Gary Mannion to take the Test?
A POTENTIAL APPLICANT
I’ve been informed that there has been a £50,000 challenge issued to one Gary Mannion, a twenty-year-old British “psychic surgeon” who is rapidly gaining recognition in the UK. Mannion claims to effect miraculous healing on his patients through the intervention of his spirit friend “Abraham” and he says that this isn’t just any old Abraham, but the very same one of Biblical fame, and that he – Gary – knows this to be true because when he Googled the name, the Google image he got he recognized as that of his friend Abraham from the Old Testament! Mannion is very careful to stay on the right side of the law, qualifying his extravagant assertions with disclaimers such as “I am not a doctor,” and “I don’t claim to cure cancer,” although the many testimonials on his many websites tell a different story.
Growing increasingly concerned about Mannion, UK skeptic Jon Cohen has offered to give him £50,000 if he can prove that his claims are genuine. Professor Chris French from Goldsmiths, University of London, has offered to carry out the test. Mannion has agreed to be tested, and a meeting has been scheduled to discuss protocols. I may even be able to meet this “surgeon” in person when I travel to the UK in April…!
What a rich life I lead!
However, I must admit that I’m surprised to learn that Google’s images of long-dead Biblical personages are so accurate…!
Taken from Swift, March 21st 2008
March 21, 2008 at 2:10 pm | Skeptic News | 28 Comments »
I HAVE A SERIES OF TAPES/CD’S FROM JERRY AND ESTER HICKS
THE ABRAHAM READINGS/ SEMINARS ETC
Jerry and Esther’s invisible friend is a different Abraham!
How do you know Julia!? Did you check out his mug-shot on Google images?!!
We have been following Mannions career from the beginning and have catalogged every move he makes and every lie he has told.
http://www.badpsychicsgarymannion.co.uk
That website doesn’t seem to exist.
I believe, as a result of badpsychics and other unhealthily aggressive websites, Gary has disappeared for the moment.
That’s a shame – unlike most of you who post remarks on this website, who are not qualified to judge him one jot, I am. I am a broadcaster and consumer journalist with many years’ experience dealing with crooks and Gary is not a crook.
I developed an aggressive breast cancer and was not likely to live this Spring. Gary took away the pain and substantially shrunk the tumour in 3 weeks. I did not expect anything when I met him. I did not know what to expect, but went along in the ‘try anything’ spirit. He did not ask for money. He was modest. He was decent. He praised my doctors and my hospital. He is a sincere and talented person. He is also young and sensitive. He is not a financial rip-off merchant – he works by donation only and does not check what you give. I saw people donate £1.50 and he booked another appointment to help them again. I saw desperate people, come away with some pain relief.
Which of you, who scoff and spend your time thinking you are superior and the rest of us are fools, can say that you took away someone’s pain?
I am shocked and appalled that people like those who write on your sites, can think themselves clever and superior when actually they are just unpleasant and come over as highly malicious wreckers. I cannot work out why anyone wastes their time jeering. You do no one any good, you harm yourselves and waste substantial amounts of time which you could use for something more constructive.
Dear Jane Tribble,
Delighted to hear that your tumour has shrunk. As good skeptics we will be absolutely thrilled if you can provide any evidence at all, other than personal testimony which has no value whatsoever, that Gary Mannion achieved this ‘miracle’ via his so called ‘psychic surgery’.
While considering your reply you will of course include all the information regarding ongoing treatment by other means.
Thank you,
DD
P.S. Can you please provide you CV regards your background as a Journalist i.e. do you have any scientific or medical expereince that would qualify you to judge the success of the so called ‘psychic surgery’?
Looks like your question thing at the end of the post worked. Also not having to sign in is nice too. Good job. Nice list. Thanks.
Jane Tribble has not returned. How unexpected.
I suggest that Jane Tribble’s sort of “testimonial” is just another work of fiction, like those on Mannion’s site.
He is a con-man.
Jane Tribble’s contribution here is very much like a shortened version of the testimonial on Mannion’s page, written by a journalist, author and broadcaster called Jane Furnival.
How very odd.
I have returned. I am too busy to read this site more than once in a blue moon and came across it when checking out something different.
