The past couple of days have been a bit of a new experience for me. I had never really experienced cyber-bullying before, and to be honest, it has left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

I unknowingly put the wheels in motion on this one, but that shouldn’t be any surprise. I was participating in a discussion thread about homeopathy — there’s been some interesting new research in the field — when up pops UK researcher Edzard Ernst.

You have to be a bit of a alternative medicine wonk to recognize his name, but he’s a retired professor in the U.K. who has published several articles attempting to “debunk” alternative medicine.

Now, I’m not opposed to honest research showing the limits and shining the light on misconceptions about the therapies I use. Every branch of health care, including chiropractic, oncology, nutrition, orthopedics and acupuncture, needs that kind of attention. The problem is, when it comes to alternative medicine, such research is often fueled less by honest inquiry and more by that really weird anti-alternative bias that you come across from time to time; the stuff that is just some hinky irrational and immature hate, like something you’d see on a reddit thread.

“Oh, you help people feel better? No, you don’t, you can’t because you aren’t *real* medicine!”

That kind of thing. Ernst has made his career with that sort of hit-and-run science, which doesn’t really advance knowledge, or stimulate dialogue, as good science should, but merely serves to prop up existing irrational biases.

So when he chimed in with his somewhat rude comments, I reminded him that he is a liar, because he had published fabricated data.

“Do you have evidence for these accusations?” he exclaimed. “Do you know that they are actionable?”

I was a journalist for 12 years. Telling me you are going to sue me for libel is like asking me if I want cream in my coffee. Especially when you’re from the UK and have no idea what the libel laws are in this country. Sure, whatever. Just make sure it’s hot and you spelled my name right, ok?

So I responded, with chapter and verse of a 2012 study that replicated one of Ernst’s earlier publications, and which showed he used misrepresented and falsified data. Quotations and citation, the whole ball of worms.

Twitter bombed!

Next thing I know, I’m getting twitter-bombed by a half-dozen anonymous Ernst sycophants, keyboard warriors hiding behind names like Mr. Ramspace and Dragonblaze or some such.

They told me I wasn’t a “real” doctor, whatever that means, and that I was selling “quack” remedies, among other miscellaneous insults.

At first I was annoyed — I think that’s a pretty normal response — and considered my own libel action, but then I realized there was really no harm in what they were saying.

I have an established practice of about 25 years, and an excellent reputation with my patients and in my community. The uninformed opinions of a few whacked Brits proxy-fighting for a half-rate researcher retired from a third-rate university are unlikely to have much effect on my life. In fact, the more I looked at their taunts, the more I realized they were of the same class of insult used in middle school.

The names of hate

And then I realized how similar their “arguments” were to what I’ve experienced coming from Republicans in the past couple of years. I’ve been called libtard, snowflake, faggot, gun-hater, n*****-lover and Jew-lover, as if loving people is some sort of insult.

Truth be told, I’m not always kind in my words. I’ve been a journalist and a hired pen, and I can wield words like a sword. But I’ve always tried to avoid name-calling, and when I feel pulled in that direction, it is because my own arguments are falling short and I’m not engaging in debate, but in ego-protection or ego-boosting. Name-calling is a direct result of a paucity of evidence or even of logical thought. Name-calling can wound the ego, but do little else.

I’m in my seventh decade of life, fought my way through innumerable conflicts, and there is little that one can say or do at this point that could genuinely rattle me.

But turn back the life experience dial 45 years or so, and such insults could be damaging. Particularly when surrounded by a pack of hyenas hidden behind an LED screen.

Make it worse. Put me further on the edge by changing the color of my skin, or my gender. Fewer resources, less societal support. It could easily push someone over the mental health edge, and it has, too many times.

Defending a faded, corrupted legacy

The goal of such bullying, from groups like Republicans and Ernst groupies, is primarily to shut you up. To make you be afraid to voice your opinion. In younger people, who have stronger peer dependency, or those marginalized by race, gender or religion, these bullying voices can have their desired effect.

The trick to dealing with this kind of assault is to look around the edge of the screen to what is behind it. In this case, we have an elderly retired man with nothing better to do with his life, no greater achievement to reach, than to camp on twitter all day defending his fading, corrupted legacy.

Sound familiar? We’ve got a guy in the U.S. doing that very same thing. With his first tweet in the morning, journalists across the land exclaim “Oh, damn. The baby’s awake.”

Or worse, being an anonymous sycophant of the deteriorating thug, absent of independent thought and parroting the words of their idol.

Very sad, really. So after some thought and a little more banter, I thanked them for the lesson in incivility, and passed them into my past.

And it was a good lesson, after all. Like so many of the awful things that have happened in the past couple of years, it let me see things in a way I haven’t seen them before. Surprising benefits in the forest fire that is our world right now.

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Dr. Avery Jenkins is a chiropractic physician also practicing acupuncture and clinical nutrition in Litchfield, CT. He also holds a 2nd-degree black belt in the martial art of aikido. www.averyjenkins.com