I apologize to Saifedean Ammous for calling him a liar on my podcast (EP #44), in promoting the episode on Twitter and then a few other times on Twitter exchanges and in this write up, if I do. Perhaps I should have said he was lazy.
disclaimer
To start with, I don’t care about the accusations made regarding the S.D.A. church, I’m not defending the church or the people he’s discussing. I’m writing to correct the facts as represented by Mr. Ammous and the stance he took and to shine a light on lazy research.
What Is a Lie?
After researching, reviewing my podcast, communicating with Saifedean via Twitter direct messenger (DM) and doing some additional reading, I came to the conclusion that saying “Saifedean lied”, was probably incorrect and as noted above, I apologize. Lying is defined by Websters as:
“to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive.” or
“to create a false or misleading impression.”
I believe Saifedean didn’t intentionally say something untrue, although you could say his statements fall into the second definitinon above of misleading. My conclusion now is, he didn’t research THIS topic well. As an author, is that perhaps worse? Let’s get into the drama that brought us to this place.
Saifedean on the Human Action Podcast
On Episode #44 I did a segment of my clip show highlighting Mises Institute president Jeff Deist featuring the wildly successful The Bitcoin Standard author Saifedean Ammous. In that interview Saifedean made an offhand (throwaway really) comment about a “cult” and their influence with the government. Prior to doing my posdcast episode where I ended up calling him a “liar”, I sent an inquiry tweet to Saifedean asking for clarification along with a clip of his statement. I didn’t hear back and I went forth with my research and analysis. You can hear his comments and read the questions to him in the tweet below. (click on Mises and it’ll play the audio for you).
This piqued my interest and I did a deep dive on this 59s from that interview. The clip and my analysis segment is featured here (qued for you at 39:16).
In his defense, Saifedean has a Twitter following of almost 250k while I’m at 1.7k and we do not follow each other (he also hasn’t blocked me…yet). Therefore, I get why he didn’t respond to my inquiry as I imagine he never saw the tweet itself. Nor did he see the follow up tweet of the show at the time. Looking at the title now, perhaps calling him a “liar” wasn’t the best idea and I’ve crossed it out, but if I was wrong he could sue me. Side note - he admits he was wrong and then claims my reach is zero (no damages) so a defamation case would fail except for my request for attorneys’ fees.
Somehow, out of the blue this episode got discussed in a tweet thread with Dave Smith and Saifedean was somehow tagged. But this time he got wind of it, presumably watched some of the segment (I doubt he watched much of it) and then reached out.
Before I show my response and the subsequent correspondence, I think its important to walk through his message and break it down just a bit. DM review style.
You might need some context which I supply in my episode. But the overview is - He claims the Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) church is a cult (insane, crazy people), Lenna Cooper was instrumental in pushing a vegan diet and the church has become influential because the government wanted to push crappy food in the 1970’s. He now says he meant to say “Ellen G. White” instead of “Lenna Cooper” and therefore I should get bent. It’s also of significance to note Saifedean wrote a book and an entire chapter on this topic and then completely f*cked it up in an interview. Is that also my fault?
He admits he said the wrong person.
The right person is material. We aren’t talking about “who hit the most home-runs” and then happen to mention the wrong person like he didn’t get the quiz question right. In this context, the wrong person means his entire theory is wrong like picking a person that didn’t even play baseball for the home-run quiz. The theory presented in the podcast, again, is that the SDA church is a cult, that they became influential with the government, all based on the teachings, ideas, visions etc, of Lenna Cooper. I presented evidence from a biography that she wasn’t associated with the SDA church and he claims she is.
If Saifedean mentioned Ellen G. White in the interview, I would’ve had a more difficult time arguing against his point because White was basically the person who started the church, pushed the idea of vegetarianism (he also claimed veganism, wrongly) and was very influential in this movement. I would still have some critique to make of his interpretation of her work and such, but this would then directly tie his claims to the S.D.A. church making it more solid. Solid enough to make me not even bother with it. But he didn’t, he said Lenna Cooper and while she is an important person in the early 1900’s dietary movement, she was not doing so as associated with the SDA church and therefore puts doubt to his claims. In fact, to tie Cooper and the SDA church as he did in the interview to support his claims would be akin to a …. “fabrication.” To be clear, Lenna attended an SDA school (undergrad; but her graduate degree was from Drexel) and taught at the associated sanitarium but she was never a member of the church nor did she speak for the church in any capacity.
If a person were to get a degree from Harvard, is that person then an official representative of that school the rest or their life? Should we say that Lenna was actually representing Drexel University all these years because she got her masters degree there? No, that would be deranged.
