Similar energy

Left: John Holmes, 1974.

Right: Arthur Tress, "The Singing Chair", 1977.

The 1970s were the heydays of human / furniture hybridisation. No-one knows why.

On the Internet no-one knows you're a dog barking mad

Enquiring minds want to know more about the JBR Health Education & Research Organisation, or society, or whatever. For its footprint on the Interlattice betrays few clues as to the activities of this nebulous body.

JBR Health Education and Research Organization
CEO and President: Prof. (Dr). B. Rai
CTO and Chief: Dr. J. Kaur
COO and Vice President: Dr. H. Singh
Directors: Prof. Marc Watt, Prof. Peter Jensen, Er. Charles Lewis, DR. Kirk Horlbeck ,Prof. B.K. behera
Patron: Prof. S.C. Anand

JBR Group Leaders:

... 19.Dr. Alexvier Gulyaeva, JBR Transcriptomics, Russia
20.Prof. John F,JBR Proteomics, Germany
21.Dr. Frederic, JBR Genomics, Romania
22.Prof. H.O.Griefa, JBR Protein and Lipid, Ireland
23.Dr. Alexander, JBR Bioinformatics, Sweden
24.Prof. Srdjan Djurovic, JBR Lipid Science and Technology, Norway
25.Prof. Louis Fontain, JBR Cardiology, USA
26.Prof. Erosa Elgebaly, JBR Heart Diseases, New Zealand
27.Prof. Sara Badia, JBR Hypertension, Spain ...

114 Group Leaders are listed for academic specialties ranging from Agriculture to Quantum Technology, but many are fabricated or identity-stolen. It may be that JBR is an acronym for "Just Balwant Rai", for the only person actually flaunting his membership as an academic affiliation, and basking in the group's reflected glory, is a certain Balwant Rai - CEO and President; also journal editor, conference entrepreneur and Space Dentist.

Really, Uncle Smut? Is this going to be another of your interminable tales of "Incorrigible fabulists who flourish in the Interweave because their mental failings mesh so well with the imperatives of social media"?

Oh yes, and I admit that "Space Dentist" sounds like one of Hawkwind's more regrettable live albums. Or perhaps an out-take from Bob Calvert's album "Captain Lockheed & The Starfighters", and even now I am mentally changing the lyrics of the second track to "Aero-Space-Age Amalgam".



In that connection, let me dispel the popular misconception that "Crown of Creation" was a Jefferson Airplane concept album about dental prosthetics and cosmology.

But Professor (Doctor) Mr Balwant Rai is not just any incorrigible fabulist. As well as his dress-up games as Orbital Orthodontist, he has erected a magnificent pleasure-dome of fantasy, a world of titles and honours in which he is "Associate Professor, Faculty of Earth & Life Sciences, Kepler Space Institute" and "Program Director and Associate Professor of Aeronautic Dentistry at KSI", although the actual Kepler Space Institute seem unaware of his status there. Returning Mr Rai (or BR) to the forefront of attention, and citing an earlier Riddledpost in the process, Elisabeth Bik has been reading and commenting on his academic corpus. Suffice to say for now that his methods are unsound and his numbers are made up.

Will there be a moral?

Oh yes, a moral the likes of which even God has never seen.



When we first met BR, he was the JBR Conference Group, pimping mockademic congresses aboard the Copenhagen / Oslo ferry vessels... such as the 4th World Silage Conference, 22nd-24th March 2018 (the first three having failed to exhaust the scholarly potential of silage), and the 4th World Citrus Conference & Expo (when I think of citric fruit like oranges and grapefruit and kumquats, my mind jumps at once to the Baltic straits).

"We are best at every conference"
"We are always perfect at our mission"

Now these ferries are a splendid institution. They are popular with Danes jaunting up to Norway to enjoy the unfamiliar experience of "hilly", and who travel overnight both ways because a cabin is still cheaper than accommodation in Oslo (possibly excepting a dormitory bunk in the Anker Hostel). Using Baltic ferries as scamference venues is innovative, though it is not clear whether credit for the innovation belongs to BR in Denmark or the Sweden-based Ashutosh Tiwari of IAAM. Here at Riddled it inspired us to hold our own Orbis-Tertius Congress of Experimental Ethics on the upper deck of a double-decker bus (as a change from the Wigglesworth Lounge at the Old Entomologist), but meanwhile BR has dropped the luxury-cruise aspect.

