According to health ranger Mike Adams, the so-called "Shorty Awards" honoring micro-bloggers who use Twitter to inform and educate online readers have been shown to be conducted fraudulently.The awards are given in 27 categories, including the health category.
While the voting is said to be "public and democratic" by its organizers, Mike Adams of www.NaturalNews.com who was winning the popular vote in the health category claims his votes were completely deleted by Shorty Awards organizers after he complained of unfair tactics being used by vaccine proponents who dumped a boat load of votes into the Shorty Awards voting system -- all for a relatively unknown vaccine-pushing opponent of natural health named Dr. Rachael Dunlop.
According to Adams, the vaccine-pushing orthodox medical system apparently did NOT want to see a prominent natural health advocate who strongly opposes vaccines win such a prestigious internet award.
Adams states, "I was set to take the top prize, and Dr. Mercola was in a solid second place when some vaccine pushers got word that a couple of "natural medicine whackos" (as they described us) were about to win the award, and they organized an opposition campaign to elect their own candidate -- a virtually unknown doctor from Australia who held a strong opinion against homeopathy and natural medicine while pushing vaccines and pharmaceuticals. They began to call for others to vote for this "pro-vaccine" candidate, even though most people had no idea who she was and had never even read her work."
Adams says the Shorty Awards voting system is clearly rigged against natural health advocates since votes for natural health advocates can be deleted and fraudulently obtained votes in favor of an opponent of natural health are kept.
Read more about this story here, and learn what you can do to help push another strong advocate of natural health into the top spot!
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Let us all Pray that we can avoid a Civil War
ReplyDeleteWe have been and are being attacked on many fronts
Please Remember to PRAY for National and World Peace.!!!
THANK YOU
PS
Remember Peace Begins at Home :o)
What I can't understand is that we are all human & on the same damn planet. Why can't we all have the right to do as we please with our health. All people seem to think about is "how can we make more money whether it hurts ANYONE or not?" What has happened to the HUMAN race? Or are they even human?!?! GOD SAVE US !!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is inaccurate.
ReplyDeleteMike Adams was disqualified from the Shortys because of fraudulent voting: hundreds and hundreds of the votes for him were against Shorty's rules.
Now he's upset that we reported him for the fraud. Tough.
Actually Dr. Rachie was in the lead when Mike Adams was disqualified. While I think Deleting Mike was harsh there were a large number of newly registered twitter accounts voting for him. Personally I think the best course of action would have been deleting all of the sockpuppet votes.
ReplyDeleteOh, the laughter. Shorty votes are a matter of public record, and shorty rules state that accounts created solely for voting are against the rules.
ReplyDeleteThe fact remains that the majority of Adams's votes in the latter part of the voting came from these newly created accounts. Breach of rules, clearly. Whether it was Adams himself creating them or his supporters, the result is the same: vote fraud.
Adams's shrill cries of fraud are indicative of a man who knows he's been caught red handed.
This list of Twitter accts which voted for @HealthRanger in the Shorty Awards in #health are violators of at least one of the following rules (as listed on http://shortyawards.com/rules).
ReplyDelete* A tweet that does not give a reason for the nomination will not be counted
* Voters must be active Twitter users prior to the start of the competition. Votes originating from new Twitter accounts or accounts used mainly for Shorty Awards voting will automatically be disqualified and will not count toward the rankings
* Votes must appear publicly. Votes from private Twitter accounts will not be counted
This list is by no means comprehensive; I only reviewed back to 20 Jan 2010 16:19:31 UTC-05:00, which covered only about 8 out of 49 pages of votes, yet I found 104 invalid votes.
