This article is a review of Mike Adams 2010 article on skeptics.
Mike Adams looks like a nice guy, right? Well, it turns out behind that smile is a self-serving, disingenuous spoon feeder of disinformation.
What’s skepticism? It’s simple; skepticism is a methodology of thought: Do not accept claims without evidence or reason. Remember that as you wade through the torrent of fake news headed your way, courtesy of Mike.
According to the blurb at the end of Mike Adams’ article at the time of publishing this article, it reads:
Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal.
naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
He has written over 1,800 articles on subjects ranging from astrology to homeopathy. After spending some time on the Natural News website reading his articles on misinformation, I have to say that you can stack cow manure 10 stories high, but it’s still just a pile of bullshit.

Mike Adam’s article and intellectual dishonesty
Today, I want to tackle one of Mike Adams’ articles titled ‘What “skeptics” really believe about vaccines, medicine, consciousness and the universe.‘
It’s only in the spirit of intellectual honesty and trusting to the readership’s intelligence that I subjected you to the link to the actual article above.
Mike begins his argument with a summary of what skeptics are:
Briefly stated, “skeptics” are in favor of vaccines, mammograms, pharmaceuticals and chemotherapy. They are opponents of nutritional supplements, herbal medicine, chiropractic care, massage therapy, energy medicine, homeopathy, prayer and therapeutic touch.”
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
Well, okay, that’s fairly reasonable. I am in favor of vaccines and whatnot. I wouldn’t exactly say I am a staunch opponent of nutritional supplements though. Nor am I on a crusade against getting a good massage.
Certainly, I am aware of the complete lack of credibility and efficiency of homeopathy and intercessory prayer.
Let’s move on.

The list of what skeptics “really believe”
Mike has created a rather large list by ‘researching’ and visiting various ‘skeptic websites’, but he never tells us which ones he visited or how he conducted his “research”.
In the interests of not writing a 5,000-word article, I am only going to tackle a few of his more maladjusted points:
• Skeptics believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective (even if they’ve never been tested), that ALL people should be vaccinated, even against their will, and … …injecting all children with, for example, 900 vaccines all at the same time is believed to be perfectly safe and “good for your health.”
• Skeptics believe that the human body has no ability to defend itself against invading microorganisms… …the only things that can save people from viral infections are vaccines.
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
We’ve had a few articles touch on vaccination on Jacmus recently, so all you regular readers should know roughly our stance on the subject. For those of you who don’t, I will say that we don’t believe untested vaccines are safe. No one in their right mind believes that.
Who the hell does Mike think that sentence is going to fool?
I do, however, believe that all people should be vaccinated. There’s a pretty self-explanatory reason for that: being the eradication of all diseases. As for injecting multiple vaccines, I believe, the science is reasonably sound there as well. The CDC has this well covered.

What Mike says about skeptics belief in the human body’s ability to defend itself
The second dot point is particularly perplexing.
Has Mike never heard of anti-bodies? Leukocytes? What the hell does he think Leukemia is then? Evil spirits?
I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to a rational adult… hell, even a batshit crazy adult that didn’t know that white blood cells are what helps keep infections at bay.
• Skeptics believe that there is no such thing as human consciousness. They do not believe in the mind; only in the physical brain. In fact, skeptics believe that they themselves are mindless automatons who have no free will, no soul and no consciousness whatsoever.
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
I AM A ROBOT. MUST WRITE ARTICLE FOR JACMUS. I HAVE NO SOUL.

My next point could appear at basically any point in this article and it would be pertinent.
Skeptics do not all believe the same things. Many skeptics are entirely at odds with one another.
A skeptic is a label for a person who values a skeptical methodology of thinking. That methodology has no doctrine; it does not mean you have to accept any ideas because you’re a skeptic or that you must reject any ideas because you are a skeptic.
It’s a way to avoid accepting claims without reason or evidence. Whether or not the evidence for a subject is sufficient to meet these requirements is often debated, especially among skeptics.
Neuroscientists are working on questions concerning the nature of consciousness and free will. The jury is still out on many questions. And that’s a good thing. A skeptic will naturally remain unconvinced of a claim until there is sufficient evidence to put their support behind it.

Mike Adams on skeptics and water
Mike Adams’ gross inference of how skeptics are closed-minded is a conscious lie — unless he is that stupid — and a convenient misrepresentation for all of his self-serving arguments.
• Skeptics believe that water has no role in human health other than basic hydration. Water is inert, they say, and the water your toilet is identical to water from a natural spring (assuming the chemical composition is the same, anyway).
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
To answer the question in parenthesis, well, duh. A water molecule is a water molecule is a water molecule. It’s not suddenly an arsenic molecule.
• Skeptics believe that the moon has no influence over life on Earth. Farming in sync with moon cycles is just superstition, they say. (So why are the cycles of life for insects, animals and humans tied to the moon, then?)
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
We do? That’s news to me since I am a fisherman by nature. The tides play a huge role in marine life. Without the tides, we might not have even evolved at all.

What Mike thinks about skeptics and artificial sweeteners
• Skeptics believe that aspartame and artificial chemical sweeteners can be consumed in unlimited quantities with no ill effects.
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
This statement is an interesting one because up until recently, I did believe that aspartame was a carcinogen and had links to Alzheimer’s disease. I used to chastise my partner for drinking Diet Coke.
This all stemmed back from my Grandma telling me about it when I was quite young, and so I’d always taken it as given until recently. My point here is to show that my healthy skepticism showed me the truth.
Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners pose no danger to your health. You can find a brief summary of the current science at Cancer.org, including references to the correct peer-reviewed papers.
• Skeptics believe that human beings were born deficient in synthetic chemicals and that the role of pharmaceutical companies is to “restore” those deficiencies in humans by convincing them to swallow patented pills.
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
I don’t even know what to say to this as I’ve never heard this argument before now. It’s creative and perhaps evidence that Mike visits the wrong sort of skeptical websites. I think those sites are more commonly known as The Weekly World News and Co.

