The Blame Game.

A couple of posts ago I inducted Central Texas Paranormal into the Rational Paranormal Hall Of Shame, for using a ghost application to fake the following image:

Not only did Paul Coffey, the team's founder, resident psychic, and, for all I can tell, sole member, try to pass this off as an actual ghost photo, he had the audacity to engage in some special pleading by claiming his "gift" of spirit communication allowed him to confirm the pictures authenticity.

When I published Paul's fakery on my FB page, The Rational Paranormal, one of it's patrons, Mark decided to take the above image and confront him directly. That's a move I totally welcomed, and would ordinarily do myself, in my mind this would give him the opportunity to hold his hands up and to admit his error, apologize and move on. Instead of doing this, Paul deleted the offending post and issued the following, quite bizarre comment.

First off, calling out some one's fakery isn't "nasty" it's honesty. What I did by exposing Paul on my page, and likely what Mark did in sharing this to Central Texas Paranormal was motivated by compassion and concern for the people being deliberately misled. I don't like liars, I think people deserve the truth, whether they accept that truth is purely down to them. But I'd stand for allowing them to make that choice. As for my page "not having anything paranormal to show" frankly that's because I don't legitimately believe I've ever come across anything paranormal to share. If I ever did, I sure as hell would. I'd never resort to fakery though.

A friend asked me recently, what I'd do if I ever had a "ghost" encounter myself, how would my blog and page change? Would I apologise for my skeptical stance? My answer would of course be, not a jot. The things I've exposed as fake, are fake, I'd stand by every word I've wrote. In fact, if I ever became a "believer" I'd likely become more passionate about exposing fakery, I'd know that it's obscuring the "true" evidence of the paranormal.

Paul then waxes on about the huge amount of ghost photographs he possesses. Now you can make your own mind up about this statement by viewing the quality of his images on his Facebook page, but I'd be remiss not to add if you have so many GENUINE paranormal images, why the hell would you find the need to fake one? The only logical answer to this question is, you've faked a ton of images already and you are well aware that most of the others are simple misidentification of natural causes.

Paul then resumes special pleading by wittering on about his "powers" again:

" I am a true spirit sensitive and I was asked by the divine to cross spirits into God's light and I have been doing so since 2010. I am also a natural medium and I talk to the dead. "

I don't care what your calling is, or what supernatural agencies you purport to do the bidding of. YOU GOT CAUGHT! It's that simple. Also, having this "divine inspiration" you were still stupid enough to not only think you'd get away with such lame fakery, but you were so proud of it, you had to plaster your name and bullshit title all over it.

Also, if I were you, I'd be getting on to your "spirit guides" cause they really screwed the pooch when they said "Ya, looks legit to me Paul, post away!"

Amongst all this, of course, Paul gives a shout out to his supporters, many of whom post plaudits, "haters gonna hate" type messages and congratulations on the thread. So many of these messages talk about "the truth." It's hard to blame the commentators, as Paul never indicates what nasty comments he is referring to, and I doubt many of them would have had time to actually see the actual post and it's rebuttal. The fact of the matter is though, anyone of them could have discovered the true origins of Paul's ghost in a heartbeat as I did, and as someone else would have if I hadn't.

 Paul, however, knows the truth, and in thanking his followers, he's actually showing his gratitude for them being blinkered and so painfully unquestioning.

Paul repeats his thanks the following day:

For "work" read lies. Also that "tell-all book"? Will Paul actually tell-all or will he repeat the same lies he's currently spewing? The latter I bet. I'd hazard a guess that he'll play the blame game in his book too.

If he's looking for some guidance in this area, he could do worse than looking to regular blog punch-bag, David Rountree, who recently appeared on the Cinnamon Moon show (03/01/16). Amongst discussing paranormal archelogy, laughably forgetting about general and special relativity again, and attempting to bamboozle the show's laughably wishy-washy hosts, both called "something-moon" for some reason, with sciency sounding words, Rountree dropped repeated comments about social media and the paranormal scene. Both of which, are apparently in a terrible state, presumably because Rountree has difficulty navigating either without being buried with accusations of lying about military service, his academic record, his native American heritage and virtually everything else.

