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Question to Radio Yerevan: Is it true that Brutus is an honourable man?

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Not many people know that in the first draft of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony's funeral oration was couched in the form of an extended Radio Yerevan joke (before Shakespeare's financial backers convinced him to edit that section of the script into a format more familiar to the Globe regulars). "People who are unaware of this fact" include potential buyers of that first draft -- now in Riddled possession -- and they are swift to voice unbecoming doubts as to its authenticity.

This is Reason #118 why Another Kiwi is no longer trusted with unescorted use of the Riddled time machine.

An extraordinary new cure has just been developed for exactly this kind of sordid problem. It wouldn’t have anything to do with leeches GcMAF, would it? I had no idea you were a medical man

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Wednesdays are Script Workshop and Conodont Phylogeny Nights at the Old Entomologist. Here we all are, wondering where to go next with the long-running GcMAF saga, for readers are calling out for new episodes; they cannot have enough of the quirky cartoonishly-exaggerated characters.

Not everyone was reading all the way from the start, of course, so for the benefit of newcomers, I tried to put together a precis of the dramatis personae and the twisty-turnies of the plot so far. May involve run-on sentences:
Helpful clarifying diagram

Siblings Trevor Banks and Lesley Hutchings (née Banks) worked for David Noakes, spamming his blood-derived GcMAF cure-all on bulletin boards and patient-support forums, before entering into competition with Noakes with their own companies and websites; later to go their separate ways (Lesley taking custody of the lotion side of their business, Trevor taking the Cytonics / Cytoinnovations brand). In a parallel plot thread they worked with married couple Doug and Amanda Mary Jewell, who came into the GcMAF business from a therapeutic business involving malpractice and mismanagement at a Bulgarian hotel [think 'Fawlty Towers' with bleach enemas]... that collaboration went tits-up when their 1stProEngineering website morphed into multiple instantiations, with hacking-related explanations for customers who lost their money; before Amanda Mary split from Doug and was last seen in Belize, complaining of conspiracies and persecution, after a stint of medical cosplay at a cancer-scam clinic in Mexico. All intertwined with other sub-plots involving Marco Ruggiero, his insider takeover of Noakes' business, and his post-GcMAF product-range that so far includes 'Bravo'© Magic Yoghurt, Non-Dairy Yoghurt, GOleic©, and Rerum©. 
Artist's re-creation of
Ruggiero discovering Rerum

Also Snuggles is a lick arse, Milton is a toffee nosed git and Quacky is a self-righteous blowhard...
Snuggles, Milton and Quacky
...But TL;DW.

The enmeshed familial backgrounds lend an additional frisson of excitement to the alliances and internecine estrangements that enliven the plot, IMHO.

But with Lesley and her erstwhile employer / competitor Noakes both sidelined and lying low as they await court appearances,* the plot has encountered an impasse and entered the doldrums, or possibly vice versa. Trevor has set aside his client-base in Latin America[a collaboration with Kerri Rivera, another of the bleach-enema Banditti] to focus on promoting his 'Omnia Vitality' imitation of Ruggiero Rerum.** We are unsure of which direction to steer in.

1. Another Kiwi vouchsafed the idea of bringing previously-peripheral characters to centre-stage, which would (in his words) "Liven up the story like bacon does to Brussels sprouts". There is, for instance, third sibling Lynda Thyer (née Banks), who assisted Noakes at his GcMAF refinery garage and co-authored a series of mockademic advertisements (extruded through journal-shaped spigots from parasitic publishers).



Lynda is moving into the diet-supplement magic-pill sector of the economy, if company records are any guide.*** But she retains enough loyalty to the miracle molecule and to her former compadres to come to the defense of a New-Age griftery in Bournemouth when the BBC caught it pimping Amanda's merchandise. Much like Showbiz, GcMAF grifting is hard to give up.


2. Part of the in-universe belief system is that a normal and essential human enzyme, 'nagalase', is actually a sign of cancer or extraneous infection or vaccination-borne nanobot infestation. Thus regular Nagalase blood tests are an obligatory component of diagnosis and for monitoring improvement. Still somewhere in Bulgaria, Douglas Jewell has registered the domains nagalasetestingindia.info and nagalasetestingindia.net.¹ No website has been built there yet, so we cannot be sure whether he proposes to expland into India (an under-exploited, largely-untouched market), or whether the target is local... it may be that Indian pharmaceutical suppliers enjoy a special level of esteem and credibility in the minds of the Bulgarian public. We should not forget the Indian snake-deity connotations of "Naga".


Doug also targets Bulgarian suckers with an Indian-themed supplement-pill webstore "Bangalore Biotechnologies": a.k.a. Mantaray Supplements. Registering domains through Iceland -- because cyberpiracy!! -- with his new e-address, dougsnewworld@unseen.is

These "New World" stylings are suitably ominous and post-apocalyptic, with echoes of Doug's earlier Wayward-Pines-themed Apocalypse Survival Ark scam. It would be easy to devote more flashback episodes to more of Doug Jewell's Bulgarian exploits but I am concerned that this would rob his character of all plausibility.