Now, regarding the sneering person who could not, it seems, spell very well, but felt the need to ask for a digest of my entire life:
My journalistic experience is long and respectable, writing as Jane Furnival – columnist for several top newspapers, I have written for virtually every British newspaper there is and many magazines including international ones. I have been a TV presenter, radio ‘personality’ and all that, for many years and my CV includes Radio 4, You and Yours, Woman’s Hour, and a long stint in BBC 1 among more. I have met and exposed a good few crooks in my time, have helped readers recoup hundreds of thousands of pounds, and am never afraid to stand up for the truth, as I experience it, even if it is unwelcome to some. I have a very good Oxford degree and am known for having a suspicious mind!
As I believe I said, during the time Gary Mannion treated me, I had been diagnosed with a vast tumour but NO repeat NO medical treatment was offered at all at that time, as I was in the queue for a mastectomy. Believe it or not, you sceptics, the NHS is a bit barebones about offering treatment – you’re hardly snowed under with offers from them!
When that mastectomy took place, the docs told me that my tumour, which I had seen on the diagnostic screen being measured at 8.5cm, had actually been 4.5cm when they removed it. They had no explanation for the shrinkage and nor has any consultant I have asked. I have asked around six.
Since then I have talked to several cancer consultants about using Gary and people like him in wards to alleviate pain and suffeing – shock horror, you’ll hate this, you sceptics but there are OTHERS who are quietly taking cancer patients all over the country in NHS clinics, doing similar work, simply not as effectively as Gary who is, I believe, a very gifted man. I’ve had treatment from others and it has been great at removing pain.
As none of you seem to know much about what it’s like to have cancer, the pain and the horror of it, you’re not qualified to sneer. It is worth asking and questioning – but that’s different from adopting a ‘superior’ snore-bore attitude which I suspect you wouldn’t do, if YOU were ill.
There ARE crooks and charlatans around- many in Mexico – but Gary Mannion is not one. – I went for the first time ever to an ‘open circle’ in Devon recently which was, I believe, run by fraudsters and nearly got thrown out for making my feelings plain! . (I spent all of £4 on getting in to the fraudsters’ mediumistic circle and it was worth it for the sheer fun of telling my family what it was like, especially as by the end, the fraudsters didn’t speak to me!)
My journalistic nose scents a story. Just how are those offering vast sums of money to Gary, financing themselves? Or is this a made-up story to add a bit of spice to the entire bear-baiting session? I suspect it is – as no bona fide educational institution does anything but investigate – they don’t offer money. They don’t HAVE money.
I wish you all well.
Jane Tribble
DD asked you a simple question – “do you have any scientific or medical expereince that would qualify you to judge the success of the so called ‘psychic surgery’?” Yes, he made a typing error, but then so have you. Would you care to answer the question?
On the preview comments relating to the Mannion documentary last year, you wrote, “His gift is to transfer pure energy and love to help the body heal itself. I am a journalist not an idiot. It is easy to mock, if you are not ill.”
Would you care to explain what this “pure energy” is? Where does it come from , how is it measured, how is it identified?
Or is it just the usual New Age energy drivel, basically?
Let me predict. The self-glorifying and self-admiring journalist, a member of a well-respected (?) profession, will not return.
I do so hope I am wrong.
Jane Tribble (Furnival)
She is a journalist. Did you know? Has a degree in English from Oxford University. At the end of her testimonial on Mannion’s latest site, she wrote, “I speak as I find, without fear of favour.”
Well, I always thought it was “fear or favour”, but I bow down to an Oxford graduate.
And, ” His hand, hovering over areas that were giving me problems, such as my neck, was extremely hot, like a bar fire, and I could feel energy flowing from him to my body.” So he sorted out her breast cancer, the pain in her abdomen, and her neck. Would you believe it?
“He is a very young man and I think he should go on to work in hospitals where his skill in pain-relief could benefit many.” I wonder why that hasn’t happened.
Answers on a post card, please.
