The Legal System Turned Upside Down: Defining, Diagnosing, and Denying HIV

Nushawn Williams. Remember him? In 1999 Williams was convicted as a sexual predator in New York State; Guilty of rape and reckless endangerment. Williams is HIV infected and he infected his victims, including a 13 year old.

It looks like Clark Baker and his AIDS Denialist crew of medical mischief and pseudoscientific scams have come to rescue Nushawn Williams, who now claims that he is not HIV infected. Williams may have tested HIV positive, but the tests were, of course, invalid.

New tests ordered by the defense, with what appears to be consultation from Clark Baker, uses an AIDS denialist favorite scheme -- electron micrographs.

For an AIDS Denialist, the only proof that HIV exists would be an image of the ‘pure virus’. AIDS Deniers refute science that relies on combinations of antibody/antigen/PCR testing to diagnose HIV. They also, by the way, refute images of HIV because they are not ‘pure virus’.

While in prison, Williams had been receiving treatment for his HIV infection. Successful treatment leads to viral suppression, making it very hard to get an image of the virus.

This is the new tactic of AIDS Deniers Clark Baker and David Rasnick. They have been using services of The Core Electron Microscopy Facility at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. A cell biologist named Gregory Hendricks has been running these tests in cases that employ Baker and Rasnick.

There is no reason to believe that Gregory Hendricks is an AIDS Denialist. I doubt that he is aware that he his providing pseudoscientists like David Rasnick with material for testimony in legal cases. Aware or not, that is what is happening. Dr. Hendricks and U-Mass Medical School probably want nothing to do with these clowns. Talk about a credibility liability. Hopefully they will figure this out.

AIDS Denialists are masters of confusion. Doubt is the one thing that they seem good at generating. That is why they have found a place in the courts.

Below are the news stories…

In court, lawyer says Nushawn Williams ‘doesn’t have HIV’ Man is said to have infected 13 women

By Gene Warner Jay Tokasz

Throughout Western New York, Nushawn Williams has been known for 16 years as a sexual predator who infected young women with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

But Williams, 36, appeared in State Supreme Court in Erie County on Tuesday to argue that he never had the virus.

His attorney, John R. Nuchereno, dropped the bombshell revelation Tuesday morning in a hearing before Justice John L. Michalski.

“He doesn’t have HIV,” Nuchereno said. “Now, it doesn’t just go away, and it leads me to believe the victim in this case is right here. His liberty has been denied for 16 years.”

Nuchereno had a sample of Williams’ blood sent to the Core Electron Microscopy Facility at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where an analysis showed no HIV, according to a report by Gregory Hendricks, a cell biologist and the facility manager.

In February 1999, Williams pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree (statutory) rape and one count of reckless endangerment for his Chautauqua County crimes. Authorities have said he infected at least 13 young Chautauqua County women, including one 13-year-old, with the virus that leads to AIDS.

After his plea, Williams, in an interview with a New York City television station, said he had slept with 200 to 300 young women before he was put behind bars.

Williams’ 12-year prison term ended in April 2010, but he continues to be held in Wende State Correctional Facility under a state law that permits civil confinement of sex offenders. A trial had been scheduled for this summer in Chautauqua County to decide whether the state can prolong his confinement.

When his story broke in 1996, Nushawn Williams made headlines around the world. He was widely portrayed as a pariah, and Chautauqua County was thrust into the spotlight as an unlikely hotbed of sordid sexual activity and drug use among teens.

Tuesday’s hearing brought the furor back to the forefront.

Chautauqua County Sheriff Joseph A. Gerace had trouble making sense of Williams’ new claim in court.

“I think it’s a desperate effort to try to get him released from custody,” said Gerace, who has been sheriff since 1995. “I don’t recall any claim that he wasn’t HIV-positive. In fact, it was shown in court that he was HIV-positive and continued to have unprotected sex with girls as young as 13. That’s what made it so heinous.”

But Nuchereno said Williams wasn’t made aware of the HIV test results until shortly before he was arrested and after the public was warned about him.

