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The Myth of Scientific
Objectivity David Stewart, Jr. Considerations of the Peer
Review Process My first experience with the peer review process came as a
fourth-year medical student after conducting a six-week research project in The reviewers rejecting my article raised no criticisms of
methodology or implementation. Rather,
each conveyed that the journal was simply not interested in articles on the
topic. There was nothing scientifically unsound about my research, which
required far more effort and planning to collect statistically significant
quantities of important new data than the vast majority of articles that
appear in print. There was no opportunity for me to respond to written
criticisms, as the reviewers had no methodological criticisms: the topic was
not of interest, and no amount of revision would overcome that barrier.
Public health and preventive medicine in I received an award from the epidemiology and
biostatistics department at the medical school for my research, but the
article was never published. Never
mind the profound public health implications of increasing tobacco use in
young people of both genders and a host of other findings in a developed
nation with a male life expectancy of just 59: reports of two cases of Lyme
disease in Midwestern states or studies of the effect of psychosocial factors
on preterm births were deemed more relevant.
In subsequent years, I have subsequently had articles published in
peer-reviewed medical journals. These
subsequent articles, while useful, were of far less significance than my
first article that was rejected. I
have always enjoyed research, but I did not enjoy dealing with the politics
and the other unscholarly considerations which at times eclipse considerations
of scientific merit. My reading of the medical literature has frequently caused
me to wonder why some articles with rigorous research are rejected, while
many that appear in print are deeply flawed in methodology and logic. Were the reviewers – respected
professionals in their fields – really blind to the serious scientific
shortfalls of many papers that I can identify immediately upon reading? It is also readily apparent that research
on some topics is more readily accepted than on others. It is not difficult to identify large
numbers of redundant and often methodologically flawed articles on certain
topics that seem to add nothing to our body of knowledge, while some
methodologically sound articles adding new insight on less favored topics
frequently face difficulties being accepted for publication at all. Such data raise the question: Are the criteria of
acceptance for publications in peer reviewed journals really exclusively
based on scientific merit? Scientific
merit is an important factor, yet it is far from the only consideration. Other factors – issues of politics,
prestige, and consensus, also play roles.
The priority which these factors are given varies widely among
different fields, and even within the same field. Applied vs. Philosophical
Sciences Notwithstanding these shortcomings, I believe that the
peer-reviewed medical literature is the best that the scientific community
has to offer. Other fields fare far
worse. Medicine and engineering are
the most honest sciences because its principles and theories are closely tied
to real-world outcome – human health – for which neither the public nor the
government will tolerate dishonesty, dogmatism, or incompetence. This does not mean that there are not
continuing incidences of such behavior, nor that medical researchers are
exempt from the kind of biases that plague other disciplines. Political considerations and conflicts of
interest periodically enter into medical research, although medical journals
– unlike those of many other fields – typically require full disclosure of
conflicts or even potential conflicts. Yet on the whole, most physicians are
perceptive, independent thinkers who are deeply skeptical of unsupported
claims, and require a preponderance of quality evidence before they will jump
on the bandwagon to support a theory or proposed treatment method. Little credence is given to theories that
are not validated by randomized, blinded, controlled clinical research
trials. Attempts to dogmatically
impose a theory simply because an authority figure or group of authority
figures said so get nowhere in the absence of solid factual support. Medical theories are also, for the most part,
testable. An intervention is done and
results are seen and measured. If a theory
does not produce desired outcomes, its failure is quickly apparent. Confounding factors can exist, but overall,
there is a clear cause and effect relationship between interventions and
outcomes. Some of the subtler
relationships require large studies to discern, but on the whole, empiric
data demonstrate that accepted interventions are generally constructive. Medical professionals are also generally
candid in admitting what they do not know and what has not been
scientifically demonstrated. Continued research demonstrates that many studies that
were believed by the original researchers to be transparent and objective, in
fact suffered from unrecognized biases or errors. And there is the problem of apparently
well-designed, large-scale studies that have come to contradictory
conclusions. Even diligent attempts to
recognize and minimize or eliminate sources of bias and error often fall
short. New discoveries continue to overturn
old theories. The medical field is not
perfect, and there is still abundant potential for discovery and refinement. On the whole, modern medicine is solidly grounded in
quality science and is more transparent, more objective, and more rigorous in
its research than most other fields.
Let us consider, for instance, paleoanthropology and archaeology. These fields lack any of the reality checks
that we find in medicine. Whereas the
public would not tolerate incompetence or error in practical fields like
medicine, few people care what explanations are given for the remote, the
abstract, or the philosophical, so long as an explanation is given. It does not matter much to the average
person whether scholars accept the idea of a heliocentric solar system, a
geocentric one, or a flat earth held up by giant elephants at its four
corners: the sun still rises in the east, sets in the west, imparts warmth,
and makes crops grow. Theories in
medicine and engineering must work: those of archaeology and anthropology do
not have to work at all. The practical realities of the former fields have
led to continued refinement over the past two hundred years, while the latter
two have remained stagnant with core tenets remaining unchallenged. Whether a scholar believes that humans originated 100
million years ago or 6000 years ago, whether dinosaurs walked the earth for
millions of years before the first mammal or whether humans and dinosaurs
were contemporary, whether the Moundbuilders had a written language or not,
or whether there was an ice age or a global flood, has no practical consequences
for the average person’s life. These
theories are very difficult to test, and can often be tested only
indirectly. Physicians can give an
electrolyte and measure blood levels.