The problem is David, and Paul, you both lied. The people calling you out aren't the guilty ones. The paranormal scene may well be a "cesspit" as Rountree states, but this isn't the fault of the people striving to expose the lies, the fakes, and the overall deception.

The blame lies with the liars, frauds and fakers, and the blinkered that swallow their lies without question.

Stuffing a Turkey: Another Round With Rountree.

So I've been waiting awhile for David Rountree to respond to my criticism of his "academic paper", I've been waiting even longer for him to actually direct me to his doctoral thesis, which is still, as far as I'm concerned, non-existent. He has responded, in exactly the way a man of his academic stature would be expected to.


By telling me to engage in fellatio with multiple penises on facebook.

Sweet.

Frankly, David, I'd rather snack on a thousand sacks of genitals than swallow an ounce of the bullshit you feed your followers.

But I don't blame Rountree for gloating, noted physicist Michael Robishaw totally agrees with his research and findings. Wait did I say "noted physicist"? I meant "self-proclaimed Psychic healer, shamen and spiritual warrior", none of which qualify him to verify theories in physics. In fact lets be honest, the only reason a person surrounds himself with so many self-appointed bullshit titles is because he or she is fundamentally unremarkable otherwise.

So what was the cause of Rountree's gloating anyway? It turns out he'd read this article: Magnetic Wormhole created in lab published on IB times August 22nd 2015. Unfortunately for Rountree, he either didn't bother to read the article fully or didn't understand it... or there's a third possibility which I'll get to in a second.

The first line of the article Dave shared states: "A wormhole for magnets has been created by scientists in a laboratory. The wormhole is not of the space-time variety, but rather it tunnels a magnetic field from one point to another." So its not the type of wormhole which Rountree's theory relies on. This magnetic wormhole is a wormhole in name alone. Of course I let Rountree know this on Twitter, which resulted in him immediately blocking me after telling me to "get a life".

Blocking opponents of his, is nothing new for Rountree, and he's clearly avoiding a discussion regarding his wormhole theory. But there is something more insidious at work here in my opinion. Dave is protecting the fragile web of lies he has constructed around his scientific credentials. He knows that a public debate with anyone (quite literally anyone in his case) with the ability to punch holes in this faux "man of science" image risks the admiration and respect he has lied to garner. Rountree fears exposure more than anything else, that's why he claims to be a quantum physicist on YouTube and Twitter, but not on Research Gate a site for academics (see here). He knows that an actual academic would expose him as a fraud in seconds.

His opinion of his followers and fan's intelligence must be very low indeed. I think he's fairly confident that they won't understand the research he linked to and why it doesn't support his wormhole bullshit.

Rountree clearly thrives in an echo-chamber, and he has a few dotted around. For example, I was recently directed to this thread in the "Keeping the Paranormal Friendly" forum. Here Rountree exposes more of his bullshit pseudo-science. Laughably one particular section of Rountree's first post shows how fundamentally dishonest Rountree is. He plagiarises the following section but can't bare leave it in its original form. Check out the one adjustment:

Rountree:

"Researchers have no observational evidence for wormholes, until now. The equations of the theory of general relativity have valid solutions that contain wormholes. Because of its robust theoretical strength, a wormhole is one of the great physics metaphors for teaching general relativity."

Original source, Planetary science.org

"Researchers have no observational evidence for wormholes, but the equations of the theory of general relativity have valid solutions that contain wormholes. Because of its robust theoretical strength, a wormhole is one of the great physics metaphors for teaching general relativity."

Laughably his addition of "until now" not only makes no grammatical sense, it's  directly contradicted by what follows!

Needless to say, Rountree's entire post plagiarises this source wholesale, unfortunately, he fails to perform a further edit and omit the following.

" Physicists have not found any natural process that would be predicted to form a wormhole naturally in the context of general relativity..."

Err... whoops...

Rountree is very much in his element in this forum, he clearly feels this is a safe space in which his bullshit is unlikely to be challenged. He's probably right. The moderator and some other posters fawn all over Rountree. He responds to this adulation by adopting a professorial tone, congratulating his mock students for not challenging his bullshit, such praise as "Yes, that's right Paige. Good memory."

But my favourite line is the following, the one utterance that should scream to anyone who has studied physics, that Rountree is not only a sham, but he literally doesn't have doesn't a blind clue. Really, this is a doozy.

