In all other cases you should not expect hear from us again in relation to your complaint.

I appreciate that this may come as a disappointment to you but I hope that you appreciate that we need to take a structured approach to investigating complaints about alternative health therapies. I would like to thank you for taking the time and effort in writing to us. Please do visit our website to keep up to date on our progress.

Yours sincerely

Julia Dean

Complaints Executive

While I understand the ASA’s need to prioritise their workload, I am not convinced that the detriment to the customer is low. As with all useless remedies, there is the risk that the user will eschew conventional treatment, particularly when the practitioner makes grand claims. Also, when an electric current is passed through a salt solution, sodium hydroxide (aka caustic soda) solyion is produced. Prolonged exposure to this does not do your skin much good. Apart from this, there is the cost – a single session costs £30 and a booked course of ten costs £250. A certain detriment to the customers’ wallets, I fear.

The take-away message seems to be is that if your actions are not too much to the detriment of your customers, your activities will pass beneath the ASA’s radar.

To recap, the following complaint was made against him:

During the course of your registration as a Clinical Scientist, between 1st March 2009 and 26th October 2010, you:
1. Made disparaging and/or misleading comments on the website forum, “Bad Science” about Dr XY
2. The matter set out in paragraph 1 constitutes misconduct.
3. By reason of that misconduct, your fitness to practise is impaired.

Before the allegations were read, allegation 1 was amended to delete the words “and/or misleading”. To cut a long story short, his comments were found to be disparaging and the panel was of the view that this constituted misconduct and that therefore his fitness to practise was impaired because the misconduct was “not minor”:

In deciding which sanction, if any, to impose in this case, the Panel has considered the submissions of Ms David on behalf of the HPC and Ms Price on behalf of the Registrant, the advice of the Legal Assessor and the HPC indicative sanctions Policy. It has revisited the testimonials submitted to it on behalf of the Registrant. It notes that the primary function of any sanction is to address public safety but that it also has a duty to give appropriate weight to the wider public interest which includes:
• The deterrent effect on other Registrant’s (sic);
• The reputation of the profession concerned; and
• Public confidence in the regulatory process
It has considered the question of which sanction to impose in ascending order of severity. It notes that where a Panel has determined that fitness to practise is impaired, it is not obliged to impose a sanction.
It first considered to take no further action, but decided against this course having regard to the seriousness of misconduct set out above. To dispose of this case by taking no further action would neither reflect the seriousness of misconduct found nor address the public interest considerations referred to above. This misconduct cannot, in the Panels judgement, be categorised as minor.
Having decided that to take no further action would not be appropriate in this case, it next considered the imposition of a Caution Order. In that regard it considered all the criteria set out in the above mentioned indicative sanctions guidance. It notes that this case does not involve any issues in relation to the Registrant’s clinical competence and further notes that the misconduct did not cause any patient harm. The Registrant has apologised for his misconduct, now realises that his actions fell below the standards expected of a registered professional and has shown genuine remorse. Further, it is the Panel’s judgement that the majority of his posts on the Bad Science Forum were not inappropriate and that there is a low risk of reoccurrence of his misconduct.

The panel does not Appear to have read the HPC’s own rules:

Our fitness to practise process is not designed to punish registrants for past mistakes. It is designed to protect the public from those who are not fit to practise. Finding that a registrant’s fitness to practise is ‘impaired’ means that there are concernsabout their ability to practise safely and effectively.
Sometimes registrants make mistakes that they are unlikely to repeat. This means that the registrant’s fitness to practise isunlikely to be impaired. People sometimes make mistakes or have a one-off instance of unprofessional conduct or behaviour.
Our processes do not mean that we will pursue every isolated or minor mistake.

Take particular note of the two emboldened sections in the quotes above. It is clear that the panel regarded his comments as an isolated mistake and therefore going by their own rules no sanction was required – yet they imposed a two year caution order. According to their rules:

… your fitness to practise is likely to be found to be impaired if the evidence shows that you:
– were dishonest, committed fraud or abused someone’s trust;
– exploited a vulnerable person;
– failed to respect service users’ rights to make choices about their own care;
– have health problems which you have not dealt with, and which may affect the safety of service users;
– hid mistakes or tried to block our investigation;
– had an improper relationship with a service user;
– carried out reckless or deliberately harmful acts;
– seriously or persistently failed to meet standards;
– were involved in sexual misconduct or indecency (including any involvement in child pornography);
– have a substance abuse or misuse problem;
– have been violent or displayed threatening behaviour; or
– carried out other, equally serious, activities which affect public confidence in your profession.

The only one of these that comes remotely close to Stuart Jones’ conduct is the last (and even then it has to be asked: do the HPC really regard making sarky comments as “equally serious” as reckless behaviour, having an affair with a client or looking at Kiddy porn?) . But even if it is considered that confidence in his profession is affected, this could only be the case if it was widely known that ‘Jonas’ is a clinical scientist. But this only became the case because the GMC released his name and CFS/ME activists at Phoenix Rising and elsewhere publicised it. So PR and the GMC contributed to affecting public confidence but the findings do not acknowledge this. Why? Medical omérta?