“He wasn’t told. That’s always been a major contention. It was never litigated,” Nuchereno said.

Williams now goes by the name Shyteek Johnson, largely to shield himself from notoriety in prison, Nuchereno said.

“His name’s been slandered across the country. He has been a target in the Department of Corrections. He’s notorious,” Nuchereno said after Tuesday’s hearing.

Handcuffed and wearing green prison garments, Williams listened intently to the court deliberations.

Lawyers for the State Attorney General’s Office questioned whether the blood sample was properly handled and whether the electron microscopy is a scientifically valid method for detecting HIV.

“It’s sort of a Pandora’s box at this point, this test,” said Joseph Muia Jr., an assistant attorney general. “The information we have is that the electron microscope testing is not the gold standard, so to speak, of testing in this area.”

Muia also suggested that with proper treatment, HIV-infected people can have their “viral loads” reduced to the point that the virus becomes undetectable.

“That may be what we have here,” said Muia, who asked the judge to allow the state to draw Williams’ blood and do more testing.

Assistant Attorney General Wendy R. Whiting reminded the judge that Williams admitted to his crimes, and medical experts are able to link people infected with HIV to a source of the infection.

“Links can be made that, at a minimum, many parties came up HIV-positive,” Whiting said.

Nuchereno tried to cast doubt on those links.

“My concern with the victims is I don’t know if they were even properly tested,” he said. Back in 1996, HIV testing was still relatively new and potentially riddled with error, Nuchereno said. “It was the equivalent of taking a home pregnancy test,” he said.

Williams’ HIV-positive status stuck, even though the test wasn’t confirmed, Nuchereno said.

“Everybody’s just assumed it all along – and, most importantly, he even assumed it,” he said. “He accepted those results. He stated, ‘They must be true because the government told me that.’ ”

Muia said Williams was tested four times a year for HIV in prison, but when pressed by Michalski, the state’s lawyers said they did not have documentation of such testing.

That’s because it did not happen, Nuchereno said.

“They kept telling him, ‘We’re treating you, but we don’t find any evidence of the virus,’ ” he said.

Williams stopped taking HIV medication in preparation for the electron microscopy, Nuchereno said. He has remained off of HIV drugs since discovering the results of the test in April.

Additional Reporting from the Associated Press


Lawyer: NY man at center of HIV scare not positive
BY CAROLYN THOMPSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Nushawn Williams, a New York drug dealer imprisoned amid accusations he infected 13 young women with HIV in the 1990s, does not have the virus that causes AIDS, according to his attorney, who said he arranged for a new blood test as part of efforts to get him released from prison.

"The results were that there was no HIV," lawyer John Nuchereno said Thursday, after revealing the findings during a court hearing earlier in the week.

He said Williams, 36, may have been the victim of a false positive when tested 16 years ago.

"Everybody just assumed the results were correct. Everyone just accepted it," he said.

State officials, seeking to keep Williams locked up, have questioned the validity of the new results.

Williams has been in prison since pleading guilty in 1999 to statutory rape and reckless endangerment.

In 1997, before he was charged, authorities in the western New York city of Jamestown took the unusual step of announcing publicly that Williams was HIV positive in an effort to stem further spread of the virus by Williams' partners to others. News that the dreadlocked Bronx native known as "Face" had been found to be the common denominator in numerous HIV cases, including that of a 13-year-old girl, set off a panic in the small city and sent lines for HIV testing out clinic doors.

He told a reporter in 1999 that he'd had sex with 200 to 300 partners.

Williams, who now goes by the name Shyteek Johnson, completed a 12-year prison sentence in April 2010 but has remained in custody as the state seeks to have him committed indefinitely under a civil law that allows extended confinement for sex offenders with mental abnormalities that make them likely to offend again.

Nuchereno argues that Williams, without HIV, is not a danger and should be freed.

"Are you dangerous because at 19 or 20 you liked to have sex?" he asked.

A trial is scheduled for next month.

The state's request to conduct its own HIV test on Williams was denied on Wednesday.