"Well ignore the math. The math is used mearly for scientific verification of the concepts discussed. When you see the equations, just mentally say "Oh, this is the justufucation for the statement""

"Ignore the maths," said no physicist EVER.  Remember Dr Matt Hunt's words when he took a look at Rountree's quantum physics pdfs?

"There are no equations when talking about quantum mechanics which suggests he doesn't have the skills to understand them."

Rountree dismisses the importance of the mathematical foundations of physics because he can't do the maths. This is why there isn't a single use of mathematics in his "wormhole" paper.

 But Rountree doesn't just preach to the faithful to social media and forums, he also blogs to them mocking critics of his theory. In a post entitled "The Next Level" he writes:

"I will be doing my first attempt at artificially opening a wormhole this weekend..... This is a serious experiment based on my thesis work, so the outcome is very important to me. oh wait, i forget i lied about my educational credentials thus i am uneducated. Lol."

The level of arrogance here is astounding considering Rountree categorically DID lie about his education.

Much of the article focuses on the casimir effect, in the discussion of this Rountree massively misrepresents one of the main arguments of his critics:

"...the Casimir effect plays an important role in the chiral bag model of the nucleon; in applied physics, it is significant in some aspects of emerging microtechnologies and nanotechnologies.This is not theoretical. This is a proven and measured effect...."

Yes, that's true. But no-one is arguing this! Rountree's critics point out to him that WORMHOLES are theoretical not the casimir effect.

Speaking of the Casimir effect, Rountree laughably spells "casimir" and "resonances" wrong at several points throughout the piece. Now I think its pretty low to focus on an opponents spelling and grammar in a debate, its usually a fair sign that you haven't got much else to focus on, but there is a really good reason for my to focus on spelling here. Roundtree, you see, doesn't spell Casimir wrong throughout the account. In fact he switches between spellings.

This implies the Rountree is up to his old plagerism tricks, remember how I showed that his "paper" published on Research Gate was made up of a huge amount of text copy and pasted from Wikipedia? Well after I wrote that some inspired soul ran it through Grammarly and found that a whopping 44% of it was plagiarised! Take a look at the PDF here. Anyway back to this post. A quick scan on Plagscan of the first half of the post alone shows a staggering amount of plagiarism. Most comes from Rountree's go to source Wikipedia, other sites he has STOLEN from include Yahoo answers, the Anderson Institute and laughably Youtube comments sections!

If this doesn't persuade you that  Rountree has none of the expertise he claims nothing will, these aren't even legitimate scientific sources. If he is going to plagiarise, why Wikipedia and Yahoo answers? Why not published papers and peer reviewed journals? I suspect Rountree is so deluded, and crucially, not scientifically literate, that he can't identify a legitimate source. 

He further reveals this in his closing words:

I will at this time refrain from revealing any further details of the work, incuding protocols and equipment identification, configuration, and experiment protocols. Simply because its my work. I own it. And i want the stalkers and trolls to melt down from curiosity. Because…well….I can. More to come. Hopefully….

Sorry Dave that's not how legitimate science works, you have to reveal your methodology! Also you critics aren't stalkers and trolls, Criticism is a vital part of the scientific methods. What are you going to do when your research is actually brought before your peers for peer review? Tell them to get a life if they critique it? What about the projects which endeavour to replicate your results if they fail? Will they also be told to eat a bag of dicks?

Speaking of said interesting meal suggestion, mine has just arrived.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

The Wacky world of David Rountree PhD (?) MSEE(?) Liar(?)

David M. Rountree is a star of now cancelled TV show Ghost Stalkers and  director of operations at S.P.I.R.I.T (scientific paranormal investigative research and information technology. Acronyms are cool) labs, whose site features 10 downloadable PDFs on quantum mechanics authored by Rountree himself. In addition to this there are 10 PDFs on the correlation between quantum physics and paranormal phenomena ranging from UFOs to ghosts and through cryptozoology.

Roundtree should know what he is talking about here, just look at the qualifications he claims to hold, and besides... HE WROTE THAT HE IS A PHYSICIST ON TWITTER! No-one lies on social media!

Looking at some of Rountree's PDFs its clear he has some knowledge of quantum physics, but none of them go into much depth beyond what you'd find in a pop culture physics book, not that there is anything particularly WRONG with pop culture physics books.... but Rountree is naming these PDFs 101-1 etc... implying that there is some academic merit to them.