@zhhej
@stslater
@Mutzey
@MikeShive
@Yalunga
@Peppermint0805
@NaturalHWC
@danieltorgerson
@PandoraKid229
@VaccineRights
@Dark_Falcon7
@nickhaas1
@BDrugFree
@phdinh33
@Jerkyturkey2
@akiradeering
@Naturopathic1
@NadiaFaz
@MonroeLuvinia
@stonekat
@qvminich
@mrtamm
@anasses
@jesseholly
@ronhende
@Moxxortamworth
@TinkLucypup
@TamaraCote
@kimber_meyers
@gfd19992000
@Jannysto
@TeamBuck
@Rena61
@nicholnelson
@poodlebeenz
@lateblummer
@cisonouk
@RoxaneMarin
@twitchy7
@littlemongoose
@missllaaurraa
@Mattoine (acct deleted)
@robinvreugdenbu
@CassioFreeman
@StaceyS4
@johntlinnell (numerous invalid votes in several categories)
@johntlinnell (numerous invalid votes in several categories)
@Richsifu
@K8Jenkins
@c2saint
@TInFish54
@Shelleycn
@TawniChenille
@daybreakarts
@yourslately
@zensibilia
@AzureFontana
@Rosannemariern
@benji456
@novembergale
@Capiola
@mealama
@bobby615
------- above 63 invalid votes reported to Shorty Awards 21 Jan 2010 9:32pm AEDT
@crystalliana
@guyross
@zenoiflas
@laevan (voted then deleted tweet, no nomination reason given)
@joells1
@Tomeato
@marjanca12
@gullvagninn
@johnramen
@love1446
@fcrpsd
@JohnNapper
@aletszamrub
@60PCBradley
@DrLexus
@informempower
@susiparisienne
@tkida79
@praveen_perera
@crandreww
@vinodwinny
------- above 21 invalid votes reported to Shorty Awards 22 Jan 2010 4.13am AEDT
@happyvida
@shosanah
@Cindiryan
@nickilee0718
@austinbain
@MrTissueBox
@Jeff_A_C
@ctijn
@ppondel
@nking87
@whosthesus
@ssvillacorte
@Elgp56
@serenitypond1
@coleyoga
@G2Santos
@ellmando
@sblakes1000
@dolphin912
@marypodlesak
------- above 20 invalid votes reported to Shorty Awards 22 Jan 2010 2.49pm AEDT
@migun4you
@andrewlogan25
@lypoProtein
@spacetruckn
@windshieldcrack
@youcann
@danmcdonalddc
@JimGrapek
********* Shorty Awards disqualified @healthranger at this point
http://www.google.com/sidewiki/entry/107959479110734224716/id/JgPZI8P_yvHA7gJw8ucYpZ_uB8I
ReplyDeletepeople have to realize they themselves can be the difference,
ReplyDeletenot shorty awards, or the fraudulent ones,
so believe in yourselve,and live! your soul dream,
no one has to give you the permission to do that,
so be strong and do what you believe in,
THAT'S the difference..it's a longtime award!!!!
You know SA is a fraud when you scroll down to their award category for journalist. Rachel Maddow was upended by two individuals I've never even heard of, and I'm a very news saavy individual. Rigged voting? You betcha!
ReplyDeleteI was told there were quite a few new Twitter accounts voting multiple times for HealthRanger and Mercola.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the evidence that the vote was 'rigged' against them?
Adams and/or his followers cheated. Live with it. And also, Dr. Dunlop isn't unknown to anyone who bother to go look for the facts.
ReplyDeleteNotice that Health Ranger was disqualified due to massive cheating. See http://machinegunkeyboard.com/healthranger_fakevotes.txt (a list of 153 invalid votes for him, and only covers votes from 20/01 to the disqualification)
ReplyDelete153 out of ~900 votes is a lot; and there were ~40 more pages of previous votes to check. You could see HUGE amounts of people whose only tweet was a vote for @healthranger, those were even more common than legitimate votes. The Shorty awards would lose all legitimacy if they allowed this to continue. I see some fraudulent votes for other candidates, but nothing that abusive.
"a virtually unknown doctor"
ReplyDeleteRachael Dunlop is well known in the Australian Skeptical community.
"Adams says the Shorty Awards voting system is clearly rigged against natural health advocates since votes for natural health advocates can be deleted and fraudulently obtained votes in favor of an opponent of natural health are kept."
Accusations like this only make the victory that much sweeter.
yeah, funny that most of your voters had only 1 twitter post, in fact, the one that voted for you....right back atcha, dufus.
ReplyDeleteI just love how kooks need to victimize themselves. The only fraud here was perpetuated by the anti-vax loon crowd. They set up throwaway twitter accounts just to see these quacks win. The Shortys were completely in their right to disqualify them.
ReplyDeleteWow, could you fools be any more deluded? The proof is in the pudding, mon amis.
ReplyDeleteQuack quack quack little duckies.
Fraudulent votes can be deleted on both sides. The voters who had created new accounts since the start of the poll couldn't vote (I.e. Had their votes removed) and acommunity that obviously has a muchbroader Twitter community rallied. No conspiracy here nor discrimination and it isbad form claiming so
ReplyDeleteThe Shorty Awards rules clearly states"
ReplyDelete""Twitter accounts used mainly for Shorty Awards voting will automatically be disqualified and will not count"
However this was violated repeatedly by @Healthranger's supporters, and so, understandably he was disqualified.