Calibrated controls ensure that the measurements are accurate. Archaeologists and anthropologists,
however, have no way to directly measure or validate any time frame outside
of known, written history. There are
no valid controls: methods of radiometric
dating for great antiquity rely upon assumptions that cannot be proven,
and in fact are contradicted by observed realities. The
philosophical sciences, including anthropology and archaeology, are far more
political than the practical sciences.
In the face of lower-quality research, vast gaps in the record, and
the unverifiable nature of foundational assumptions, conclusions are dictated
less by evidence and more by fiat.
This politicization includes the elevation of foundational theories to the
level of fact, declaring them to be unchallengeable. Of course, whether establishment scholars
accept reality or not has no bearing on the nature of that underlying
reality. When the scientific method is
not followed in the creation of foundational tenets and such tenets are then
declared exempt from scrutiny, continued research will not bring any
automatic self-correction in the course of time: erroneous views can be held
for centuries or millennia until a revolution occurs and intellectual oppression
is overthrown, just as occurred with medieval Catholicism. Engineers, physicians, and other practical scientists earn
the public’s respect by demonstrating competency in the results that they
achieve. Anthropologists,
archaeologists, and others achieve few practical results and have little to
offer to demonstrate real-world competence. Is Peer Review the sine qua non of Scientific Knowledge? In criticizing non-scientific factors in the peer review
process, I do not wish to imply that the non-peer reviewed literature is
teeming with an abundance of neglected wisdom and brilliant insight. To the
contrary, Albert Einstein observed that very few of the unpublished ideas
people sent to him had any merit -- although he did find some, like Charles
Hapgood's Crustal Displacement theory.
Much of the non peer reviewed literature is highly speculative,
logically inconsistent, and written by individuals who often have conflicts
of interest or ulterior motives. One
need only to pick up a non-peer reviewed publication like an alternative
medicine journal to see that this is the case. Most articles are printed there because of
irrecoverable scientific flaws that make them unsuitable for more rigorous
venues. It is therefore easy to
appreciate why most professionals are disinclined to take content from non
peer reviewed publications seriously. However, it would also be a mistake to conclude that there
is no scholarly merit to be found outside of consensus peer-reviewed
journals. Political and other
unscientific considerations make it difficult or impossible for some
excellent content to be published in first-tier scientific journals. The treasure-trove is in identifying
innovative content with scholarly merit which has been rejected for political
rather than scientific considerations. Excellent content exists, although
finding it can at times be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Some authors and venues are more reliable
than others. I
am, on the whole, a proponent of the peer review process. Peer review can
help scholars to refine their arguments, identify flaws in methodology and
reasoning, and maintain basic scientific standards. The peer review process indeed works well
when its primary consideration is scientific merit. However, this process fails when political
or dogmatic concerns override scientific merit, resulting in the easy
acceptance of low-quality articles which address favored topics or reaffirm
or defend establishment viewpoints, and the out of hand rejection of articles
addressing unfavored topics or contradicting establishment viewpoints without
consideration of scientific merit.