Also he makes some quite fundamental errors. For example in Quantum Physics 101-1, which consists of nothing more than the potted history of some of discoveries that led to the development of quantum physics, Rountree states this about Planck's constant:

"This is known as Planck’s Constant, and along with the speed of light, is one of the two key constants in physics."

Now even a second year degree student, like me, knows that there are far more than two key constants in physics, and Rountree claims to have a PhD in Quantum mechanics from Princeton!
He goes as far to even talk about Newton's theory of gravitation in the same paragraph, did he forget about Newton's gravitation constant G? What about all these constants?  Seems like an odd thing for a physicist to forget.

These are just for starters. I used every one of those during my first year.

Looking through the other PDFs among a few silly mistakes and over-simplifications, I couldn't really find anything that screamed "This was wrote by a PhD". For example, there isn't one single equation for example, in fact I'd say most of the imparted information could be found on Wikipedia or in a popular science book in any bookshop.
To be fair everyone makes mistakes, but this is a PhD and the PDFs never really rise beyond the level of a second grade book report.

I linked the documents to the awesome Dr. Matt Hunt PhD in applied mathematics, formerly of the much missed Fundamentally Flawed podcast, he made the same observation as I had:

"There are no equations when talking about quantum mechanics which suggests he doesn't have the skills to understand them."

This led me to question whether Rountree actually has a PhD in quantum mechanics, could he be lying about his qualifications? Before I deal with that (and boy will I), what is Rountree's actual claim linking quantum physics to the paranormal?

Taken from Quantum Physics 101-2

Woah woah woah.... The will of the observer?

See what Rountree does here? He blinds you with the wonder of legitimate science, the non-intuitive nature of quantum physics, then he sneaks past you a  BIG FAT LIE. Will isn't a measurable quantity, never has been. Never been show to have the damnedest effect on reality either, quantum or otherwise. Rountree has reality confused with a Green Lantern comic book. And "will" as with consciousness, has damn all to do with collapse of a wave function.

Also Rountree doesn't seem to understand the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics (again important to remember this is just one of many possible explanations for the probabilistic nature of quantum physics). The Copenhagen interpretation doesn't state that "nothing is real until you observe it" but that a quantum system doesn't adopt a fixed state until it interacts with something in its enviroment, causing the collapse of its wavefunction! The wavefunction being everything that can be known about the system while it remains isolated.

Rountree continues based on this faulty premise:

So a ghost is a quantum wave? There's one great big glaring problem with this premise. A "ghost" wouldn't be a object on a quantum-scale. As its visible with the naked eye, and often human sized, we'd assume it to be a macroscopic object, the number of particles it would have consist of (and it would have to consist of particles as to be seen it has to interact with photons) would exceed Avagado's number generally taken to be the limit of microscopic to macroscopic objects, otherwise there would no seeing it at all, it wouldn't be dense enough to even appear transparent.

I put this to Dr Matt, he had this to say:

"Correct"

Thanks Matt.

Also remember when we talked on the last blog about the collapse of the wavefunction causing the observables to take a set value? Well the observables aren't "imaginary" and "real" are they? No they are things like momentum and position and energy... wait...  He actually said the wave is imaginary, therefore the ghost is imaginary. FUCK! I totally agree with that!

He spoils it by continuing.

The rest of Rountree's first set of PDFs reveal little else of his theories, instead he deviates on to other subjects such string theory. The second set of PDFs feature Rountree's connections to various paranormal phenomena.

The first PDF "Anti-gravity and UFOs" quickly spirals into conspiracy theory and pseudo-science: Nazi saucer projects, anti-gravity weapons. The stuff of nonsense.

So Tim Ventura floated an object across the room, this is how UFOs travel, firstly Ventura's research can't be found in peer reviewed journals but in UFO sites and magazines. This is one of the first sources that Rountree has really cited and its pseudo-scientific rubbish. I can't even show a picture of the device Tim built because even the site American Anti-Gravity have removed it!

Also you know how Tim's object "defied gravity"? With a stream of ionized air!

Anyone need me to tell them why this isn't going to allow aliens to travel across THE VOID OF SPACE!

