Hook, line and sinker

Yes, it’s a Poe. Sorry to disappoint.

Problem is, when satire gets this close to reality, can we honestly continue to call it satire? Fred Phelps and his ilk happily trumpet the exact same sentiments – in the exact same words – and we know damn well that they’re for real. So how close to the bone can you get before your lampoon becomes seen as a legitimate endorsement?

I confess, I’ve long believed that the LF Nexus was for real, but my recent trawlings of the site have finally convinced me that it’s Poe-worthy. Little things like the ridiculous numbers, the truly bizarre and extreme views, the tagline “A Stew of SATIRE, Science & Spirituality” (their caps), the blurry pic of Dr Bisconti that looks (in the words of FrodoSaves) “like Harrison Ford with wine-stained lips”… it’s all added up to a conviction that I have, in fact, been royally Poe’d upon. The killer blow was when I decided to take a look at the homepage of WebPsyops, Inc, who are building Bisconti’s new website. As well as a time machine, apparently. I snorted with laughter, and then finally came to the conclusion that some (very industrious!) person out there was yanking my chain.

So – kudos to whoever the real person behind Michael Bisconti actually is, but I’d strongly advise caution. I consider myself a reasonably bright person, and yet it’s taken me a number of in-depth viewings of the site to establish its fakery. Should someone who holds similar views to “Dr Bisconti” happen across the Nexus, it’s quite possible they would take it for reality, and that could lead to a whole world of trouble. The anti-gay stuff is especially inflammatory, and does not appear at all to be tongue-in-cheek. A few more nods, a few more knowing winks interspersed with all the crazy would go a long way towards establishing the LF Nexus as a classic piece of satire, as opposed to a object lesson in fringe lunacy.

Since WordPress introduced this new polling feature a few months ago, I thought now would be a good time to use it. What do you think? Poe or no?

And the nominees are… oh, there’s just the one.

It’s not enough for Dr Michael Bisconti to make up his own qualifications – he’s also seen fit to imagine himself a special award, too. Yes, Dr Bisconti is the proud winner of a “Samson” award from the Behavioural Science Award Society.

Now you would imagine that a group with a membership of over 160,000 (that’s more than the American Psychological Association and more than four times as many as the American Psychiatric Association) would have a fairly considerable presence on the internet. You would expect a Wikipedia page, a substantial website, membership lists, contact details… Amazingly enough, though, the only site which even mentions the BESCAS is www.bescas.com – the site linked above. Call me suspicious, but when the webpage layout is damn near identical to Bisconti’s, and when it carries the same tell-tale over-inflated figures and “coming soon” announcements, I tend to suspect that the good Doctor may have pulled his “Samson” straight out of his behind…

Bisconti does deserve his award, though, for his advancement of the field of Pneumiatric Psychology. This differs from other forms of psychology in that it… well, it’s hard to say really, since Bisconti has done nothing to define the term, even at the Pneumiatry Institute’s own webpage. Call me a cynic, but I would go so far as to say that “pneumiatry”, much like the related discipline “anthropiatry” is a meaningless, made-up word from out of Dr Bisconti’s head. Given that every page on the internet which mentions either term carries the LF Nexus trademark TimeCube page layout, it’s not too much of a leap to assume that no-one outside of the LF Nexus uses them, and that they therefore have no meaning outside of Dr Bisconti’s batshit crazy institution. We’ve already established that the definition and re-definition of words is something of a Bisconti hallmark…

It’s a good thing for Bisconti that he set up his own National Psychiatric Association, since the APA clearly disagree with him on some fairly fundamental issues – such as homosexuality being a mental illness. In fact, it looks pretty much as though the NPA was set up specifically to promote the agenda of homosexuality as a psychological condition. Mind you, the LF Nexus’ most recent research shows that gay people are not, in fact, mentally ill – they are mentally dead! Upping the ante a bit, Dr Bisconti now claims (as of last Monday) that homosexuality is a choice, and that homosexuals suffer from “a lack of desire to behave normally.” I’m not going to even dignify his nonsense by responding to that. If anyone in this picture is in need of psychiatric or psychological intervention, I think we can safely say that it’s Dr Bisconti himself.

Look, if I say it’s a law, it’s a law!

Sadly, the LF Nexus list of scumbag websites, whose ranks I had so hoped to join, has been discontinued, because they’re too busy. Nevertheless, I’m still happy enough to mine the rich seam of crazy that runs right through the middle of Dr Michael J Bisconti’s website… so today let’s examine his alternative to the theory of evolution. Rather than taking what one might call the “classical” creationist approach (as espoused by Ken Ham, Ray Comfort, Kent Hovind etc.), Dr Bisconti has gone one better and developed the theory Law of eXolution, a concept which, as far as I can tell, is entirely unique.

