Entry #072: Deepak Chopra

A.k.a. The King of woo woo

The arch-bishop of woo himself, and probably one of the most influential (and flaky and zealous) crackpots chugging along today. A prolific author of New Age/self-help books (and a regular contributor to that absolutely abhorrent cesspool of anti-science, Huffington Post), Chopra is famous for using poorly understood (or not understood at all) vocabulary from physics, particularly quantum physics, mixed with “Eastern knowledge”. His writings are usually centered around woo-y claims along the lines of “recognize your inner beauty and the quantum entanglement will cure you”. Ardent opponent of “materialistic science” which hasn't yet recognized the ancient wisdom of Eastern spirituality, reincarnation, homeopathy and such. Earns a lot of money.

His most common inference rule is The Galileo Gambit (“scientist uniformly reject my ideas, but hey! Remember Galileo; his ideas were also reject by the scientific community [well, the church, in fact] back in the days; therefore I am right and everyone else are close-minded). An antidote is available here.

Some examples of his style: Chopra bashing skepticism (that is, Chopra fighting against logic and scientific inquiry – spot the fallacies): ; Chopra being taken on by Michael Shermer; Chopra on ”only spirituality can save the world” (and as Myers points out, Chopra neglects to tell us how); Chopra failing to deal with criticism; Chopra ”proving” that there is an afterlife; Chopra in general (this is part 3; links to the earlier ones); Chopra failing critical thinking yet again.

Well, I guess you get the point. This is a guy so utterly unable to grasp the foundations for critical thinking, so completely out of touch with reason, rationality and the ability to distinguish evidence from wishful thinking, that he must set some kind of record.

This is a decent, recent example of total Chopra failure. This one is marvelous.

A most hilarious parody of Chopra, the "DBag Chopra" twitter account, is found here.

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Diagnosis: This guy is seriously dangerous; he’s been claimed by Time magazine to be one of the 100 most important people of the 21st century; he has a huge following (Mikhail Gorbachev referred to Chopra as "one of the most lucid and inspired philosophers of our time"). His grasp of reason, critical thinking and reality is more tentative than Jack Chick’s, however, and the lunacy he represents might in the long run be even more dangerous than the Discovery Institute.

In short, he is probably the most influential loon in our Encyclopedia, and among the most dangerous (with Cynthia Dunbar and David Barton and some others).

Entry #068: Betsy Chasse

Producer, director and screenwriter for “What the bleep do we know” (together with, among others, the irretrievably lunatic William Arntz), Betsy Chasse is also an escapee from Ramtha’s school of enlightenment. She also runs Eloramedia, ”which offers spiritually oriented, motivational books, videos and music for children of all ages – adults included! She is a highly sought after speaker on such subjects as spirituality, the blending of science and spirituality, and marketing to the cultural creative demographic.”

A sympathetic interview can be found here. Among other things, it reveals that Chasse is ”infamous For: Driving scientists up the wall by claiming water's atomic structure can be changed by bad thoughts - and heavy metal music”. Indeed.

Chasse admits that before she started the film she didn't know anything about quantum physics. She learned from this film is that it's up to her, however: ”I am the creator of my own reality. I am responsible for my own self. By taking on that responsibility it's really empowered me to do great things in my life.” In other words, everything she knows about quantum physics she’s learned from the film she made about it without knowing anything in advance. A potent recipe for creative belief formation. A fair and succinct review of the movie is found here.

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Diagnosis: Chasse lives and breathes on confirmation bias in its most purified form – indeed, the whole message of What the bleep can be summed up as a defense of confirmation bias as a method of inquiry. The impact of the movie was big, but Chasse is probably soon forgotten. All the better.

Entry #054: Fritjof Capra

The king himself of touchy-feely new age bullshit, Capra is the author of ”The Tao of Physics”, which captured the imaginations of the Dunning-Kruger baseline some decades back by exploring the similarities between quantum theory and Eastern philosophies. Capra is a physicist, systems theorist, and has aslo written ”The Turning Point”, ”Uncommon Wisdom”, ”The Web of Life”, and ”The Hidden Connections”. Dr. Capra is also a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, and the sort of guy that would be a demi-good of the clinically moronic David Brooks’s neural Buddhists. ”The Tao of Physics” claims that physics and metaphysics are both inexorably leading to the same knowledge, and proceeds by way of wishy-washy Zen Buddhism peppered with half-baked concepts from quantum theory in a thoroughly confused, pyramids and magnet stone kind of quasi-religious delusional gruel.