Assistant Attorney General Joseph Muia Jr. questioned whether the April blood sample had been properly handled, as well as the reliability of the test submitted by Nuchereno, which was conducted using an electron microscope at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

"The information we have is that the electron microscope testing is not the gold standard, so to speak, of testing in this field," Muia said during a motions hearing Tuesday in state Supreme Court.

He told the judge that Williams had been tested quarterly while in prison and treated for HIV because of consistently positive findings. But he said he did not have access to the prison medical records to show the court.

State corrections officials said Thursday they could not discuss specific inmates' care but that offenders generally receive services consistent with the standard of care in the community.

Muia also suggested the treatment Williams received in prison had made his HIV undetectable.

Dr. Joseph McGowan, medical director of the Center for Aids Research and Treatment at North Shore University Hospital, told The Associated Press that the accepted protocol for HIV testing involves screening the blood for antibodies and then confirming the results with a second test. An electron microscope would be unreliable, particularly for someone infected a long time, because the number of cells harboring virus genes would be diluted over time and difficult to detect, said McGowan, the New York and New Jersey chairman of the American Academy of HIV Medicine.

"Electron microscopy is not typically a means for confirming or ruling out HIV infection," said Dr. Joseph Cervia, who is also a certified HIV specialist with the American Academy of HIV Medicine and a clinical professor at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine.

In its 2010 petition seeking civil confinement, the attorney general's office described Williams as a mentally disturbed, sex-obsessed drug user who was unruly and sometimes violent in prison and would likely infect more women if set free. A psychologist's report said Williams targeted vulnerable young women who were underage and/or drug addicted and "used charm and coercion to secure sexual contact."

For more on the original Nushawn Williams Case see

http://www.poz.com/articles/204_1380.shtml

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Conspiracy Theories, AIDS Denialism, Holocaust Denial, and Dr. Nancy Banks

Just as we were getting bored with the same old (elderly white male) AIDS Deniers, enter Dr. Nancy Banks. Claiming to have a medical degree from Harvard, Dr. Banks has been recruited into Clark Baker’s AIDS denialism legal team. She is one of his star witnesses for his Office of Medical and Scientific Justice. Banks is an ‘expert’ witness in Military cases, where Clark Baker has actually found an attorney dim enough to employ his services.

What I like most about Nancy Banks is that she illustrates something we have known for years… AIDS Denialists and Holocaust Deniers are nuts in the same shell. In the case of Nancy Banks, she is one nut that has it all – conspiracy theories, AIDS denial, and Holocaust denial. Below is an essay that sheds light on Nancy Banks. I have agreed not to name of the author to evade Clark Baker’s harassment.

Dr. Nancy Banks has no background in infectious diseases, has never done research, and has never published anything other a self- published book “AIDS, Opium, Diamonds, and Empire: The Deadly Virus of International Greed”.

Banks explains that AIDS is caused not by HIV but by a global conspiracy in league with a variety of secret societies and Western governments to loot Africa of its diamonds and other natural resources while diverting attention from the plunder by manufacturing the AIDS epidemic. According to her theory, AIDS symptoms are actually caused by the antiretroviral AIDS drugs or by tuberculosis and other diseases afflicting mineworkers. This subterfuge allows diamond corporations like DeBeers to escape liability for hazardous working conditions while at the same time engaging in a vast scheme to depopulate continent.

Banks draws heavily on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. For example, she quotes prominent anti-Semitic authors Eustace Mullins, Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, and Salvador Astucia. As the quotes below also show, she is not afraid to openly accuse a Jewish conspiracy of genocide in Africa. She singles out Israel, the American Jewish Congress, and Maurice Tempelsman as examples of the wider Jewish conspiracy. Finally, as can be seen in the index, Banks’ book is a compilation of some of the most widely disseminated conspiracy theories of the 20th century including such varied topics as the Kennedy assassination, fluoridated water, the Matrix, and 9/11, all of which somehow explain her theory of HIV/AIDS.

