My Mate Martin Timchur - And his sexual assault

 

Martin Drew Timchur was an old colleague of mine, unfortunately, back in the day when I used to host a Blog the name of which I can't even recall. The Blog was, however, relatively widely read within my profession and attracted generally polar opinions ranging from congratulatory to threats of litigation (none of which amounted to anything because those I criticised had already damaged their own status as professionals, generally by lying). I had never written an article about Martin Timchur for I had yet to meet him and had little to say. Now I do.

Another female colleague summed up Mr Timchur accurately and succinctly a number of years ago as "Slimy" and, as we can see from this recent Courier Mail article, he most certainly still is (the crime or offence (it was a crime by any moral standard)) itself would have occurred a few years back).

Where do we begin? It may as well be with his own guilty plea to having sexually assaulted a female patient but not before checking that the clinic was empty and all the doors were locked. He received a 9 month jail sentence, suspended, deferred for 18 months. You can surmise from the article that Marty is a notorious self promoter, not in itself a crime, excepting fashion. However, as with all malignant narcissists the die is cast with respect to their high opinions of themselves and disregard for anyone else unless that person carries the promise of a buck or two.

For a brief time I had to work alongside Marty as a tutor at Central Queensland University where they ran a chiropractic degree. The tutorials in question were 3 x 2 hour, back to back blocks on the subject of clinical neurology, part of which involved students memorising various structures and the other addressing clinical questions, wherein you had to apply a little bit of critical thinking together with an understanding and appreciation of natural selection. Without understanding how biology is put together, so to speak, and therefore what its primary function is (survival/ reproduction), all the anatomy books in the world won't help you. You will, as one evolutionary biologist explained, have one hand tied behind your back.

Marty was himself OR apologetic to a faction within the profession which is responsible for attracting the label pseudoscience and unprofessional.  Around 20% of the profession are committed 'traditionalists' which means they adhere to the (red flag coming) teachings of the founder, D.D. Palmer who declared, like any street preacher, that he had discovered the one truth. Palmer 'received' much of what he called the teachings of chiropractic from the 'otherworld', yes, the spirit realm (or whatever really), a deceased medical practitioner.

And since nothing screams "evidence based" or "Professional" louder than "Communicating with imaginary friends" I had based most of my posts not only on fraudulent behavior within the profession but why our particular one self selects for it. I'll try to be brief - if you allow people to make things up merely to suit their own personal unprovable beliefs you have the antithesis of professional. Why? Because making shit up is fraudulent and overtly dangerous when the focus of the exercise is to help someone else. 

Marty rarely shared the teaching load which didn't stop him from constantly declaring how tired and overworked he was. By this stage I'd had to put up with him screaming at students (some female students had come to me complaining of verbal abuse. He didn't seem to target males) and sending emails behind my back saying I'd abandoned classes. I confronted him on this matter. He denied it at first until I said I'd seen the emails. Then I reminded him of the fact that we had 5 students in our last class, that I was, as usual, sitting silent twiddling my thumbs and that another colleague was tackling 20 students by himself, in the room immediately next door because his co-tutors wife was in hospital. Would Marty mind if I helped him out (so that he could continue with his stories about being an expert radiographer (who apparently had not bothered to actually sit the exams (as we later heard)). There was also the matter of alleged medicare fraud but enough for now.

I don't mind telling you that I offered to 'sort things out' should Marty find himself unable to cease being a creep. He declined my offer, took my point, and we went back to work. Not for one moment did I ever trust him, something I made clear to other colleagues who all, but one, opined that for some reason I shouldn't bother. The thing about creeps is they are indiscriminate. You, dear reader, may be thinking that this piece represents something 'personal', just between he and I. No. Apart from the woman he was convicted of assaulting, creeps have a fondness for sharing their disease with others, usually the vulnerable because the psychologically twisted are also cowards.

This is a community service announcement and a warning to all. Martin Timchur is at large and must be reminded, at every step of the way throughout the rest of his life, that he will always be watched by someone, somewhere.

The question raised to the class was this - Why do messages from the eyes go to the limbic region of the brain before the occipital lobes? The limbic region is the evolutionarily older part 'above' the brainstem chiefly concerned with emotions and reflexes. It's the 'sorting house' for 100% of incoming sensation. That's right. Everything that comes in goes through here first and of that we are aware of very little. Why? The larger so called visual centres which deal with complex, and therefore slower visual processing, are at the back. There are quite a few other regions involved as well suffice to say that Marty had absolutely no idea what the answer was but nevertheless went on to give it a go.

I said nothing. The students gazes drifted awkwardly from he to I. I said nothing. Finally Marty said these profound words...

But first. A short lesson on why mixing supernatural beliefs into professional education is nothing but erosive of learning and ethics. Palmers entire premise that spine dysfunction (roughly) was the primary or only (he said 100% then revised it to 95% based on making more stuff up) cause of all human ills was based on the belief that biology (life) was explained by invoking the presence of a Universal Life Force which traditionalists imaginatively call 'Universal'. Essentially a bad back stops magic from linking up with your own spirit (Innate) and presto - ill health.  Imagine surgery or anything remotely serious based on such extraordinary feats of logic! What's wrong? Don't know but we do know it's a problem with your spirit somewhere. Give me the hammer. Stat!!

