Dear group,
You may wish to curse my name because I am actually the one who
evicted
Ilena Rosenthal from the Trash Talk board (sponsored by the junkscience.com
site) and it was entirely my decision to do so. As a result, her voluminous
stream of disconnected babble has been imposed on you. Please accept this
as my expression of regret.
Also, as it appears that she has gone through most of her standard dog and
pony show, I'll take a moment to correct the record.
First, it has been said that Ilena always lies. That is wrong. She only
lies when the truth is not convenient. Ad hom? Certainly, technically -
but supported by data.
For example: While the regular posters on the TT board did greet her claims
related to breast implants with skepticism, we debated and investigated. In
fact there was a substantial turn-around in the opinion of the majority of
the group. Ilena would have you believe that there is a corporate line
which everyone there toes. The truth, however, is that after considerable
debate the majority came to conclude:
1) The conflict between the oft-cited 3-5% failure rate and Ilena's
oft-cited 80% (+/-) failure rate is in the fine print, not in the numbers.
The former is an _annual_ rate, the latter is for a period in the range of
ten to twenty years. That is, the numbers are in general agreement with one
another.
2) That the failure rate is at least alarming, and that the
incidence of
localized damage to tissue is undeniable. We also hypothesized
the
existence of several mechanisms for other illnesses to occur as a result
of
leaking implants.
3) Items 1 and 2 combined to make it obvious, to
the regular TT group, that
breast implants, for trivial reasons, are foolish
... and most of us
actively attempt to persuade people not to take the risk
without hard
consideration.
4) However, we were able to find nothing to
support the claims of Ilena,
and some others, that implants lead to a wide
array of nebulous mystery
maladies, and we were unable to find any reason to
discard the
epidemiological studies which suggest, by the process of
elimination, that
these maladies were hysteric.
Anyone who wants to go through the archives to verify this is invited to do
so.
Here's the url for that now, inactive forum.
Later I - and only I - discontinued the breast implant topic as a separate
forum within the board. The reasons were simple.
First, contrary to Ilena's claims, the topic is not banned from the TT
board, it was merely redefined as a minor topic within a different forum as
it no longer generated sufficient, on-topic conversation to sustain a
separate forum.
Also, a lot of people were getting upset after they wondered onto the board
expecting to join a sympathetic support group. Of course, they were quite
disappointed when they found that, instead, they'd wondered into a group of
skeptics who were not about to accept anything at face value without
examination.
Ilena's ejection from the TT board would have been justified for reasons
that you have probably observed here: Reposting the same things, again and
again; cluttering the works with massive cut & paste posts of marginal
relevance; and her consistent, repetitious bleatings that everyone who
disagreed with her was either a liar, a fool, or the member of some sort of
conspiracy.
But that's not why she got the boot. I, personally, threw her off of the
board because she acquired personal information about another member, who
chose to post anonymously, and used that information as if to threaten. She
followed up her threats by attempting, via email, to get that poster in
trouble with her employer.
Even then, the termination of Ilena's posting privileges was not considered
by me to be permanent. She had the option, at the time, of merely stating
that she wouldn't do it again ... and I would have flipped her posting
switch back to the "on" position. But, apparently, the new feather for her
martyr hat was more important to her than her postings. Now, of course,
after witnessing her rather vigorous campaign of lies, reinstatement is no
longer an option. Sorry - you're stuck with her.
In the history of that board, no more than a half-dozen people have had
their posting privileges revoked. Ilena was the first. (Perhaps I should
send her a plaque?) A few of those suspended were hard core right wing
whackoes (my characterization, not theirs). Usually the left-wing idiots
seem to be more delicate and leave when their feelings are hurt by people
who question their ability to think. A few were members of what appears to
me to be the Ilena cult. By their behavior, it was clear that their only
function was to disrupt the exchange of ideas. Unlike Ilena, I won't
speculate about, or fabricate stories about, their motivations. It's not
worth the trouble, even for amusement ... not even when thoughts about
pheromones cross my mind.
But I should correct a few more of her misrepresentations about the TT
board. First, the "staff" is all volunteer (in spite of our standing joke
about the paychecks being lost in the mail for a year now), and the prime
directive is to do whatever is necessary to maintain a place where a useful
free exchange of ideas, that lead to the debunking of junk-science, can
happen. Of course, we use a more balanced definition of junk science than
Ilena would suggest. We have observed that junk science comes from all
directions, industry, governmental agencies, politicians, feel-good citizens
groups, and occasionally, from actual scientists. Much junk science is
actually the result of valid research being misrepresented, quoted out of
context, or excerpted without valuable qualifiers, so as to create an
impression which the researchers would not support.
Unfortunately, it does appear that most of what is initially identified as
probable junk, does turn out to be junk. So our initial responses tend to
be more critical than neutral, just because of that accumulated experience.
Ilena would have you believe that the staff marches in lock step to serve
whatever Milloy's issues might be. Here we have support for the old notion
that the best liars make good use of half-truths. I would suggest that most
staff members do, in fact, agree with Milloy's positions most of the time.
I do. I also have disagreed with him on a number of issues and verbalized
that disagreement on the board. Of course, my view is that I agree with him
most of the time because, most of the time he happens to be right. If
that's a conspiracy, so be it.
Regarding her suggestions that Milloy runs the TT board and causes people to
be expelled, to quiet them, you may be safely amused. I'm the guy with the
switch and the only one - ever - to have flipped it or to have made the
decision to flip it. Individual moderators have the power to lock down
threads or edit posts made within their forums - for relevance or to delete
unacceptable language - but I am the only one to ever lock anyone out.
On checking my records, I see that I have had fewer than a half-dozen email
exchanges with Milloy this year - one being a suggestion that a certain post
be removed because the poster was, apparently, cheering Timothy McVeigh's
approach for protesting governmental actions. (I ended up revoking that
person's posting privileges as well, although she was an extremely well-read
and energetic source of information which many of us found to be useful.)
There have been two occasions where Milloy did request that I reconsider my
act of locking out certain individuals. I did reconsider both cases, but
both of those individuals are still gone.
Now you have it. The whole truth, and nothing but.
Please accept this correction of the record as my apology for diverting
Ilena's energy in the direction of your forum. It was not by design -
although I do confess a certain joy at not seeing her name pop up every day
and not having to read her tripe.
Since Ilena's pattern is to attempt to counteract any criticisms with masses
of irrelevancies and fabrications, I don't plan to respond to anything she
writes in rebuttal. But if any of you who frequent this forum would like
more detail, please ask for it. Or, you wish, visit the Trash Talk forum at
http://www.cfis.org/ to see
for yourself. You do not have to be a member to
read, only to post.
Membership is free. The parent of the TT Board is at
http://www.junkscience.com.
There, you will almost certainly see positions
taken that you agree with
and some that you disagree with. You are invited
to present any case in
agreement or disagreement on the TT board.
Cordially,
Bill Holt