Banks believes that almost all world events of the past 75 years can be tied to so-called HIV hysteria: “The AIDS paradigm has created a universal belief system based not on science but on inference, innuendo, and association. Very few people will exercise the capacity to synthesize what on the surface may appear to be unrelated events. The assassination of President Kennedy, the prolongation of the Vietnam War, the War on Drugs, the War on Cancer, the rise of Kissinger and Iran-Contra, the de-industrialization of the United States and the strengthening of China as a world power, the genocide in the Congo and the current financial crisis are different acts of the same psychodrama.” Banks, AIDS, Opium, Diamonds, and Empire, p362. 

Banks uses a variety of anti-Semitic and other conspiracy theories to advance her theory of HIV/AIDS:

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire by Nancy Banks, p29, fn 38: Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, The Synagogue of Satan: The Secret History of World Jewish Domination.

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire by Nancy Banks, p95, fn 123: John Coleman, The Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Committee of 300. Coleman believes that world governments are controlled by a conspiracy of 300 families in England that acquired power and wealth during Great Britain’s Opium Wars with China. See http://coleman300.net.

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire by Nancy Banks, p127, fn 173, 175, 176: Various books about the Gemstone File. The Gemstone File is a conspiracy theory that Aristotle Onassis, Joseph Kennedy, Eugene Meyer, and others were involved in a global conspiracy including the mafia, oil and drug cartels, and rogue militaries. According the conspiracy theory, the Kennedy brothers were murdered when they attempted to break away from the conspiracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone_File.

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire by Nancy Banks, p128-29, fn 182. “Eustace Mullins stated that ‘Bernard Baruch, Eugene Meyer, Jr., and Paul Warburg . . . exercised more direct power over the American people than any president, because back of these men was the strength of the financial oligarchy which had maintained undisputed sway in this country since 1863.’” Eustace Mullins, The Federal Reserve Conspiracy.

Note: Eustace Mullins was a prolific anti-Semitic author and white supremacist who believed in a vast Jewish conspiracy to control the world through finance and medicine.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, in his book The Federal Reserve Conspiracy, Mullins wrote: “The American people have assumed the burden of hundreds of billions of dollars of debt simply because we let a handful of enemy aliens take over our monetary system. The three most important architects of our present monetary system are ... Paul Warburg, the German Jew who wrote the Federal Reserve Act, Emmanuel Goldenweiser, the Russian Jew who supervised the details of Federal Reserve Board operations through its first thirty years, and Harry Dexter White, son of Lithuanian Jews, who set up the International Monetary Fund.”

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire by Nancy Banks, p141: “Diamonds are common and cheap. . . . This is a commodity that is tightly controlled by a small group of individuals who form a spider web of misery and intrigue that leads from South Africa to Tel Aviv to Brussels and New York. These sparkling gems are not a girl’s best friend, but a warmonger’s best asset of untraceable funds to pay for guns, corrupt politicians, assassins, and chaos in pursuit of an agenda run out of Israel.”

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire by Nancy Banks, p145: “It is not surprising, according to reports, that [Premier Diamond of South Africa] has blamed this rapid rise in the incidence of tuberculosis on AIDS, inferring that working conditions are irrelevant. The cynical use of AIDS, as a method to neutralize potential legal action against Premier Diamond’s sub-standard mining practices is rather typical of the ‘impeccable business decisions’ of this organization. What possible liability could accrue to a company that has a graveyard full of dead workers and cities full of injured workers who have a disease that was ‘sexually acquired’?”

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire by Nancy Banks, pp148-49: “AIDS is part of the business model being used by the West to explain away the numerous atrocities committed by extractive corporations as a part of their routine business practices [in Africa]. Maurice Tempelsman, an icon of such business interests, has invested his entire life in supporting this business model whereby workers’ lives are ended abruptly by deliberate business decisions that privilege profit over human life. . . . Tempelsman has played a key role over the course of the last six decades in the destabilization and economic ruin of several African countries. . . . By sitting on the board of the Harvard School of Public Health’s AIDS Initiative, Tempelsman has made sure that the atrocities he instigates in Africa as a staunch advocate for mining interests are misconstrued as the HIV/AIDS crises. . . . [His] resume omits that Tempelsman is chairman of the American Jewish Congress, a Zionist pressure group that claims it works closely with the Israeli military.” (emphasis added).