He says it’s my fault for not reading his book.
Well, c’mon now. Saifedean admitted he got the wrong person and then says I am “deranged” because he once got it right in a book I didn’t read and he didn’t mention in the podcast. More specifically, he didn’t reference that he was telling an example he wrote on in more detail in his book. I likely would have done more research then if I had known. Below I outline more details from his book on this topic, but how is it my fault he can’t get his own writings correct when telling us about it in a podcast? In the DM he sent me, the first thing he did was include a link, not to his book but to an Australian blog post “Isupportgary.com”. It has a lot of good information on this subject relating to Australia, but not his own work and not to the USA. Here is the exact link he sent me. “CLICK”
If Saifedean’s defense is that the SDA church has influence in Australia…ok, and?
He doesn’t mention his claim that the SDA church is a cult.
He also claimed the SDA church was a cult “these insane people”…”crazy people.” This is like when people call you a racist so they can dismiss arguments and ignore arguments altogether. He started off the segment in the interview by calling the church a cult, associating them with “these insane people” and “crazy people” so the listener can then fully accept the next few lines which might be more subjective and without having to fully investigate the claims themselves. If you start off with “Church cult, and they pushed this diet that I think is bad and lobbied the government” you’d react with “wow, a cult!” So I bet the diet and reasons for pushing it were really nefarious. The church isn’t a cult and his points can be argued without having to make this claim as well. While the White/Cooper name mix up is all he focuses on, my episode also focused on the issue of a cult, that he now ignores.
Thankfully No one watches my pod.
I wouldn’t say “no one”. Recently I had Dave Smith on and for me the show did good numbers (over 2k so far). But then again, I don’t push bitcoin or the carnivore diet so my upper range is limited. Otherwise he’s not completely wrong. In addition, he said “thankfully”, is that so he won’t have to defend himself to a wider audience?
Here was my response.
Someone else on Twitter sent me a screenshot of a DM to them from Saifedean calling me a piece of shit. I understand calling him a “liar” is very charged but I think I explained above why I believed it was justified. I mean, he also called millions of people “crazy”,…”insane”,…and members of a “cult.”
In Court, it’s very taboo to say the other party is “lying” and I’ve had a judge rebuke me for it. But you can use almost any other synonym such as, fabrication, untruth, stretching the truth, made up facts, deception, dishonesty, slander and the list goes on. I’ve used them all without a problem. If I had done so here, maybe Saifedean wouldn’t have followed with:
I had plenty of replies set up for this but eventually I wrote the following, which by the way as I’m publishing this does seem to reduce the effect of the first portion of my answer regarding being an attention whore. But its been quite awhile since we exchanged DM’s.
That is the end of our communications via Twitter DM.
But, It gets worse
During the writing of this I decided to google the terms “Saifedean Ellen G. White” and see what I could find. I was sure I did this when the episode came out but wanted to see what else was available considering Saifedean referenced his book but didn’t want to supply me with the links. Well, I found his chapter from his book online and you can read it as well (if still available). https://saifedean.com/fiatfood/
In his DM’s to me Saifedean is passing this whole affair off as “I just said the wrong name.” Which is mostly correct if you believe his declarative statements in the book. My argument back to him was the name makes a big difference because in my research I found that Lenna Cooper was never a member of the church and she stayed connected to Dr. Kellogg, whom the church disfellowshipped (kicked out) altogether in 1907 due to his views on eugenics and race degeneracy.
The sad part is, the contents and context of his chapter are good and even though I grew up in the SDA church I could agree with a lot of his analysis overall. The agreeable “theory” makes this even more frustrating because it’s not necessary to misapply facts or change them through shoddy research to serve the narrative. Either way, here are some nuggets from the book on the following topics - Ellen G. White, Lenna Cooper and Dr. John Kellogg.
Dr. Kellogg
You’ve probably heard of Kelloggs the cereal company and might even know it’s named after a real person, Dr. John Kellogg. I discuss him in my podcast episode as well. With Dr. Kellogg, like the others, Saifedean is partially correct and simultaneously wildly wrong in a way that makes me shake my head.
John Kellogg, another devout Seventh Day Adventist and follower of Ellen White, viewed sex and masturbation as sinful, and his idea of a healthy diet was one that would stifle the sex drive. He was correct and astoundingly successful in marketing his favorite breakfast of industrial waste to billions worldwide.[10]
As noted above, Kellogg was kicked out of the church in 1907. This fact can be found in books or all over the internet with a simple google search. Whether he continued to be devout to the church or not I can’t say. His letter about Ms. White in 1936 indicates he believes the church is doing good work regarding their health message and therefore he doesn’t want to cause trouble.