Back to the classroom and I can't honestly conclude whether Marty indulged in the same belief but it doesn't matter. More importantly is how a person thinks, not necessarily what they believe which enables us to think clearly and help others rationally and ethically. Supernatural claims have no basis in reality in that they're indistinguishable from any other imaginary thing. Therefore they comprise no part of science or scientific explanation. They require no logic expect that of circularly in precisely the same manner that a fundamentalist 'proves' God by citing the Bible as proof of God, therefore God is real. Can we prove that Harry is a wizard by quoting J.K Rowling? People are welcome to make believe but not in education, certainly not professions where we have strict ethical codes of conduct, such as don't try to fuck your patients even with their consent, not that Marty appeared concerned by that (after all I can only go by the article which mentioned the admission of sexual assault (sexual assault is the attempt to have penetration without consent. Rape is penetration of vagina, anus or mouth without consent. Neither conviction looks good on ones 'curriculum vitae')). I'm not sure if he was accused or convicted of false imprisonment.

I had spent many hours admonishing colleagues who were make believers because they were, almost to the person, paranoid, self serving, anti vaccination, anti medical conspiracy theorists with the emotional control of toddlers, but I mean that in the nicest possible way. I'd even attracted an offer to co blog by the gentleman who was awarded Australian 'Skeptic of the Year' for his tireless work exposing some of the most disturbed anti vaxxers I've ever witnessed. He received constant death threats. Fortunately I did not.

Which reminds me. One day I was contemplating why so many who refer to themselves as 'natural healers' are anti vaccination. Envy mixed with sloth because you don't have to learn anything or achieve anything. You just get to claim everything without having to take any responsibility for it. Vaccination has, overall, despite the imperfections present in, well, everything, been an extraordinary success. All one need do is examine history to understand that you wouldn't want to live in the past when things were 'more natural'. Anti vaxxers, hypocritically, believe they are the true vaccinators. When a chiropractic true believer plies their trade they are vaccinating, pure and simple, like the magical laying on of hands. But that's another subject. 

As I was saying, I don't know if Marty fully embraced the idiocy of Palmers magical claims but he was functionally the same. He'd made his bed with the fraudulent and gullible, a proper nest for his type. I let that be known and I could tell by the specific shade of red his face often became together with the trembling in his voice  that he may not have exactly valued my opinion.

The students waited, then Marty blurted out a phrase most oft repeated by Creationists, Religious Fundamentalists who blurt out vacuous statements such as "Gee I don't know, but I DO know that the body is Intelligently Designed." This has always been my beef with traditionalists and creationists in particular. Intelligent Design, ID, was a term or catchphrase, invented by fundamentalists as substitute for Biblical Creationism because through the 20th Century it had become increasingly obvious that the Bible and other types of scripture (including the traditionalists inane '33 Principles', a laundry list of childish statements based on the assumption that a magical life force explains everything) were simply mistakes, and pretty obvious ones at that. However, fundamentalists don't like their children learning facts so they updated their narrative and fraudulently labelled it a 'science' (which, after all, sounds much like 'Seance').  And once you have a population trained to consume vulgar platitudes in place of a robust education you have the perfect environment for atomic grade fraud. Chiropractic is the evangelism of Health Care.

"Maybe Doug knows something" said an embarrassed Marty, if that's an emotion he's capable of. I didn't answer, our students did. I said "You've all sat through my lectures on natural selection, why do you think the signals go to the limbic region first?" To which most of them quickly replied "It's fast". In biology 'efficient' things are more likely to survive and reproduce, so that 'design' gets passed along. Not before or since have I ever had to sit and witness such a display of utter ineptitude inside a tertiary education facility. On a recent flight down to Tasmania I watched a documentary about sociopaths and psychopaths. I don't know if Marty has ever been officially diagnosed as either although I observed him displaying most of the traits of the former. I doubt he's the latter generally because he's such a bitch, as my daughters would say. These people require the gullibility of those around them in order to function. The list of signs is instructive. Lack of empathy, impulsive, controlling, threatening, won't learn from mistakes, lying, superficial and more. Another informative list is that regarding narcissistic personality disorder. Grandiose sense of self importance, delusions of grandeur, needs constant praise and attention, entitlement, exploitative, frequently demeans, intimidates, bullies or belittles others. And in their advice for dealing with such people. #1 Don't fall for the fantasy and don't, whatever you do, take it personally. To them each person is just another potential grift, a con, because in their life only one person matters - themselves. I mentioned above that Marty is a coward. He'd smile to your face then go behind your back. He was unused to being pulled up and told to pull his head in. This was around 2017. 

A part of me has sympathy for Marty. It's quite small. Regardless of that I understand that some people are simply born with personality disorders and that such folk are far more numerous than you'd guess. They end up in jail for committing just these types of crime, for predatory behaviour. I spoke to another colleague who hypothesised that Marty and the woman had had a consenting relationship before the assault although I think they preferred that narrative because it reflected a little less poorly on the profession. I'm ignorant of those details. The reality is it reflects very poorly when we try to rationalise assault of any sort. It's the 'She's asking for it' argument which, to the best of my knowledge doesn't hold up in court.