Bruce Lipton: Quack, Creationist, Buffoon, PhD

UPDATE April 2020 — A more thorough (and less polemical) critique of Lipton can be found here: The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton: A Final Summing Up

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In the previous post on Dr Bruce Lipton, I dealt with the first segment of his short video series Beyond Darwin. Lipton shared his belief that global ecological catastrophe is being caused people’s acceptance of Darwinian evolution. Even more curiously, the solution he proposes is, of all things, his specific form of cancer quackery. 

Really. Don’t take my word for it. Check the previous post!

Anyway, here is my take on the second (and final) part of the talk. I have transcribed Lipton’s words in their entirety, exactly as spoken, because that is easier than trying to edit his appallingly scrambled and inarticulate diction. Thankfully, the talk only goes for two minutes.

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He begins:

Every organism is put in place with every other organism to balance some part of the environment…

Put in place by whom?

….Lipton, it turns out, is a creationist. He’s not the highly politicized Christian fundie type, but he clearly believes in some kind of pantheistic Intelligent Designer. No doubt the majority of the world’s population believe something similar, but Lipton has a PhD in cell biology. He should be able to at least make a coherent case for his position. 

Bruce Lipton PhD: Quack, ignoramus

UPDATE April 2020 — A more thorough (and less polemical) critique of Lipton can be found here: The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton: A Final Summing Up

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People googling “Bruce Lipton quack” often get referred to this blog, as that phrase was briefly mentioned in a comment on one post or another. I always got a twinge of guilt that I hadn’t written about him yet, so here goes…

Bruce Lipton, PhD has made a name for himself as a more science-savvy version of Deepak Chopra. But Unlike Chopra, seems to have largely escaped the attention of the skeptic community. He peppers his talks with technical terms from biochemistry, hoping that no one with the relevant training will pay any close attention and call him to account. I have no relevant training, so I will deal with a fairly straight forward talk, and consider its merits.

This two minute video talk is probably a good place to start. No need to watch it. I’ve already sat through the whole two minutes of it and transcribed a few of his barely articulate and ungrammatical sentences.

 Cancer quack Bruce Lipton PhD with face-lifted cancer quack Louise Hay

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Lipton tells us that the earth is going through its sixth mass extinction, which scientists say is caused by human behavior. Lipton agrees. But that’s where any agreement between Bruce Lipton PhD and modern science finishes. Lipton finds a rather curious origin for the whole thing:

Much of this human behavior is in fact related to a concept that we arose in this garden as a total result of accident, when in fact this is the complete opposite from the…the…I mean…we were, we were….it was purpose and design through the entire process.

I’d like to play dumb here and say that he couldn’t possibly be referring to evolution, because that doesn’t propose that life arose by accident or chance. But I can’t play dumb. I know he means evolution, because Creationists talk like this all the time. Now, I can understand why the average member of the public hears the words “random mutation and natural selection”, and focuses on the easiest word — random. It takes a bit of background reading to clear up the confusion: genetic mutations are only “random” within some clearly defined parameters; and beyond that, natural selection is not random, (which is why the word selection appears rather prominently in the term).

But Bruce Lipton isn’t an average member of the public. He has a PhD in developmental biology! Why is he ignorant of the most basic concepts of his own field?

End of the World 2012

With people predicting that the world will end on Friday December 21 2012, I thought it might be worth looking a little more closely at the issue.

After all, if this prediction is correct, it may be of some importance to those not wishing to suffer a miserable fate like drowning, being swallowed by the earth, or dying like a miserable wretch on his hands and knees trying to eat grass while a bunch of light filled beings flounce about in loose fitting pastel colored clothes imploring the victims to focus on the positive.

Those of us over the age of 3 months old may recall hearing predictions like this before. And a swift check in the internet reveals that there have indeed been earlier predictions of catastrophes, especially focusing on the year 2000. How about we double check and see to what degree those predictions were accurate. Maybe this will give an indication of how seriously we should take predictions about 2012.