Those stylings also echo Doug's speculative £207,725 budget for a Nagalase / GcMAF-testing laboratory, "Project Better World", from January 2017 [with conversion from Central African Francs]... uploaded to the Interlattice by an unfamiliar personage, under circumstances that are cloud-bound and whereabouts unknown, with no indication of the prospective funding source at whom the pitch was directed. Will all this end well? Magic 8-Ball says "Doubtful".

3. Greenish Hugh was all for "making a teaser trailer for a future episode and running it up the flagpole to see if the wheels fall off."

4. It will all be easier to choose between these options when we decide whether the GcMAF Saga is an interminable multi-generational soap-opera or a Jacobean Revenge Tragedy that ends with everyone dead. Personally I am nostalgic for the Fosdyke Saga.

[Thx Malarkey!]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
* David Noakes is unclear on the concept of "low profile". His legal imbroglio has inspired an epic tear-drenched anonymous whine in his media outlet. Pro-Tip: When harping on the triviality of one's alleged naughtiness, DO NOT MENTION the potential 10- or 18-year sentence.
You can be dragged out of England, because of a misunderstanding, or French corruption, as is happening to David Noakes, and put into a French prison, amongst the worst in Europe. [...]
In David’s case the French prosecutors were OCLAESP, the utterly corrupt heath department of the Gendarmerie, who presented charges that were clearly perjury. And French judges listen to the prosecution; they don’t care about the defence.
They want to send him to prison for 10 years. There is no offset - he might do 18 years, and at 64, with squalor, rats, cockroaches, fist fights and daily homosexual rapes, there is no way he would survive.
Not content with settling scores through poison-pen websites and borough-newspaper-related activities, Noakes has been inducted to the prestigious Board of Governators of an antivax Alt-Med Food Purity group, the National Health Federation. In return he publishes glowing advertorials for that group's international coat-tail-riding antivax agitation:
The National Health Federation (NHF) President Scott Tips was one of the speakers at the Trieste event, which was attended by at least 2000 intelligent and well-informed parents and activists. His talk, even though very badly translated into Italian by his interpreter, was well received by the enthusiastic and vocal crowd.
[Reprinted from here]
The NHF has a general convergence of interests with Noakes' Alt-Right politics, for neo-nationalist groups like the UKIP and the Italian 5-Star Movement have assimilated antivax anxieties, making them fellow-travellers. But the NHF may have not thought through their decision to recruit the lad... for when you lie down with dogs it was probably a mistake to have smeared yourself beforehand with peanut butter and fish paste you get up looking all antisemitic. Which may not be the connotations they seek -- they still aspire to an appearance of respectability and principled integritude, while Noakes is the perennial victim of conspiracies and gathering dark forces, and it is only a matter of time before he is back on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion again.
...not one word can be broadcast by the BBC unless it goes through the German Siemens company's network systems. The Zionists who own Siemens control the BBC's output, and have done for at least 10 years.
** Trevor was in Croatia last December, peddling Omnia and passing on his expertise in Dark-Field Microscopy.

*** The listed address of Lynda's new company "Healing Supplements Ltd", in Dover, previously housed "Immunology Ltd." (with Lynda Banks as Director / Secretary) and then the three-generation family vehicle "Cytoinnovations". Trevor and Lesley also traded from there back when they were still in the building recycling / restoration trade.

1. The domain nagalase.in was unavailable because Trevor Banks bought it in 2015.

2. The "unseen.is" webmail service was evidently an off-shoot of the "Before it's news" Alex-Jones-wannabees. One might acquire one of their e-addresses if, for instance, you wanted to infiltrate a group of conspiracy loons, and needed to signal your conspiracy-mindedness. Conversely, if you're using an @unseen.is address to register domains, you'd just be a gullible loon.

Wrong on ALL THE LEVELS

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Imma sure there is nothing hinky about this freelancer-recruitment advertisement at Upwork:
I need someone to collect images of 100 human beings in certain format. This data will be strictly used only for research purposes. 
The Riddled Research Laboratory is TOTALLY NOT INVOLVED.

Another recruitment advertisement from the same individual seeks someone to re-write 4-5 pages of material copy-pasted into an academic paper so that it is no longer recognisable as plagiarism:
[unfortunately the advertisement is no longer open for general access]
Did I mention that the would-be author is in Hyderabad?

Hello darkness, my old friend

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The predatory-publisher spam is coming from inside my head!!

Further adventures in Spam

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For us old farts the modern world is full of novelty and information-overload and insufficient bacon, and it is too much to grasp why a parasitical journal called "Oncotarget" should be working the neuroscience side of the street, while spamming non-neuroscience non-oncologists. It is almost as if the publisher is mainly concerned with broadening the income stream while the IF lasts.


However did previous generations survive, without these modern technologies of global inter-connected communication that allow one to receive Nigerian scam e-mails in Estonian?

One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimiliar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings

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The Codex Alimentarius. Is it:
  • A Mayan folded book that survived the Spanish destruction, housed in the Vatican Library and believed to be a dynastic record until its recent reclassification as a restaurant guide after the identification of the glyph for 'cilantro'?
  • A baleful tome describing unspeakable rituals, its existence confined to the imaginary libraries of the Cthulhu Mythos?
  • A transnational project of aligning food-standard legislation?
This is all leading up to a flashback episode revealing some of the GcMAF backstory. Please imagine the text shimmering and rippling as you read it on the screen, as is the time-honoured way to signal the transition into dreams and memories.