Such arbitrary and unscholarly considerations have no place in
science. I
believe that most submissions should
be rejected from scientific journals, but they should be rejected for
methodological or analytical reasons –not for political or dogmatic
ones. The standards should be the same
regardless of the author’s viewpoint or the acceptability of his theory to
establishment scholars. Amateurism and Science Much of human progress has
resulted from discovery outside of
the peer review process. There would
have been no Model T if Henry Ford had to have his methods approved by a
board of leading “experts” before any production could be attempted. Charles
Hapgood wrote on his groundbreaking work on unlocking the secrets of the Piri
Re’is map: This investigation was undertaken
in connection with my classes at the college, and the students from the
beginning took a very important part in it. It has been my habit to try to
interest them in problems on the frontiers of knowledge, for I believe that
unsolved problems provide a better stimulation for their intelligence and
imagination than do already-solved problems taken from textbooks. I have also
long felt that the amateur has a much more important role in science than is
usually recognized. I teach the history of science, and have become aware of
the extent to which most radical discoveries (sometimes called
"breakthroughs") have been opposed by the experts in the affected
fields. It is a fact, obviously, that every scientist is an amateur to start
with. Copernicus, Hapgood
further noted that “the late James H. Campbell, who worked in his youth with
Thomas A. Edison, said that once, when a difficult problem was being
discussed, Individuals who insist that no scholarly work can be
seriously considered unless it has been published in peer-reviewed journals
are the anathema of human progress, the modern incarnations of the medieval
priests who enforced dogmatism by decree. Only Small Innovations Need
Apply Thomas Brody, Ph.D., a well-published physicist accustomed
to merit-based publication, was blindsided by the profound arbitrariness of
the peer review process in the philosophical sciences like archaeology. He explained the rejection of his
painstaking work on The Origin Map
by peer-reviewed publications, noting that two journals rejected his work and
“refused even to review the paper...Thus I had no opportunity even to reply
to formal criticisms.”[2]
He further observes that “many important scientific advances were originally
published without peer review, including Isaac Newton’s revolutionary Principia,” and concludes that the arbitrariness of the
peer review process undermines a core principle: “The whole point of modern
science is that it is supposed to progress independently of subjective
pronouncements by human authority figures.” The scholarly community has a vested interest in
maintaining its own sense of authority and correctness. The peer review allows for minor
modifications of existing theories, but not major ones. Noted linguist Cyrus Gordon observed: "Scholars belong to guilds
held together by common opinions, attitudes, and methods. As a rule,
innovation is welcome only when it is confined to surface details and does
not modify the structure as a whole. For this reason, new interpretations of
a problematic word or verse may be applauded by the very academicians who
will stop at nothing to discredit a breakthrough destined to touch off a
major reappraisal of the entire field."[3] By definition, inventors and discoverers of major
breakthroughs have no peers. If their "peers" had to already know and
accept their findings before they could be taken seriously, no discovery
could occur. Their work therefore can rarely be dealt with even-handedly by
peer reviewers, who judge innovations by how well they fit currently accepted
theories, and who often feel threatened or defensive about work challenging
their own belief and expertise. David
Stewart, Sr. wrote: If you are a few inches ahead of
the scholarly community, they will heap praises and honors upon your head.
But if you are a block or a mile ahead, those same individuals will crucify
you. It has always seemed to me that discoveries and inventions of real value
are indistinguishable by the masses from absurdity and insanity for the
simple reason that they are outside of the norm. This is perhaps more true in
Professional Egotism It
would be a mistake to think that scholars – and even an entire academic
community – do not have egos. Rarely do
they say to pioneers who break new ground, “thanks for enlightening me!” To the contrary, major discoveries are
often fought tooth and nail. This is
especially true when discoveries are made by those outside of their
professional circle. This in spite of the fact that the most significant
discoveries have historically been made by amateurs. For instance, Belgian Robert Bauval’s
groundbreaking work demonstrating the correlation between the alignment of
the The
egotism of the scholarly community introduces major biases into the peer
review process, setting a very low threshold of evidence for pieces that
defend establishment theory, but a very high (and often impossible) threshold
for writing challenging those beliefs.
When the scholarly community is challenged by amateurs over matters
that are indefensible – such as the misidentification of the Bat Creek Stone
as representing Cherokee language – the threshold for publication of papers
defending the establishment viewpoint is low indeed. It must be demonstrated at all costs that
the establishment was correct, no matter how compelling the evidence to the
contrary. In the rare case that
concessions must be made, it is necessary to give as little ground as
possible and to demonstrate that even the grossest blunders of the scientific
community were in fact carefully researched and insightful conclusions which
can perhaps be revised slightly, but retain intrinsic validity and allow no
room for more sweeping changes. These
tactics are directed towards maintaining orthodoxy of belief within a
profession, and preserving the prestige and esteem of the field in the eyes
of the general public. Any evidence that scholarly consensus has gone astray
on foundational matters will be fought tooth and nail by practitioners of the
field, in much the same way that major league sports players unions rally to
defend their own even when caught red-handed with positive drug tests. The interest is not in determining the
truth, but in saving face and avoiding consequence or reform. The Myth of Intellectual Peer review works reasonably well for applied sciences
like medicine and engineering, where the progress is based on observable,
real-world results. In the
philosophical sciences, however, peer review can become an oppressive means
of knowledge filtration, enforcing dogmatic orthodoxy among practitioners of
a field. Academicians face professional mandates for
publication. Tenure, seniority, and
advancement are often linked to publications in peer reviewed journals. Peer review, in turn, reflects consensus beliefs. Publication is highly competitive, with
both professional esteem and career advancement at stake. Research grants are often linked to peer
reviewed publication, as government and other entities rightly want to know
that others in a field feel that an idea is good before pouring large amounts
of money into it. Sought-after positions
in national organizations, editorial boards, and so forth, typically result
from professional networking.
