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LymeNet Flash: Open Letter re Censorship of Info on Lyme Controversies Tax deductible The Lyme Disease Network receives a commission from Amazon.com for each purchase originating from this site. When purchasing from Amazon.com, please first. Dedicated to the Bachmann Family LymeNet needs your help: The Lyme Disease Network is a non-profit organization funded by individual donations. In the United States, your donations are tax deductible. » » » » Open Letter re Censorship of Info on Lyme Controversies Author Topic: Open Letter re Censorship of Info on Lyme Controversies LymeNet Contributor Member # 13680 posted 09:43 AM Hi all This relates to a thread originally being discussed in General Support. Basically it concerns anonymous individuals from the Steere camp who are removing/altering/defacing the entry for Lyme in Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia used by hundreds of thousands of people. Examples of items removed include any discussion of Blumenthal's findings, the fact that EM rashes ar often absent in Lyme, and evidence of a link between Lyme and biological weapons research.

Below is my open letter to 'Nighthawk J', a an anonymous microbiologist who has recently been removing material. Elena Open Letter to Nighthawk J I am sharing this discussion with members of the Lyme community via online forums such as Lyme Net, because those most entitled to know all essential and relevant facts about this disease are, after all, those who have had their lives ruined by it. That said, let's deal with the issues. This debate has been very long, and it would be unreasonable to expect people, especially Lyme patients, so many of whom suffer cognitive impairment, to concentrate on dozens of issues at once.

I will therefore reply, for now, only to the points in your above comment. You state that I have not provided proper references for my assertion that that ``a disproportionate number of leading Lyme disease researchers are involved in biowarfare research'. My original Wikipedia paragraph gave examples, with proper references, of the biowarfare background of four highly important figures in Lyme disease science - Mark Klempner (whose 2001 paper is consistently used by doctors and insurance companies as the basis for denial of treatment for chronic Lyme); Alan Barbour, considered co-discoverer of the causative agent of Lyme; Allen Steere, so-called discoverer of the disease in the 1970's and the leading proponent of ``Steere camp' thought; and Jorge Benach. In addition one reference led to an article I wrote called ``Lyme Disease is a Biowarfare Issue'.

While you may not be happy at me referencing my own article, nevertheless that article contains several more references supporting the same point - ie that a disproportionate number of the most important Steere camp Lyme researchers have a background in biowarfare. They are all solid references and can be found at the website of NY radio presenter Dave Emory on. The Wikipedia Lyme article is already very long and I didn't think it necessary to add a lengthy list of examples; however, as you have implied that my evidence is not substantial enough, I am adding two more leading figures in the modern history of Lyme medicine, Edward McSweegan and Phillip Baker, both of whom have served as Lyme Programme Officers at NIH and who therefore had a massive influence on diagnostic, prevention and treatment policies. Both have a strong biowarfare background and I have provided high-quality references regarding this. If you require more examples, please let me know.

You also stated that: ``The claim that ``so many Lyme disease' researchers are members of the EIS, also unreferenced, is not credible. It would be easy to find among the many hundreds of former EIS members some who now participate in Lyme disease research.' ' First to recap - the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service was set up during the Cold War, to conduct what, at the time, was publicly and unashamedly admitted to be offensive biowarfare research. If you examine your two statements above, Nighthawk J, you will see that they contradict each other somewhat. In the first, you are alleging there are not many Lyme researchers who are also involved with the EIS. In the second, you are stating that it would be easy to find some Lyme researchers among graduates of the EIS.

So, I'm not clear what you are trying to say. Are you saying that you think the proportion of Steere camp Lyme researchers with a background in the EIS is very small? If so, what percentage would you consider small? If you are trying to say that the correlation is meaningless because there are many hundreds of ``former' EIS members, then you are wrong here too.

The Steere camp advise that Lyme is ``hard to catch' and ``easily cured' with a short course of antibiotics. Most recently they advise us that chronic Lyme does not even exist. They have alleged that serious neurological sequelae are extremely rare.

Why then should America's most highly trained infectious disease specialists, the EIS, waste their precious time on it? Scientists like Klempner, Benach and Barbour, who have been placed at the head of biowarfare research (funded by millions to over a billion dollars) are presumably some of the best brains in the US as regards infectious disease. Why then would such individuals have devoted, and continue to devote, hours and hours of their precious time to a ``hard-to-catch', ``easily cured' disease? We would not expect experts in biowarfare to be spending a major part of their careers studying athlete's foot, for example. According to CDC itself: ``Currently, 60 to 80 people are selected annually for coveted EIS posts.' ' So, as I have said, this is a ***small, elite force***.

If Lyme was truly ``hard-to-catch', ``easily-cured' etc, it would be remarkable that even one member of such an elite force would want to specialise in it, much less many. Do the world's most highly skilled surgeons spend their time removing ingrown toenails?

Incidentally, your word ``former' to describe EIS officers is misplaced. Where is the evidence that those Lyme researchers who are publicly known to have been trained by EIS have ``left' and no longer retain any links, obligations or responsibilities to it? Instead, common sense, and the evidence, indicates the opposite.

Allen Steere, for example, downplayed the significance of his EIS membership during the 1970's, and told the media that he only joined to dodge the Vietnam draft. Yet three decades later, he was still deeply involved enough to be helping to organise an EIS gala event. The militarily sensitive nature of the work makes it highly unlikely that scientists could simply leave this elite infectious disease unit, cut off all ties, and not retain any obligations to their senior officers within it. You state: ``Moreover, the definition of ``biowarfare research' used here is overly broad and casts a wide net that includes basic research of any microbe that can be a potential bioweapon.' ' Why do you say that?

