Mike Adams: Cheater & Hypocrite

Are familiar with the Shorty Awards?

Well it seems that well known quack, Mike Adams AKA the Health Ranger, who I've blogged about before doesn't know how to read the rules!

Adams was in the forefront of the pack - for a vote that admittedly is little more than a Twitter popularity contest.  It really didn't seem right that this was happening.

But if you were to google "Health Ranger" "Shorty Awards" at the time I am writing this you would get a deluge of blog posts just like this one.  So I guess that explains some of it.

But then this morning these tweets came up from @Sc00ter:

"ww, there's a LOT of people voting for @HealthRanger that have next to no friends. Created to vote for @shortyaward.. I thhink so"

"got an email from the Shorty awards saying they're investigating @HealthRanger for ballot stuffing"

Well well well.

Is it possible that some one wasn't paying attention to this rule?

Voters must be active Twitter users prior to the start of the competition. Votes originating from new Twitter accounts or accounts used mainly for Shorty Awards voting will automatically be disqualified and will not count toward the rankings.

Meanwhile, Orac, PZ Meyers and others did some of their own promoting for votes for @DrRachie.  Which I'll point out is EXACTLY what @healthranger was doing...except without the voting bots.

So... now, hours later, Mike Adams has been removed from the ballot for significant evidence that at he or a least his over-zealous follwers weren't playing by the rules, and Dr. Rachel Dunlop has the most votes. Yay, all is right with the universe... except there could be one more thing that would make it just about perfect: If Mike Adams threw a hissy fit and made for the triple-crown of bad-sportsmanship by being a hypocrite at the same time.

Wait for it....

Wait for it....

Okay - here.

Wow.

Okay you narcissistic jerk, let's do some of your own vanity-googling for you shall we?
At the time of this writing if I google each of '"Shorty Awards" "Health ranger"' and '"Shorty Awards" "Rachael Dunlop"' I get 506 results for the Health Ranger combo - and on the front page alone 7 of 10 hits begin with the headline "Please help the Health Ranger win the Shorty Awards for health content" - that is some seriously focussed SEO going on there!  Meanwhile the Rachael Dunlop iteration gets 206 hits and on the front page I have to really look to see that 3 of the 10 are pleas for votes.

So, really Mike who is it who is pushing their voters the hardest?  I mean, seriously?  Why are you such a cry baby?  Its not even like we beat you at your own game.  We simply played by the rules.  Rules - you know them, right?  They are kinda like laws.  Sort of like the laws of physics... oh - never mind.

So, what can skeptics do?

Well you can vote for @DrRachie from a legitimate account.  And you can go to the bottom of Adam's post to his action items - specifically #2 and #5 and pass on to the people behind the Shortys that you support their actions.

And it might be worth pointing out to them that Mike has so much respect for the awards that he ends his rant with: "The contest itself doesn't matter that much." (Which is obviously why he spent so much effort trying to win and complaining about it when he was caught cheating.)  He may as well have capped it off with:

"Oh yeah!?!?  Well I didn't want to win anyway! ....stupid contest."