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire by Nancy Banks, pp150-51: “The Congo is the second largest country in Africa. For decades, under Belgium rule, it was ruthlessly stripped of its natural resources . . . . King Leopold claimed that everything in Congo belonged to him. . . . The corporations answered to King Leopold, and Leopold answered to the Rothschilds who became the court bankers in 1853.”

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire by Nancy Banks, p159: “AIDS is the subterfuge for the economic destruction of a continent and psychological warfare against the African people of the Diaspora. [Maurice] Tempelsman as chairman of the Harvard School of Public Health’s AIDS Initiative intends to keep it that way. It’s just business!”

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire by Nancy Banks, p169, fn 263: Salvador Astucia, Opium Lords, Israel, the Golden Triangle and the Kennedy Assassination. Astucia’s thesis is that the World Jewish Congress, in league with Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky and the FBI, hired French heroin traffickers to murder John F. Kennedy. As repayment, the heroin traffickers were allowed to resume their activities in southeast Asia, which required the U.S. to overthrow the government of South Vietnam.

Opium Lords, Israel, the Golden Triangle and the Kennedy Assassination, by Salvador Astucia, p1 “Opium was the glue that held together the rivaling factions that conspired to kill JFK. The main factions in the conspiracy were Zionist instigators, the American Mafia (headed by Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky and his lieutenant, Santo Trafficante), French-Corsican crime syndicates in Marseilles, France and Southeast Asia, and the US military.” (emphasis added).

Opium Lords, Israel, the Golden Triangle and the Kennedy Assassination, by Salvador Astucia, pp250-51 “Regardless of the document’s origin, many of the Protocols [of Zion] bear a striking resemblance to reality. And quite frankly, the general tone of the Protocols is similar to that of the Talmud. . . . The first example—Protocol XII, Control of the Press—clearly reflects reality in modern America. The US news media is almost completely dominated by Jewish individuals at the executive and ownership levels.” (emphasis added).

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire by Nancy Banks, p225, fn 336-37: Eustace Mullins, Murder by Injection. Mullins is a prolific anti-Semitic author and white supremacist. In Murder by Injection, he claims that a Jewish global banking conspiracy led by the Rothschilds and acting through their American agent Jay Rockefeller have created a medical monopoly in the United States that is poisoning Americans with vaccines and fluoridated water in order to reap profits from the medical and pharmaceutical industries while also sapping the will of Americans to resist the New World Order. Banks takes her theory of HIV/AIDS directly from chapter six, “Whither AIDS?”

Murder by Injection, by Eustace Mullins, p5. “The present work, the result of some forty years of investigative research, is a logical progression of my previous books: the expose of the international control of monetary issue and banking practices in the United States; a later work revealing the secret network of organization through which these alien forces wield political power—the secret committees, foundations, and political parties through which their hidden plans are implemented[.]” Mullins’ reference to his previous works is significant. Mullins’ previous works include the virulently anti-Semitic books The Curse of Canaan and The New History of the Jews.

The Curse of Canaan, by Eustace Mullins, pp150-51. “With Satan’s help, the Canaanites attacked and seized the land of Israel. . . . The Canaanite invaders now occupying Israel are not ‘Christ’s’; they are the revilers and mockers of Christ. . . . We have been persecuted because we have fallen into the trap of the world, the dualism which offers us the choice of following God’s Will, or of passively joining the Canaanites in accepting Satan as the leader, which means participating in the shedding of blood and the obscene rituals of human sacrifice.”

The New History of the Jews, by Eustace Mullins, p5. “Throughout the history of civilization, one particular problem of mankind has remained constant. In all of the vast records of peace and wars and rumors of wars, one great empire after another has had to come to grips with the same dilemma . . . the Jews.”

The New History of the Jews, by Eustace Mullins, p49. “Jews and Ritual Murder: At the dawn of civilization, the blood rite, in which human blood is drunk from the body of a still-living victim, was known to many tribes. However, only one people, that has never progressed beyond the Stone Age, has continued to practice the blood rite and ritual murder. This people is the Jews.”

