Opinion by Consumer Advocate
Tim
Bolen
Wednesday,
August 25th, 2010
I think the arrival of
Michael K. Botts,
Esq. as Stephen Barrett's attorney in the
Doctor's Data v Barrett, Federal lawsuit
is significant.
It is a flat-out desperation move.
Simply,
Stephen Barrett could not afford to hire
a law firm to Defend. So someone
is providing an attorney of their
choice - not someone Barrett would pick
- Michael K. Botts, who is not a
litigator but an intellectual property
and patent attorney.
Why would someone pick Botts when he is
not a litigator? Because Botts is,
himself, a
quackbuster. He is close to
being an insider, and he is, clearly, a
zealot. You will find his name
interspersed through
quackbuster documents going back as
far as 1986. For instance, below
is a reference to the so-called
The
Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
and Aberrant Medical Practices
Publisher: Paul Kurtz
Editor in Chief: Wallace I.
Sampson, MD, FACP, Clinical Professor of
Medicine, Stanford University
Managing Editor: Meghann French
Science Editor: Saul Green, PhD
Associate Editors: Barry
Beyerstein, PhD, Timothy Gorski, MD,
Steven Novella, MD
Senior Editor: Michael K. Botts,
Esq.
Pay close attention to the fact that, in
typical
quackbuster attention to detail
(sarcasm intended), two
of the people currently listed are DEAD
(Barry Beyerstein and Saul Green), and
have been dead for quite a while.
However, I'd bet their current work is
just about as good now as when they were
alive.
So, why does
Barrett have to use an attorney who has
limited litigation experience?
My guess is that (1)
Stephen Barrett could not
get his homeowner's insurance policy to
pay for a second Defense (he was
previously sued in Pennsylvania), (2)
He could not raise serious money from
his so-called support network, (3)
He has been abandoned by the old
quackbuster soldiers, (4) He could not
get any advocacy group, like Public
Citizen, to come to his aid.
I'm guessing he fell back on his Puppet Master
with a simple device - "if they get
me they will get YOU..."
So, suddenly,
Stephen Barrett has a questionable attorney he
can't really afford, a guy who is a
known zealot. It makes sense if
you look, once again, at the inset
above.
There
is a name that ALWAYS plays an important
role in Barrett, and other
quackbuster and
skeptic (pseudo-skeptic) activities.
Who?
Paul Kurtz, the owner of Prometheus
Press, the Skeptical Enquirer Magazine,
the originator of
CSICOP, and the publisher of
too-many-to-name-here anti-AltMed
publications - and, of course, a whole
host of sexual deviance publications
including, according to an article I'll
show you below, a big bunch of
pro-pedophile stuff.
Paul Kurtz -
I think he is the Money Man, the guy who, in my opinion, when, and
if, he tells Barrett to jump, Barrett
responds with "How high Sir?"
as he leaps into the air. I think
Kurtz is the guy who is writing the
checks to Michael K. Botts, Esq.
We know for sure that Kurtz is the guy
who publishes Barrett's crappy books,
providing Barrett, and other quackpots,
with an income, and who makes money
publishing Barrett's crappy books.
Paul Kurtz -
Barrett, and the entire US "skeptic"
community's "Puppet Master..."
So, What does
this mean?
So, what do I think will happen now?
Instead of a "legal" Defense, they're
going to use a two part strategy:
(1) Delay, delay, delay - for the
last thing the
quackbusters want is to
have Barrett (a) examined by a
Psychiatrist, (b) forced into a
two or three day video taped Deposition.
(c) or to have the NCAHF board
members Deposed, (d) or to have
Paul Kurtz,
Terry Polevoy,
Orac the Nipple Ripper, Steve
Novella,
William London, or
Paul Lee
Deposed.
Any of the above would create a disaster
for them.
(2) They will instigate a
"screaming" Defense,
similar to the tactic
Victor Herbert used to use. Botts, I'd guess,
is a zealot who will scream out, in
writing, the
quackbuster message in Barrett's
Official Response.
Why? Once
the Response message is on file then the
public relations campaign to destroy
Doctor's Data Laboratory, and the
Doctors that have used their services,
will begin in earnest. Barrett,
and his Puppet Master, will call on all
of their resources, all at once, in an
effort to win.
But, will this work?
Nope. They've tried this before,
and each time it has backfired.
This time, I'd bet, it will backfire
even more.
What is their
Public Relations tactic going to be?
This is easy. Once Botts files
something, anything, the so-called
support network (insert the word
"co-conspirators" here) will write comments
on their blogs, based on what Botts
writes in those Court Documents, about
the case. Since they are all
linked together in a Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) move (insert the term
"civil conspiracy" here), they will be
using their existing structure to
dominate the internet search engines and Wikipedia, with their destructive,
defamatory, version of the lawsuit.
Then they will send out Press Releases
referring to the comments from alleged
"scientific groups" (co-conspirators)
that can supposedly be found on the
first pages of search engines like
Google. Then, once some 85 IQ
reporter writes a story, then they can
refer other reporters to that story,
blah, blah, blah.
Simple? Yes. And, it is what
they are doing right now - so it would
seem that it should work, for they
think, the North American Health Freedom
Movement is too dumb to counter it.
It might have worked three years ago.
Now, all it is going to get is that the
blog owners and writers involved will
simply be added on to the lawsuit in a
"Second Amended Complaint."
My
guess is that Doctor's Data's law firm,
Augustine, Kern, and Levens, is
quietly sitting there like a cat
outside of a mouse hole. A
pleasant, playful lunch will be along in
a minute.
It will be a shock, I think, for
individual members of the quackpot Farm
Team (the bloggers, and the commenters
on those blogs) to realize that after
that guy that
showed up at their place of work this
morning, with the Court Summons, they now have 21 days,
themselves, to lawyer up (mortgaging the
house, selling the car, pawning the
dog's jewelry), individually, and
Respond.
After the first one gets served there
will be panic in the quackpot ranks.
So, What's this
"Puppet Master" Stuff?
It's been right here in front of us all
this time. There is someone
running Barrett. Someone who
prefers not to be seen for obvious
reasons. Let us start with some
simple, sensible, assumptions:
(1)
Stephen Barrett does NOT run those
websites. He couldn't hold a
full-time job during most of his
professional career. He couldn't
even pass the test to become a
Psychiatrist. For a long period of
time he had a guy named Paul Lee, PT
from Denmark, editing the sites.
Lee has disappeared from sight. So
who actually runs those websites?
(2) Barrett is not running the
quackbuster operation. He is
not that bright, and that will show up
quickly when we see the two days of
video-taped Deposition he will be forced
into, posted on the internet.. Barrett
has deep-seated psychological problems.
They'll show up in a Court ordered
Psychiatric examination. Barrett is a
front-man.
(3) There are two parts to the
internet component of the quackwatch,
etc., operation: (a) the
actual misinformation articles, but more
importantly (b) The SEO component
which floats the scum to the top of the
septic tank. Barrett has no
training in SEO. It is being done
by a professional. Professionals
get paid a lot of money. So, who's
paying?
I had two separate analysis done, by SEO
experts, of how
Stephen Barrett, and the
pseudoskeptics float to the top of
the search engines. It is not by
accident. It is planned and
executed. How they do it makes
them co-conspirators.
Co-conspiracy is actionable.
This lawsuit,
Doctor's Data v Barrett, is just
starting to get interesting.
Stay tuned.
Tim Bolen - Consumer
Advocate