In fact the narrative is complicated by the presence of three backstories. One features an AIDS-denialist Italian physician, but we need not delve into that now for it has been recounted elsewhere by a different AIDS-denying Italian physician who felt deprived of the credit he deserved. The second involves a trio of ME/CFS doctors, and it is enlivened by their enthusiasm for spurious blood-tests and for diagnosing Chronic Lyme Disease and a laboratory artefact (XMRV) everywhere, but here at Riddled we are all about the deferred gratification and we will save that saga for later. The third...

The suggestive title of the Codex Alimentarius lends itself to the Paranoid Portfolios of career conspiracists. Whatever the opposite is of a Worship Word (you will not speak it!), that's the Codex. We find it, for instance, in the on-line fund-raising performances of Rima Laibow, and of Ian Crane, for whom it is so central as to overshadow the UFOs and the Illuminati. And all is mutual recrimination, and accusations that rival conspiracists are Controlled Opposition, for this is a crowded field where everyone is competing for donations and DVD-sales from the same pool of suckers; there is only so much Paranoid Style to be monetarised.

Evidently the conspiracy involves Algerian typeface, which is almost enough to recruit me to the opposition.*

Here we need a segue to the National Health Federation. At right is all the Library Pixies would provide on short notice and I hope it will prove an adequate substitute.

The NHF was founded in 1955 by various dregs from the John Birch Society, as a mutual-protection umbrella group for cancer-exploitation con-men. Their various treatments and rationales for curing cancer were mutually incompatible, but they concurred on the urgency of repealing all regulations and agencies that restricted their income streams... much as televangelists, Satanists and the Taliban come together in ecumenical collegiality to agree that the real enemy is atheism. The John Birch Society connection comes in because so many Birchers were fastened onto the Laetrile moneyteat.
Smutbrain after trying to bring
structure to the Conspirasphere

They have a new generation of leadership now, more specifically employed in the diet-supplement scampill industry, so they are more focussed on the noble fight against food-safety and honesty-in-advertising legislation, though that is awkward to say out loud and is better couched as "Food Purity through Free-Market Forces". They present themselves as New-Age niceness, without the ALL-CAPS shoutiness of Alex Jones and Natural News. So the Codex Alimentarius becomes the Evil Corporate Agenda, a Trojan Goat for GMOs (much as the NHF stand against dusky-hued people is robed in the mantle of environmentalism; evidently ecological degradation is all the fault of immigrants). It is all astro-washing or (as it might be) green-turfing. Though the NHF Crank Magnetism is turned up to 8 Tesla, so there is AIDS denialism and tobacco denialism in their heavily-plagiarised archives; also anti-fluoridation and antivax positions, as legacy paranoia, and because community health initiatives directly impact on their business.**
George Monbiot writes for the NHF -- who knew?

However entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of bright images -- especially the Hall of Health Freedom Heroes, just look at it! -- it may entice our minds from another subject of almost equal importance. Like this EU-lobbying alliance of Scott Tips from the NHF, Rob Verkerk from the 'Alliance of Natural Health', Ian Crane again (trying hard not to mention the Lizardoids), and Paul Anthony Taylor from the Dr Rath Health Federation.

I thought the paranoid-ideation crowd were all in competition and do not play well together.

This is the exception that proves the pudding, and the proof is in the rule.
Taylor once sat on the NHF Board of Governators, and indeed was their Executive President, but for some reason he fell into disrepute and his name has been erased from the archives. The 'why' is unclear. The Rath Foundation is an AIDS-treating vitamin-pill empire responsible for an unknown number of deaths in South Africa by fighting the use of antiretroviral drugs, but surely that alone would not discredit it.

As for the ANH, they are anotherwretched hive of scum and villainy. Despite their 'international' pretensions, the group is essentially a UK affair, and more precisely a Rob Verkerk affair.*** It serves as NHF fuckpuppet for the latter group's lobbying in the EU against food-standard legislation. Here for bonus bullshittery is a colloidal silver scamsite with Scott Tips and Verkerk on the board... the rightwing hive-mind opposition to Fiat Currency guarantees a special place in the scammocopoeia for precious metals, turning colloidal silver into a shibboleth of libertarian self-care.

So back to Ian Crane; back to the milieu of False Flags, Nephilim, transhumanism, the NWO and the Depopulation Agenda.
Bonus masks, 99% Illuminati-free


It seems that we can credit Crane with early adoption of the Suppressed Medical Secret story-line. In the present narration, his main purpose is to introduce David Noakes to GcMAF at a time when Noakes was looking for a new career. The seed fell on fertile wind and great was the reaping of whirlwinds.
In the spring of 2009, David Noakes listened to a presentation in Ghent, Belgium on Codex Alimentarius by some guy called Ian R Crane. During the course of his presentation, Ian stated there was a little-known cure for cancer called GcMAF. After the talk, David went home and put it into Google.
Our man's political career had stalled at that point, with a failed electorate candidature for the UKIP, followed by that party rejecting his leadership bid. Evidently Noakes is too crazy for UKIP, who fondly regard him as "a swivel-eyed loon whose insane conspiracy theories make the rest of us look as mad as a box of frogs", while his post-rejection view of the party is equally negative (because Freemasons, and palm-feathering nest-greasing corruption).