Blimey! Googling around the www looking for possible new topics for a TV series last month and found this growing thread. Psychic Surgery is pure gold-dust! So with racing pulse I started calling a few media contacts to get a wider view of Gary Mannion and any of the folks on his site. Gary has relatively low profile in la-la land but the legal folks at Auntie Beeb advised me “to run for the hills” when I enquired about his pal, BBC presenter/Daily Mail journalist, Jane Furnival. She appears to have about as many medical qualifications as he does; indeed video clips elsewhere on the web showing her leading ghost hunting tours round her house. You couldn’t make it up! So, sadly, she’s hardly a credible spokesperson for Gary or my TV show and I can’t find anyone with any serious clout who is prepared to take part. I will keep looking for themes and checking back here in case anyone with real medical credentials wishes to argue his case and then we’re on. Such a damn shame. Fascinating bunkem like this is the very best “car crash” television. No sane TV outlet could possibly commission a programme without a lawyer on stand-by or massive disclaimer at the end but before I completely write it off I’m going to try and have a quick word with Louis Theroux and see if he might investigate Pyschic Surgery. Brilliant Sunday eve fare! Keep chuntering. SD.
pls don’t give this chap – or any others like him – any exposure steve, some folks are so naive (and/or stupid and/or desperate) they will fall for it and get hurt. after an earlier pseudo documentary, my girlfriend who is NHS nurse in Oxford saw for herself how hopes are raised and then dashed by this flaky kinda crap. it would be another kick in teeth to hard-working dr’s and nurses and genuine medical scientists to give airtime to this psychic twaddle. BUT you might be on a winner with a prog. about testimonials. there is growing culture of reviews and endorsements – but how do consumers check these out??? you had access to contacts at BBC and were able to dig around for info, which debunked Gary’s reviewer, but most folks can only take testimonials at face-value. i bought some camera LEDS recently from a website that included a glowing review from someone who also claimed to work for BBC. the LEDS were crap so I called the site MD and challenged him and he pretty much admitted the review was manufactured when I asked for names and numbers. in effect reputable media brands are being exploited without their consent. does anyone know if there is a register of journalists – not compiled by themselves – and verified by the media bosses that they are indeed bona-fide trained employees working to a code of conduct and, importantly, that they are experts in the respective field and that their boss has sactioned them using the media title to give credibility to their friends/clients/suppliers etc in this way? does the BBC even know it is implicity associated with recommending electronic retailers/quacks etc via the wonderful outpourings of www? i think not. dashing off now to write a review for something/someone/anything wearing my BBC hat (I’ve got a licence and I appeared as a guest on a teatime chat show 5 years ago so I’m obviously qualified to speak for the company/umbilically connected u know!) let me know if you need an interview or ever need a fab testimonial, mwah x
To Steve Docherty
I presume you saw the BBC3 documentary on Mannion broadcast in March last year. All 6 parts have been posted on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=young%2C+psychic+and+possessed&aq=f
Steve,
I would urge you to get further properly skeptical coverage. If you visit UK Skeptics site then you will find plenty of people there who can help you. Julia in particular has been most active in chasing Mannion. Last we heard he was trying it on in America I think. Land of the free and the gullible.
Anyway, I disagree that a well done show, showing him and possibly others like him up would be good publicity for them.
You could try to look at Adrian Pengelly as well. Convicted fraudster.
Badpschics had a really good archive on him but I think Julia did most of it so you can go there. Also have a look on Spiritlove, a site for psychic groupies. Even they were pretty suspicious of our Gary.
Anyhow, go for it. And while you are at it, take a look at teh ADE 651 explosive detector scam and the lovely Jim McCormick who is behind it. This also needs more coverage as it has gone quiet. We are waiting to see if plod charge him and Gary Bolton of Global Technical and his GT200 scam device. Let us know if you hear any whispers on this story. Cheers and all the best for your work
P.S. By way, legally if you need an angle you could invoke the latest Consumer Protection legislation with the psychic scam artists. They are taking advantage of the average and vulnerable consumer because they peddle their wares with not a jot of evidence, and make no disclaimers to that effect. For some reason Trading Standards are not consistent across the country on these matters. We have had some success in Glasgow regarding Derek Ogilvie, and Julia has pursued a few cases successfully. I think we also put the mockers on Mannion when he went to Wales hiding behind Comic Relief as a marketing exercise, when we complained to the local Council who owned the property where the so called Psychic fayre thing took place.
Anyway, enough for now. Where’s Jane I wonder? Defender of the faith that she is shouldn’t she still be here crusading on Gazzas behalf? Miss ya!
Hello, all! I’m the Julia previously mentioned in this thread, the one who set up the website exposing Gary’s lies and exaggerations.
You may be interested to know that Gary has been in Brazil, one of the hotbeds of “traditional” psychic surgery – the kind Gary doesn’t do because it requires skilful sleight of hand and produces physical evidence (such as chicken guts or surgical waste) that can be grabbed by sceptical witnesses and proved to be fake. When he returns Trading Standards will be having a word with him about a false claim, about which he has already been warned, currently being made on his website.