His mockademic events receive the imprimatur and support of the US Department of Veterans' Affairs. Yeah right. Also supported by Open Research Hub; World Dental Network; StudentJobNet; Incudent ["the natural way of dental health"]; and the Journal of Dento-Medical Science & Research... which is to say, other manifestations of BR's entrepreneurial imagination, propping each other up in a network of aspirational grift, with web-domains generally registered by his regular co-author and co-scammer Jasdeep Kaur. This is really sad now. It is a vertiginous glimpse into an entire self-referential, self-sustaining alternative universe ... possibly constructed by Philip K. Dick, though I don't know if Dick would ever have coined such barbaric neologisms as "Incudent" and "Medivents".

Which is a good point to note that the JBR Health Education & Research Society has extended its ambitions and morphed into the JBR Institute of Health Education Research & Technology, and acquired a FaceBorg page of its own. Alas, it is a barren ghost-town of a page, home to coyotes and tumbleweeds, and a couple of posts trying to sign up suckers for the World Dental Network.

Going back to the Journal of Dento-Medical Etc. this did exist... as a short-lived spigot with a single issue in 2013, emanating from Pee-Pee Publisher [I am not making this up]. The Prospectus provides an alternative title - "JBR International Medico-Dental Science and Technology, a journal of the JBR research group" - because of course it does. Whatever its title, the ephemeral entity lingers on to bestow its aura of credibility upon JBR income-related activities.

But journal management is like mopping up elephant poop Show-business: both are hard to forsake. So we find BR at the editorial helm of a number of journals, competing for the custom of the space-dentistry research community. Notably, from the SciDoc cockwombles, the JBR Journal of Translational Space Dentistry, Medicine and Exploration (JBR-TSME) - the flagship of a little flotilla of JBR-branded trash-spigots. And the JBR Journal of Interdisciplinary Medicine and Dental Science, from the lowlife garbage people at OMICS.

Continuing the general theme, one could also count the Journal of Aeronautics & Aerospace Engineering (though it has lost the JBR brand)... though nominally extruded by "Longdom", a new parasitical publisher / conference scammer on the scene, Longdom is just another OMICS polyp embracing various imprints (rebranded to shake off the fraud-stink, while providing an outlet for academic failures who don't want the reputational damage of being seen to publish in OMICS' journal-shaped jizz-mops).

Anyway, BR's rich fantasy life reaches its acme with JBR University. Motto: "It is a long established fact that a reade." This presents itself as a kind of on-line knocking-shop or middle-man, putting would-be tutors in touch with would-be tutees who want the quality of their on-line education guaranteed by a couple of conmen of no fixed abode. Evidently the web designer felt that the text sounded better in the original Lorem Ipsum.



"Thousand of instructors" are claimed, but only one course... in Computer Science, I grieve to report, not in Space Dentistry.

All these aspirational-grifting pretensions of academic acceptance sound pathetic beyond words. But confident bullshit counts for a lot in our wonderful post-truth post-reality reality. BR did blag his way into Dutch dental-school academia for a while, and into the network of Mars-simulation enthusiasts who seal themselves into caravan-sized capsules to test their manned-mission endurance. He convinced actual researchers to co-sign the studies critiqued in Pubpeer threads (with implausibly repetitive numbers, purportedly collected in those confinement exercises). And people signed on to be Directors of that vaporware JBR University! Some of them are regulars from BR's mockademic scamferences.

It seems that no self-deceptive Walter Mitty fantasist is too inept to fail as an Interlattice scammer.

Space Dentist, sign of the time Space Dentist, so outta line

"When the recruiting call goes out for the first crewed mission to Mars, and the practical necessity finally dawns on NASA for someone aboard the probe who can tend to the zero-gravity dental needs of the rest of the crew, who're they gonna hire for those specialised skills? Balwant Rai, world's only Space Dentist!" According to the Riddled Dream Machine, that's what young Balwant Rai thought when he read 'Prostho Plus' at an impressionable age, and was thereby inspired to greatness.

