Michael Vandeman

Mike Vandeman, who posts as Michael J Vandeman PhD is an environmental activist of some kind who has a holy jihad against mountain bikers. He cites various research in support of his agenda, but it turns out on investigation that this research does not actually say what he claims it does. As far as can be seen, mountain biking is no more disruptive to wildlife than hiking, much less disruptive than motorised off-road recreation, probably somewhat less disruptive than horse riding, and is not identified as a significant threat by any wilderness management agency anywhere in the world.

As with most trolls, the more authoritative your rebuttal of his idiocy, the more likely is is to respond with "duh!" (a favourite of his). As far as Vandeman is concerned, mountain biking is self-evidently evil. If you can't see that it's self-evidently evil, it must be because you are stupid, woefully ill-informed, a liar, or some combination of the three.

Vandeman was kicked out of the Sierra Club, reportedly for trying to get one of the other officers fired form his day job for not being tough enough on mountain bikers (that may or may not be true). The Sierra Club bay area chapter minutes are pretty unequivocal, though:

He tends to take issues to his private website where he will not be contradicted.

Vandeman has caused at least one newsgroup to go moderated, and has reduced one or two others to uselessness.

Modus operandi
Standard Vandeman crap includes posting reports of the deaths of mountain bikers in a "when will they learn?" tone; this has in the past included deaths where the individual was doing something else entirely at the time. Needless to say this is pretty unpopular, and tends to attract flames, which he loves as it's evidence of the unreasonable behaviour of mountain bikers.

He also uses the phrase "typical mountain biker" quite often, very commonly when posting "another death threat form a typical mountain biker" type junk; he will post emails sent to him, with full headers, clearly revelling in the hate mail he attracts. His definition of death threat is typically liberal, in numerous cases including email which contains no threat, death or otherwise.

The third strain of Vandeman junk is citing studies which "prove" that mountain biking is uniquely harmful to the environment. These are typically rebutted with very little effort, but that does not matter. Many of the studies he cites are his own work, and have never been published in a peer-reviewed journal. There is no known example of any of his anti mountain-biking work being published in any reputable source at all.

FAQs
The "official" MJV FAQ was taken down, but these ones still exist:
 * BBTC Vandeman FAQ
 * Mr. ABC (Anti-Bike Curmudgeon)
 * Karsten Self's FAQ posting

Bottom line: Vandeman is no longer funny.