I understand Curtis’ point about not giving Gary any exposure, but if sceptics didn’t report people like him to Trading Standards and spread the word via the internet and TV their exploitation of the sick and desperate would be even worse. For example, both Gary and Adrian Pengelly formerly made the blatantly illegal claim to have successfully treated cancer. Gary received a warning about this and Pengelly was successfully prosecuted.
As for the BBC documentary about Gary, I was extremely disappointed that the director chose not to mention Gary’s TWO warnings from Trading Standards and threats of legal action from a London hospital and BrainGym (yes, I know BrainGym is nonsense but it’s copyrighted nonsense, a fact which was lost on Gary). I provided the director of the show with this information but he decided, in his own words, “to let the audience make up their own minds”. How they could be expected to do so without knowing all the facts I don’t know, but that’s lazy journalism for you.
Curtis, I understand your point about about not giving charlatans extra exposure, but one of Mannion’s psychic surgery events tomorrow in Colchester has suddenly been cancelled. Now, I don’t know why, but I don’t suppose it is because it has been a massive sell-out. He hired the hall himself, so I expect he will be considerably out of pocket. An article appeared about him a month or so ago which might have had something to do with it.
http://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/local/8338836.Psychic_to____operate____by_using_his_mind/
Thx for feedback, am based in Spain so do often miss UK progs. On a different trail at mo. but plan to return to pyschic surgery next year so will check back here end of year to see if any updates. Cheers S
This will probably be my last visit to your website as I am now ‘semi-terminal’ ie no one knows how long I have to live.
Can anyone running your website give me contact details for Steve Docherty who has put derogatory remarks re the BBC and myself on your website? I should like to find out what he is talking about and who he talked to, so that I can put the record straight.
If you can’t email me with some contact email address for him, I suggest you remove the remarks, which are silly, offensive and inaccurate, as I recently recorded a BBC interview at home, which was requested by the BBC, and an interviewer drove 80 miles to get from me. Due to illness, I have had to turn down the BBC’s various interview requests and requests to do regular spots, over the last couple of years and I haven’t told them why – so I’d like to know what this man is talking about or who he talked to who spoke so unprofessionally.
Regarding all your to-and-fro’ing about what I’ve written: I’ve never claimed to have any medical qualifications nor scientific ones; nor, it seems, do any of you, writing on this website.
But I AM qualified, as we all are, to know when my pain has been helped. I’ve clearly told my story – doctors have no explanation for how my tumour shrank so much, with no medical care at all.
Gary did this and I’m grateful; so, recently, did another anonymous healer from Wiltshire, who managed to stop my pain for two blissful weeks. I’ve no idea who she was – a friend took me to see her.
I think you seem to be confused about psychic healing. It isn’t the same as mad ‘operations’ in which conmen produce chicken parts etc!
I think it must be the manipulation and transfer of energy into the body from the healer – you feel a fantastic sense of re-charging – that’s not the best word but the only one I can think of – afterwards. It doesn’t heal, but it darn well helps!
When you start looking into stuff, you realise how very little we know about medicine, the body etc. People imagine there are batteries of drugs to help, but there are very few.
I have trouble finding a good painkiller – morphine dished out by the palliative hospital team, makes me feel ill; herbal stuff is sometimes more effective, but not now that I have 5 tumours in my back. I haven’t seen Gary for at least 18 months if not more – he’s all round the country from what I see on his website, but not my neck of the woods and I can’t travel anymore. I know he is busy with appointments.
REAL scientists, REAL doctors, don’t scoff. They are empirically interested in anything that will HELP people – and they listen to their patients’ experiences, and take them seriously. I’ve had great conversations with doctors – including several top consultants at London hospitals – about so-called ‘psychic healing’ and the possibilities of using it, going round wards where people are crying with dreadful pain – I’ve seen them – and offering their help to relieve the pain of seriously ill people.
If any of you have any experience of illness, you’ll know that unfortunately, during death, pain ‘breaks through’, and the body quickly gets used to high doses of painkillers but the docs can’t give more than a max dose.
This ‘psychic healing’ technique is already available via the few Macmillan cancer centres in NHS hospitals and it’s called things like global healing. The healers I’ve seen there, say they have to be vague, but I’ve had their ministrations, and it’s the same technique as Gary and others use. They’re good, but just not as talented, sadly.