However, Saifedean is completely correct about Dr. Kellogg wanting to stifle sexual desires in males and I think everyone knows soy has this effect. I mentioned this in my podcast by the way.
Ellen G. White
Saifedean’s analysis of her (a founding member of the SDA Church starting around 1844 and a spokesman for the church throughout her life) is mostly acceptable throughout the pages in this chapter. He takes a crack at her however:
Ellen G. White, one of the founders of the church, had “visions” of the evils of meat-eating, and preached endlessly against it (while still eating meat secretly, a very common phenomenon among anti-meat zealots even today)
All correct, except for the “eating meat secretly” part. In fact, she was open about it as evidenced with a letter from Dr. Kellogg on January 9, 1936.
Some excerpts:
Dr. Kellogg continues with examples of openly eating meat and along with a situation where she claimed she might start practicing her own teachings.
It should be noted, not eating meat as a member of the SDA church is highly suggested. It’s not something they believe will result in a loss to your salvation but rather a health message. You can disagree with the message, but it’s their message nevertheless. If you read the letter in full you’ll see a different accusation by Dr. Kellogg and you could take shots at Ms. White for plagiarism.
Lenna Cooper
In Saifedean’s response to me via DM, he says he simply got the names mixed up and wrong. Therefore I was surprised to see Ms. Cooper’s name appear in his writings.
I addressed the first part in my episode by indicating I couldn’t find any proof that she was a member of the SDA church. In fact, a biography about her indicated she wasn’t a member, they couldn’t find proof she ever was and that when she died she was a member of a different denomination.
I further was able to show that she followed the path of Dr. Kellogg after graduating and worked as his protege. She even lived with his family for several years. As noted above, Dr. Kellogg was kicked out of the SDA church in 1907. As a libertarian, I imagine there is plenty to dislike about Ms. Cooper so I’m not really sure why tying her to the church is helpful. In fact, that is what brought this to my attention in the first place. In addition, the Battle Creek Sanitarium where Ms. Cooper got her degree, worked and taught was first created by the SDA church but later purchased and run by Dr. Kellogg in 1897. It was later repurchased by the church in the 1950’s.
Church is a Cult
In his response and amid him telling me to fuck off, Saifedean never mentions he said the church was a cult. I explain above why I believe he did so. Further, in the interview on the Human Action Podcast he attributes some other reasons why Ms. Cooper (but not White) believed meat was bad. I am not sure exactly what his claim is because I can’t find any proof of it nor does he expound on it in his chapter.
In his chapter on Fiat Foods, Saifedean even goes out of his way to describe actions of the SDA church as not objectionable.
For some theological reasons I do not understand, the Seventh Day Adventist church has for a century and a half been on a moral crusade against meat.
There is, of course, nothing ethically objectionable about religious groups following whatever dietary visions they prefer, but the problems arise when they seek to impose those visions on others.
Other religions have theological reasons for specific diets, Jews and Muslims come to mind. Also, while the church believes a healthy body is what God wants, it’s not a theological teaching by the church.
This is also not how you would describe a cult. In fact, in defining a cult you need a charismatic leader. While the SDA church has/had Ellen, she never professed to be anything more than a spiritual leader in the church. Much less so than the Mormons view Joseph Smith in fact. Lastly, as stated previously the issue of meat eating isn’t even a requirement to join and be a member of the church.
Honestly, this whole situation now bores me. Saifedean reacted like a bad client who can’t stop making mistakes and causing himself more trouble in an effort to make himself not look so bad. Enjoy his books and writings if you are interested. I’ve only looked into one chapter and feels like a factual mess. If he reached out to me with a simple explanation this would have gone away. But he couldn’t just take responsibility for his mistakes, he lashed out, which caused me to find more problems.
Did Saifedean lie? Maybe not, as I can’t read his mind on all of his claims. Laziness might be a worse moniker to place on him however and that is certainly what we have here. I can be lazy in my podcasts, but I am not lazy in how I do my job and this is certainly the way he makes his living. My ultimate question is still the same one I raised when I did the podcast - Why would you make these statements when they are so easily disproven and when it was unnecessary to make your overall point? Ah yes, because you didn’t do the proper research in the first place.
This reminds me of why some deep researchers really dislike certain popular conspiracy theorists. They do a disservice and distract from the other legitimate theories that hold water when they push forward the absurd ones with the legit ones. Here we have a great topic and well thought out concept mixed with pot-shots, misstatements and lazy research. What else is he messing up on?
Interesting. Thank you for documenting all of this.