In the aftermath of major blogging landmarks like the BCA Statement takedown and the Jeni Barnett affair, I've received numerous e-mails on the subject of how it is that we manage to coordinate so much action so quickly on these key issues. Many thoughtful alternative medicine practitioners and anti-vaccination activists have speculated that there might be more behind some of our blogs than meets the eye... drug company funding perhaps, or a network of sock puppets created by Ben Goldacre. Well today, for the first time ever, I'm going to blow the lid off the whole skeptical blogging scene, and expose the secret cabal that runs the "Bad Science Community."
As usual, the folk at JABS were well ahead of the game, cottoning on quickly after the Jeni Barnett blog storm that something sinister was afoot. As three of their top investigative members noted:
Squib: A little bird has told me Bad Science will be seeding the blog-sphere with this story. It would be interesting to find out if this has been at the suggestion of a PR Consultant. If he has employed a consultant, the email will probably included dangling carrots so as to deflect the blogger from independently checking the facts.
Jabba: There is no way all of this could have happened so quickly without Pharma backing.
They have to prove that what they do, keeps the pharma donors happy....
The story began back in 2003. With the MMR controversy in full swing, vaccine manufacturers like Merck were facing the terrifying prospect of plummeting orders from their sinister Health Ministry collaborators. If things didn't turn around soon, they were going to have to release a new brand of painkiller, or create a new type of flu to keep their profits going. In order to avert the crisis, they employed top PR specialists BS Communications an agency with a long and distinguished history of influencing public health policy.
The agency had a plan - to leverage the increasing power of bloggers and create an 'astroturf' movement - but they needed a charismatic leader to inspire others to follow. Step forward Keeping up Appearances actress Patricia Routledge. After the BBC cancelled her popular series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, the actress was out of work and looking for cash to supplement her pension. BS Communications approached her, and quickly established that a thirty-something male doctor was well within the range of the veteran thespian's abilities. Routledge signed, and the fake character "Ben Goldacre" was born. Some claim that you can see the resemblance in the following publicity photo from the mid-90s.
With the fake 'Ben' character in place, the next step was to recruit a number of sycophantic followers to, well, follow him. I was a freelancer when I was approached, selling bad jokes to comedy birthday card manufacturers. Work had dried up owing to the catastrophic collapse of the comedy card industry as the increasing age of the population meant that most people just wanted cards with flowers and trains and cricket bats on them. In that climate, I was more than happy to oblige. 'Zeno' was an obvious choice, with his Acne Treatment Device sitting in direct competition to many of the qua..., sorry, professionals targetted. Frank Swain came from the militant anti-science wing of the BNP, explaining his almost fanatical campaigning on their behalf ahead of the European Elections, while Gimpy is in fact nothing more than a modified chat bot regurgitating material from a Merck PR library.
With this crack team in place it's easy to see how BS Communications are able to dominate the blogosphere so effectively. Every couple of months, a random-number generator linked to a database of alternative health qua..., sorry, professionals is used to generate a target, technology first used in a more primitive form by the Bush administration's defence staff (they used a dart and a blindfold, although latterly unsuccessful trials with a hunting rifle were conducted). Frank "No-Greens" Swain takes the result and sends an e-mail around telling everyone what to write; BSC make payments to us all via PayPal, Routledge dons her Goldacre wig and visits a pub to talk to drunk people in a sinister brain-washing exercise; and within 24 hours a media storm is created.
If you think about it, you probably should have worked it out all along. I mean, the idea that a diverse and disordered bunch of people around the world passionate about politics and science would actually write these stories of their own free will is just nuts. I'll no doubt be expelled from the collective, but at least now you know The Truth.
Oh, and one more thing - we set up the British Chiropractic Association as an elaborate parody. I mean, come on, did you really think such a daft organization could be real?!
http://layscience.net/trackback/610
This is brilliant! I also got roped into the conspiracy to host a section of the Jeni/LBC transcript at my blog. I am still waiting for my big pharma cheque - any idea when the fake (and incredibly dashing - I must say) Goldacre will deliver my money?
Thanks, yours in anticipation; "Maggie" (not my real name).
You've got to understand that the whole BS Communications was always just a red herring to distract attention from who was REALLY running the show. You got to take it back to the late 1960s, when a group of Cuban exiles who just so happened to be major shareholders in the shadowy organisation that later became Glaxo Smithkline decided they needed to cover their backs by throwing up a smokescreen around this whole science/pseudo-science issue in order to defend the dominant western medical paradigm and cover up the truth about homeopathy. So they sit down and reverse-engineer a whole new method of communication that, in time, will come to revolutionise the world, enabling them to get their message out by covert, unconventional means - something whose power no-one else at the time could even begin to imagine. The name they settled on? The "internet". That was where the CIA stepped in. This whole thing's been a set-up from the start...
A rival faction of the disinformation network, and former BS Communications frontmen, have come together under the guise of the 'World Conference of Science Journalists'.
Having reportedly forgotten to pay their dues to Casa Nostra boss Don Merck, top pitbull 'Ben Goldacre' (if we may use her pseudonym) has been commissioned to unceremoniously draw their ire by suggesting that they are 'broken, misleading, dangerous, lazy, venal and silly', when in reality we all know that they tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Anonymous:
It's clear that you've been mislead by the CIA and their "Cuban" stooges.
The truth is that it's actually an off-shoot of the late-1930s Nazi-Soviet pact: both Hitler and Stalin wanted to ensure that in the future no-one would have a choice but to be "treated" by "evidence-based" or "science based" "medicine".