Noakes is as if the Monty Python 'Bigotry' skit attained sentience. His inner world is populated with Jews, Freemasons, Bilderbergers and dusky-hued immigrants, singly or in free-floating ad-hoc alliances. His old blogs newsdecode and EUtruth are compendia of slights and resentments inflated into Universal Truths (and one can only speculate about the personal origins for his resentment of child-protection agencies). The dumbarse bumblefuck is no better at paranoid ideation than he is at politics, for he cannot even spell "Alimentarius".

Nevertheless, the tip-off from Crane spurred Noakes into action. He enlisted friends and family, establishing the "Immuno Research" and  "Macro Innovations" companies in his own name; "Immunology Ltd" in the name of Lynda Banks; "Immunisis Ltd." and "First Immune" in his daughter's; and "Immuno Biotech" in Guernsey. It was the beginning of his swift ascent to the dizzy empyrean of the Hall of Health Freedom Heroes! An ascent by way of an advertising kiosk outside the Dublin GPO.

In the course of his Google Research, Noakes learned about Sodium Dichloroacetate or DCA -- the other miracle cancer-cure that doctors don't want you to know about -- and was selling that as well... piggybacking on an existing forum to pimp his putative product, and registering his own webshop (where consumers were advised to buy it through his GcMAF shop). This does not evince enormous faith in the curative properties of GcMAF.

Noakes' companies are not in ideal shape at the moment but at least he now has a fallback career -- for between his new friends and his old racist ultra-nationalist connections, he has earned the title of Political Commentator for Russia Today.
[Thx Malarkey, Dora]
----------------------------------------------------------
* Just saying, if the Illuminati were serious about Immanentising the Eschaton and hastening the advent of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, they would combine Algerian with the existing abomination of Comic Parchment.

** More on the NHF's European adventures here and c/o Dora. And wouldn't you know it, the "different AIDS-denying Italian physician" comes back into the story, for it is a small world, or else a normal-sized world but full of large people.

*** Verkerk has been a GcMAF / Noakes fanboy from way back.

My new hobby:

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Playing Scrabble using Captcha-words from Sci-Hub.




Long-term goal is to arrange them into haiku.

Mais où est Le Journal des Neiges d'Antan?

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Dr Elisabeth Bik (whom God preserve) encountered the International Society of Microbiota, one spigot of the Edeas / Takayama Congress Factory. Hilarity ensued.

But I should explain [for values of 'explain' that include 'make everything more confusing']:

Hilarity ensued independently in mid-July, when a Dr Gundry was tasked with defending the vagina-crystal yoni- empowerment stupidity-taxation product range from 'Goop', and took the opportunity to burnish his credentials by boasting of the nutriceutical meetings he attends:
I bring this up because I am writing this on a plane while returning from giving a paper to the 11th annual World Congress on Polyphenols Applications...

Not good enough for you? ... why not look at my abstract* on 78 patients with marker proven autoimmune diseases, which became negative on lectin removal and restoration of gut wall integrity with The Plant Paradox program (more on that in a minute)?

*Gundry, S.R, 2016. Curing/remission of multiple autoimmune diseases is possible by manipulation of the human gut microbiome: The effect of a lectin limited, polyphenol enriched, prebiotic/probiotic regimen in 78 patients. Journal of International Society of Microbiota 3(1).
Gundry disapproves of beans in one's diet (although the resemblance to Pythagoras ends there), and sells Lectin Shield to strengthen the intestines against their effects; also Vital Reds polyphenol concentrate. To itemise his full range of supplements and webstores would stray beyond the ambit of the Riddled Mission Statement, and more important would be boring to write; suffice to say that he could be mistaken for a hexarrhinous Rhinograde such as Eledonopsis suavis, for it must be difficult to fit a single snout into so many troughs at once.
Pythagoras [right]; not Gundry
His rhetorical question "why not look at my abstract" attracted a veritable scornucopia of derision, and a non-rhetorical answer, i.e. because the Abstract is subscriber-only.

In all fairness, it was not all his own fault. When Gundry rocked up at the 3rd ISM World Congress on Targeting Microbiota in 2015 with a similar presentation-- "Manipulating the human microbiome using polyphenol rich foods, supplements, and prebiotics, coupled with avoidance of major dietary lectins reverses endothelial dysfunction" -- the Abstract entered circulation with Open Access status, as was the custom of the day. It only became subscriber-only later on when the publisher reneged on the deal, shifting to a new website, also to a new business model of "charging readers as well as contributors". He could not have predicted such transience.

This is something of a pattern at the euphoniously-titled JISM. Back in time immemorial before last Tuesday, in the days when JISM was all open access and peer review and solicited contributions, Reiss et al. (2015) paid the APC for them to disseminate a paper that was good enough to earn the admiration of Dr Bik.

Then the publisher / scamference-organiser adopted the Disruptive Business paradigm, so "Association of Dietary Type with Fecal Microbiota" first became inaccessible except as a title, then disappeared entirely from the revised Tables of Contents when JISM was repositioned as an "archive of conference proceedings". The "permanent unique identifier" aspect of a DOI link depends on the publisher's integrity.