Professionals who fail to produce an adequate volume of published
literature suffer professionally. Even
worse is to get a reputation as an intellectual renegade views fall outside
of consensus orthodoxy: academicians who cross this boundary are blackballed
from professional organizations, and sometimes become unemployable. No one wants waste time on projects which
have no real chance of publication, or worse, to become a professional
outcast. Academicians are well aware that “playing the game” of the
establishment is essential to their professional advancement. In this way, the peer review process
restricts the freedom of academicians. Political considerations thus dictate both
the direction of research and the range of acceptable conclusions. There is no basis for the popular assumption that
academicians are independent, unbiased, and not beholden to external
influences. To the contrary,
academicians face the same economic imperative to tow the party line as do
paid ministers, who claim to be independent at to do their own thinking yet
who consistently side with their denomination’s official interpretations in
discussions with others. Few are
willing to cross the line. As Upton
Sinclair noted, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when
his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Dogma by Fiat There is no good way to determine the precise impact of
geographic location on radiometric dating, or background levels of radiation
in remote antiquity, or a host of other issues. Because archaeologists cannot verify these
assumptions and are not willing or able to acknowledge ignorance or
uncertainty, and so foundational assumptions are accepted as fact. These issues are frequently compounded by
anthropologic and archaeological findings which are highly incomplete. What arises is dogma by fiat: many
foundational theories are construed as fact based on no evidence great than
“because I said so” declarations of founding authority figures. There is no reason, for instance, to believe that
background radiation levels have remained the same over time as radiometric
dating theory demands – to the contrary, the geologic record demonstrates
vast fluxes in the earth’s magnetic field over time, demanding similar
fluctuations in cosmic radiation. Yet
the burden of proof is subtly shifted: assumptions are accepted, not because they have been proven, but
because they have not been disproven. Scholars abdicate their responsibility to
meet the burden of proof, demanding that critics compellingly disprove that
their theory rather than offering positive proof. This relates to uniformitarian dogma that
things change very slowly over time, therefore allowing the sweeping
extrapolation of currently measured values into the remote past. Uniformitarianism is deeply troubled
because we can document, both in our world today and in the past, that changes
occur far more rapidly than the theory would either predict or allow. Anthropologists and geologists scholars
have been compelled to accept
uniformitarianism, not because of scientific evidence for its validity (to
the contrary!), but because of expediency.
It is claimed that no “serious scholars” deny the process
of macroevolution. The fact that The Forbidden Words: “I
Don’t Know” Were anthropologists, geologists, and others to
acknowledge that change over time has not
been uniform and that presently measured values have not been constant throughout history, they would have no way to authoritatively
contrive remote timelines or offer explanations about many other
matters. Accounting for past changes
would be complex, burdensome, and ultimately unreliable. They would have to utter those three
dreaded words -- “I don’t know” – that scholars in their field seem incapable
of uttering on matters of significance.
As these professions do nothing to make life better for
the average person, the only thing that they have to offer the public is
their knowledge. Publicly admitting
ignorance (except of the most peripheral and inconsequential matters) or
acknowledging the uncertainty of foundational theories could undermine the
trust that the public has placed in them and cause individuals to turn to
other sources – such as religion – for answers about which science is
uncertain. This in turn would decrease
the prestige and sphere of influence of the scientists personally and the
field in general. Such acknowledgments are therefore taboo for professionals
in the field, under penalty of ostracism and ridicule. As the result of the unwillingness to acknowledge doubt or
uncertainty about establishment theories, the evidence for these theories is
wildly overstated in both the scientific literature and the lay press. Highly speculative theories are presented
to the public as definitive fact without the necessary disclosures of the
theories’ contradictions and our limited grasp of the present. Respected scientists declare that
“evolution is a fact – not a theory.”
Radiometric dating calculations are conveyed as being highly accurate
and precise, even when tests
from the same specimen vary drastically and some
living plants and animals are dated as being thousands of years old. Popular media like the Discovery Channel
make emphatic factual statements – “humans entered the John
Mitchell observes: “It’s
not exactly that they are wrong. It’s
that they are partial and arbitrary.
That’s the way they teach in school and college. You have to challenge them to get anywhere
near adjusting your mind to the reality of things. If you take to heart anyone’s scientific
explanation, you will have an uneasy life: for, you know, the theories that
are portrayed as certainties are always changing. If you believe what they tell you in school
now, by the time you get to be my age you’ll be very old-fashioned indeed.”[4] Those who claim to be “skeptics” about religion,
tradition, and other sources of human knowledge demonstrate that their
thresholds of belief are ones of convenience and not principle: their
uncritical acceptance of speculative and deeply troubled theories – so long
as these theories have the stamp of scientific consensus – demonstrates
profound gullibility. Agenda and Bias Establishment scholars are quick to cite the religious
belief or philosophy of those they disagree with as evidence of agenda and
bias. Such citation is deemed adequate to invalidate any pretense to
scholarly merit the individual may have, and serves as a priori evidence of the individual’s unsavory propensity toward
fraud in order to buttress his belief.
