There is, perhaps, no greater indicator of a deficient intellect than the ad hominem attack.
Last week, I was subject to one such attack on our website regarding my Top 10 pseudoscience newsmakers of 2015.
“On Thom Barker: I think it is a real hoot that this man, author Thom Barker... criticizes Dr. Mercola, whom I follow as an excellent alternative health information source. Barker is actually, by his appearance in his photo...appears to be at least 70-80 lbs OVERWEIGHT. Compare his words and physical weight with that of Mercola, who by all accounts, appears to be as fit and trim as anyone I know. Now Thom, obesity and diabetes are both very dangerous health conditions. Perhaps you should consider either going to a psychologist, a medical doctor...or Mercola if you prefer a natural approach. But Thom, if you don’t do SOMETHING OTHER THAN RANT...your life may be hampered by poor health. And don’t forget that the American medical association (AMA) ranks the mainstream medical folk as the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA. Not making this up, it is just known information. So, Thom, please choose both your thoughts, rants and diet and exercise more carefully. IN the end you’ll be a better person because of it. Stop Hating Natural Health and go LOOK in a MIRROR. Best Regards, Steven”
I mentioned Mercola, one of the most dangerous quacks on the planet in passing, but Steven’s violent response toward me personally warrants a more thorough examination of the quack in question.
Although a licenced physician and surgeon by the State of Illinois, a licence he features prominently on his website, he is not a Medical Doctor, but a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine.
There is not anything particularly wrong with Osteopathic Medicine per se. In the right hands, it provides all the benefits of modern, science-based medicine—including prescription medication, surgery etc.—with manual musculoskeletal manipulation techniques designed to strengthen the body with a focus on natural health promotion and disease prevention.
Unfortunately, while DOs are the legal equivalents of MDs and some are actually professional equivalents of MDs, many of them also practice dubious and outright nonsensical “alterative” therapies including chelation, clinical ecology, orthomolecular therapy, homeopathy and other thoroughly discredited quackery.
Mercola is one such osteopath. In fact, there is seemingly no pseudoscientific nonsense Mercola is above promoting including using secretin to “cure autism” and treating cancer with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).
He has been repeatedly sanctioned by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) for making false claims and is the subject of almost universal disdain within the evidence-based medical community.
That is not to say everything the man says and does is nonsense. There is certainly much to be said for diet and exercise in promoting good health, but Mercola’s purpose appears to be more about selling people supplements and other dubious “natural” health solutions for which he rakes in millions of dollars a year, a much more lucrative endeavour than what most physicians can make practicing actual medicine.
I could go on and on about Mercola’s quackery from his anti-vaccination tendencies to HIV/AIDS denial to his conspiracy theories about Big Pharma, but turning to Steven’s unwarranted ad hominem attack, I note there are other logical fallacies within his text.
The only evidence he presents that my opinion is off base is that I appear from the two-year-old picture used for my author profile to be “70-80 pounds” overweight (it’s actually about 40) inferring that somehow invalidates my opinion, which is clearly non-sequitur. In the first place, there could be all kinds of reasons that I am fat, but how I live my life is in no way irrelevant to the veracity of my opinion.
He says I hate natural health, which is a straw man. I do not, by any means, hate natural health. I am, in fact, a huge proponent of diet and exercise over medical intervention even though I do not always do a good job of practicing it myself.
I am against so-called “natural health products” that at best do nothing and at worst can be harmful, but it is a mistake to conflate that with hating natural medicine.
He infers that Mercola’s own “fit and trim” appearance is evidence that what the man is selling works. This is fallacious both because Steven has no idea whether Mercola subscribes to his own advice and because there is no way of knowing whether he is actually healthy under that “fit and trim” appearance.
Finally, the disingenuous “best regards,” is simply another attempt to insult me since he obviously in no way wishes me best regards.
If this troll continues to lurk out there, I hope he learns something. He will note that I did not call Mercola a quack because he is bald, but because he practices and promotes pseudoscientific nonsense for financial gain.
Steven will also note I did not call him, Steven, intellectually deficient because he lives in Colorado, but because he actually demonstrated intellectual deficiency by attempting to rebut my validly held opinion by calling me fat like a six-year-old on a schoolyard might.
I do understand why he would have to resort to juvenile bullying, however, because when you are defending something that essentially boils down to magic, actual facts for rebuttal are pretty hard to come by.
I do not know this person, but I can almost see him sitting at his computer all proud of himself for coming up with what he thought was a pithy response to my condemnation of his quack hero. Unfortunately, he merely exposed himself as a petty ignoramus.
Over the years, I have received hundreds of such comments. Normally I just ignore them, but this time I am simply not going to take it lying down.