This all sounds familiar, Uncle Smut.
Sadly, yes... this post is largely intended as an update to an earlier loosely-structured survey of Marvin Edeas, his Takayama Publishing Group [now just Takayama], and their place in the magical-ingredient leprechaun-sperm nutriceutical industry. It would be wrong to repeat that earlier introduction to Marvin and his identical twin / alternative-universe duplicate Bejit Edeas (their careers are complementary, with Bejit focused on cosmetics-MLM instead of mockademic meetings; both, we are informed, have been nominated for a Nobel Prize, conceivably by each other). They are too good to be true: one speculates that in fact they are refugees from the fictive realm, having escaped from the script of Cronenberg's next movie.

A single IP address houses a sample of various actual and aspirational conference- and journal-related activities.

"Polyphenols-site.com'? That sounds familiar!
Yes indeed, the abode of the annual World Congress on Polyphenols Applications, receipients of Dr Gundry's latest presentation. If only he had attended the 3rd World Congress on Maillard Reaction & Glycation (glycation-site.com), he would have learned that beans are good... especially as a starch-digestion-blocking weight-reducing bean-based dietary supplement.

So going back to where we started: Dr Bik encountered the coming October 5th Congress on Targetting Microbiota, and found it OMICS-like in general demeanour. She was most struck by its sausage-fest quality.

It is all most odd, for organiser Marvin Edeas has previous associations with feminine collaborators and co-authors and domain-registration figureheads -- Céline Duval, and Céline Joubet (who may be related to Rouby Joubet, a co-author and press contact and domain holder). Also Céline Mailfert, who may be related to Anne-Sophie, a sentient e-mail address and co-author; and Céline Mercier, who signs press releases. Not to forget Yuri Hatanaka, who balances registering domains for Edeas with her career as an Anime character, nor Yuki Ikeda, Society chairwoman, nor Mizuho Nasu, pharmacist and stock-art image. None have an Interduct footprint larger than the dent of a stiletto heel, but surely Edeas could prevail on one of them to speak at the Congress.

The Great Gazoogle helpfully shares the Abstract of Edeas' planned presentation to the 5th Congress:
Our aim is to highlight the subtle relationship that exists between microbiota and mitochondria. Microbiota targets mitochondria by modulating the Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) production and the mitochondrial activity through interactions with toxins, proteins or other metabolites released by gut microbiota. [...] Firstly there will be a test to show the quality, quantity and diversity of microbiota, and secondly a preventive or therapeutic strategy will be administrated (probiotics, diet, prodrug or fecal transplantation). The era of digital medicine is here.

Evidently there has been little progress in the course of two years, as the identical Abstract appeared in Cell.Mol.Biol. (Noisy-le-Grand) in 2015*... Understandably, Dr Edeas has been too busy organising conferences to pursue actual research.

We are compelled by an obsessive search for completion to note that versions of that 2015 paper re-appeared as "Microbiota-mitochondria inter-talk: consequence for microbiota-host interaction" (Path.Dis. 2016), and as "Microbiota interact with mitochondria to regulate interaction with host cells" (JWMS, 2016). The level of textual and pictorial overlap across these papers elicited pointing and laughing.

Since then the Journal of World Mitochondria Society has shifted websites and scope, and that second paper there -- previously open-access -- has been abandoned, links leading only to the implacable dread gate-keeper of 404. If authors Chaumet and Edeas are disappoint, they have the recourse of complaining to the journal's erstwhile chief editors Chaumet and Edeas, or the Society's founder, Marvin Edeas. I have no such helpful advice for authors who paid for publication in other vehicles from the same stable, which vanished completely when Takayama Publishing[now just Takayama] decided that the non-profitability of the Associations and the associated scamferences did not warrant further outlay on website fees.


All that is missing is a Journal of Snows-of-Yesteryear Society.

As for les neiges d'antan, here they are.
------------------
* The Cell.Mol.Biol. journal is distinguished by its zombie editorial panel of dead honorary Nobel Laureates, and its disruptively innovative paradigm of peer review, by which the responsibilities of selecting reviewers for a submission, and ensuring that it is revised to address their critiques, befalls on the author rather than the editor. It is also notable for an Avignon-Papacy-like publishing schism: the founding editor was ousted from his seat, forcing him to set up a secondCell.Mol.Biol. (with the same ISSN), under the auspices of OMICS, from which to fulminate and rain down denunciations upon the usurping Anti-Editor.

You stop when you're broke In vitro, in vivo

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I am not making up the name, nor even stealing it from a P. G. Wodehouse novel... Ignatius Massop is in fact the handle of a computer retailer in Rheinberg, who has diversified into Alternative Oncology, as proprietor and domain-registrant of Resurrection Clinics. These include a clinic in the Netherlands (because legal reasons) but they appear to be a German / Polish franchise of the "Saisei-Mirai" chain. Ignatius Massop also owns the complementary "Best Immunotherapy" website serving to provide consumers with wholly disinterested medical advice.



What brings all this into the purview of the Riddled mission statement, and indeed under its rubric -- if not vice versa -- is the fact that Saisei-Mirai is a chain of cancer-fraud snake-oil shops, offering an eclectic pick-&-mix buffet of mutually-Supportive Modalities, for if the first five forms of high-tech cargo cult have no effect there is always a sixth, or a seventh, as long as the cash holds out. Thus their scammocopoeia is a useful resource for oncological hipsters.

I was listening to Tumor Treating Fields (TTF) before they were cool. 