It is claimed that a Bible believer cannot meaningfully analyze
archaeology, nor can a BYU scholar write a balanced work for a general
audience about Mormonism. A smirk and
an insinuation is all that is needed to dismiss the individual’s work without
any need for objective evaluation of scientific merit. By invoking ad hominem accusations of bias,
establishment scholars can conveniently dispense of the need to address
either the data or the arguments.
Frenzied name-calling and peer-review censorship help them to quash
inconvenient evidence and maintain tight control on what theories can or
cannot receive the mandate of “science.” The idea that establishment scholars could be biased,
however, is never entertained. They
are presented as fair-minded, objective, and unbiased. Never is it considered that establishment
scholars of the religion of evolution could have bias, or could be prone to
discredit evidence that contradicts their theories – such as evidence that
the most ancient Americans had technology greater than that that of the
Indians at the time of Columbus, extensive evidence of the so-called “ice age”
is actually more consistent with a global flood, or that extensive finds of
ancient American writing systems employing characters from Near Eastern
languages are not a priori
frauds. The Reverse Scientific
Method It is generally assumed by the public that archaeologists
and anthropologists came to their conclusions by objectively weighing all the
available evidence, without bias or preconception. Based on the evidence alone, scriptural
teachings – such as the global flood, the creation of man, and the age of the
earth – were rejected. The evidence
allegedly was not consistent with these teachings, which were written off as
ignorant mythology. The “correct”
scientific explanation for observed evidence was then arrived at after
careful, honest, and scholarly effort. This public misconception in fact represents almost the
precise opposite of what actually transpired in the scientific
community. Rather than weighing the
evidence on its merits, all scriptural conclusions were rejected a priori. Peter Bros observed: The scientific establishment
unknowingly cast its lot against a prehistorical civilization before the
evidence began showing up. It did so by enforcing the eighteenth-century rule
of reason which stipulated that God could not be used as an explanation for
physical reality, thereby rejecting out of hand the possible validity of all
biblical accounts and, in the case of a worldwide prehistoric society, the
possibility that a flood of biblical proportions destroyed all but the
megalithic evidence for that civilization.
Making the world of science safe against Bible-thumpers became the
overriding goal of nineteenth-century science. Pierre-Simon de Laplace had barely finished
banishing God as the source of Newton’s perpetual motion in the solar system
(by creating his swirling mass of gas out of whole cloth) before evidence for
the worldwide flood described in the Bible began to accumulate. Science, at this time, was unaware that
accounts of a universal flood appear around the globe, the universal flood
being a part of the myths and traditions of more than five hundred widely
separated cultures.[5] Bros goes on to provide a litany of examples, including
how the Ice Age theory was invented in order to provide an alternate (but
highly problematic) explanation for massive evidence most consistent with a
global flood. The approach of science was not to weigh the data and then arrive at the conclusion most
consistent with the evidence. Rather,
it was to reject any possible role of God, and therefore to reject any
possibility that scriptural teachings about the creation, the global flood,
and so forth, could be correct. In
other words, no matter how much objective evidence points toward the validity
of a scriptural teaching – such as the global flood or the creation –
scientists must go out of their way to contrive alternative hypotheses that
appeared sufficiently plausible to the layman to banish God from the universe What resulted followed was the reverse scientific
method. The process was not one of
putting all of the data pieces on the table and determining which solution
best fits the pieces. It is rather of
starting with axiomatic assumptions (the lack of any divine intervention in
the universe, the lack of validity of any scriptural histories or teachings,
and belief in evolutionary theory), excluding any explanation that could be
construed to support scripture, and then attempting to assemble the pieces in
an alternative fashion. Scholarly
consideration of scriptural histories – except with the express purpose of
discrediting them -- was simply not allowed.
As naturalistic theories were often poor fits for observed evidence,
data tampering, destruction, and misinterpretation became part of the
process. It is not that there is no
evidence for scriptural teachings. It
is that any positive evidence, by definition, is ignored, destroyed, or
declared inadmissible. The Double Standard In Forbidden Archaeology, Cremo and
Thompson observe: One prominent feature in the treatment
of anomalous evidence is what we could call the double standard. All paleoarthropological evidence tends to
be complex and uncertain. Practically
any evidence in this field can be challenged, for if nothing else, one can
always raise charges of fraud. What
happens in practice is that evidence agreeing with a prevailing theory tends
to be treated very leniently [as we have seen with foundational frauds like
the Piltdown Man and Java Man]. Even
if it has great defects, these tended to be overlooked. In contrast, evidence that goes against an
accepted theory tends to be overlooked.
In contrast, evidence that goes against an accepted theory tends to be
subjected to intense critical scrutiny, and it is expected to meet very high
standards of proof. This double standard is described in
the following way be the archaeologist George Carter (1980, p. 318): “When a
new idea is advanced, it necessarily challenges the previous idea. This disturbs the holders of the previous
idea and threatens their security. The
normal reaction is anger. The new idea is then attacked, and support of it is
required to be of a high order of certainty.