Sceptics, show doubt but have respect for all points of view.
They don’t merely gainsay anything they hear.
The Greeks who I believe invented the term, would be horrified, to see a very necessary and valid attitude so devalued, as it is by some on your website.
I would urge them to have respect for others’ viewpoints and experience.
You’re not rooting out conmen and so, protecting a vulnerable public from parting with money – Gary never asked me for money and did me some good. – In this case, you seem to be just having a go at someone who is plodding through his life and work, pretty unperturbed by you. People go to see him, and go away feeling better.
So move on! Have a go at the North Devon people I mentioned – by going to see for yourselves as there’s nothing like firsthand experience. For all I know they may think they are genuine.
I am an unashamed fighter for freedom-of-thought. I speak as I find about my experiences.
I don’t hide as you seem to think; I just don’t have a lot of time to consider your website unless I’m bored and sleepless from pain, as tonight!
I have two names – one is my married one, one my professional one – like a lot of media people. Nothing sinister there. Tribble is my married name. I don’t write under it at all.
We do historical ghost walks in our old house as a way of helping to support its maintenance. Again, nothing sinister there; people love them. I have been interviewed to publicise them.
By going, last year, to Guatemala, to get a drug unavailable on the NHS or in the States – you can read about that in last year’s Mail, other papers and the main breast cancer care website too – I managed to change things in the UK, and now more breast cancer sufferers are allowed to have this drug. It was too little too late to help me, but I spent 5 months trying to find where I could get it. A lady emailed me who discovered her cancer as a result of reading my article with the symptoms listed.
Despite having no scientific background, I have devised my own medical regime using scientific research trials of drugs unavailable yet – which, if they do any good, I will publicise to the high hills.
This is based on research, from Oxford by coincidence, where they used a combination of drugs to cure someone last year who had 6 weeks to live – sorry, to the person writing on your website, with a chip on his shoulder about my having gone to uni there, I understand your feelings, having worked my way there from a school in Peckham – but we need centres of excellence. You’ll be grateful for that research one day, if it cures you or your loved ones of disease.
The trials and research difficult stuff to read and understand – just as hard as understanding why Gary can do such brilliant things, just by touch!
Both the sciencey stuff and the psychic stuff are important – I’ll fight for survival on all fronts. I’m supported in my efforts by helpful doctors including one visionary at the Royal Marsden.
If my own efforts don’t work, don’t know how much longer I have to live – the hospital say they now think my particular cancer is called a triple negative, ie doesn’t respond to any drugs they have – and so I think you’ll understand, I really don’t have time to waste. However I am contactable for anyone with a question.
But if one of you falls ill in the future, remember what I’ve said. You will then understand.
Try everything, dismiss nothing until you know by your own experience, and don’t give a monkey’s if someone else sneers!
Dear Ms Furnival,
In your testimonial on Gary Mannion’s site you wrote:
“Eventually, a friend who is a top breast cancer specialist at Bart’s, suggested that they had measured areas of inflammation around my tumour in the original scan, and the tumour was smaller then they first thought.”
This seems to be to be a perfectly reasonable explanation, yet you are now claiming that the shrinkage of your tumour has baffled medical science. Don’t you see the contradiction here?
Jane Furnival
I was very sad to read your last post. Whatever the disagreements there are on the subject of “psychic surgery”, I would not wish what you are experiencing on anyone.
Nevertheless, I have to say this. You have been asked questions about how energy, and its nature, and love are transferred from one person to another. You have avoided the questions. Why?
You must know that psychic surgery/faith healing/magic healing and the rest have been researched and found wanting.
http://www.ebm-first.com/faith-healing.html
And I am afraid to say that your testimonial on Mannion’s site might well be being used as an attempt by a medically unqualified person to attract and treat cancer patients.
Dear Jane,
None of us horrid skeptics for one moment wish you ill.
Have you ever watched Gary doing Abraham. Now go watch Colin Fry doing his spirit guide. Come on Jane. You claim some degree of analytical thought yet you seem to abandon all rational when it comes to Gary.
We have told you before. Your testimonial is worthless. Gary cannot cure bloody bacon, let alone serious illness. If he could why are you now semi-terminal? Can’t yoy just get hold of him and get it sorted. No. Obviously not. And please let us know any of your medical contacts who support this work, or any like it. We will get them struck off.