Here, according to the good Doctor, is the “standard definition of eXolution”:

“the law of nature that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in the same preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to perpetuation in successive generations”

Now, call me cynical, but I tend not to entirely trust Dr Bisconti’s proclaimations on, well, anything really, so I took the trouble to actually find out what the “standard definition” of eXolution really is. As it turns out, the only recognised instance of “eXolution” in (relatively) common usage is as an alternate spelling of “exsolution”, the process by which minerals can be separated under high temperatures. I would go so far as to say, then, that Dr Bisconti’s definition is just plain made up…

Setting aside the fact that Bisconti just makes his definitions up out of thin air (a little like his qualifications…), let’s just take a look a couple more of the misconceptions on this page. First off, there’s clearly some confusion in Bisconti’s brain over what the words “law” and “theory” mean. He states:

“This [eXolution] is a law, not a theory. A law is proven and irrefutable.”

“This [evolution] is claimed to be a theory, which is, of course, inferior to a law anyway. A theory is unproven and refutable.”

Let’s just check our definitions again, shall we? A scientific Law is a mathematical expression of a consistent, demonstrable, universal observation. An obvious example which you will no doubt remember from school would be Boyle’s Law*. Bisconti’s Law is neither mathematical (it is impossible to express in mathematical terms), nor demonstrable (it presupposes knowledge which we do not have) – even if it fulfilled the claims of consistency and universality it would still be a (badly-formulated) theory, never a law.

Evolution, meanwhile, is a theory: a general principle or body of principles which explains a certain phenomenon. A theory is not “inferior” to a law – this is a standard mistake made by those unfamiliar with the language of science.
But, as we’ve seen, definitions are malleable things where Dr Bisconti is concerned. The irony of their claim that evolutionists will trick you by providing an incorrect definition of evolution is beyond staggering. Still, they’ve debated over a million evolutionists, so I guess they should know…

The other principle problem with eXolution (aside from the fact that, having coined the term, Bisconti then makes no further exposition of it on any one of his tens of millions of other webpages) is that, under the above definition, it’s almost entirely meaningless as a hypothesis. One quintessential element of any scientific hypothesis is that it must be falsifiable; that is to say, it must be possible to state what evidence would invalidate it. The theory of evolution is eminently falsifiable (Haldane’s “rabbits in the Precambrian” would be an obvious example), but eXolution, in the form stated above, admits of no possible falsifying evidence. It therefore has no use even as a hypothesis, let alone a theory or law.

The epic wrongness of the LF Nexus continues – I’m looking forward to seeing what depths of stupidity Dr Bisconti will plumb next…

*PV = k, where P = gaseous pressure, V = enclosed volume and k = a constant

So that’s what all those spam e-mails were referring to…

Poor Frodologists. Truly, the smackdown has been delivered unto them, since they are now on Dr “Diploma Mill” Bisconti’s Wall of Shame.

Although they find themselves in the illustrious company of PZ Myers, I can’t help but feel that the Scumbag Websites wall is a lonely place, so in the spirit of humanist camaraderie I present my attempt to join them. Dr “no really, a real Doctor, honest!” Bisconti states quite clearly that “the websites listed on this page drew ‘FIRST BLOOD’”, so if that’s what it takes, let’s sharpen the knives and take our chances… Since the LF Nexus is so frickin’ huge (over a million pages, according to their footer), I’ll just take them one or two at a time.

To kick off with, since I’m both sexy and a martial artist, let’s look at the catchily titled page on Sexual Karate. Sexual Karate, as you may or may not know, is an “advanced defensive science and defensive art, 50 years in the making”, which consist of er… three lines of text. That must have been a pretty exhausting half-century, Dr. Bisconti! Sexual Karate is a surefire way for you moist-trousered sorts to avoid the perils of intercourse.

The three principles of Sexual Karate are as follows:

1. Avoid temptation.
2. If you do get tempted, run away.
3. But it’s okay if you’re asleep.

To arrive at this earth-shaking solution to the problems of human sexuality, Dr. “It’s a honorary title, I give it to myself” Bisconti and his team waded through over 100 million pages of pornographic literature. To get an idea of the scope of this achievement, that means they would have had to look at one porno picture every second, non-stop, for more than three years. They also performed more than 500,000 experiments to test the theory. Bear in mind that they also had to read through ten million books, journals and magazines – assuming they read ten books per day (I can only usually manage one, but maybe I’m lazy), that would have taken them well over 2000 years, meaning that Dr “not a real doctor” Bisconti has been reading anthropology books and looking at porn since before the birth of Christ. Now that’s dedication!

I salute the bold Doctor and his team of fearless octogenarian volunteers for their priceless contribution to the field of human sexuality. Remember kids: Avoid it, run from it, and if all else fails, go to sleep.