Given that the concerns raised by Stuart Jones about the contents of Dr. Myhill’s website were so serious (and some of the pages have since been amended, removing the medically dubious bits) the take-away message is that if medical professions criticise each other they should choose their words very carefully and never, ever express them in public. Which is a real worry because if any medical professional is giving dangerous advice then the public needs to know.

The nuttier wing of CFS/ME activism has been gunning for Stuart Jones because they regard any criticism of Dr. Myhill as an attack on them. On Phoenix Rising ‘wildcat’ does so – s/he manages to interpret the sub-heading on the masthead of this forum as an attack on CFS/ME sufferers. I defy wildcat or anyone else to find any such attack.

In the long run, they have done their cause no good. CFS/ME sufferers themselves have often felt they had legitimate criticisms of their doctors. They can still make such criticisms of course but now any sympathetic medics whose evidence might have supported them will now have to seriously consider whether they should – since even accurate criticism will have an adverse effect on their career. The CFS/ME militants have made a rod for their own back.

The best thing would be if the person concerned were silenced permanently. No I don’t mean kill him; who do you think I am, Tony Soprano? If the person concerned is based in the UK, silencing can be achieved by means of that country’s plaintiff-friendly libel laws. Sometimes all it takes is a legal letter to the writer and they will fold. Most people don’t have the £100,000 or more needed to defend a libel claim. In the case of bloggers, you could also threaten the blog’s hosting company with legal action if they do not shut the blog down. Joseph Obi made excellent use of this tactic to silence Quackometer’s criticism of his humble and ethical business.

A word to the wise: use real lawyers. Here are a couple of examples of emails sent to Andy Lewis of Quackometer:

Le Canard Noir / Andy Lewis,

I represent the Burzynski Clinic, Burzynski Research Institute, and Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski. It has been brought to our attention that you have content on your websites http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2011/11/the-false-hope-of-the-burzynski-clinic.html that is in violation of multiple laws.

Please allow this correspondence to serve as notice to you that you published libelous and defamatory information. This correspondence constitutes a demand that you immediately cease and desist in your actions defaming and libeling my clients.

Please be advised that my clients consider the content of your posting to be legally actionable under numerous legal causes of action, including but not limited to: defamation Libel, defamation per se, and tortious interference with business contracts and business relationships. The information you assert in your article is factually incorrect, and posted with either actual knowledge, or reckless disregard for its falsity.

The various terms you use in your article connote dishonesty, untrustworthiness, illegality, and fraud. You, maliciously with the intent to harm my clients and to destroy his business, state information which is wholly without support, and which damages my clients’ reputations in the community. The purpose of your posting is to create in the public the belief that my clients are disreputable, are engaged in on-going criminal activity, and must be avoided by the public.

You have a right to freedom of speech, and you have a right to voice your opinion, but you do not have the right to post libelous statements regardless if you think its your opinion or not. You are highly aware of defamation laws. You actually wrote an article about defamation on your site. In addition, I have information linking you to a network of individuals that disseminate false information. So the courts will apparently see the context of your article, and your act as Malicious. You have multiple third parties that viewed and commented on your article, which clearly makes this matter defamation libel. Once I obtain a subpoena for your personal information, I will not settle this case with you. Shut the article down IMMEDIATELY.
GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY.
Regards,
Marc Stephens
Burzynski Clinic
9432 Katy Freeway
Houston, Texas 77055

and

FINAL NOTICE TO CEASE AND DESIST

I am not here to grade your article, or play games with you. You fully understand what you’re doing, which is why you are trying to hide behind your so-called “opinion”. You have a history of lying in your articles since 2008. All articles and videos posted from your little network are being forwarded to local authorities, as well as local counsel. It is your responsibility to understand when you brake[sic] the law. I am only obligated to show you in court. I am giving you final warning to shut the article down. The days of no one pursuing you is over. Quackwatch, Ratbags, and the rest of you Skeptics days are numbered.

So, since you have a history of being stubborn, you better spend the rest of the day researching the word Fraud, you better do full research on the relationship of Dr. Saul Green and Emprise, Inc., and you better do full research on Stephen Barrett who is not licensed, or ever was licensed. So his medical opinion is void, which I am sure you are fully aware of his court cases. So your so-called opinion means nothing when this is disclosed in court, and by law you must prove your statements are true. Your source of information are all frauds, and none are medical doctors. You being apart of the same network makes you guilty, in the eyes of the jurors.

Be smart and considerate for your family and new child, and shut the article down..Immediately

You are still accountable for Re-publishing false information, and disseminating false information. None of the previous attorneys that contacted you about defamation had documented history in the courts. We have well documented history which is on record with the court, which is available to the public. So, when I present to the juror that my client and his cancer treatment has went up against 5 Grand Juries which involved the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Aetna Life Insurance, Emprise, Inc., Texas State Medical Board, and the United States Government, and was found not guilty in all 5 cases, you will wish you never wrote your article. In addition, my client has treated multiple cancer patients around the world, which is fully documented by the FDA, NCI, and Kurume University School of Medicine in Japan, and has finished Phase II clinical trials with FDA approval to move forward with Phase III. I suggest you spend more time with your new child then posting lies and false information on the internet that will eventually get you sued, which will hurt you financially. I am going to pursue you at the highest extent of the law.