The involvement of Klempner and Barbour is at the highest level, ie they are ***heads** of RCE's, which are biowarfare super-labs set up in the US in the aftermath of 9-11. Long before 9-11, Klempner studied ways of increasing the virulence of plague, and Barbour studied anthrax. (see refs in footnotes to my article at Benach studies tularemia. (see, for example, his published study at Do you consider research on plague, anthrax and tularemia to be ``basic research on any microbe'? These are some of the most important and most feared bioweapons known to science.

Likewise, of the two most recent NIH Programme Officers in charge of Lyme disease, both have a background in biowarfare. Phillip Baker is a specialist in anthrax, and Edward McSweegan has worked, and still works, in the field of recruiting senior biowarfare scientists from the former Soviet - clearly top-level work. While with the EIS, Lyme ``discoverer' Allen Steere studied Aspergillus flavus, the fungus that produces deadly biowar agent aflatoxin, of which, according to UNSCOM, Saddam Hussein stockpiled huge quantities prior to the first Gulf War. (Christopher J. Davis,Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, quoted in Emerging Infectious Diseases: ) So clearly, the Lyme researchers' involvement with the EIS or ``biodefense' was never limited to ``basic research of any microbe' potentially useful in war, as you say, but instead included some of the most deadly agents known to mankind.

If you feel these examples are insufficient for you, I can provide more. Nighthawk J, you removed information about Japanese WW2 experimentation with Borrelia genus microbes, saying that this was irrelevant because ``The Japanese were clearly working with relapsing fever Borrelia, not Lyme disease Borrelia, which was not discovered until decades later.' ' First of all, the very fact that leading Lyme researchers like Alan Barbour have devoted hundreds of hours to studying relapsing fever, and have written articles outlining the parallels between this and Borrelia burgdorferi, shows that relapsing fever Borrelia are very much relevant. Second, while there is proof that the Japanese worked on relapsing fever borrelia, you cannot state that they did not work with Lyme disease borrelia, because most of the details of their work was concealed from the public after the war. It is now known that the US government protected leading biological warfare scientists from the notorious Japanese Unit 731 from prosecution for crimes against humanity. Their knowledge and expertise was recruited for American use, and as a result most of their research came under the aegis of (classified) American military science. So, unless you happen to be an American or Japanese biowarfare scientist yourself, with access to the relevant classified material, you are not in a position to say exactly which Borrelia species were studied, or not studied, by the Japanese.

You state that Lyme borrelia were ``not discovered until decades later'. Several manifestations of Lyme disease, for example ACA, have been recognised since the late nineteenth century.

Therefore, in theory, Lyme borrelia organisms could have been isolated for study long before even WW2. Biowarfare agents such as glanders were used in the First World War and crude forms of biowarfare have been practised for thousands of years. To say that WW2 biowarfare experimentation with relapsing fever borrelia is irrelevant to Lyme borrelia because the latter only become identified to civilian medicine in the 1980's is like saying that knowledge on retroviruses acquired prior to the 80's should be ignored by AIDS scientists, because AIDS was not identified until the 80's. It makes no sense. Clearly in studying a new organism scientists would look at those organisms biologically closest to it. And in fact Lyme researchers often cast their net even wider than Borrelia genus, when studying Lyme.

Researchers frequently refer to the characteristics of the spirochetes in general, obviously a much wider grouping which includes the agents of syphilis, gingival infections, Weil's disease, and so on. Finally, for some years it has been known that Lyme could be caused by many strains of borrelia other than B. Recent research has shown that there are Borrelia which cause an illness identical to Lyme, which are genetically closer to Relapsing fever borrelia, than to the burgdorferi group, altogether. (Again, see for details and references.) This lends weight to those who believe that Lyme should be seen above all as a ``borreliosis', much like other borrelioses - serious, multi-system in nature, capable of infecting the nervous system, and of ``persistence in the eye and brain', as military doctor Jay Sanford wrote in the 1970's - another point you, Nighthawk J, removed from the Lyme article. In view of the above, your deletion of my information about Plum island and Erich Traub is misplaced too. The fact that a study indicated the presence of one strain of Borrelia burgdorferi in the US, long before Nazi bioweaponeer Traub was involved with tick research on Plum Island, does not mean that his, or Plum Island's, involvement is therefore irrelevant. Does the existence of various natural strains of anthrax in American soil long ago indicate that anthrax is therefore unrelated to biowarfare?

Elena Cook (Wiki name ``Shine-a-lite') [ 13. June 2008, 03:04 PM: Message edited by: Eight Legs Bad ] -------------------- Justice will be ours. From UK Registered: Oct 2007 IP: Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts) Member # 13742 posted 05:55 PM I thought this was a great post with many excellent points. I'm thankful there are other Lymies out there that have a sharper brain than I, and can delve into this type of stuff and still make sense - if that makes any sense! Lauren -------------------- 'The only way out is through' From mississippi Registered: Nov 2007 IP: Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts) Member # 10397 posted 08:07 PM I'm not real familiar with how wikipedia works. If someone deletes info can it be added again? How does someone gain the authority to change the info? I have heard this is being done with many listings on wikipedia.

So, you really can't trust what you read there. From Northeast, again. Registered: Oct 2006 IP: Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts) Member # 5102 posted 08:07 PM repeating lymielauren's sentiments. An awesome piece. Thank you for being so diligent. From ct, usa Registered: Jan 2004 IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 12928 posted 08:51 PM -------------------- Seeking renewed health & vitality.