It's a little know fact that this one document - which led to the carving-up of eastern Europe - had an addendum attached to it in very-small print. It stated that both the Germans and the Russians would get together with the nascent pharmaceutical industry in the UK and the US - which was on its last legs due to the combined crippling effects of the Great Depression and Roosevelt's socialism-inspired "New Deal" - to ensure that they would help profit from the up-coming WWII by creating "cures" for "diseases".
Is it a co-incidence that "penicillin" (a known placebo) was first used during WWII? No! Think that it was - as the legend goes - stumbled upon by mistake by a "Scottish" scientist called "Alexander Fleming"? Don't be so blind! How else do you think it could have happened? These things don't just happen.
"But how do the CIA fit into this?" you might ask. It's very simple, the "CIA" were a front-group created by Hitler and Stalin to ensure that the US would no longer be free: the "CIA" is there to protect the US's interests and it is well-known that the best kind of slave is one who thinks that he is truly free. Not many people know what "CIA" actually means; the usual explanation for its acronym is "Central Intelligence Agency"; however, it really means "Created In Auschwitz", which proves how evil it is.
As for the "Cubans", well they're just a front group, including "Alexander Fleming" or, to give him his real name, "Alexandria Flamenco". They're not actually Cuban but are Mexican.
QED!
Wha.....? I'm totally horrified. I thought I was working for our lizard overlords. I haven't even been paid! I just thought I was working towars the new Saurian World Order. My supreme Mistress, Lady Petra B, told me, when we met in her pink Cadillac, that my reward was to be in the future - the near future, in 2012, when the Old Order finally disappeared. That's it - I'm going to Scotland Yard with my tapes.
Is this true?
D-notice,
I can see why you might think that, but you really need to dig a little deeper. Hitler-Stalin was just a side-show from the beginning - one look at this photo should tell you all you need to know: http://manila.indymedia.org/images/2009/04/2450.jpg - just look at the way Molotov and his sidekick are staring so intently at what's obviously some kind of primitive tweeting device sitting there on the table, and tell me that this is just a coincidence!
Sure the CIA and the Cubans WANT us to think that they're nothing but a vehicle for the grand medicinal intrigues of the so-called Hitler-Stalin allopathic pharma-Nazi paradigm, but you have to ask yourself who's gaining from all of this? Flamenco gets to be remembered throughout history as one of the good guys. The CIA get a free hand to carry on running things however which way, and the Cubans? All I'll say is that it seems very telling that 95% of global supplies of so-called "penicillin" originate in Havana - and that production rocketed just at the time that Castro was taking power.
You need to understand that this whole operation was first conceived as a means of drawing attention from the activities of a small group of Catholic missionaries working in Southern France during the 20s to smuggle Congolese uranium across the mediterranean for experimental use by the Nazis in the war that the Vatican knew was inevitably coming. The CIA took it over just at the point that global power shifted away from the Pope and towards the Episcepalians circa 1947, only a few weeks before the infamous "Roswell incident" - I'll leave you to make your own conclusions around what that means.
it's all true
my cheque is in the post
unfortunately it's a homeopathic cheque so it has been diluted down to being completely F'in useless!
Whale.to is also run by bsc in order for us to communicate this sort of information. The 1995 design is there to make people doubt its authority.
In my defence, cocaine and high class hookers are an expensive hobby.
You do realise there are people stupid enough to believe this?
Hang on, where have all my paycheques been then? I've worked long and hard in the defence of Big Pharma and they've given me zilch! Clearly Ben hasn't been forwarding them on to me, the selfish git...
@Anonymous: "You do realise there are people stupid enough to believe this?"
Oh yes - they e-mail me on an almost daily basis :)
Martin is the editor of layscience.net.
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Damn! I've been had - and I didn't even enjoy it.
I thought those emails I kept receiving were delivered by God himself.
Is it also true, then, that chiropractors, homeopaths and the anti-vax lobby are just an elaborate hoax designed to maximise sales of Goldacre's and Singh's books? Tell me it isn't so.
Martin, this is brave stuff and I appreciate the risks you're running, but the people need to know the FULL truth. Do you expect them to believe it's just coincidence that you're blowing the lid off this conspiracy NOW? Is it coincidence that Jackson's autopsy found all those pharmaceutical drugs inside of him? Is it coincidence that cheated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavei swears by tea-tree and ginseng infusions? Is it coincidence that the spectre of swine flu stalks the land? Routledge, BS Comms and their power-crazed minions have gone too far! They must be stopped at any price! It's clear what must be done. We must dilute all our arguments down to 1/100,000th of their original strength, pepper them with pseudoscientific babble ("Fie, Goldacre! Your rhetorical energy potentials are misaligned! What say you to that, sir!") and if all else fails, we must march on Parliament itself and demand free Brain Gyms for every child. We'll soon have the Science Menace on the run!
http://www.layscience.net/files/ben.png
Was anyone else sort of turned on by that picture? It's like all my weird fantasies in one. The only thing missing is a ukulele.
It's a bit late for a serious skew on this post, but I'd like to add that if it wasn't for Twitter, I'd never turn up to as many talks/rallies/pubs as I do. It's possibly one of the most underestimated forms of communication on the planet.
Cheers for making me spill hot tea down my pretty dress *grumble-snortinglaughter-grumble*
Carmen x
Should have guessed when I spotted Ben's bra strap and the top of his G-String at the Pendrell's oak the other week.
Excellent post
What the....!? Am I the only one doing this for real and for nothing? Oh what a mug I've been.
I couldn't understand why everyone at the meet-ups was better-dressed than me, drunk posher drinks than me, smirked in a knowing way when I asked a question, had *two* meals of an evening rather than the standard *one*.
It all makes sense. I am soooooo mad.
*schemes extremely evilly*
lol