If you had no history of lying, and if you were not apart of a fraud network I would take the time to explain your article word for word, but you already know what defamation is. I’ve already recorded all of your articles from previous years as well as legal notice sent by other attorneys for different matters. As I mentioned, I am not playing games with you. You have a history of being stubborn which will play right into my hands. Be smart and considerate for your family and new child, and shut the article down..Immediately. FINAL WARNING.
Regards,
Marc Stephens

Note the unlawerly language, ranty accusations and errors in spelling & grammar. There are also inaccurate statements about a third party which the recipient can check for himself. Someone receiving the above missives might come to the conclusion that Marc Stephens is not a lawyer and indeed a search for him on the website of the Texas Bar Association draws a blank.

Your target may conclude from this that either you lack confidence in the veracity of your statements or that you cannot afford a real lawyer. It is very bad for them to come to this conclusion because they and others will just start repeating the damaging allegations about your business. So – real lawyers only.

Sometimes, even if you have engaged a proper lawyer, your target refuses to cave in. If you do nothing now, you look weak and other bloggers will dive in for the kill. So, you sue. This can have short term benefits; the first edition of Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science omitted a chapter on Matthias Rath due to his ongoing libel action against Goldacre and the Guardian. This was good in the short term but Rath went on to lose his claim which resulted in lots of bad publicity and the suppressed chapter spurting out all over the Net.

The above may lead you to the conclusion that the risks of the legal route are too great but keeping silent is not an option as this may lead your customers to believe that your critic is correct. You cannot have that so later posts will examine other options available to you.

Before I start though, let us look at the meaning of the word ‘anonymous’ as it is used here. Dr Myhill’s supporters seemed to think that this meant the GMC was acting on the basis of an unsigned letter whereas in fact they always knew who he was. The complaint was anonymous in that Dr Myhill did not know from whom the complaint had originated. Some also argued that she should be allowed to ‘face her accuser’, a view that would have merit if he had been making allegations about something she had said or done to him but in fact his criticisms were about medical misinformation on her website – which could be viewed by the Fitness to Practice Panel themselves. Input from ‘Jonas’/Stuart Jones was not required.

For reasons best known to themselves, the GMC chose to reveal his identity to Dr Myhill anyway, which resulted in a world of grief for him. I should point out that there is no reason to believe that Dr Myhill has had anything to do with this, the evidence points to CFS/ME extremists, who were well represented amongst her supporters who had turned out for her FTP hearing. His identity was tweeted and retweeted fairly rapidly. From here we have “Mr Stuart Jones is Jonas, The Big Girls Blouse…”. It went down hill from there.

They had been ranting on the now-deleted ‘überthread’ and elsewhere about this being an attack on CFS/ME sufferers whereas in fact, as ‘skepticat’ points out:

The complainant, who posts on the Bad Science forum under the name of ‘Jonas’, started a thread over there with the announcement that he’d made a complaint about a range of recommendations Dr Myhill makes on her website. These, Jonas argued, are contrary to national guidance and safety limits and so may place people at risk. The recommendations are in connection with nutritional supplements, heart disease, contraception, breast cancer diagnosis and vaccines. None of this complaint appears to be about treatment relating to CFS, with the possible exception of the vitamin supplements.

This belief may have arisen due to conspiritorial thinking by the activists: the owner of the Bad Science website is Dr Ben Goldacre, who once worked with Dr Simon Wessely who is hated by the extremists because (according to them) he says either that the causes of CFS are psychological not physical, or that it is a sham illness. From this they seem to have deduced that all Bad Science posters are there to do Dr Wessely’s bidding.

Consequently, because Dr. Wessely is a target of theirs, anyone who in their eyes is one of his minions becomes a target. From this it is clear that they have a cached copy of the überthread and intend presenting it as evidence to the HPC panel considering Stuart Jones’ fitness to practice. I don’t suppose it will be the version that shows them making insulting and/or provocative statements to get a reaction, then, on getting one, editing their posts. Not that it really matters as ‘Jonas’ did not rise to the bait. Others did but this can only be seen as relevent if you see Bad Science posters as being united in a campaign against those with CFS. The tone of comments both here and here suggest that other posters could become targets when they fail to achieve their objective against Stuart Jones. Fortunately, the GMC does not know who they are.

Similarly, the fact that this thread was on Ben’s site is evidence for them that he agrees with what is being said. In fact he banned one poster (not Jonas) for making a particularly unpleasant comment about a doctor (not Myhill) and instituted a moderation process for the forum.

It is clear that Stuart Jones is owed an apology by the GMC because if it was not for them the extremists would not have an easy target for their viciousness. One thing on which I do find myself in agreemernt with the Myhillites; the GMC is not fit for purpose.