For crying out loud Jane, at least come to your senses now and declare that Garys treatment ahs obviously miserably failed.
That’s all the evidence we need i.e you claim he helped but he blatantly ahs not.
Good wishes,
Dubious Dick
Dear Jane,
I have been reading your testimonial on Mannion’s site again, and some points have occurred to me that I do not quite understand. You wrote, “Gary asked my (sic) briefly what was wrong and immediately sensed the area in my abdomen where the pain was most strong.” If he could sense it, why did he need to ask? And how did you answer his question?
You wrote, “His hand hovered above the painful area.” I have seen him demonstrate “Psychic Surgery” in public 3 times. He has always massaged, kneaded, laid hands on his “patients”. Perhaps your “consultation” was private, and he behaves differently. Why he should do that, I don’t know. Do you?
You wrote, “He indicated a collection box outside, but did not seem interested in how much I put in. There was about £2.50 in there, representing donations for his entire afternoon’s work.” In the documentary on Mannion broadcast about two years ago, it was said that Mannion claimed on a good week, he could take getting on for £2000. Perhaps when you saw him, it wasn’t so good.
You will be aware of the various Placebo effects, and “Vitalism”.
http://www.ukskeptics.com/article.php?dir=articles&article=the_mystical_nature_of_alternative_medicine.php
Worth a read?
I’m coming rather late to this discussion because a good friend of mine, who is a good bit more New-Agey than I am, just had a session with Mannion and believes to have been helped. She paid minimal money for it and so thought it was worth the risk. I was worried about the proposition; quizzed her about what he did exactly, what she paid, what she felt etc. etc. Then I started to check this guy out.
I’ve now trawled through the BBC documentary (quite good), his website (mediocre), the badpsychics website (way below par–they offer less evidence for the fact that Mannion is a fraud than he offers for the claim that he isn’t, and none of the links on the left of the badpsychics site, where one would click for that evidence, work). So it seems to me that the standards of evidence on both sides are appalling–neither side could convince a switched-on 7 year-old.
But perhaps ‘evidence’ is neither here nor there. Based on what I’ve read and seen, I am quite certain that Mannion is not doing anything to cure anyone. What he’s doing is switching on the faith, the hope, or, if you like, the mental placebo-effect. I fail to see why that should be such a huge problem. There is good evidence that placebo thinking, like placebo pills, actually works to some extent. People have experienced pain-free periods, slower progress of diseases, even delayed deaths because of it. In many, many cases, traditional medicine can achieve no more.
So my friend, a week ago, went to someone who I am convinced is a ‘hoax’ by the strict standards of evidence. She’s been pain-free for a week, for the first time in years. Is that because he actually did something physical, in the ‘real’ world, to help her? I don’t think so. Is that because she *believes* he did something to help her? I’m sure of it. Do I think that a week’s worth of freedom from pain is worth the £30 she paid him? You bet. One patient on the BBC documentary about Mannion paid him £20 and got a year’s worth of freedom from pain out of it. Her gallstone had not disappeared, which was cited as evidence of his failure, but it hadn’t bothered her for a year. I’d say she got a great deal.
Am I going to tell my friend that I think this guy is, strictly speaking, a hoax–in other words, am I going to shoot down her faith that she’s been helped? Of course not. Once you accept the terms of the ‘treatment’, ie that it’s all in your head, you can’t even really claim he’s a hoax–he has helped my friend, no question about it. You might say that he should just disclose this upfront and say to his clients, hey, you need to understand that what I’m doing is just encouraging the placebo effect, but I don’t think the treatment would actually work, even on the level that it apparently does, unless people were utterly faithful (or deluded, depending on your stance) going into it.
So I agree with the skeptics that there is a kind of benevolent deception involved here, and I also agree that there might be healers out there who use it for personal gain and turn it into something malevolent. Skepticism is good, but even skeptics could benefit from switching on their compassion occasionally, and their ability to distinguish. Just because someone is in pain and willing to try anything, that doesn’t necessarily make him or her a gullible dupe. Just because someone is perpetrating a hoax, if that is what Mannion is doing (and I’m not sure he is–I think there’s a very real possibility he might believe in what he’s doing with every inch of his being), that doesn’t mean that he’s harming people. It doesn’t even mean he’s failing to help them. It may just mean that he’s not helping people in the way that he implies, or in a way that skeptics and other people who live and die by ‘evidence’ can accept.