Using Thomas Kuhn's ”The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” as a stepping stone, he and the Benedictine monk Steindl-Rast also explored the parallels between new paradigm thinking in science and religion (yes, exactly – poor understanding of Thomas Kuhn is probably the greatest generator of fluffy woo in history) that together offer what the authors consider remarkably compatible view of the universe. Evidence is selectively used if anyone wondered.

His main fight is against reductionism (a concept he doesn’t understand, rest assured) and a mechanistic world-view, in favor of a holistic approach. The wikipedia article is informative, if sympathetic. The penchant such people have to rely on armchair confirmation bias rather than evidence is obvious from their bald assertions (probably they believe it themselves) that their direction is the one in which scientific consensus itself is moving. It isn’t. Capra and his ilk are loons and crackpots.

A soulmate of Deepak Chopra, some representative examples of his rosy-tinted woo is found here, here and here (all sympathetic sources; he explains his disdain for Darwinism and Francis Bacon, among other things).

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Diagnosis: Woo-meister and cranky dingbat. Enormously influential – if you’ve ever heard of ”the similarity between Zen Buddhism or [insert wooey Eastern ”philosophy”, preferably one you know little about, here], Capra is the instigator. One of the most important crackpots alive.

Entry #049: Roger J Callahan & Gary Craig

The last decade or so certain psychologists and pseudo-psychologists have been claiming to be could cure any craving or phobia in minutes, sometimes even over the phone, by just a wee bit of tapping and some positive thinking to "rebalance [the body’s] natural energy system." Anything, really, from addiction to biscuits, alcohol, cigarettes to murdering homeopaths. The buzzword is "Thought Field Therapy” (TFT), a mish-mash of psychology, acupuncture, neuro-linguistic programming, hypnotherapy and what amounts to reiki and life force mysticism. It has absolutely no scientific foundation, and test results don’t exactly go in its favor. But woo apparently appeals.

Not only is there no evidence for its efficacy – it also relies on such quack myths as ”meridians”. In fact, the American Psychological Association asserted that TFT "lacks a scientific basis" and removed support for it in 1999, stating that TFT "does not meet [our] definition of appropriate continuing-education curriculum for psychologists".

The technique was invented and is promoted by – you guessed it – Roger Callahan (pictured right), who terms his treatment "Thought Field Therapy" because he theorizes that when a person thinks about an experience or thought associated with an emotional problem, they are tuning in to a "thought field. and the evidence adduced in support of TFT by Callahan and other proponents comes from uncontrolled case reports that were not peer reviewed. In 2001, in an unprecedented move, the Editor of the Journal of Clinical Psychology agreed to publish, without peer review, five articles on TFT of Callahan’s choosing. Psychologist John Kline wrote that Callahan’s article “represents a disjointed series of unsubstantiated assertions, ill-defined neologisms, and far-fetched case reports that blur boundaries between farce and expository prose.” It has its roots in ancient Chinese medicine.

You can read about them here. And here. And here’s his website.

Dr. Callahan also brags about being endorsed by Kevin Trudeau (who will appear later, rest assured). Perhaps because both were in major trouble with the FTC in 1998.

For their importation of TFT into Africa to treat PTSD and Malaria, see here.

And here is an NPR interview where Callahan claimed TFT successfully treated malaria.

A balanced analysis can be found here.

There is a good primer on thought field therapy here.
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Diagnosis: Crackpot and charlatan (probably unconsciously). His influence is appallingly wide, and his crackpottery has been adopted by several serious practitioners and even received governmental endorsement.

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Roger Callahan's disciple, Gary Craig, invented a variant of TFT known as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), applied kinesology and pure woo. His website is here.

Critically evaluated here.

EFT is apparently a procedure that ”borrows from the much-heralded discoveries of Albert Einstein”. How, you may think? Well, because ”everything, including your body, is composed of energy”. The residue is borrowed ”from the ancient wisdom of Chinese acupuncture.”