Tumor Treating Fields (TTF) or Electrical Cancer Therapy is "a type of electromagnetic field therapy using low-intensity electrical fields to suppress cancer cell proliferation in the body"... that sounds all very well, but apparently you wear a quilted vest and padded balaclava designed for bomb-disposal cosplay or Extreme Contact Calvinball, with your daily activities restricted to the length of the extension cord. With matching designer electric blanket. "The electric fields are designed to be specific for each patient after accessing scans." There's a TED-talk and everything.

This TTF patient keeps his victims alive for 
weeks in a soundproof basement "playroom"
As you are now, so once was I: blissfully naive in the ways of Alt-Med mendacity. Having read "Spoor of Spooks" and "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science", I thought myself appraised of the full taxonomy of fraudulence. But too much time spent at the Saisei-Mirai scamsite has disabused me of that notion.*

Mesotherapy (electroporation)?
Maitake MD-Fraction Extract?

Then there's Ukrain
The quotidian weather in Great Britain.
Perhaps. Also an allegedly cancer-curing extract of Nipplewort (Chelidonium majus), which also cures hepatitis, AIDS and radiation sickness. Ukrain's remedial value is supported by academic publications, all emanating from the Ukrainian clinic specialising in its use. Its manufacturer Vasyl Novytskyi set aside a stockpile of the concentrate, using tonnes of Nipplewort which he foraged from public parks in Vienna, which is why he is facing fraud charges for changing the dates on ampoules so that they no longer seem to have expired. Novytskyi may in fact have been trying to create a National Liqueur, for no European nation is secure in its claims to statehood until it has a hangover-treating vile-tasting mothball-infused form of alcohol that the local yoofs can shot-drink as a display and test of manhood.
What in the world is Smut Clyde drinking now?



It is refreshing to find Amygdalin, on the list of modalities, for it is of the old-school dispensation. It used to be 'Laetrile' before repudiating its slave name.

For some reason, neither the Laetrile nor the electromagical ski-jackets were mentioned when Saisei-Mirai paid Nature to publish a 5-page academic-article-shaped advertorial (in exchange for sponsoring a Special Issue on Breast Cancer). GcMAF was there, though. Lots of GcMAF. A series of Case Reports and in-vitro studies churned out from Saisei-Mirai is all that keeps the journal Anticancer Research afloat.**



And finally, E. coliColey Vaccines.
The back-story there is tedious, but it involves a Lost Recipe, huzzah! Original recipes are always being lost; it must be a tradition, or an old charter or something. Coley's Bacteriotoxin Blend is joined in oblivion by the secret ingredient of Talmudic dark-blue tekhelet dye, lost in the Diaspora; and the Lost Chord; and the Lost Wax Method known only to sages of yore in the glory that was Lemuria.
Hunting chilazon for tekhelet dye

So Doctor Coley rejected the surgical and chemotherapeutic directions in oncology prefered by his Edwardian peers, offering instead his own combination of anecdotes and magical thinking. He did agree, though, on the need to wear a high starched collar and spats during each consultation. More recent clinical trials of Coley's Toxins have been consistently "inconclusive" (which is true in the narrow sense of "failed to support the desired conclusion"). But FAILURES DON'T COUNT, as they can be ascribed to the failure to follow Coley's correct recipe, or to use his special sauce of tailoring the toxin blend for each patient (Yay personalised therapy!!).
Still hunting chilazon


Anyway, the current popularity of Cancer Immunotherapy required someone to be anointed as Father of Immunotherapy, which motivated a series ofrecent papersretconningColey into that role (recycled, with little change, as a Whackyweedia entry). This rehabilitative project was abetted by a Family Foundation, i.e. Coley's single-minded daughter, set on redressing the injustice of the obscurity he had fallen into. Further assistance came from the appalling state of Coley's records (which only the daughter was able to read), and non-publication of unresponsive cases.

If any doubt lingers as to the value of Coley's febrigenic brew -- reconstructed by the clever scientists at Saisei-Mirai -- here is Dr Marco Ruggiero (friend of Riddled), using his editorial privileges at the totally non-parasitic Journal of Ruggiero Studies to herald Coley as a Brave Maverick Scientist, his own harbinger as an intellectual John the Baptist.

* Disabuse[vt.] Retract abuse (from). "On the Frau Doktorin's insistence, I disabused the cat of all the swears I had directed at him".

** Yamamoto and (one facet of) the history of GcMAF recently made their way into a Snopes article.

When Great Gatsby cosplay goes terribly wrong

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Some magnificent bastard is scamming wannabee start-up entrepreneurs, selling $3500 and $6500 tix to Exclusive Society Soirées where they can network with Venture Capitalists and Investor Angels, sealing deals in a soft-focus milieu of champagne and nose-candy. The VCs and IAs get to slip past the bouncers almost for free, much as in Ladies' Night at a Courtenay-Strip titty bar.
Another Kiwi is refused
entry to the Yale Club