--------------------------------- Do not take anything I say as medical advice - I am NOT a dr! From TN Registered: Aug 2007 IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 9882 posted 08:59 PM Wow, nice work Elena! For others, here's the wiki link: -------------------- My biofilm film: 2004 Mycoplasma Pneumonia 2006 Positive after 2 years of hell 2006-08 Marshall Protocol. Killed many bug species 2009 - Beating candida, doing better Lahey Clinic in Mass: what a racquet! From Mass. Registered: Aug 2006 IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 11039 posted 09:08 PM Thank you for keeping a watchful eye on this and all your time, effort and expertise! From South of the North Pole Registered: Jan 2007 IP: bettyg Unregistered posted 02:28 AM 8 legs, any chance you could break up your long solid blocks of text into short paragraphs for us neuro lymies?? Looks interesting but i have to SOB, SCROLL ON BY. Thanks for your consideration. IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 8314 posted 08:18 AM Many thanks Elena for putting the history straight!

Best wishes, Andromeda From UK Registered: Nov 2005 IP: Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts) Member # 9309 posted 09:32 AM Super Job! Thanks for doing this. From USA Registered: May 2006 IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 10778 posted 09:47 AM Elena -- You are one smart cookie who isn't afraid to do the right thing! Thank you sincerely for doing something most of us are unable to do! Let us know if you get a reply!

Allie From Northeast Registered: Dec 2006 IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 13680 posted 02:46 AM Hello Sparkle, I'm pasting in below a post of mine from General Support with some info on how people can help keep Wikpedia's lyme entry accurate. The sabotage that the Steerites do can easily be undone at the click of a button, but it takes perseverance as they seem to have a few people, like this microbiologist, who are on it all the time. Betty, I have broken up some of the longer paragraphs - hope this is better now - apologies. Thanks to all of you for your encouraging words. Take care Elena ----------------------------------------- Hi all, The information source I am talking about is Wikipedia, and while some of you may feel it is not a serious source for people to consult for health information, nevertheless, it is a fact that hundreds of thousands of people do use this online encyclopedia. It is therefore crucial that the Lyme info there is accurate. Wikipedia was set up as a 'people's encyclopedia' where anyone at all may edit entries.

However, there are certain rules, for example, factual information must be referenced by reliable sources etc. They have a small staff that checks these things, and whom you can alert when the rules have been broken. Sadly a number of malicious Steerites have been continually editing the entry to remove material showing the true prevalence, chronicity, severity etc of Lyme, the uselessness of current diagnostic approaches etc.

In addition they have massively censored all information on conflicts of interest. Because people are not required to give their real names, we cannot know for sure who the Steerite posters are, however, one of the worst offenders, who uses the name 'Nighthawkj', has revealed that he is a microbiologist. This microbiologist has been extremely active and has deleted for example, a 1970's quote from scientist Jay Sanford affirming that it is well known that borrelia persist in the brain and eye.

He has also deleted many important paragraphs written by a member of LymeNet which details the connections of leading Steerites like Alan Barbour, Mark Klempner etc with biowarfare. There is only the briefest mention of Blumenthal and NO mention of his finding that the IDSA Lyme committee was corrupt.

I have tried to make corrections today but found the uploading would not work, even though my computer seems okay otherwise. However it will take many hands to correct the amount of misleading statements and damaging deletions that the mysterious 'microbiologist' and his friends have done.

You can easily register for free at You choose a username and password and although the rules may seem very complex at first, there are tutorials to help. It is not necessary to learn all these rules - you can simply click on the Edit link next to any section in the Lyme article you wish to change or correct. There is a section called 'Talk' where people discuss the changes they made, and you can also access the entire history of all changes ever made, with the dates they were made and the usernames of those who made them. The Lyme article is at Elena quote: Originally posted by sparkle7: I'm not real familiar with how wikipedia works. If someone deletes info can it be added again?

-------------------- Justice will be ours. From UK Registered: Oct 2007 IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 8314 posted 03:45 PM Just had a thought, the name of the mysterious microbiologist, Nighthawk J, sounds kind of military doesn't it? BW, Andromeda From UK Registered: Nov 2005 IP: bettyg Unregistered posted 06:44 PM 8 legs, thanks for breaking this up for comprehension for us neuro lymies!! IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 13680 posted 07:47 PM quote: Originally posted by Allie. Let us know if you get a reply!

Allie The coward hasn't replied; instead he sneaked in to remove the word 'chronicum' from erythema chronicum migrans. How the Steere camp hate anything that suggests Lyme is chronic! Unfortunately it appears Nighthawk J has enlisted the help of someone arguably even more vicious than himself.

Here is a copy of the comment by his anonymous friend 'RetroS1mone' (who bears a curious resemblance in writing style to John Nowakowski), followed by my reply: COMMENT BY RETROS1MONE::I deleted the biowarfare allegations. This kind of nonsense has no place on Wikipedia and violates like a whole laundry list of Wikipedia policies especially [[WP:BLP]] since some of these scientists are still alive.

Please do not try to add this back in. There are many Internet forums where it would be appreciated and I encourage you to go there. 13:41, 18 June 2008 (UTC) REPLY to NIGHTHAWK J by ELENA: Nighthawk J, I have restored the word 'chronicum' in 'erythema chronicum migrans'. That was the name used by the medical establishment for nearly a century, and even used initially by Steere himself, until a political decision was made to obfuscate the chronic nature of Lyme. By the 1990's virtually all Steere camp authors had dropped the word 'chronicum'.