Murder by Injection, by Eustace Mullins, p203. “In reviewing the all-pervasive influence of the Rockefellers and their foreign controllers, the Rothschilds, in every aspect of American life, the citizen must ask himself, ‘What can be done?’”

Almost every major conspiracy of the 20th century can be found in Banks’ book. Banks weaves each conspiracy theory into her narrative and blames each one for being the true cause of the AIDS epidemic and AIDS symptoms:

Deep politics, p13
Jay Rockefeller and the Flexner Brothers, p27

World Zionism and the Versailles Conference, p28
Fluoridated water, pp71, 73, 363
Fluoridated water is a form of population control, p366
Unemployed cancer researchers looking for fame, p109
The Skull and Bones Society at Yale, p112
Kennedy Assassination, pp113, 116
George H.W. Bush, p113
Dick Cheney, p121
Joint Special Operations Command, p121
9/11 (The World Trade Center was leveled by explosives by neoconservatives to justify the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan), pp121-23, 356
Nixon and Kissinger start the Vietnam War to expand their drug empire and poison American blacks and Hispanics with heroin, p126
Mafia and Joseph Kennedy, p131
CIA and the Kennedy assassination, p133
HIV does not cause AIDS, pp233, 259, 395
AIDS is a hoax, p241
AIDS is an energy deficit condition, p353
AIDS medications cause AIDS, p242
AIDS is caused by dehydration, p393
AIDS is caused by lack of sleep, p393
AIDS is caused by pollution, p394
AIDS is caused by heavy metal music, p394
AIDS is caused by Coca Cola, p395
Love and gratitude prevent HIV, p396
HIV is not sexually transmitted, p293
Stargate and Army remote viewing program, p328
The Matrix, p360-64
Chakras, p365

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Celia Farber's Day in Court: Dismissed with Unavailing Contentions

Supreme Court Decision in 

Celia Farber, Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v

Richard Jefferys et al.,

Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Louis B. York, J.), entered November 9, 2011, which granted defendant Richard Jefferys' motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint as against him, unanimously affirmed, with costs. 

Supreme Court properly determined that plaintiff was a limited public figure because, through her publication of countless articles, she voluntarily injected herself into the controversial debate on whether HIV causes AIDS with a view toward influencing the debate (see Krauss v Globe Intl., 251 AD2d 191, 192 [1st Dept 1998]), and "project[ed] [her] name and personality before . . . readers of nationally distributed magazines . . . to establish [her] reputation as a leading authority" in this area (Maule v NYM Corp., 54 NY2d 880, 882-883 [1981]). The court also properly concluded that the subjects of HIV/AIDS, plaintiff's journalism, and her receipt of an award for her journalism fell "within the sphere of legitimate public concern" (Chapadeau v Utica Observer-Dispatch, 38 NY2d 196, 199 [1975]). Indeed, the record established that plaintiff was a contentious figure within the traditional HIV/AIDS community. 


Jefferys met his burden of demonstrating that plaintiff could not show by clear and convincing evidence that he made the challenged statements with actual malice or with gross irresponsibility (see Huggins v Moore, 94 NY2d 296 [1999]; Chapadeau v Utica Observer-Dispatch, 38 NY2d 196 [1975], supra). The record was devoid of evidence that Jefferys acted with knowledge that his statements were false or with reckless disregard for the truth, or that he did not follow the standards of information gathering employed by reasonable persons. Jefferys sufficiently explained that his statement about plaintiff's journalism was based on his expertise and research on HIV/AIDS for many years, on an article signed by prominent experts in the field, as well as on the many articles in the record which critiqued plaintiff's 2006 article as being filled with misquotes or misrepresentations. Jefferys also provided documentation to support why he believed what he wrote about the plaintiff was true and compared in detail plaintiff's journalism to the articles and studies she cited and explained why he believed her work to contain misrepresentations. [*2]