So here is the OMICS version of his CV, all fulsome and sunriped (other versions exist, equally cleansed of false modesty):

Editor-in-Chief
Professor, Department of Aeronautic Dentistry, Kepler Space Institute
Biography
Assoc. Professor Dr. Balwant Rai is the founder of curriculum aeronautical (2006) and space Dentistry and JBR group association of space and aeronautical dentistry (2006). He is Program Director and Associate Professor of Aeronautic Dentistry at KSI. He is working as Researcher, VU, Amsterdam. He is also consultants and adviser of different companies. He is also the President and Founder of the JBR Institute of Health Education Research and Technology.
Dr Rai has more than 100 published articles in international and national journals, has written seven books, and is Editor-in-Chief of four international journals He is also founder of the BR formula and BR regression equation used in forensic technology. His current work involves the effect of micro-gravity on the oral cavity, human physiology and psychology and non-invasive biomarkers, including the elaboration of technologies to prevent the adverse effects of microgravity on the human physiology including oral cavity. His biography has been published in Who’s Who in Health and Medicine and Who’s Who in the World, USA. He is invited Editor of Mars Quarterly. He is an invited reviewer to NRF, South Africa, reviewer of more than 10 different journals, and has seven pending patents. He is an invited reviewer of many national and international indexed journals.

The Kepler Space Institute does exist, being the successor of the old L5 Sociey, and inheritor of that Sociey's dream of human expansion into the high frontier of Space (though with a realistic acceptance that mining the asteroid belt and filling the Langrangian-point orbits with hollow rotating O'Neill Habitats is a long-term goal rather than an immediate prospect). I fondly remember the spaceward enthusiasm of L-5 members in the 1970s. Anyway, there is no indication on the KSI website of Associate Professors, nor a Department of Aeronautic Dentistry, nor Program Directors; and especially nothng about Balwant Rai... leaving one to suspect that the association is not current (if it is not fabricated entirely).

"Working as Researcher, VU, Amsterdam" was accurate five years ago, but probably not now, after the ignominious retraction of a paper he plagiarised and published with a Vrije Universitiet affiliation:

The journal had been informed by one of the co-authors, Jack van Loon, that he had noticed after publication that Fig. 1 of the article had been taken from the internet and masked, giving the wrong impression that it is showing the setup used in the studies discussed in the paper. Further investigations by the publisher revealed a significant textual overlap with the paper “Srisurang et al., Journal of Investigative and Clinical Dentistry (2011), 2, 23–28”.
...
The co-author, Jack van Loon, strongly dissociates himself from that note adding the remark that, “unfortunately and in my view, this publication had to be withdrawn because of plagiarism and false information within the paper without me knowing.”

The claim to edit International Journals is probably true, using "journals"in a broad sense that includes various scuzzy little scholarly jizzmops from the mockademic-publishing genre of grift... not just from the lowlife at OMICS, but all the way down the human-centipede foodchain to SciDoc.

As for the "JBR Institute of Health Education Research and Technology" (it is not clear what the 'J' stands for), this has no existence or activities other than its frequent appearance in Balwant Rai's CVs, adorning and bolstering his scientifical plausibility... much as I always include the Riddled Institute of Experimental Ethics and Impure Science in the 'Author Affiliations' line of my published papers.

There is, on the other hand, a JBR Conference website, for Balwant wants his turn at the Scamference moneyteat... rather than gracing other people's predatory conference scams with his authoritative presence as Judas Goat Prestigious Invited Keynote Speaker, he has decided to be the organ grinder rather than the monkey [that came out sounding ruder than I intended]. Please tell me that you are not surprised:*

The prospect of being stuck with Balwant Rai on a Baltic Cruise-liner overnight Copenhagen / Oslo ferry does not enormously appeal. Suppose it is a dress rehearsal for the Hohmann transfer-orbit mission to Mars, and he seizes the opportunity to monitor the dental condition of his fellow-crew? This is not rocket science... well, I suppose in fact it is.

Reassuringly, the most recent JBR Conferences have been downgraded to a purely land-based affair, so I'm guessing that the "Baltic Cruise" scam has not been as remunerative as was originally hoped. But if you are in Copenhagen in the next day or two, it is your opportunity to pay a lot of $$$ to hear Keynote Speaker Balwant Rai ranting for 40 minutes about the endless educational possibilities of his own eponymous University, even though it is at a time of the morning when decent citizens have just been thrown out of the Mikkeller Bar and are still on their way home to bed:

Breakfast and Networking : 8:30-10:00 am 

1. JBR University: New way of education system
Prof. Balwant Rai, JBR Health Education and Research, Denmark 10.00-10:40 am.

But wait, there is more! For thanks to RetractionWatch, we learn that there is someone else still later in the foodchain than Balwant Rai, who is reduced to plagiarising the latter's research speculative essays into the effects of zero-gravity on teeth: I can only suppose that Balwant is not alone in his Space Dentistry ambitions, so we advise him not to rest on his laurels. it is an uncomfortable posture and the aphids get up one's bum.

