If science fails you resort to old-fashioned bullying

In the past I have written about the tendency of the scientifically challenged to stifle debate through legal threats. The virus is spreading. Now we have yet another case of criticism, this time about Christopher Maloney, that is disallowed. PZ Myers identifies the genius behind this attempt at censorship:

The Prime Quack has been identified: Andreas Moritz. He has admitted to getting Wordpress to pull Michael Hawkins' blog, and is also threatening me, now.

Here is the way Orac feels about this nonsense.

Seemingly, whenever a quack or a crank encounters serious criticism, the first reaction is almost never to try to argue based on facts, reason, and science, but rather to try to silence the person doing the criticizing. The tactics are many and varied, but the end goal is always the same: Suppress the criticism by any means necessary.

He goes on to list several examples from his own experience to illustrate the point.

Update: Skeptico has discovered this "debating technique" too.

Update II: Apparently WordPress has decided to allow valid criticism once more and the original blog is up and running again. In a new post Michael Hawkins thanks all those that put pressure on WP.