As it happens I'd never heard of Healthranger Mike Adams before this. So his fame is spreading.
I see a LOT of anti-Mike Adams accustations here. The truth is, the vaccine promoters are the ones who urged their followers to cheat and go sign up just to vote for their vaccine-promoting candidate.
ReplyDeleteYou can see this for yourself simply by going to the web site of so-called "Orac" and reading his call to his fellow blog readers to game the Shorty Awards vote in order to stop Mike Adams from winning:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/01/this_must_not_come_to_pass_quacks_winnin.php
How come so many people here are claiming natural health guru Mike Adams cheated in these votes, and are posting his supposed "invalid" votes, but I don't see anyone checking the votes of the vaccine-promoting "doctor" for similar "invalid" votes?
ReplyDeleteSeems like the comments here are a bit lop-sided against Mike Adams.
Steve, do you think the pro-vaccine forces singled out your blog and sent their shills to comment here, in an attempt to make Mike Adams look bad? How could you possibly have so many anti-natural health readers, on a blog that is about natural health?
Good point...and YES I do think the pro-vaccine crowd is trying to load the comments section on this blog with comments against Mike Adams, in an attempt to discredit him.
ReplyDeleteAnd YES, it is amazing to me that these anti-Mike Adams writers all claim to have "analyzed" the votes cast for Mike and found many of them to be "fraudulent," when all his votes were invalidated and deleted by the Shorty Awards organizers. How did they get copies of the votes makde for Mike?
I find it equally suspicious that they all seem to use use the tactic of calling invalidated votes "fraud," when invalid simply means the votes didn't qualify. Interestingly, they're not conducting the same kind of analysis of the competing votes for the vaccine-promoting doctor from Down Under. How many votes does she have that are invalid? Are they too going to be labeled "fraud"? Or is it only the invalid votes for Mike Adams that are to be labeled fraud?
This looks like a hatchet job to me. And a well-organized one, to boot.
I know another commentator has already pointed this out, but it appears to be the anti-Mike Adams crowd that were urging their followers to commit fraud by loading the system with votes for nominees who are against natural health. This, in a blatant attempt to stop Mike Adams from winning. You can read one of their shrill, hysterical blog posts urging readers to cheat the system here: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/01/this_must_not_come_to_pass_quacks_winnin.php
In fact, in case the guy deletes his blog so no one can see his call for readers to cheat the system by loading it with anti-Mike Adams votes, I'm going to re-post it in the next comment.
Who are the real frauds in the Shorty Awards brouhaha in which Mike Adams is now being accused of committing fraud? Was it Mike Adams, or was it the anti-Mike Adams crowd who were the dirty tricksters loading the system with votes?
ReplyDeleteWell, you decide for yourself. Here's the text of the Jan. 20, 2010 post to a skeptics blog called Respectful Insolence, calling for readers to load the Shorty Awards system with anti-Mike Adams votes in an attempt to keep Mike from winning:
This must not come to pass: Quacks winning the Shorty Award for health
Category: Alternative medicine •
Antivaccination lunacy • Computers • Medicine • Quackery
Posted on: January 20, 2010 8:00 AM, by Orac
Although I have a Twitter account, I really don't use it all that often, other than having set up an automatic feed to Tweet all my new posts for the blog. True, I do from time to time have flurries of activity (usually when I'm trapped in a particularly boring conference) or am inspired to tweak J.B. Handley or other anti-vaccine kooks when they start Tweeting nonsense, but for the most part I remain a blogging kind of a guy. One could argue whether it's my tendency towards logorrhea on the blog rendering me incapable of hewing to the 140 character limit for Twitter, but whatever the reason I'm not that active there.
Perhaps that's why I'm a bit late to the party and hadn't heard of the Shorty Awards, which are apparently being awarded to Twitterers in various categories. I'm also rather late learning about just who's running in first place in the Health Category. At the time of my writing this, it's that über-quack of quacks, that despicable ghoul for whom there is no such thing as sinking too low in the service of promoting quackery, Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com. Get a load of some of the Tweets voting for him:
Wendy Burnett I nominate @HealthRanger for a Shorty Award in #health because...he gives us the information the gov doesn't want out
Tamara I nominate @HealthRanger for a Shorty Award in #health because...He tells No Lies
Mary Rebman I nominate @HealthRanger for a Shorty Award in #health because...he digs for the truth, doesn't follow mainstream media
Now there's some burning stupid!