* The notion of using the meeting-room facilities of overnight Baltic ferries as venues for this grift was plagiarised from Ashutosh Tiwari.

House built on sand

Bunker struck amidships in the last torpedo salvo
Taking on sand and sinking fast
This is last transmission
God save the King

What did people sweep things under, before carpets and rugs were invented in the 1950s?

Non Angeli, sed Angli

By way of an update to the previous post, I have made the acquaintance of Bryan Emerson -- ecological-impact-minimising money manager -- and perforce I must share it with you, for he appears to have escaped from the notebooks of a crap satirical novelist. Conceivably Tom Wolfe, although I am open to correction on that point, for Riddled is all about the factual accuracy.

The power of Ira Dei
the Dragon-onna-stick
COMPELS me to share

Bryan is a seasoned entrepreneur, low carbon footprint living proponent, involved angel investor, mentor and board member for early-stage companies.
He is a Major in the Civil Air Patrol and an Extra class amateur radio licensee. He remains President of Starlight Capital, Inc. which, until sold in 2015, hosted approximately five private equity conferences each year at The Yale Club New York since 2001 (see: www.equityforum.com). Bryan works a portion of the year from his off-grid, solar and wind powered log cabin.

It would be wrong to speculate about the number of human heads stored in the log cabin's freezer.

As is the way of successful venture capitalists / investment advisors, Mr Emerson also touts for contract gigs through LinkedIn and Upwork (I am unable to find Warren Buffet's Upwork entry but it is sure to be there somewhere). He is also available for wedding receptions and children's parties, although there is a dry-cleaning fee in the event of cake- or ice-cream-spillage on his costume.

Mr Emerson comes to Riddled attention as an erstwhile part-owner of the 'Equity Forum' operation, before selling his share to OMICS for whom he now works.

Starlight Capital, Inc. sold its interest in New York Private Equity Forums to a large conference organizer and publisher (www.equityforum.com). Mr. Emerson implements a marketing optimization program for it in India approximately four weeks each year. He uses Starlight Capital to identify promising angel investment, mentoring and board membership opportunities.

That is, the gombeens at OMICS did not themselves devise the ingenious rort of soliciting $$$$ from business-plan-possessing but moneyless would-be entrepreneurs, promising to provide an assignation with investors to whom they might strut their stuff and and pitch their elevators.* I am disappoint. Still, kudos to OMICS for recognising the similarity between this scheme and their core activity (i.e. beguiling similarly-desperate academics with the promise of publication through production-line scamferences and mockademic journals).

OMICS are keen to capitalise on the concept's full potential, taking their "one-of-a-kind" opportunity out of New York and onto the road, advertising tickets to fast-approaching 2017 play-date encounters in Los Angeles,

San Franciso and Las Vegas,

Orlando, Atlanta and Chicago. In comparison the original operators are left looking visionless and unambitious. Sadly, the absence of dates and venues for any of these not-at-all-vaporware Equity Fora (not to mention 'organising committees' and 'scientific programs') makes it difficult to plan one's attendance. It also fosters the unfortunate impression that OMICS' expansive ambitions have outstretched their intentions. Here at Riddled Sugar Daddies we are experts on professional appearance and we urge OMICS to attend our next workshop on "Authenticity and How to Fake It: Selling your Vision to the Suckers", only $6500. There they will learn to avoid the look that they are flinging shit at the walls to see which kind attracts most flies.

This manifestation or symptom of late-stage capitalism is not as novel as I had thought. The Great Gazoogle tells of agitation against start-up exploitation, in a long-vanished epoch of nobility and chivalrous values (e.g. here, here and over there), that is to say 2009-2010. Before the ideas of extracting unpaid work from job applicants (a chance to display their capability) and making would-be entrepreneurs compete for venture capital (for Reality-TV entertainment) became taken for granted.

The name of Mike Segal featured in that disturbance in the Force, on account of the volume and tone-deafness of his solicitory spamming. Also, shaming and blaming for the use of a Verizon e-address. To everyone's surprise, M.J.Segal Associates reappear as the other founder of PrivateEquityForums (along with Bryan Emerson) -- the description being dutifully copy-pasted as "Founding Sponsors" of the OMICS version of the brand, on account of the gravitas conferred by the names. A warning is in order: the former website is all garish and shouty, enough to make the average predatory-journal web design look like a model of understated elegance.