Nighthawk J, the rash was given that name, and had its name maintained for nearly a century, for only one reason - because doctors observed the persistence of the rash. It's not rocket science. REPLY TO RETROS1MONE by ELENA: RetroS1mone, I have deleted all your edits, which range from vandalism to the insertion of dangerous medical misinformation to libel. Your wholesale disregard for the harm you are potentially causing to patients who might read this material is reminiscent of the style of Dr John Nowakowski, who was eventually convicted of libel for his anonymous internet activities. I am sharing the details of what you have done with the Lyme community via internet forums such as Lyme Net, just as I have done with Nighthawk J's similar malicious edits. You removed information I added, which informed people that the EM rash occurs in less than half of cases. This is highly important information.

A person recently bitten by a tick, feeling ill but lacking the 'classic' rash, could make a life-saving decision to seek medical treatment as a result of reading that information. Instead you inserted a quote alleging that EM is found in 90% of infected patients.

This figure has no factual basis, as it derives from old studies, some written by Steere, in which the ***very criteria for the definition*** of 'infected patient', in most cases, was the presence of an EM rash! Pure circular reasoning, in other words. Your excuse for removing my statement was that my source (ILADS) is 'not a reliable source'.

ILADS is an association of doctors and allied health professionals, nearly all of whom have extensive clinical experience in treating Lyme. They have the support of tens of thousands of patients - clear proof that they are competent in their field. What better indicator is there of physician competence in a modern society, than the continuing loyalty and admiration of tens of thousands of patients? How then can you allege they ILADS are not a reliable source?! This is a flagrant violation of Wikipedia's 'NPOV' (neutral point of view policy'. You edited a paragraph stating that the reliability of serology for diagnostic purposes remains controversial, replacing it with this: 'These tests are sufficiently reliable to support diagnoses.' Once again, a blatant violation of 'NPOV'.

The reliability of the antibody tests is so controversial that scientists from BOTH camps have commented on the need for improved diagnostic methods. While those in the Steere camp generally claim, publicly anyway, that existing serology can rule out Lyme, privately they hold patents in which they explicitly state that the genetic material, technique etc being patented is intended to address the problem of the ***currently unreliable tests***. They mention problems not only with specificity but also with sensitivity. I am happy to provide examples of this if you require it. You have removed reliably sourced evidence criticising the Klempner study without any grounds for doing so, other than your own bias. You have removed an entire paragraph, which showed a very balanced point of view, providing information about both opposing camps, and replaced it with this biased remark: 'Disagreement has arisen in the medical community over the existence and definition of a condition known to proponents of its diagnosis as 'chronic Lyme.' This condition includes several different patient groups, according to investigators of the Ad Hoc International Lyme Disease Group publishing in the 'New England Journal of Medicine' You then quote at length from only ONE camp, ie the Steere camp, (represented by the self-appointed International Ad Hoc Lyme Group).

You have removed this factual paragraph:- 'However ILADS has accused AAN of simply repackaging the IDSA guidelines as three coauthors of the new guideline, including the lead author, were also coauthors of the IDSA Lyme guideline. There is significant disagreement with this guideline.'

-and replaced it with an accusation that the ILADS policy is to diagnose Lyme disease in 'patients with a well-defined illness that has nothing to do with 'Borrelia''. This is a baseless and libellous statement against an organisation of professionals. You have compounded the libellous allegation mentioned, with this unscientific and offensive allegation: 'ILADS advocates extended courses of antibiotics, lasting for months, years, or indefinitely, for what it calls chronic Lyme patients. ILADS also advocates for insurance companies to pay their members to administer long-term antibiotic treatments, despite a complete lack of evidence of efficacy.'

Where is the evidence that any ILADS doctor has written a prescription for antibiotics 'indefinitely'? Further, why have you ignored peer-reviewed evidence, for example the recent Fallon study, documenting efficacy of repeated courses of antibiotics in ameliorating symptoms in chronic Lyme? You have added material alleging that patients have been treated with dangerous bismuth compounds and with malaria (to induce fever, an early-20th century treatment for spirochetal diseases).

How many people do you believe have been treated by these methods? While there are charlatans in every medical arena, the number of Lyme patients who have died of malaria, or bismuth poisoning can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand, with several fingers left over. Those who have died of complications of misdiagnosed or inadequately treated Lyme, on the other hand, are uncountable, as no epidemiology exists, but likely add up to a staggering toll.

Fatal outcomes from Lyme include third-degree heart block, stroke-like sequelae, MS and ALS-like syndromes, perinatal mortality of children born to infected mothers, road accidents due to fatigue and/or lack of concentration at the wheel, violent encounters/accidents due to neuropsychiatric illness, and Lyme-related suicides. Further, recent studies by researchers such as MacDonald and Miklossy indicate that a proportion of Alzheimers cases may be due to Lyme. This could add hundreds of thousands more deaths to the figure.

You have removed the entire section on Lyme controversy, containing information on Blumenthal's findings that the 2006 IDSA Lyme guidelines were authored by a panel riddled with financial conflicts of interest, and containing much factual and relevant information documenting links between Steere camp scientists and biowarfare establishment. Instead, you replaced all that important information with this: 'When the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) issued new guidelines for Lyme diagnosis in 2006, recommending actual evidence of Lyme before diagnosis and treatment, the ILADS and allied chronic Lyme advocacy organizations quickly condemned the guidelines. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who had received awards from chronic Lyme advocacy groups.began a probe into the IDSA panel responsible for the guidelines, putatively on anti-trust grounds.

'.Although Blumenthal alleged conflicts of interest on the part of IDSA, he declined to name the allegedly conflicted panelists or detail what he considered their conflict to be. The IDSA panel responded by stating they had been wrongly 'accused of profiting financially by recommending to not treat with unnecessary and prolonged courses of antibiotics,'.' The fact that someone of the standing of Ct. Attorney General alleged financial conflict of interest, coupled with the fact that the IDSA responded by agreeing to set up a brand new panel to review the original guidelines, is an indication that financial conflict of interest was clearly present. Indeed some of the 2006 IDSA Lyme panel members have very openly revealed their conflicts of interest. For example Raymond Dattwyler directs a biotech company developing recombinant Lyme antigens, which it has incorporated into a bioweapons vaccine against Plague. Which brings us back to the biowarfare issue.