Who's in third place? The almost as bad Joe Mercola, who is anti-vaccine to the core, spreading anti-vaccine misinformation and outright quackery hither and yon through the blogosphere, thanks to his website. He's number three in the voting. If either of them were to win, it would be particularly galling, given that, unlike a lot of other blog awards, there will be a Shorty Awards ceremony in New York.
Here's a suggestion. Go over to the Shorty Awards and check out how it works. (You need a Twitter account to vote, and votes from active Twitterers count for more.) Then vote for someone other than Mercola or Adams. Right now Rachel Dunlop is in second place; she has the best chance of overtaking Adams.
There is one category where Adams and Mercola richly deserve your vote, though. Feel free to go and vote for them in the woo category. Too bad John Scudamore doesn't Tweet, though. He'd be even more deserving of a woo award than even Adams or Mercola.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/01/this_must_not_come_to_pass_quacks_winnin.php
ReplyDeleteOoops. I forgot to post the link to the blog post reproduced in the above comment, which is from the skeptics blog "Respectful Insolence," whose writer urged readers to load the Shorty Awards vote system with anti-Mike Adams votes.
Here's another skeptics blog I found (see below) in which the blogger urges his readers to load the Shorty Awards system with votes for pro-vaccine nominee Dr. Rachel Dunlop in order to displace the huge voting lead held at the time by Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com.
ReplyDeleteThe skeptics blog is called "Pharyngula" and is subtitled "Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal" which should tell you just about everything you need to know about the mindset of the blogger.
You can read his post at the following link:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/a_pointless_poll_in_a_new_medi.php
And just in case he tries to remove his post in order to prevent people from seeing how he urged his readers to cheat the Shorty Awards system (my opinion) in order to cheat Mike Adams out of winning the health category vote, here's the text of his post:
"A pointless poll in a new medium
Category: Pointless polls
Posted on: January 19, 2010 8:38 AM, by PZ Myers
You'll need a Twitter account to crash this poll. There are these things called Shorty Awards being given to popular twitter users in various categories, like health. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, a medium with almost no content, restricted to 140 character brief comments, is easily dominated by the shallow and the superficial, so alt med quacks are having a grand time running up the score.
Let's see if we can do a little readjustment. A skeptic, Dr. Rachel Dunlop, is also in the running, currently at #16 (she's being beaten by Dr House). All you have to do is get onto Twitter and enter this string: "I nominate @DrRachie for a Shorty Award in #health because…" and fill in your own brief reason.
There are also lots of other categories that you can tinker with — I notice that @pzmyers is in the lead in the awesome category of #squid right now, with one vote. The numbers in most of the categories are actually so small that we could pharyngulate just about anything, if I were a cruel and capricious leader who wanted to organize a coordinated skewing of #religion or #bacon or whatever. But I shall content myself with sending my legions marching off to #health…this time.
Another one! While you're on twitter, also vote "I nominate @maddow for a Shorty Award in #journalist because..."."
As you can see from the information in the comments directly above, it is the anti-natural health crowd (who euphemistically call themselves "skeptics") who urged their readers to cheat the Shorty Awards vote system by calling on their readers to load the system with votes for fellow "skeptic" and fanatical vaccine advocate Rachel Dunlop -- all for the explicit purpose of robbing natural health advocate Mike Adams of his huge lead in the vote.
ReplyDeleteThese "skeptics" call natural health advocates "loons" and "quacks" when in reality all you have to do is read their blog posts for about five minutes to see who the real loons and quacks are. Whoowhee...they are one crazy bunch of self-appointed know-it-alls!
And they are apparently absolutely ruthless when it comes to doing everything in their power to make sure no one from the natural health community wins an internet award.
Reminds me of the "global warming" promoters who call their detractors everything from "Nazis" to "lunatics," but when the truth comes out it is they have no compunction whatsoever about cheating or rigging the data in order to bolster their sagging arguments.
Name calling, vote cheating, data-rigging -- all hallmarks of the "skeptic" mind.
Looks like it is WE who should be skeptical of THEM, me thinks.
Hello Steve,
ReplyDeleteI work in the health industry too. I really appreciate your emails!!!!!! Also, I am anxiously awaiting my Silver Machine. Keep up the good work. It's men like you and Mike Adams that really should be supported.
Kind regards,
Laona