But that was a whole paragraph without a joke, so here's an instance of Segal's spammed Invitations to a Shakedown. His insistence that email spam is in fact targetted correspondence is another commonality between start-up meat-market grifters and predatory publishers (who never send spam either).

Although we have not had a chance to speak about this event or your company's funding requirements, kindly note that this correspondence is not part of a bulk mailing being delivered to you by a commercial e-mailing service and I have sent it to you personally on the basis of general research that our staff has undertaken on your company - based upon its industry sector and stage of operations. Of course, we do not know the expansion plans of your company or its need for capital, but are always on the lookout for companies with strong growth prospects which may resonate with our investors. 

The joke is that the recipient of this passive-aggressively insistent series of messages -- the struggling little company identified as in need of a capital injection, and open to paying Mike Segal $$$$ for a discreet consenting-adults introduction to investors -- was Sony Pictures.

-------------------

* $6500 to attend as a non-presenting entrepreneur; the fee for actual lordosis presentation is too delicate to be placed on the record, so must remain a matter for speculation.

These are the first signs of sonic attackYou will notice small objects such as ornaments oscillatingYou will notice vibrations in your diaphragmThere will be bleeding from orificesThere will be an ache in the pelvic regionYou may be subject to fits of hysterical shouting or even laughter

The last time the Riddled Journal Club looked at Drs Klinghardt and Ruggiero's article-shaped claim-stake, carving out their territory within the Chronic Lyme Disease goldfield, it was Shooting-Fish-inna-Barrel night at the Old Entomologist.

Company logo: synchronised-swimming sperm

So the pointing & laughing was focused on the scammy, spammy nature of the "Science Publications" who extrude the 'American Journal of Immunology' [editors include M. Ruggiero] from their base in the United Arab Emirates.¹ Some secondary hilarity ensued from Klinghardt's method for diagnosing otherwise-undetectable occult Lyme Disease, i.e. by dowsing. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP... dowsing was rebranded as Applied Kinesiology in the 1960s, before Klinghardt -- who never saw a grift he didn't want to copy -- appropriated it as "Autonomic Response Testing".

Fish-inna-Barrel Tuesdays are not actually as much fun as they sound, because sometimes the fish shoot back if the vile Throgmorton happened to have stocked the barrels with archerfish. Of course similar problems arise on Picking-the-Low-Fruit Wednesdays when the fruit trees fail to cooperate.

Anyways... it was inevitable that hand-held ultrasound scanners would find a place as a theatrical prop in the advertisement for the RK Protocol, for they are a recurring feature in Ruggiero's artistic practice theragnostic cosplay. We have previously seen his discoveries that the humble scanner can diagnose autism (recording brain abnormalities that remain unnoticed by autism researchers, those purblind fools), and can facilitate snake-oil treatment of brain cancer, by relaxing epithelial-cell junctions to make brain capillaries leaky and let the snake-oil through. After hours his students and assistants brandish the scanners while they chase one another around the laboratory making Pew-pew-pew noises.

So this is the new breakthrough. It is a tenet of faith in alt-med circles that the wriggly little Borrelia burgdorferi spirochaetes of Lyme Disease like to sequester themselves within the cells of your tissues in Double Secret Probation -- inert, unnoticed by the immune system, therefore undetectable by the usual tests of antibodies or even DNA. But an internal ultrasonic caress will rark the little buggers up in the manner of earthworm grunting, driving them out from the cells to renew their rampage and undergo detection.

It is not entirely clear how the ultrasounds -- with a millimeter wavelength -- can interact with structure at the subcellular scale of microns, with such dramatic and preferential effect. And given the scanner's biological impact, one wonders at its blithe and cavalier use as a harmless diagnostic tool; it is almost as if Ruggiero is not in fact stupid enough to believe in its brain-melting, spirochaete-rousing pluripotency. But we recently saw a 1970s documentary in which ultrasound irradiation of the soil, meant for pesticidal purposes, had the unexpected side-effect of transforming the previously-peaceful occupants of Manchester Morgue into reanimated shamblers with an antisocial hunger. Perhaps a similar phenomenon is at work.