This is arguably the greatest conflict of interest of all, with very many of the Steere camp's most prominent figures involved. You have accused me of libelling 'living scientists'. I have provided solid references for all my assertions regarding Steere camp researchers and biowarfare science.

I challenge you to show me one example where I have accused even ONE scientist, living or dead, of being linked to biowarfare research ***without any factual basis***. Elena Cook ('Shine-a-lite' on Wikipedia)~~~ -------------------- Justice will be ours. From UK Registered: Oct 2007 IP: Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts) Member # 9780 posted 08:06 PM Thanks -- you go girl!

You are speaking for many of us. From home Registered: Aug 2006 IP: Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts) Member # 5831 posted 08:48 PM Elena, you can take your complaint to wikipedia itself. I had a weird attack on myself by a guy who was mad that I gave a friend of his a bad amazon.com review for a self published book.

He tried to get my wikipedia entry banned. Various wikipedians who are in charge of disputes chimed in, and he was negated as a 'sock puppet' and my entry was kept intact.

I think a sock puppet is someone who just comes on to cause trouble to one person, I think. If you have evidence his alterations are with malign intent or to obscure valid perspectives, you can take it to those who handle disputes at wikipedia.

He cannot then keep defacing the page. They deal with this all the time, especially on controversial political issues.

Now, this guy is not exactly the right admin, but maybe he can get you to the right person. He seems to be a librarian with a specialty in science: On the other hand, you can't reference your own article. This is an encyclopedia and they have fairly strict rules. They don't let you reference blogs either. So you have to reference reputable 3rd party sources such as scientific articles or mainstream news media. From united states Registered: Jun 2004 IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 13680 posted 03:46 AM Hi Oxygenbabe, Thanks for your post. I will try to contact that person. However I suspect that the whole Lyme debate will be too complicated for Wikipedia staff.

I dont think they will understand that what the Steerites are doing is malicious, unless many many of us send in complaints all at once. Another Lyme Netter private messaged me asking whether we can report the situation to a Wikipedia moderator. Here is the reply i wrote: Wikipedia is a very anarchic kind of thing, they allow complete freedom to anyone at all to edit their encyclopedia.

They seem to believe that if someone does something malicious, the 'good sense' of everyone else will prevail and the damage will be undone by other editors. Sadly it can be pretty complicated to edit articles and a lot of Lymies, weighed down by cognitive probs, are put off by this. The Steere camp periodically send people in to do blatant vandalism, eg remove important phrases and substitute nonsense or pornography. It's possible to report that to the Wikipedia staff, but they tend to do that completely anonymously, using different IP addresses each time and without setting up an account.

Where they pull out, for example, stuff about what Blumenthal found and substitute IDSA rubbish, they do use their personal accounts. This is still anonymous, but their static computer IPs, and possibly other identifying info may be known to Wikipedia technical staff, who can take action if their are enough complaints. The matter is difficult though because, lacking Lyme-specific knowledge, Wikipedia staff will see this just as a dispute between two medical camps rather than he 'vandalism' that it is.

It's necessary to show they have violated specific Wikipedia 'policies' eg 'Neutral Point of View'. You can do this when you remove their garbage, by explaining why you have edited their edits.

You do this in a section called 'Discussion'. To get to the Discussion page, you just click on the 'Discussion' tab on top of the page itself. You then choose what section you want to add your comment to, click the link called 'Edit', and add your comment.

Vanness Wu In Between Download Skype there. The best way to keep the Lyme article accurate, is to visit the page frequently and click on the 'History' tab at the top. This brings you to the History page, which lists all changes that have been made in chronological order. The most recent edits are at the top. You can then click to compare two versions. If you see that someone has vandalised or added false info, you can click the link called 'Undo'.

Sometimes, if they have many changes or if several of them have collaborated in making changes, it's necessary to do what they call a Revert - this will revert to the last 'decent' version which you indicate. Info on how to do this is in the Help section. The best way to reverse their changes is to first register with Wikipedia so that you have an account (you dont have to give your real name).

Then go to this page which teaches you how to view the changes that have been made. Once you spot a malicious change, just click the Undo link next to its entry in the History page. If even 5% of people on Lyme Net checked the History page once a week for malicious edits by the Steere camp, we could probably keep the article accurate permanently.

The Steerites only have a few miserable sad cases working on this, probably Dr Nowakowski, McSweegan and one or two others. Remember that this is a resource used by hundreds of thousands of people and misinformation could mean the difference between someone new seeking treatment and ending up disabled for life. That's why it's so important to keep it accurate. Any help from LymeNetters is appreciated! It does look very complex when you first join, but once you learn a few simple rules from reading the tutorials, it becomes much easier.

Elena -------------------- Justice will be ours. From UK Registered: Oct 2007 IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 13680 posted 03:55 AM One good thing about Wikipedia is that their software sometimes catches out people who are trying to be sneaky. After the vandal calling himself 'RetroS2mone' added all the nonsense which I criticised above, he tried to make it appear he was being scientific. But later he added this rant, in the 'Discussion' section, which reveals his true colours.

This time he did not log in to his account, and hoped it would appear anonymously. But because he used the same computer which he has used when posting with his Wikipedia account, the software identified him and told the world it was the same man.

This is his rant below. You may want to grab a plastic bowl, or other vomit receptacle, before reading this, however.