New York Private Equity Forum hosts America’s best investor-attended national funding venues for early and later-stage companies.In light of the recognition, the Forum has received applauds from the investment community and entrepreneurs seeking capital.Equity forums are exclusive invitation-only events designed to assemble a select group of business visionaries, entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, investment professionals, and money managers. In addition to presenting " one-of-a-kind " private investment opportunities, this prestigious event at the Yale Club New York is designed to be an ideal setting for new business development, exchange of ideas, creation of deal flow, location of capital sources and ultra-high-end networking.
Give them all the applauds!
The afternoon program, ending at 5:30PM, will provide ample time for effective networking, breakout sessions and one-on-one meetings with the senior management of presenting companies. A gala private reception will immediately follow the day’s program. Guests will enjoy first-class networking and Live Jazz along with a great selection of wines and hors d’oeuvres.
The whole thing reads like Baron Merlona's Private Club, all Lear Jets and cigars and well-bred hookerscortisones courtesans, except the Baron's Club was the aspirational grift of a dumbarse bumblefuck who wants to think of himself as a Dirty Rotten Scoundrel without putting in the hard yards of actually scoundrelling; whereas the New York Private Equity Forum is a real working scam. They have evidently hired a conference room at the Yale Club, and therefore cite that desirable address as their headquarters, which is a nice touch. My censorious disapprobation is mingled with schadenfreud on behalf of the suckers, and annoyance that we didn't think of the grift ourselves, here at the Riddled Experimental Ethics Laboratory.


There have been 67 of these Fora... not bad for an entity that sprang from nowhere six months ago, in the manner of a quantum fluctuation birthed from the forehead of Zeus. Whoever could be the instigator of the Equity Forum? They have anonymised the domain registration...


...NO WAIT, it's just another pseudopod of the OMICS skinwalkers. The phone number resolves to that of OMICS, and various LinkedIn accounts link it to the company's gombeens and cockwombles. Evidently CEO Gedela -- Ersatz Kwiderach of the Open-Access Revolution -- is not content with the income from the parasitical-publishing and mockademic-meeting rackets, and aspires to some of that sweet Hamptons-scented Money Manager dosh.

So Messrs. Trahison & Clerisy, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths (also Riddled's legal advisors) are all agog to hear from this dude, Sr Counsel for NYPEF and OMICS and its IMedPub subsidiary...
"Not so fast," says the reader, paying closer attention to Mr Vattikoti's affiliation. "We know of Allied Academies, and Pulsus Group or CME Society, assimilated into the company's congressive empire in the hope of shedding the stink of the OMICS reputation while they clog our email with spam for their production-line cookie-cutter scamferences. Not to forget Conferenceseries. But who is this EuroSciCon?"
an internationally renowned medical peer-review publisher and conferences organizer established in the year 1984 publishes and hosts the work of researchers in a manner that exemplifies the highest standards in research integrity.
Who indeed? EuroSciCon / EuroSciConOnline / LifeSciEvent purport to be English, operating out of a virtual-office mail-drop in High Barnet. But sure enough, these details are as corroborative fraudulent as ever, and once again the company is a fuckpuppet for Hyderabad's finest. Whatever EuroSciCon may have been for the 15 years after Shara Cohen founded it, OMICS have kept only the name (and the corporate repute), restuffing its skin with their usual business model of drowning the academic world in Alt-Facts mendacity so that legitimate conferences disappear in the noise.
Recognition at last! 'Suzan Brown' is well-
versed in my "expertise and experience" in
neurology, though not in my name & gender

The IMedPub e-address schandra@imedpub.com usefully leads not only to this new acquisition, but also to meetingint.org, confirming it as yet another tentacle.

The pursuit of further tentacles is left as an exercise for the reader. I just want to say, Kudos to whoever came up with the name of "Pubicon" as a small Indian on-line publisher with only seven "American Journals of W", two "British Journals of X", two "International Journals of Y" and one "Global Journal of Z" -- though that was beforeOMICS acquired them.

Non Angeli, sed Angli

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By way of an update to the previous post, I have made the acquaintance of Bryan Emerson -- ecological-impact-minimising money manager -- and perforce I must share it with you, for he appears to have escaped from the notebooks of a crap satirical novelist. Conceivably Tom Wolfe, although I am open to correction on that point, for Riddled is all about the factual accuracy.
The power of Ira Dei
the Dragon-onna-stick
COMPELS me to share

Bryan is a seasoned entrepreneur, low carbon footprint living proponent, involved angel investor, mentor and board member for early-stage companies.
He is a Major in the Civil Air Patrol and an Extra class amateur radio licensee. He remains President of Starlight Capital, Inc. which, until sold in 2015, hosted approximately five private equity conferences each year at The Yale Club New York since 2001 (see: www.equityforum.com). Bryan works a portion of the year from his off-grid, solar and wind powered log cabin.
It would be wrong to speculate about the number of human heads stored in the log cabin's freezer.

As is the way of successful venture capitalists / investment advisors, Mr Emerson also touts for contract gigs through LinkedIn and Upwork (I am unable to find Warren Buffet's Upwork entry but it is sure to be there somewhere). He is also available for wedding receptions and children's parties, although there is a dry-cleaning fee in the event of cake- or ice-cream-spillage on his costume.

