Nightline’s Martin Bashir investigates Scientology. The head of their celebrity center Tommy Davis does them no favors.
Bashir: But with the greatest respect Mr. Davis, Tom Cruise is an actor. He's not a medical academic, he's not a clinician. Do you really think he's qualified to denounce an entire field of medicine?
Davis: Well I think your comments, right there, are actually quite degrading of actors and artists.
When Bashir asks about the efficacy of "auditing" e-meter machines, that have ever been tested objectively, Davis says: "I don't know why it would be suggested to random clinical trials." and says his proof is the improvements seen among his fellow Scientologists. This is the same My son is my proof rationale Jenny McCarthy gives when asked on how she knows vaccines cause autism and that it can be cured with a schedule of homeopathic quackery.
The other unsettling part of the segment is the rambling, pointless answers given by Scientologists Tom Cruise, Kirstey Alley and John Travolta explaining what Scientology has done for them. I've heard these kind of rambling feeble attempts to disguise irrational belief as some sort of reasoned moral treatise before. It was every time Sarah Palin goes off script. As fomer Alaska Gubernatorial opponent Halcro described Palin's debate style:
She's a master, not of facts, figures, or insightful policy recommendations, but at the fine art of the non-answer, the glittering generality.