The greater the departure from the previous idea, the greater the
degree of certainty required, so it is said.
I have never been able to accept this.
It assumes that the older order was established on higher orders of
proof, and on examination this is seldom found to be true. [24] As time passes and theories change, the
status of anomalous observations also changes. In some cases (as shown, for example, by
the theory of continental drift), evidence once considered anomalous may
later attain scientific acceptability.
In other cases, evidence which was acceptable, or marginally
acceptable, may become so anomalous that professional scientists will
completely reject it. The process of rejection does not usually involve
careful scrutiny of evidence by the scientists who reject is. Human time and energy are limited, and most
scientists prefer to focus on positive research goals, rather than spend time
scrutinizing unpopular claims. In the scientific community, the word will go
out that certain findings are bogus, and this is enough to induce most
scientists to avoid the rejected material. [25] When theories change, and a certain
body of ideas and discoveries become unacceptable, there is generally a
period of time during which prominent scientists will publish systematic
attacks against the unwanted findings. (In the parlance of some scientists at
the The process of suppression of evidence
is illustrated by many of these anomalous paleoanthropological findings
discussed in this book. This evidence
now tends to be extremely obscure, and it also tends to be surrounded by a neutralizing numbus of
negative reports, themselves obscure and dating from the time when the
evidence was being actively rejected. Since these reports are generally quite
derogatory, they may discourage those who read them from examining the
rejected evidence further. However, the negative reports generally
provide many references to earlier positive reports. When these are examined
in detail, it is often found that they contain a wealth of detailed
information and reasoning not adequately dealt with in the later negative
critiques. This to properly evaluate
anomalous evidence, there is no alternative to examining in detail the
arguments and evidence presented in the original reports.[26] Low-quality
pieces defending the scholarly consensus viewpoint face a low threshold of
acceptance, while high quality pieces offering opposing viewpoints and data
are turned away without even an opportunity to respond to criticism. In
a follow-up volume, Impact of Forbidden
Archaeology, author Michael Cremo responds to Dr. Kenneth Feder’s
invocation of a higher evidentiary standard for conclusions differing from
establishment theory: You
say “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.” But claims are judged
extraordinary not in relation to some independent standard (which might be
okay) but in relationship to the currently dominant consensus in a particular
discipline. This means that the parties to the dominant consensus are in
control of what claims should be deemed extraordinary, and hence almost
impossible to prove (to them and those who accept their authority). That may,
as you say, be the way things are in science, but it does not strike me as a
particularly good way to treat evidence. It shades too far into ideology and
partisan politics. The real question is what are the standards of good
evidence. We
suggest that the comparative method provides a fairer and more objective way
of evaluating evidence. Suppose that we have two sets of evidence, set (a)
which is accepted by a mainstream scientific discipline, and set (b) which is
not. If a careful comparison of (a) and (b) shows that they are equivalent,
then both should be given equal legitimacy in scientific discussions Either
both (a) and (b) should be accepted, or they should both be rejected, or
perhaps they should both be considered ambiguous In our view, if (a) and (b)
are of comparable quality, then (b) should not be consigned to oblivion,
while (a) is prominently publicized. After all, the climate of scientific
opinion may change later on, and (b) may no longer be regarded as
constituting an extraordinary claim.[6] Dr.
Feder’s demand for “extraordinary evidence” can be deemed a confession that such
this double standard is business as usual.
Peer reviewed sources frequently demonstrate this double standard. A
relatively small group of people – editors and reviewers of major journals –
hold considerable power in determining what claims are “ordinary” or accepted
and can be published with a low standard of evidence, and what claims are
“extraordinary” and are therefore excluded from publication by being held to
a higher and often unattainable standard. One
frequently finds bitingly critical rants of evolutionists against
creationists in scientific journals which lay claim to even-handedness,
objectivity, and impartiality. Yet
defenders are not allowed to respond. Egyptologists are welcome to dispute or
criticize Robert Bauval’s findings about the pyramids in professional
publications, yet Bauval himself is not allowed to present or even defend his
findings once they are attacked. It is
easy for linguists to get articles published in professional sources attacking
the credibility of translations of inscriptions like the Bat Creek Stone,
helping the establishment save some face after having erroneously insisted
for so many years that the stone was written in the Cherokee alphabet or was
a forgery. Even
in the face of gaping professional mistakes, such articles attempt to defend
the history of rejection of such writings by the establishment, and convey
that whatever errors or oversights may have occurred in the professional
community in the past, that they are justifiable. Such demolition jobs offer
no new insight or understanding, and contribute nothing to our knowledge of
ancient peoples. Positive
contributions which offer to expand our understanding of the Bat Creek Stone,
however, have virtually no chance in professional publications. A
Ultimately, the discussion is not about evidence, as
establishmentarians refuse to engage on a level playing field or to enforce a
consistent standard of evidence. Will
Hart wrote: There is really no “debate” between the orthodox and the
alternative history camps because the former group refuses to engage in any
fair, open exchange or to provide solid proof of its theories. Every one of their basic [pyramid]
construction tenets can be subjected to scientifically controlled tests.