In opposition, plaintiff failed to raise a triable issue of fact. Her effort to establish that her work does not contain misquotes or misrepresentations is immaterial because even if plaintiff were correct about her work, she can point to no evidence that would establish actual malice or gross irresponsibility (Mahoney v Adirondack Publ. Co., 71 NY2d 31, 39 [1987] ["(f)alsity and actual malice are distinct concepts"]). Similarly, plaintiff's assertion that Jefferys was biased against her or bore her ill will does not aid her cause (see Harte-Hanks Communications, Inc. v Connaughton, 491 US 657, 666 [1989]). Moreover, there is no reason to offer less protection to the contested statement because it was made via an Internet communication (see Sandals Resorts Intl. Ltd. v Google, Inc., 86 AD3d 32, 43-44 [1st Dept 2011]).

Supreme Court was also correct in finding that the use of the word "liar" in the contested statement was not actionable (see Ram v Moritt, 205 AD2d 516 [2d Dept 1994]; see also Steinhilber v Alphonse, 68 NY2d 283, 294 [1986]). The full content of the statement, including its tone and apparent purpose, and the broader context of the statement and surrounding circumstances leads to the conclusion that what was being read was "likely to be opinion, not fact" (see Thomas H. v Paul B., 18 NY3d 580, 584 [2012] [internal quotation marks omitted]; see Immuno AG. v Moor-Jankowski, 77 NY2d 235, 254 [1991], cert denied 500 US 954 [1991]).

Supreme Court appropriately resolved the case through summary judgment because the issues can be determined by the objective proof in the record (see Kipper v NYP Holdings Co., Inc., 12 NY3d 348, 354 [2009]; Karaduman v Newsday, Inc., 51 NY2d 531, 545 [1980]), and no additional discovery was necessary or warranted to resolve the motion.

We have considered plaintiff's remaining contentions and find them unavailing.

THIS CONSTITUTES THE DECISION AND ORDER 
OF THE SUPREME COURT, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT.

ENTERED: FEBRUARY 19, 2013

CLERK

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Crazy Is as Crazy Does: Conspiracy Theories and Anti-Science

Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation
Published in Frontiers in Personality Science and Individual Differences, 2013
by Stephan Lewandowsky et al.

Conspiracist ideation has been repeatedly implicated in the rejection of scientific propositions, although empirical evidence to date has been sparse. A recent study involving visitors to climate blogs found that conspiracist ideation was associated with the rejection of climate science and the rejection of other scientific propositions such as the link between lung cancer and smoking, and between HIV and AIDS (Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, in press; LOG12 from here on). This article analyzes the response of the climate blogosphere to the publication of LOG12. We identify and trace the hypotheses that emerged in response to LOG12 and that questioned the validity of the paper's conclusions. Using established criteria to identify conspiracist ideation, we show that many of the hypotheses exhibited conspiratorial content and counterfactual thinking. For example, whereas hypotheses were initially narrowly focused on LOG12, some ultimately grew in scope to include actors beyond the authors of LOG12, such as university executives, a media organization, and the Australian government. The overall pattern of the blogosphere's response to LOG12 illustrates the possible role of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science, although alternative scholarly interpretations may be advanced in the future.

Click here to download the provisional PDF of the article.

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AIDS Denier Henry Bauer is Unlikely to be Appointed to Journal of Cryptozoology Editorial Board

Monster Hunting 2.0 by Dan Cossins for ScienceNews

So long as the standards are kept high, then I think it will demonstrate that cryptozoology isn’t just full of crackpots chasing Nessy. —­Darren Naish, University of Southampton, U.K.

Since the demise of the journal Cryptozoology in 1996, there has been no peer-reviewed English-language periodical for the controversial field, which studies animals known from anecdote, folklore, or fragmentary physical evidence, but not yet authenticated with actual specimens. So when the U.K.–based Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) approached popular cryptozoology writer Karl Shuker about launching a new journal, he was happy to oblige.