Below: Effects of scanner over-use

The RK Protocol continues with PCR testing of each customer's urine sample, to confirm the post-ultrasonification appearance of DNA from the previously-dowsed spirochaete. This task of bringing reality into conformity with the results of Klinghardt's ART-woo is outsourced to “DNA Connexions”, a Colorado Springs centre of proprietory state-of-the-aunt DNA-detection procedures. Owned by Dr. Blanche Grube, with a Dr. Christopher Shade as Lab Director. Grube also trades as Biocomp Laboratories at the same strip-mall address, where she purveys a

“blood serum procedure […] Biocompatibility test, a comprehensive report that simply states whether the dental materials are Highly Reactive, Moderately Reactive, or Least Reactive.”

She is further said to operate a dental clinic -- catering for clients who cannot tell the difference between a dental bridge and the one in Brooklyn -- where they can have their fillings replaced in the unlikely event that they are dangerously Reactive. Meanwhile Shade’s primary income stream is “Quicksilver Scientific”, part of the ecosystem of Mercury Detection clinics... there he sells mercury testing (plus the usual scammocopoeia of supplements, plus Hemp Oil), and commends clients to Grube’s dentistry if their amalgams prove to be leaching the naughty element into their bloodstreams. Sounds legit!

It may be that Klinghardt is merely hewing to the code of Professional Courtesy when he shares access to the suckers' wallets as widely as possible. He and DNA Connexions regularly appear as a double-act at Chronic Lyme scam-fests trade-fairs, but this does not establish that they have a mutually-beneficial business arrangement.

The paper says little about how to cure Chronic Lyme disease once it is diagnosed. The authors note, however, that Ruggiero's current nostrum "Rerum" showed therapeutic promise when used as a "positive control". As tested by dowsing. I am not making this up.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. According to Ruggiero's erstwhile business partner David Noakes, writing anonymously at one of several hating books vanity websites devoted to score-settling,

There is nothing predatory about The American Journal of Immunology, and the journal would be insulted to read that.

I'll take that risk.
Of course Noakes would say that.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

With Chronic Lyme Disease it is difficult to know where to stop with the Updatage and the Out-takage. That is the trouble with esprit d'escalier... a single glass is never enough. I don't know whose idea it was to ferment and distill an Escalier, but if the consequent hangover is any guide, the idea was not a good one.

Anyway, this is as good a time as any to remember “Nordic Laboratories”, who pimp spurious blood tests for UK numpties who already know what they want to have and will pay good money for validation. Despite the Scandiwegian stylings of austere efficiency and rectitude, “Nordic Labs” are in fact one of several grifts run by an alt-health supplements-&-vitamins pill-mill in Sussex, while their Copenhagen address turns out to be a mail-forwarding service [upstairs from the amber shop and the Shanghai Chinese Restaurant].

The boss of the outfit gloated about the determination of his customer base of desperate griefers, how they go on shopping for tests until they find someone who will validate their self-diagnosis:

Chris Moore, Managing Director of Nordic Laboratories, ascertained very quickly that of the 100 or so patients in the room, only around one-fifth had actually received a positive laboratory test. Yet these patients are living in the tatters of lives torn apart by the symptoms of Borrelia infection and all of them had to seek (and fund) their own treatment because nothing is available on the NHS. He made the point that times have changed. Patients are now very informed and know a lot about their own health and are looking to their doctors for support, not dismissal.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nor should we forget the egregious Sin Hang Lee, who was pimping a magical PCR DNA test for Chronic Lyme before he branched into “detecting DNA in Gardasil” as a secondary income stream. So a few years ago a totally grass-roots organisation sprang into being, the Coalition Against Lyme and Related Borrelioses (CALRB), for the purpose of

hosting a symposium on September 16, 2014 at the State Capitol building in Hartford, Conn., to discuss new scientific approaches to Lyme disease testing and diagnosis.

A more accurate formulation might be that CALRB existed to bombard the Massachusetts legislature with press releases, themed around the need for more recognition of and funding for Lyme disease... and the need for more widespread use of PCR techniques to detect the elusive spirochaetes... specifically, Sin Hang Lee’s test.

Its job complete, CALRB vanished back into the quantum fluctuations from whence it came. Great was the surprise, then, when the President and executive director of CALRB (one Kevin Moore) also turned out to fill the role of “Media Relations Director for Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory”… which is to say. he’s Lee’s press agent. While the domain for the now-vanished CALRB website had been registered by Jessica Vigliotti, Lee’s lab employee, and co-author on his mockademic publications.

There is something simultaneously impressive and depressing about the shamelessness of these people, and the lack of effort they put into hiding their trail of slime.