Alternative historians have been under the false impression that the other
side could be convinced with compelling fact-based arguments and
incontrovertible evidence. But that
has proved to be a false assumption.[7] Admissible
evidence must meet a consistent standard.
When evidence is declared either valid or fraudulent based on how well
it fits a predetermined theory, the scientific method is turned on its head. Theory Trumps Evidence The double standard, taken to the extreme, is that no
evidence is powerful enough to overturn foundational axioms: these unproven
theories became more important than the data itself! Quality evidence has frequently been thrown
out simply because it conflicts with evolution or other consensus
theories. Cremo and Thompson observe: In this regard, Laing (1894, p. 389)
wrote: “if we accept…the skulls of Castelnedolo [sic] and Calaveras, which
are supported by such extremely strong evidence, it would seem that as we
recede in time, instead of getting nearer to the ‘missing link,’ we get
further from it. This, and this alone, throws doubt on evidence which would
otherwise seem to be irresistible.” In
other words, the fact that the discoveries violated evolutionary expectations
was sufficient to overrule all other testimony.[8] The
establishment solution to inconvenient evidence is either to ignore it or to
declare it a fraud. After having
rejected correct scriptural explanations, scholars had no possibility of
arriving at the correct answers (Jacob 4:17), being
“ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2
Timothy 3:7). Scholars had
to contrive their own mythology to provide alternate explanations
discrediting scripture and establishing themselves as the sole authorities in
their area of research. Collusion and Data Tampering We
can find further evidence of collusion and data tampering in modern times
when we look back further. In the pre-Darwin
era, many anthropologists – atheists and agnostics, but unaware of Large amounts of
paleoanthropological evidence were amassed in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries in support of a theory that humans or near humans were
living in the Pliocene, Miocene, or earlier periods. This evidence was not regarded as anomalous
by the scientists who introduced it, since they were contemplating theories
of human origins (mainly along the lines of Darwinian evolution) that were
compatible with this evidence. Then,
with the development of the modern theory that humans like ourselves evolved in
the Pleistocene, this evidence became highly unacceptable, and it vanished
from sight.[9] Another
serious concern is the circular
logic and lack of blinding in the philosophical sciences. For instance, scientists performing
radiometric dating tests know the presumed identity of a fossil, and
therefore what date ranges are “acceptable” to fit with established
theory. When scientists are blinded to
the origin of specimens, the dates often deviate radically from the
“expected” values that are arrived at when collusion is allowed. For instance, a blinded lab dated
Allosaurus bones (without knowing their origins) to a period contemporary
with humans. What does it tell you that such labs refuse to employ
blinding methods that are central to scientific integrity, consult
extensively with accepted timelines in determining which numbers to accept
and reject, and virtually never publish results outside of the expected
ranges? The “Cracked Kettle” Approach to Science In
Icons of Evolution, widely
published researcher Jonathan Wells, Ph.D., observed the self-contradictory
arguments of some evolutionary scholars: Needless to say the
announcement that the controversy was dead failed to persuade the critics in
the audience. But the most amazing thing about Padian’s lecture was its
stunning display of non-sequiturs. In fact, it reminded me of an old lawyers’
joke. According to the joke, Jones sues Smith for borrowing his kettle and returning it with a crack in it.
Smith’s lawyer defends him as follows: 1. Smith never borrowed the
kettle. 2. When Smith returned the
kettle, it wasn’t cracked. 3. The kettle was already
cracked when Smith borrowed it. 4. There is no kettle... Of course, Padian was not
trying to be funny... But consider the following summary of his argument: 1. In the controversy over
bird origins, critics of the dinosaur hypothesis have not proposed any alternative
hypotheses that can be tested by evidence. 2. The evidence on which the
critics base their alternative hypotheses is selectively interpreted. 3. Although science is not a
vote, the majority of the scientific community rejects the critics’ methodology
regardless of their evidence. 4. There is no controversy.[10] It
is sobering that individuals like Mr. Padian are the “experts” defining to
the public what is and what is not science. Yet these same points of “logic”
are often employed by establishmentarians to dismiss conflicting
viewpoints. Prisoners to the Past Medical
theories have changed drastically over the past 150 years as the result of
new research and analysis: little nineteenth century medicine is recognizable
today. In contrast, the core tenets of
archaeology and anthropology have remained largely unchanged over this period
even as new evidence has been unearthed.