“I felt it imperative that a journal of this nature should exist again as a platform for formal scientific cryptozoological research and reviews of past cases that mainstream journals may not be willing to consider,” says Shuker, who has a PhD in zoology and comparative physiology from the University of Birmingham, U.K. Having assembled a panel of reviewers who then pored over the first batch of submissions, the CFZ and Shuker published the first issue of The Journal of Cryptozoology in October 2012. Editor-in-chief Shuker insists that all articles are subjected to the “same level of rigorous peer-review evaluations as [in] any mainstream journal.”

Shuker hopes that by providing an outlet for cryptozoological research with a genuinely scientific approach, the new journal will ensure that serious contributions get the attention they deserve. Much depends on the quality of the material and rigor of the review process, of course, but he also hopes that The Journal of Cryptozoology will raise the reputation of this much-maligned field in the eyes of the scientific community.

Such aspirations will no doubt raise a few eyebrows. For many onlookers, the term cryptozoology is inextricably linked to crackpot amateurs who make sensational, unsubstantiated claims about the existence of Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster. That’s understandable; there are all manner of “investigators” seeking out fantastical cryptids in a distinctly less-than-scientific manner.

Most people who unashamedly call themselves cryptozoologists are doing a form of travel writing, says Darren Naish, a paleozoologist at the U.K.’s National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton who also dabbles in cryptozoology. “It tends to be a lot of speculation and not much analysis of data, and the conclusions are not based on a robust-enough framework to be considered of the normal caliber you’d expect for scientific conclusions.”

But the fundamental concept of cryptozoology is not pseudoscientific, argues Shuker. “If cryptozoology is approached in a rigorously scientific, objective manner, it is no more a pseudoscience than is any other branch of zoology,” he says. And there are several recent cases of new species being discovered on the basis of anecdotal evidence, including the saola (or Vu Quang ox), found in the forests of Vietnam in 1992, and the kipunji, a monkey in Tanzania, officially described in 2003. These creatures are not as exotic as the yeti or the orang pendek—a bipedal primate said to roam the rainforests of Sumatra—but they demonstrate that even today, in an age of satellite maps and camera traps, animals as large as oxen can escape science’s gaze.

Zoologists engaged in this sort of research are doing cryptozoology, says Naish, whether or not they would identify their work as such. But there is a small cadre of trained zoologists with positions at accredited universities who scientifically analyze supposed evidence for the existence of cryptids—and who describe themselves as “scientific cryptozoologists.”

Naish, who includes himself in that group, uses his knowledge of vertebrate paleontology to scientifically evaluate strange-looking carcasses and to assess the likelihood that extinct marine creatures such as plesiosaurs could still be around. He was part of a team that used statistical models to predict the number of extant pinniped species yet to be described, a study published in 2008 in Historical Biology. Another notable example is Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, who applies his understanding of functional foot morphology in primates to evaluate alleged sasquatch footprints.

Citing the work of Meldrum in particular, Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, says that “the standards are already high among those who are working academically and scientifically.” Despite the presence of established scientific cryptozoologists, however, the term cryptozoology remains tainted—something Shuker hopes to change with The Journal of Cryptozoology.

The first issue featured a reevaluation of evidence for a footprint first reported in 1871, said to have been made by a Queensland tiger, an Australian marsupial thought to be similar to the Tasmanian tiger; and another, by Naish, that examines a previously enigmatic carcass from Australia’s Margaret River known only from a single photograph. “Neither paper was likely to have been published in a mainstream journal,” says Shuker, “and yet both were fully deserving of publication on account of their strictly scientific approach.”

Although it’s early days, the response to the new journal has been encouraging: since the first issue was published, Shuker says he has received submissions from researchers within the mainstream zoological community.

Naish is cautiously optimistic. If cryptid studies come from a well-reasoned scientific approach, they should be accepted by mainstream zoological journals, he says. “On the other hand, you could argue that every specialized subdiscipline needs its own special community-interest publication.”

The big challenge is to make sure the journal is robust enough to be taken seriously, Naish adds. “So long as the standards are kept high, then I think it will encourage a gradual rise in the standing [of the field] and demonstrate that cryptozoology isn’t just full of crackpots chasing Nessy.”

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