Nutcases in orgonomy:

The following article is written by Joel Carlinsky - a very strange (maybe partly nuts?) orgonomy agitator:
My comments in italics

Reich, in his book, "the murder of Christ" spoke at length of the harm done to the cause of freedom by irresponsible "freedom Peddlers" and warned against the inevitable rise of "Orgonomy Peddlers" who would try to "help" orgonomy by promoting it. As with so much of what Reich said, this warning has been ignored by those who claim to be most favorable to Reich and reckless and irresponsible misuses of Reich's discoveries along with incompetent and misguided efforts to "prove Reich right" by well-meaning but ill-informed people who feel a compulsion to act as missionaries for orgonomy have resulted in more harm to orgonomy than a galaxy of Carl Sagans ever could do.

I wish to make clear that I am not hostile to Wilhelm Reich and I do in fact accept most of his theories. I feel Joel is either lying or nuts when he says this My criticism is directed solely at certain present-day Reichians whom I regard as incompetent and irresponsible "orgonomy peddler" of the type Reich warned about. I do not contest the facts of orgone Biopysics I feel another lie here, but the actions of a certain group of adherents of Reichs work.

My credentials: I have been involved in orgonomy since 1967, mostly in cloudbusting this may be more Carlinsky misinformation, but also in laboratory work, including Oranur. I have had tutoring in orgone biophysics from Eva Reich and have a letter stating so from her in which she says she considers me "very knowledgeable in the field". I did the first cloudbusting in Australia, the first cloudbusting from an aircraft, taught the first College course in orgone physics for which students received academic credit, and have done numerous original experiments in orgone biophysics that revealed previously unsuspected qualities of the orgone. In many public lectures and in print I have defended Reich and his work. I have deliberately refrained from publishing most of my research for very good reasons.

I am convinced that James DeMeo and his associates are doing a lot of harm to the earth and to the public by their incompetent and irresponsible misuse of the cloudbuster. I also consider them to be hurting the credibility and long-term chances for acceptance of Reich's work. I say this after years of doing the very same things they are doing and coming to the reluctant conclusion that promoting orgonomy is counterproductive, despite my own conviction that the cloudbuster and the orgone accumulator work exactly as Reich claimed. The sad fact is that none of the publications on orgonomy to date, including these by Reich, bears any resemblance to a scientific report and no really good experiments have ever been done. My own opinions on the subject have been formed on a basis of personal observation and not published reports. Despite Jim DeMeo's ranting on about scientists who dismiss his and Reich's work having emotional or financial motives, the only published work in the field is so flawed that no sensible scientist would consider it. DeMeo claims that the mere fact of publication in an in-house journal that is not peer reviewed is in itself reason to reject it. True, but that is not grounds to exempt such private publications from the same standards. As peer reviewed journals and neither the journal of orgonomy nor DeMeo;s own "Pulse of the Planet" meet those standards. Scientists are right to refuse to consider evidence that is so poorly presented. As one example among many: in a letter to a farm journal, "Acres USA", June 1989, DeMeo explicitly says that in order to prevent irresponsible misuse of the cloudbuster, details of how it is used are deliberately withheld from publication so nobody reading the reports can learn to duplicate the operations leaving aside the question of just why DeMeo and his associates should be considered more responsible than the rest of us, any report of a scientific experiment must include sufficient information to enable independent replication by other researchers. That is the function and basis of a scientific report and without such detail it is untestable and unverifiable. A scientist is quite right to refuse to consider an untestable claim.

The experiments claimed by DeMeo to prove cloudbusters work are evidence of his

lack of understanding of how a scientific experiment is done, his efforts at statistical analysis are laughable, in one article he claims 300, 400, 500 and even 600% of normal rainfall in an area on the east slopes of the Sierra Nevada's during the months of May and June. He does not state what normal rainfall is for that time of year at that location or how much rain 600% of normal rainfall for that area at that time of year is zero. I can't blame any scientist for thinking all Reichians are frauds and fools if that sort of evidence is presented.

<p> Nobody has ever yet done a proper study of cloudbusting with double-blind experiments, randomized trials, and independent outside evaluation of the results. Cloudbusting can be conclusively proven to an on-site observer but trustworthy written evidence has not yet been published, efforts by DeMeo and other true believers to convince rightfully skeptical scientists with amateur and easily discredited evidence are then followed by vituperative personal attacks on the motives and mental health of the scientist when he quite rightly refuses to believe without proper evidence. DeMeo and his followers do not help the cause of orgonomy by their actions. Of far greater immediate consequence is the ecological damage done by ill-conceived cloudbusting projects conducted with more concern for collecting statistics and converting unbelievers than for the needs of the environment. The reluctant conclusion that promoting orgonomy is counterproductive.

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Eric Krieg's commentary:

I make a hobby out of studying fringe beliefs and the people who promote them. Yet I make an open offer to help anyone run a fair experiment which could prove ( or disprove) a paranormal claim. I admit that some of my fellow skeptics are not playing with a full deck and that many paranormal claimants are very intelligent (at least in some areas of life) I'm used to many excuses for paranormal claimants who are reluctant to putting their claims to test including:

"I'm too busy", "you wouldn't believe me anyhow", "I don't want to work with negative people who don't believe", "sure I'll participate in a test . . . in a few months", "the claim is already properly tested, just look up the results", "what do I want to prove it to you for? - I already know it works". But now, I've seen a new excuse for not wanting to see cloud busting claims tested: "we don't want to prove it works or people could cause great harm to the planet by misusing it". Beyond my frustration, I must admit that is a great defense against being debunked. It reminds me of the B science fiction mad scientist rant, "FOOLS, DON'T THEY KNOW WHAT FORCES THEY DEAL WITH!". I wonder if Carlinsky actually believes cloudbusting could destroy the world and wants to sic the skeptics on the whole subject to keep unworthy people from misappropriating such awesome technology. He lies so much, it's hard to know how he really feels. He makes a good point that DeMeo operates far outside his area of knowledge in the course of taking up many goofy causes. Carlinsky's analogies between scientology and orgonomy are scary. I still take his claim about DeMeo threatening people seriously - I have heard from a number of people that DeMeo threatens legal action in attempt to suppress free speech. I personally have encountered a number of hypocritical paranormal claimants who ask for people to openly consider their claims - but turn around and try to keep people from hearing the criticisms of the claim. Real seekers and promoters of truth will say, "I feel this way, but those who disagree say . . . "

I find true believer crackpots interesting, every now and then, one takes it upon themselves to dedicate their life to just bringing down some prominent person. It's probably a similar dysfunction as with stalkers - just a different kind of obsession. I must admit to being accused of being obsessive in my debunking of Dennis Lee as seen at http://www.phact.org/e/dennis.html.

My personal pages on orgonomy can be found at

http://www.phact.org/e/orgonomy.htm

I don't buy Carlinsky's disingenuous excuses to avoid open honest testing of orgonomy claims. He accuses DeMeo of deserving no scientific attention for not allowing replication - but says orgonomy shouldn't be tested. Go figure. I still feel, "Test the paranormal claim, if true - the entire world can benefit through confirmation, if false - the followers can then use their time for better purposes." If Carlinsky is mad at me, my response is "expect to get burnt when you dedicate your life to burning others" If there are evil anti-free-speech orgonomists that want to try to silence me, I warn you that oppressing me would only galvanize support for me from volunteers that would post all this information and taking up the cause of keeping the internet open. - if you have a problem with what I post, nicely come to me first - I have a number of lawyer friends. Anyone who wants to offer rebuttals, commentary, etc on this subject - great, send it in, I'll post it.

Eric Krieg