Also please note his crocodile tears over those who suffer chronic Lyme symptoms. - - - - Tirade by 'retroS1mone': 'Let's be perfectly clear. IDSA is a org with 8000 members, then you have AAN. The CDC backs them. There is the Ad Hoc International Lyme Disease Group.

There is the medical literature. ILADS is a few hundred docs and nurses who profit by giving people with unexplained symptoms months or years of very expensive antibiotics with no evidence they have an infection and no evidence the antibiotics work if they did. And they want insurance companies to pay for them. Talk about a conflict of interest! I have no idea if chronic lyme is real or not and I really don't care too much except for the people who suffer from symptoms.

I do know the medical community is almost unanimous on chronic lyme and the literature has gotten more clear in the past year, and that's what counts by Wikipedia. I re wrote the major ILADS slant to reflect consensus in science and medicine. You can say there is evenly divided opinion, doesn't make it so.

--Preceding unsigned comment added by RetroS1mone (talk * contribs) 13:38, 18 June 2008 (UTC) ' - - - Anyone feel like replying to this lowlife? In my post above I give details on how you can write in to the Discussion section of the Wikipedia Lyme page. Elena -------------------- Justice will be ours. From UK Registered: Oct 2007 IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 13680 posted 03:29 PM The same Steerite troublemaker has deleted our good info yet again, this time claiming, as his excuse, that ILADS is 'not a reliable source' of info. At the end of my post is his latest garbage - vomit bowls at the ready. I will respond to his lies and falsifications, but it would be really helpful if others could help out with this situation.

I think what we need is a little committee of people, ideally from more than one time zone, who can take it in shifts to guard that Wikipedia Lyme page and make sure Steerites cannot vandalise it in this way. If anyone is willing to help, please p-m me or email me at elena444cook@yahoo.co.uk and I will be happy to explain the technical side of how to do it. Here's the latest crap from 'Retros1mone': Elena Cook/Shine a lite, Did you change your name recently?

I am new to this but I looked at the edit history of this article, there is an editor 'Freyfaxi' who writes like you and says the same stuff until February and also goes by 'Elena Cook' on other websites. In answer to your questions, I will say this once, The ILADS website is a self-published source. It is kind of acceptable if your reporting what they say but not a RS for other information. An essay by the ILADS secretary on the ILADS website and a position statement by the ILADS secretary and past president Stricker in a low impact journal does not support the statement there are two equal standards of care for chronic lyme a condition most scientists and doctors dispute. You could say, 'Two ILADS members claim there are two standards of care in the medical community' but not much more.

The fact that an Attorney General alleged conflict of interest means he alleged conflict of interest. The case was settled with no findings of antitrust violation.

Potential conflicts of interest by IDSA members are disclosed on papers they write. Compare to ILADS members who don't mention their organization wants to treat patients with no evidence of infection with months or years of antibiotics and insurance companies should pay for the unproven treatments.

A BSL-4 lab is a lab to work with dangerous pathogens. They don't have to be bioweapons. Work on a vaccine or on anthrax or other pathogens is not necessarily bioweapons research. The CDC unit you refer to as an offensive bioweapons unit was a surveillance unit to detect emerging diseases.

Your bioweapons charges are based on two relevant sources, a book where the author raises the possibility of pathogens excaping Plum Island, and without any direct evidence as reviews say. The second source is a radio talk show that mentions something you wrote under the pseudonym 'Elena Cook.' That is not a RS. The book is also not a RS except to say, 'Michael Carroll, in Lab 257, raises the possibility that Lyme could be an escaped pathogen from Plum Island.' The section on bioweapons allegations has no place on wikipedia without better sources (a better source), I said once before and I will not say again. Wikidia is not a soapbox to indulge one's fantasies about government conspiracies unless those fantasies coincide with information in reliable sources.

RetroS1mone talk 14:45, 21 June 2008 (UTC) -------------------- Justice will be ours. From UK Registered: Oct 2007 IP: Honored Contributor (25K+ posts) Member # 12673 posted 03:51 PM - I'm just getting to this thread. It will take a while to read all this - Elena, thanks for the links and for your efforts to facilitate easy reading. - From Tranquil Tree House in my dreams Registered: Jul 2007 IP: Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts) Member # 5831 posted 08:36 PM Elena, they don't need to understand lyme to moderate the piece correctly. If something has a legitimate reference (news, journal articles) you can reference it. Your statements should be objective reporting.

Download Ebook Perahu Kertas Full Pdf more. If someone keeps changing that, then they are a vandal. They can be stopped.

Unfortunately--what you posted that he wrote is basically correct. Which doesn't mean I don't agree with you and admire many of the connections you've made. But in your most recent post, all that he said, he's actually right. If I were trying to show both sides of the lyme controversy, I would reference the multitude of articles about chronic lyme that appear so often now. Such as the Philadelphia Weekly; Pam Weintraub's new book; etc.

Also Under Our Skin. I'm pretty sure it was reviewed by a major medical journal, maybe Nature? I'm not remembering specifically now but *that* is a way to legimitately report the controversy--this new documentary, reviewed in a major medical journal. And when Pam's book gets reviewed in NEJM, another legitimate reference.

You would then be reporting on a phenomenon that is emerging, and your reporting would be legitimate. The biowarfare hypothesis is one that makes sense to me but that would have to be under, Controversial Theories, or some heading like that. Lab 257 would be an example of theories that abound, but citing it for actual evidence is dicey because though it was an interesting read, it was not well-referenced journalism. (This is just my opinion as a journalist). That's what makes wikipedia as good an encyclopedia as the Britannica. Even though created by the populace, there are pretty good rules in place for correct referencing.