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Diagnosis: Pure, delusional crackpot of the worst kind. Impact uncertain, but EFT is a spin-off of some frighteningly popular quackery.

Entry #021: Fred Bell

According to his own website, “… at age 14 Bell was not only working at the University of Michigan on nuclear energy projects, but was also inducted into the U.S. government's project called M. K. Ultra. This early mind control research covered such topics as past life regression [check], and the popular remote viewing used today by the CIA and other intelligence gathering factions worldwide [check]. ... Dr. Bell worked on a magnetic disintegration project later known as the Philadelphia Experiment [check], a high temperature fusion experiment, a bubble project later known as Cold Fusion [check] ... . In addition, Dr. Bell worked with the University of Michigan's Cyclotron doing experimentation with the bombardment of nuclear particles and their collisions involving reverse time as observed in a Wilson Cloud Chamber [check]. As a result of this, Dr. Bell built the World's first time machine called the T-1 Time Travel Transposer that allows time travel into the future in increments of microseconds [words fail, but check]. On his 17th birthday, he was transferred into the United States Airforce. There he began working on highly classified projects, several involving early warning radar defense systems and the detection and tracking of extraterrestrial craft [check].

He then left the defense sector and began studying with Himalayan Masters [check]. During this time he became internationally known as a contactee to a Pleiadean group of extraterrestrial humanoids whom were here to help the people on earth save themselves from their own destructive tendencies [check, I guess]. This group comes from a star system 500 light-years from earth.

Today Dr. Bell is a practicing naturopath, scientist and environmentalist, and political activist ...”

So what does he do? Well, dr. Bell is kind enough to want to sell you, for a fairly steep price, various healing devices of his own invention, based on for example Ozonic Electro-Magnetic Technology, quantum receptors, bio-plasmic energy (a.k.a. healing pyramids) to block negative energy, or the Amazing Andromedan Holographic Projector, which "when worn on the head accelerates the brain into quantum entanglement focusing mode”. Who wouldn’t want that?

His website is here.

It is discussed here.

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Diagnosis: Words fail. Probably harmless.

Entry #018: Michael Bernard Beckwith

Beckwith is a New Thought minister and founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City, California, a New Thought church with 8000 members. Beckwith was one of the featured teachers in The Secret movie (hence an automatic consideration for inclusion in our encyclopedia); teaches meditation and “scientific prayer”, speaks at conferences and seminars and is the author of numerous books. Beckwith is a prophet of the infamous Law of Attraction, a crackpot idea in pseudo-scientific dressing about how positive thinking metaphysically attracts success. When Beckwith says "There's enough for everyone. If you believe it, if you can see it, if you act from it, it will show up for you. That's the truth", it is not meant metaphorically. The same goes for "There are laws of the universe and if you practice them they will respond to you." No, Beckwith, that’s not how it works.

Beckwith’s main project is to combine the most fluffy ideas from the world’s religions with New Age thought – and then proceed to declare it “science”; the epitome of New Age flakiness, in other words.

It should be mentioned that Beckwith is a serious contributor to various charities and environmental issues; unfortunately his ridiculous metaphysical rantings might overall have more adverse consequences than his contributions to social issues have positive consequences.

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Diagnosis: Professional snowflake with delusions of grandeur and a serious shortage of critical thinking skills; quite an impact, but it is unclear to what degree his metaphysical gibberish contributes to his influence.

Entry #007: William Arntz

Our seventh loon is the unfortunately influential filmmaker William Arntz.



Arntz is the Producer, Director, and Screenwriter of the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know”, perhaps the most influential piece of dreadfully cranky quantum-woo ever produced. It's complete gibberish; confirmation bias, lunacy and wishful thinking dressed up in pseudo-scientific language. Arntz is a graduate of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment (yes: channeling, pyramidology, numerology, tinfoil hats, you name it), and a radical, utterly flaky New-Ager whose dishonesty is presumably a consequence of solid confirmation bias and gullibility rather than malice.

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Diagnosis: Flapdoodler with a clinical lack of critical thinking skills, complete idiot; currently enjoys rather large influence through his work, however.