Regular readers of this blog don’t need to be told who Rhawn Joseph is, but for the rest of you, he’s the panspermist who gazes at photos from NASA and ESA of the surface of Mars and Venus, and then claims to have identified mushrooms. And spiders. And human skulls. He’s just a barrel of laughs.
He’s also been dabbling in the law. He tried to sue NASA, and more recently, he sued Springer Nature for refusing to publish one of his pareidolia papers, and for daring to retract another when people alerted the publisher about what a flaming ball of garbage it was. He’s litigious, but either too cheap or too weird to get a legitimate lawyer to help him out, so he’s filing these things pro se, which makes them particularly amusing. Here’s a succinct summary from a judge:
Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D., proceeding pro se, is a scientist who claims he found evidence of possible extraterrestrial life on Venus and Mars. To expound his ideas here on Earth, Dr. Joseph wrote two articles—one about life on Venus, the other about life on Mars—and submitted them for publication in an academic journal called Astrophysics and Space Science (“ApSS”). ApSS published the article about Venus, and the piece received some traction in the scientific community. But before publishing the article on Martian life, ApSS told Dr. Joseph that it needed to vet his findings a bit more. Dr. Joseph did not like the sound of that. So he withdrew his submission of the Mars article and demanded that ApSS remove the Venus article from its website. Rather than remove the Venus article, and after conducting additional peer review, ApSS told Dr. Joseph that it would retract the article.
The judge also made a few other comments.
The Complaint is at times difficult to follow. It is littered with speculation, confusing ramblings, conclusory legal assertions, and personal attacks against Defendants. See, e.g., Compl. ¶ 12 (“The Defendants are lying, confabulating, engaging in fraud and falsifying their references[.]”), ¶ 20 (claiming that “major scientific discoveries must pass through three stages: 1) Ridicule, 2) Violent opposition, 3) Acceptance as obvious and self-evident” and that Dr. Joseph’s work regarding life on Venus and Marks “is now at stage 2 (violent opposition)”); ¶ 23 (calling the two individual Defendants “mediocrities”); ¶ 30 (“Defendants libeled and slandered Plaintiff in April of 2020.”). Because Dr. Joseph is proceeding pro se, the Court endeavored to distill the facts from the Complaint as best it could and construe them in the light most favorable to him.
Yeah, that’s the shouty deranged Rhawn Joseph I know all right.
The best part: Rhawn Joseph was suing Springer Nature for…
FIFTY BILLION ($50,000,000,000) DOLLARS!!!
Isn’t NY an anti-SLAPP state?
So, clearly a volunteer for Elon Musk’s Mars mission?
I hear the spacecraft is going to be “self-driving” also, too.
No, it’s still at the Ridicule stage, which is where non-scientific blathering gets to stay.
After seeing Joseph’s photo, I suspected he was too young to be the Rhawn Joseph who, from the ‘70s through at least the ‘90s was a very accomplished neurologist/neuropsychologist. Unfortunately, a minute with the Google machine disproved that hypothesis. What a shame. And on top of it all is the irony of a neurologist suffering this bizarre form of dementia.
Too be honest,the name doesn’t ring a bell.But it is very difficult to keep track of all the batshitcrazy wackaloons in America.
Didn’t watch, though I have to admit nothing says “expert on alien life” like mirror shades and chest hair.
That’s an oooold photo. I don’t think he lets more recent photos get out. And yeah, he was a neurobiologist, but something happened to his brain.
HappyHead: “No, it’s still at the Ridicule stage, which is where non-scientific blathering gets to stay.”
Uh, there’s a guy calling himself “Q” on the line for you.
snarkrates:
And they’re also deserving and receiving of ridicule.
And despite the Q-nut’s claims, they’re not being violently opposed, they’re the source of the violence.
#2 Snarki, child of Loki
Yes. We need to gather them all. Christen the ship the Golgafrincham B Ark.
Did he put his pinky to his lips a-la Dr Evil when he made his demands?
Sadly, Gijoel, he’s only half the man Dr Evil was (who, after a little bit of prompting from the star of It Takes a Thief, demanded one HUNDRED billion dollars).
Which, frankly, says something really disturbing about both of them.
So the obvious corollary here is that every assertion that is opposed by scientists must self-evidently be true, right? Isn’t that the way logic works? No?
Just to point out: $50 billion would barely make a dent in the misbegotten gains of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. Dr. Evil and other evil geniuses have to keep up!
Dr. Myers,
That was one of the most amusing videos I have ever seen from you. Thanks for the nice Christmas present.
It led me to look around Google to learn more about this guy. He claims to have a Ph.D, but I was unable to locate anything indicating where this Ph.D. came from. Do you know anything about that? While I am on the subject, I found the following site:
http://brainmind.com/publications.html
…which contains an absolutely spellbinding account of the many astounding events in this man’s alleged life, from his early childhood. It is the most egomaniacal thing I have ever read since many years ago when I encountered the works of Alfred Lawson. Can any of this be true, or is this guy just one of the worst liars on the face of the earth?
If anyone knows more, I would love to hear about it, and thanks again for the laugh.