Mike’s self-absolution with no real evidence
Note that Mike conveniently ends his list with a paragraph absolving him of all research responsibility.
“All the beliefs listed above were compiled from “skeptics” websites. (I’m not going to list those websites here because they don’t deserve the search engine rankings, but you can find them yourself through Google, if you wish.)”
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
Within that quote is a gross expression of intellectual dishonesty. At the top of this article, I gave Mike Adams the courtesy of linking to his article to make my own review more transparent. (We have advised search engines to not follow the link by adding no-follow in the coding, an SEO action that any blogger can do.) I want you to be able to see for yourself that I’m not making this up.
You (the reader) should be able to investigate via the links I’ve provided and judge for yourself whether Mike is genuine, insightful, helpful or a hindrance to the embodiment of intelligence and reasonable discussion.

Skeptics aren’t consistently skeptical…?
So basically, any person with a skeptical mind (not Mike’s apparently insane definition of the word) can see from the dot points above that Mike Adams is a quack.
Not only does he wallow in his supposed ‘research’ like a pig in shit, he actively lies to his readers by pushing points that he knows are bullshit.
In this section, Mike lists a few more dot points on things that we should be skeptical about but aren’t.
This is where my bullshit meter went DING!
Some of them are rehashes of the points above, so let me single out a few more that slip in.
• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the corruption and dishonesty in the pharmaceutical industry. They believe whatever the drug companies say, without asking a single intelligent question.
• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the profit motive of the pharmaceutical industry. They believe that drug companies are motivated by goodwill, not by profits.
• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the mass-drugging agenda of the psychiatric industry which wants to diagnose everyone with some sort of “mental” disorder. The skeptics just go right along with it without asking a single commonsense question about whether the human brain really needs to be “treated” with a barrage of mind-altering chemicals.
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)

Skeptics and modern medicine
Those that know me well enough to have spoken with me on the topic of pharmaceuticals know that I am a big advocate of modern medicine. Is that the same as not asking a single intelligent question about pharmaceutical companies? No.
I have been a vocal opponent of the overprescription of antidepressants and antibiotics as well as questioning the motives behind the patenting of certain drugs. There is nothing wrong with questioning those motives. Assuming, however, that the entire pharmaceutical industry is rotten and in on the deal is just not facing reality.
• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the enormous dangers of ionizing radiation from mammograms and CT scans. They have somehow convinced themselves that “early detection saves live” when, in reality, “early radiation causes cancer.”
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
Tristan raised a good point in response to this. In Mike Adams’ homeopathy article, he espouses the view that “Electrons are a vibration, not a physical thing.” so that leaves us all scratching our heads on how Mike thinks ionizing radiation works. Care to enlighten us, Mike?

Mike Adams’ writing lacks credibility
Up until now, Mike has had a microscopic veneer of credibility. I only grant him that here because his next point utterly decimates any reasonable conclusion he might have been trying to come to:
• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the demolition-style collapse of the World Trade Center 7 building on September 11, 2001 — a building that was never hit by airplanes. This beautifully-orchestrated collapse of a hardened structure could only have been accomplished with precision explosives. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwSc7NPn8Ok) Astonishingly, “skeptics” have little understanding of the laws of physics. Concrete-and-steel buildings don’t magically collapse in a perfect vertical demolition just because of a fire on one floor…
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
Now Mike shows his true colors. The sheer arrogance of slipping this little nugget of shit into an article already piled high with bovine excreta is mind-blowing. This point says more about Mike Adams’ character than the entire archive of his Natural News website.

Out with the rest of the garbage…
The remainder of Mike Adams’ article talks about why skeptics are all idiots and states a number of times, “This is what skeptics actually believe. They will tell you this themselves!” with an air of desperation.
I could stomach this if there were some links to actual websites with actual quotes from people but Mike provides us nothing with which to judge his claims.
We’re expected to take these claims at face value (as we apparently do with everything else) and respect his journalistic credentials in the matter. The conclusion to the article is particularly odious:
Skeptics… zombies… drones… different words for the same thing. Soulless, mindless, lacking consciousness and free will, having no awareness of the value of life… these are the skeptics arguing for vaccines, mammograms and chemotherapy today. They are agents of death who can only find solace in an industry of death — the industry of modern medicine.
Mike Adams on naturalnews.com (January 24, 2010)
I feel like he wants to put ‘sheeple’ in there but realized it would bring down the quality (ahem) of his writing.

In conclusion, fuck you, Mike Adams
Mike is the type of person I had in mind when I wrote my previous article, Let’s Get Immunized Against Bullshit.
Mike Adams’ particular brand of bullshit is especially dangerous, as he is the website owner, published author, and regular columnist on Natural News which, by all accounts, is a popular website.
Mike’s irresponsible spread of information and prominent anti-vaccination websites is endangering children. It promotes disease and the spreading of the most insidious forms of misinformation.
He is perpetuating the continued opposition to all scientific endeavors. Mike is the highest form of schadenfreude, and his follow-up to the responses under his article shows all too well the joy he derives from spreading the bullshit around nice and thick.
So, here’s my personal message to you Mike, sent gift wrapped in love by Lilly Allen.
What does skepticism mean to you?
Skepticism or scepticism (depending on your mother tongue) has different meanings to different people (aside from those found in dictionaries). We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments on what skepticism means to you. Are you a skeptic? What are you skeptic of?