Professional archaeologists are as disinclined today as they were 150
years ago to challenge Major Wesley Powell’s decree that there could have
been no Precolumbian Old World influence in the There
are two possible explanations for observation that the core tenets of applied
biology (i.e. medicine) in the twenty-first century are drastically different
from those of the nineteenth century, while the philosophical disciplines
(i.e. anthropology) have built an intricate superstructure on nineteenth
century beliefs while leaving those core tenets largely unchanged. One is that nineteenth century natural
philosophers – Darwin, Laplace, Lamarck, Agassiz, and others – were much more
brilliant, insightful, and correct in their scholarship than the medical
researchers of the time. They may have
gotten many, even most, of the details wrong (see Jonathan Wells Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth),
but they were perceptive enough to arrive at “correct” conclusions in spite
of deeply flawed methodology and logic.
The other option is that the tenets of the natural philosophies have
changed little because they have not been exposed to the same rigid standards
of evidence and the compulsory real-world reality check of the applied
sciences. Peter
Bros observes that the scientific community’s deification of Agassiz, Darwin,
and others as “untouchables” has hindered science by casting its lot with
rigid conclusions based on fragmentary information that has since proven to
be erroneous or incomplete: We
have created a scientific system that enshrines off-the-cuff ideas of men who
lived before we knew about the atom, electricity, or even that some stars
were galaxies – in short, we are allowing our views of reality to be
controlled by the unverifiable notions of dead men who knew relatively
nothing.[11] The Nomenclature Game Two
hundred years ago, anthropology, archaeology, and other “soft sciences” were
referred to as philosophies. Today,
they are called sciences. This nomenclature
shift imputes a degree of scientific rigor to the discipline which the
available evidence does now warrant.
It belies the fact that these fields are interpretive rather than empirical, and falsely implies that
scholarly consensus represents hard fact rather than theory or philosophy. Many
individuals require the scholarly community’s permission to believe anything,
and rely heavily on the “experts” to tell them what to think. Establishment “skeptics” often claim that
any belief or theory that is not advocated in the peer-reviewed scholarly
literature is, by definition, without merit.
The fact that belief in a global flood has been around since the dawn
of time but has not gained acceptance in the scientific literature, they
argue, demonstrates that the concept is without merit. If it had any merit, obviously the
scientific community would have accepted it by now, but the alleged absence
of “serious scholars” (i.e. establishmentarians who adhere to the religion of
evolution) demonstrates its lack of merit.
Of course, anyone who does entertain the notion of a global flood –
regardless of credentials – cannot be considered a serious scholar. The
reasoning is circular. By defining the
experts as scholars who hold Darwinian viewpoints and defining anyone who
holds an opposing or scriptural viewpoint as being unscholarly, it will never
be able to identify scholars who support scriptural viewpoints – because
anyone who does cannot be considered a scholar! The
global flood was thoroughly discredited in the nineteenth century, they
claim, and subsequent research has only further discredited the global flood
while “proving” alternative ice age theories.
Why revisit something that has already been thoroughly repudiated by
“serious scientists?” By equating the
beliefs of establishment evolutionists with hard scientific fact, they avoid
any need to engage or address conflicting data. With
such rules of engagement, scriptural events have never been examined on an
even scientific footing. Establishmentarians
who dismiss as fantasy anything that does not appear in the peer-reviewed
literature are playing well-rehearsed semantic games as a convenient means of
disposing with opposing arguments without having to engage the data. They are invoking a fool’s errand when they
tell opponents that data and theories must appear in peer-reviewed scholarly
journals before they can be considered credible. They know perfectly well that the natural
philosophies, by their own rules, are not allowed
to seriously consider evidence for scriptural events, and so it is not possible to publish an even-handed
article on the global flood in a top-tier peer-reviewed journal. Rules dictate that naturalistic,
anti-scriptural explanations must be sought for all observed data – regardless
of which fits better with the data at hand! When anti-scriptural theories are
unable to provide plausible explanations for existing data, the tactic has
been to declare the data to be fraudulent or to represent “anomalies” or
“outliers” – code words indicating that the evidence does not fit the
prevailing theory, but does not need to be engaged or explained. Obviously it is the data which is
fraudulent or anomalous, and not the theory which fails to explain it! Nor is there any evidence which is
sufficient to overturn establishment theories which are not based on
evidence. |
[1] Hapgood, Charles. Maps
of the Ancient Sea Kings, Adventures Unlimited:
[2] Thomas G. Brophy, The
Origin Map, Writers Club Press:
[3] Gordon, Forgotten Scripts, p. 36
[4] in J. Douglas Kenyon, Forbidden History.
[5] Peter Bros, “The Case for the Flood,” in J. Douglas
Kenyon, Forbidden History.
[6] Cremo, Michael. Impact of Forbidden Archaeology, Bhaktivedanta Books, Los Angeles, 1998,108.
[7] Will Hart, in Forbidden
History, 213.
[8] Cremo and Thompson, Forbidden Archaeology, 445
[9] Cremo and Thompson, Forbidden Archaeology, p. 19 or 27.
[10]
Wells, Jonathan. Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?,
[11]
Peter Bros, “The Case for the Flood,” in J. Douglas Kenyon, Forbidden History.