So there is a way to outsmart your enemies and that's by using legitimate sources. From united states Registered: Jun 2004 IP: LymeNet Contributor Member # 13680 posted 02:48 AM Hi Oxygenbabe If the only references in the stuff this man is removing/defacing where what he said, you'd be right. But you've made the mistake of assuming this man has a shred of integrity - he doesn't. He's taken out whole sections at a time, as well as key phrases, to do with chronic Lyme, all of which were ***already*** supplied with detailed references, from the peer-reviewed medical literature.

He's tried to pretend that the only reference for the material he removed was the Ilads website -it's nonsense. As far as ILADS themselves are concerned, they most definitely do meet Wikipedia's official criteria for a 'Reliable source' - even for Ilads articles which have not yet been published in the med literature. As far as the biowarfare info, this is actually listed under a section called 'Controversy' anyway.

His accusation that the only refs in there are Lab 257 and my article are again, a lie. I've pasted in the existing refs from the section in the article that discusses biowarfare below. They include a leading national newspaper; the NIH; official info from Boston University and Univ of California re directors of their associated biowarfare labs (Klempner and Alan Barbour respectively); the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research; and a letter from the head of a California public health department. All of these sources easily meet the 'reliable Source' criteria of Wikipedia. I only referred to my article because within it there are additional equally hard references supporting other related statements. You are right that Lab 257 is not well referenced in the sense that, although the author included a long list of heavyweight sources at the end, he did not index his work. It is a very difficult job for the reader to try and match individual assertions in the book to some of the sources.

However I may just do some of that and add the specific sources in. The man's goal is clearly to censor all material indicating the existence of chronic Lyme, as well as the Blumenthal investigation, the biowarfare aspect and many other issues.

Guest post by Hans Custers. Nederlandse versie. A very, ehhrmm interesting piece on Variable Variability, Victor Venema’s blog:. And I don’t mean interesting in a rhetoric, suggestive way; I mean it is a well-written and well-reasoned article, worth reading. Victor writes about the meme regularly used by the anti climate science campaign, often supported by some straw man arguments, that the science of human impacts on climate would not be falsifiable.

He shows it’s nonsense, by giving some examples of how it could be falsified. Or, more likely, already would have been falsified, if the science would be wrong. Victor’s post inspired me to think of more options to falsify generally accepted viewpoints in climate science. If there are any ‘climate change skeptics’ who want to contribute to real science, they might see this as a challenge. Maybe they can come up with a research proposal, based on one of the options for falsification. Like proper scientists would do. First, a few more things about falsifiability in general.

Bart wrote a about the subject four years ago, explaining that a bird in the sky does not disprove gravity. What looks like a refutation at first, might on second thoughts be based on partial or total misunderstanding of the hypothesis. Natural climate forcings and variations do not exclude human impacts. Therefore, the existence of these natural factors in itself, cannot falsify anthropogenic climate change. A real skeptic is cautious about both scientific evidence and refutations. ‘Climate change skeptics’ like to mention the single black swan, that disproves the hypothesis that all swans are white.

Of course that is true, unless that single black swan appears to be found near some oil spill. Some of the falsifications that I mention later on might be somewhat cheap, or far-fetched. It is not very easy to find options to falsify the science of human impacts on climate. Not because climate scientists don’t respect philosophical principles of science, but simply because there’s such a huge amount of evidence.

There are not a lot of findings that would disprove all the evidence at once. A scientific revolution of this magnitude only happens very rarely. Whoever thinks differently, doesn’t understand how science works. Karl Popper Even more, the claim ‘The AGW hypothesis is unfalsifiable’ demonstrates a lack of understanding of Popper’s ideas, in which falsifiability is so important. I don’t think Popper’s philosophy implies that some three word hypothesis – Anthropogenic Global Warming – can be rejected by nothing but a few simple claims. Popper would expect a more serious intellectual effort from a scientist.

First, he will have to find an accurate wording for his hypothesis. The next step is some thorough thinking about the consequences. This will help him to design tests that can either support or falsify his idea. If, in the end, the result of the test appears to be worthwhile, the scientist will write a paper on this whole enterprise. As a matter of fact, the ‘AGW-hypothesis’ is not a hypothesis in the Popperian sense. The human impact on climate is a theory, supported by many hypotheses, each of them tested according to widely accepted scientific standards.

Just as Popper and his successors in the philosophy of science would have wanted. One more thing. The philosophical principle of falsifiability and the feasibility of tests for it are two different subjects. Scientists are still busy, because the technology did not exist in Einstein’s days. And it is highly unlikely that the scientists that proposed the Higgs boson ever even dreamed of the, because it was beyond anyone’s imagination at the time. Philosophy of science does not set a time frame for hypotheses testing.

The issues involved in the testing of hypotheses are the story of almost every scientist’s life. They’re not sitting back, thinking of new and brilliant ideas, most of the time. Instead, they are busy digging for data, messing with measuring equipment, or evaluating errors in experiments. For climate scientists, one of the major issues is the pace at which they can get new information: one year of data every year. And one year of data is not a lot for climate research. There are no test tube planets for climate experiments.

They will have to do with what is left: observations of (changes in) the climate in the present and the past and simulations of the relevant processes in the climate system in computer models. Most self-proclaimed skeptics seem to have objections to the latter as well. Wouldn’t it be nice if they, just for a change, would say how it should be done? That’s it for falsifiability in general. Here are the 10 way to disprove the human impact on climate. A drop in global temperatures for some period of time to the level of 50 years ago or longer, without a clear cause The average global temperature is almost 1 °C higher now than it was in the early 20 th century.