"Many UFO reports indicate the craft are able to create a field to counter Earths gravity, or at least to manipulate it." 

What reports? Any chance we can see them? Nah, just take his word for it.

Moving on to the "Ghosts and Crytzoology" PDF, here Roundtree offers an alternative second hypothesis on the origin of ghosts.... because frankly I'm losing the will to live... I give in here.

There isn't an iota of evidence in any of these documents that Rountree is actually a PhD in quantum physics as he claims.

Rountree's qualifications

The first thing I did to check into Dave's education was go to Princeton's home page, from there I can search their library of thesis dating back to 1926, with thesis from 1997 onwards represented by full text. As Rountree claims to have qualified in 2012 his dissertation should definitely be there.

First searching David M, Rountree.

Hmmm... nothing.

Let's try just David Rountree:

Hmm.... a few Rountrees. No David. And no results in quantum physics or mechanics. Why would there be no doctoral dissertation for David Rountree?

Try yourself.

A General search reveals something unsurprising, Rountree is exposed on various sites by a multitude of people as, to be frank, a liar. Not only about qualifications but also about military service.

Let's be clear here what follows is the hard work of the cited individuals, who have been on Rountree's case for sometime. I reproduce it simply because I think as many people as possible should know what this man this. These people, who will be named, are awesome. I suck.

So has Rountree produced any evidence of his qualifications? The PhD in quantum mechanics, no not one jot, he's posted evidence of other qualifications, so why not this one? I'll let you draw your own conclusion.

On the left here's one he has posted, Master of Science in Electrical Engineering awarded in 2007. But from where? The seal of the certificate is obscured. If you look at the profile at the top of this blog Rountree does claim an MSEE in 2007. The crucial difference is Rountree claims that he got this degree from NJIT, the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Problem is, that isn't their seal. Its the seal of Belford University.

According to the Better Business Bureau, Belford is a scam university, a diploma mill, unaccredited. offering "life experience degrees". In 2012 it was hit by a $22.7 million dollar class-action lawsuit, which has, unfortunately not had much of an impact on its trade.

So Rountree is a Master of Science in the same sense as Kent Hovind is a doctor. i.e. Not at all.

Two qualifications down. One to go. His BSEE. Again Dave has posted "evidence" of this qualification on twitter:

I'm going to let the authors of the brilliant No Blue Falcons Blog tell you the problems with this one, after you read this go tell them how much they rock.

"The first big red flag is the word “neccessary” in the first line under his name, which should actually be spelled NECESSARY... The second problem is in the following line. The words “here by” is also incorrect. The correct word should be “hereby”... David M. Rountree was born May 22, 1954. That means he did not graduate high school until 18 years later, which would be 1972. How was he able to obtain a four year degree in ONE year?" 

And there is much more, you can read more of their conclusions here.

Rountree's lies don't stop at his qualifications as mentioned, but I do. My aim was to examine his claims with regards to physics and I have. You shouldn't stop here though. This man deserves to be exposed.

To read more about this shocking claims and fabrications follow these links:

http://www.worstparanormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Rountree-expose.pdf

https://nobluefalcons.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/the-records-prove-stolen-valor-by-tv-personality-and-author-david-rountree/

https://nobluefalcons.wordpress.com/

So why does any of this matter?

Rountree is lying to gain respect in the paranormal field, he hides his bogus claims behind the shield of  authority in physics, It insults physicists and exploits ignorance. In doing so, he spits on everyone who worked their arse into the ground to gain a qualification IN ANYTHING, because he skipped the work and went straight for the reward and respect. And he's gettin' it too.

And how does he respond to his critics? As I've shown with more fabrications and with CHARMING images like this:

Really? A gun. What an outstanding man of science.

Tell you what Dave, I will retract all of this. Every word. I will sing your praises for a year. I'll Grovel.

All you have to do is one thing... tell me the title of your doctoral thesis and link me to it.

That's it.

Up for the challenge soldier?

Thanks to everyone who helped me research this post. I got an immeasurable amount of assistance from TK Anderson, who also wrote this open letter to Rountree. The No Blue Falcons run a regular blog on the antics of Dodgy Dave, which is a second to none source of information. And To Matt Hunt for his expertise. Plus immeasurable others who contributed without even knowing.