Mr Emerson comes to Riddled attention as an erstwhile part-owner of the 'Equity Forum' operation, before selling his share to OMICS for whom he now works.
Starlight Capital, Inc. sold its interest in New York Private Equity Forums to a large conference organizer and publisher (www.equityforum.com). Mr. Emerson implements a marketing optimization program for it in India approximately four weeks each year. He uses Starlight Capital to identify promising angel investment, mentoring and board membership opportunities.
That is, the gombeens at OMICS did not themselves devise the ingenious rort of soliciting $$$$ from business-plan-possessing but moneyless would-be entrepreneurs, promising to provide an assignation with investors to whom they might strut their stuff and and pitch their elevators.* I am disappoint. Still, kudos to OMICS for recognising the similarity between this scheme and their core activity (i.e. beguiling similarly-desperate academics with the promise of publication through production-line scamferences and mockademic journals).

OMICS are keen to capitalise on the concept's full potential, taking their "one-of-a-kind" opportunity out of New York and onto the road, advertising tickets to fast-approaching 2017 play-date encounters in Los Angeles,
San Franciso and Las Vegas,

Orlando, Atlanta and Chicago. In comparison the original operators are left looking visionless and unambitious. Sadly, the absence of dates and venues for any of these not-at-all-vaporware Equity Fora (not to mention 'organising committees' and 'scientific programs') makes it difficult to plan one's attendance. It also fosters the unfortunate impression that OMICS' expansive ambitions have outstretched their intentions. Here at Riddled Sugar Daddies we are experts on professional appearance and we urge OMICS to attend our next workshop on "Authenticity and How to Fake It: Selling your Vision to the Suckers", only $6500. There they will learn to avoid the look that they are flinging shit at the walls to see which kind attracts most flies.

This manifestation or symptom of late-stage capitalism is not as novel as I had thought. The Great Gazoogle tells of agitation against start-up exploitation, in a long-vanished epoch of nobility and chivalrous values (e.g. here, here and overthere), that is to say 2009-2010. Before the ideas of extracting unpaid work from job applicants (a chance to display their capability) and making would-be entrepreneurs compete for venture capital (for Reality-TV entertainment) became taken for granted.

The name of Mike Segal featured in that disturbance in the Force, on account of the volume and tone-deafness of his solicitory spamming. Also, shaming and blaming for the use of a Verizon e-address. To everyone's surprise, M.J.Segal Associates reappear as the other founder of PrivateEquityForums (along with Bryan Emerson) -- the description being dutifully copy-pasted as "Founding Sponsors" of the OMICS version of the brand, on account of the gravitas conferred by the names. A warning is in order: the former website is all garish and shouty, enough to make the average predatory-journal web design look like a model of understated elegance.

But that was a whole paragraph without a joke, so here's an instance of Segal's spammed Invitations to a Shakedown. His insistence that email spam is in fact targetted correspondence is another commonality between start-up meat-market grifters and predatory publishers (who never send spam either).
Although we have not had a chance to speak about this event or your company's funding requirements, kindly note that this correspondence is not part of a bulk mailing being delivered to you by a commercial e-mailing service and I have sent it to you personally on the basis of general research that our staff has undertaken on your company - based upon its industry sector and stage of operations. Of course, we do not know the expansion plans of your company or its need for capital, but are always on the lookout for companies with strong growth prospects which may resonate with our investors. 
The joke is that the recipient of this passive-aggressively insistent series of messages -- the struggling little company identified as in need of a capital injection, and open to paying Mike Segal $$$$ for a discreet consenting-adults introduction to investors -- was Sony Pictures.
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* $6500 to attend as a non-presenting entrepreneur; the fee for actual lordosispresentation is too delicate to be placed on the record, so must remain a matter for speculation.

Bring Me the Head of Stuart Little

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Sam Peckinpah's attempt to make family movies about cute anthropomorphic rodents was not a huge success.

Image stolen from a PubPeer thread.

Unwanted mental image #487

Make your armpit a charmpit oxter a roxstar

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I for one am delighted to see this fine old Glasweegee word, long in desuetude except among hardcore Scrabble habitués, making a comeback by way of oncology papermills.

My new hobby:

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Collecting photographs of Lizard-fish swallowing other fish.

Go home, underwater photographers, you are drunk and obsessive.

Derp Frog just can't be arsed.

Ineluctably

Alacrity

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An aromatic herb from the Apiaceae family, similar to coriander and celerity. Few culinary uses other than in flavouring Akvavit, and in Extreme Norwegian Cuisine. Sometimes mistaken for acrimony, a variety of hemlock, with tragic results.


Does anyone else think this akvavit tastes weird?
Not us, Socrates!

Metäl Hõrns: DÕIN IT RÕNG

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He could be saying "ILY" in American Sign, but there are probably not many ASL-signing Deaf in the audience.

UPDATE: This other chorister is clearer on the concept.

And lo, a mighty hilarity ensued across the face of the land, and in heaven above the angels laughed so hard they farted

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An asylum of antivax loons* is protesting a mockademic scamference. Your argument is invalid.


At the protest of the global vaccine summit which has taken place this past weekend in Houston, Texas.
Here's a link to the event being protested: http:/vaccines.global-summit.com/
Antisemitic nazi-fellating shitweasels, meet skeezy OMICS grifters! We're glad you found an adversary so worthy of your time. At least someone is stupid enough to believe their self-proclaiming "global summit" mendacity!
Need moar popcorn, BRB.


[H/t to Michael Brown for the link to Reasonable Hank
* Thx GrrlScientist for Term of Venery]

Did anyone laugh?

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