The widget by Skeptical Science (which unfortunately does not work very well in a WordPress blog) adds some perspective to the amount of energy accumulating in the climate system. These huge amounts of energy do not simply stay in the climate system without a cause. It is what we expect to happen, based on the greenhouse theory. And there’s no other explanation that is supported by a reasonable amount of evidence. It would be very clear that science overlooked something important, if all the energy would suddenly escape without something extraordinary happening (like a huge volcanic eruption), or hide in some unknown place.

A drop in global sea level for some period of time There are two major causes for sea level rise: thermal expansion of seawater and the melting of land ice. Water extraction from and (temporal) accumulation on land play a minor role. At this moment, thermal expansion is the main factor.

This is evidence for warming of the oceans, which is important because the oceans can store much more heat than the atmosphere. Thus, the ocean level falling, would not only be evidence for cooling of the oceans; it would be strong evidence that the climate system as a whole would be losing energy.

(Note: pure water has a strange property: the density decreases with an increase in temperature between 0 and 4 °C. This effect disappears with increasing salinity. For almost all sea water, the maximum density is at freezing point).

Changes in sea level on a short term are not caused by thermal expansion or contraction, so they do not falsify anthropogenic climate change. The figure below, from the, for instance, shows a substantial seasonal variation. This variation can be filtered out of that data, and that’s the graph that is usually shown. A strong rise or decline in the atmospheric CO 2 level Since the late 50’s, the shows an ongoing rise in the amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere. If there would be a sudden huge change in the CO 2 level, without a clear, demonstrable cause, that would be proof that our knowledge of the carbon cycle falls short.

Climate change skeptics sometimes refer to a graph by, in which thousands of megatons of CO 2 mysteriously seem to appear in atmosphere within a few years, and then disappear again, causing wild fluctuations in CO 2 levels. The fluctuations miraculously stop in 1958, exactly when Keeling started his measurements on Mauna Loa. Maybe we are being fooled for more than half a century by all CO 2 molecules in the world. But it’s more likely that the graph below, from Cripps, father and son Keeling’s home base, displays the more accurate data. The discovery that climate forcings in the past were much larger, or temperature changes much smaller, than science thinks One of the ways to estimate climate sensitivity, is by looking at temperature changes in the past and the knowledge of their causes. It is very likely that the magnitude of a temperature change mostly depends on the magnitude of a change in the radiation balance at the top of the atmosphere, rather than the exact cause of this change.

In other words: a Watt per square meter is a Watt per square meter, no matter if it comes from the sun, from an increased greenhouse effect, or something else. So, smaller temperature changes in the past, of larger forcings causing them, would be evidence for a low climate sensitivity. Climate change skeptics often claim that relatively small change in the radiations balance are responsible for a significant part of the warming that we’ve seen since the early 20 th century, or for temperature changes in a more distant past. They don’t seem to realize that these claims imply a higher, rather than a lower climate sensitivity than is generally assumed by scientists. Warming of the stratosphere Many changes that are happening in the climate system are caused by warming itself.

Observations of these changes cannot be used as evidence for the cause of warming. But there are some changes – fingerprints – that are specific for the increased greenhouse effect. Cooling of the stratosphere is one of these fingerprints. This cooling is confirmed by measurements, as is shown in the figure below, from ‘‘ by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Stratospheric warming is not the only human fingerprint that can be found. More detailed information on fingerprints can be found in last year’s paper: ‘‘ by Santer et al.

Major errors in equipment in satellites, measuring outgoing longwave radiation We can see the absorption of heat by greenhouse gases in satellite measurements of longwave radiation that leaves the earth’s atmosphere. The absorption bands of CO2, methane, ozone and water vapor are clearly visible in these measurements, as shown in the figure below. Whoever can demonstrate the measurements to be wrong, will make it into the history books. It would not only disprove the human impact on climate, it would wipe quite a lot of established physical science off the table. Evidence of a substantial fall of relative humidity with rising temperature If specific humidity would not follow temperature, the relative humidity would be lower in a warmer world. Then, there would not be a positive water vapor feedback, or it would be very small.

It is highly likely that this would make matters rather worse than better. Our greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a smaller rise in temperatures than expected, but the downside would probably be disastrous: world-wide drought. Unless Clausius and Clapeyron were wrong. A source of heat in the climate system that we do not know yet All the evidence shows the heat in the climate system has been increasing for decades, and still is.

Assuming even climate change skeptics do not dispute the law of conservation of energy, there has to be a source of heat somewhere. Who knows, one day, we might find some kind of mini-sun, hidden deep in the oceans.

It would be a game changer for climate science. A fundamental flaw in the scientific understanding of radiation physics or thermodynamics This one is especially for the ‘slayers’, who deny that there is a greenhouse effect at all.

Their ideas are either utter nonsense, or they are about to discover the very biggest mistake in the history of science. It would mean that we’d have to reevaluate fundamental physical science, that has been undisputed for decades to centuries, like the Stefan-Boltzman law or even the laws of thermodynamics. We would probably end up rewriting every single physics book in the world. CO 2 molecules appear to behave differently in the wild, than they do in a laboratory I added this last one as a ‘tribute’ to one of the veterans of the war on climate science in The Netherlands. He, whose name I will not mention, does not dispute the greenhouse effect, but thinks it is relevant to mention that absorption of longwave radiation by CO 2 has only been measured ‘in laboratory conditions’. He’s wrong, of course, because there are satellite measurements as well.

But let’s forget about that. I think the idea of molecules behaving differently in the lab, compared to their behavior in the wild, is so creative that it deserves attention.

I won’t go into the consequences of this revolutionary hypothesis. I will leave that, dear reader, to your imagination.