Posted on 01/31/2006 7:50:43 PM PST by DaveLoneRanger
The fabricated evidence on human stem cells published by Hwang Woo-suk and colleagues had a life shorter than two years as scientific fact. In contrast, the infamous hominid remains of Piltdown Man announced in 1912 stood as real for nearly 40 years.
Hwang Woo-suk et al.’s DNA evidence and photographs of human embryonic stem cells reportedly from a cloned blastocyst were “fabricated,” according to an international investigating panel convened by Seoul National University. The investigation sprang from questions about the cells and DNA evidence posted anonymously at Korea’s Biological Research Information Center. The SNU panel’s independent testing of evidence led to the conclusion that data had been invented.
Hwang's claims are far from the first fabrications in science. Nobel Physicist Richard Feynman made pertinent remarks on supposedly newly-found Maya documents that were publicized in the 1970s. They were quickly found to be fakes. Feynman had earlier translated (for fun, naturally) a section of a Maya astronomical almanac from the authentic Dresden Codex in which mathematical symbols denoted regularities of the sightings of the planet Venus. When the finding of a new Maya codex was announced, Feynman quickly saw it as a forgery. The arcane calculations for Venus were repeated from the Dresden Codex, and merely copied in a different style, that of the authentic Madrid Codex.
In other words, the forgery wasn’t very clever. “Out of the hundred thousand books originally made [by Mayans],” notes Feynman, “we get another fragment, and it has the same thing on it as the other [very few] fragments. It was obviously, again, one of these put-together things which had nothing original in it.”[i]
But clever forgery is partly why the Piltdown Man eluded detection for some 40 years, until technology and hypothesis-testing by scientists unequivocally disputed it.
The bombshell at the 1912 Geological Society of London of the earliest human-type fossil was set off by country solicitor and amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson (1864-1916) and Arthur Smith Woodward (1864-1944), Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum. They described the discovery of what seemed to be much of the cranium and part of the jaw of ancient human remains, found in a gravel pit near Piltdown, Sussex in England. Flints and animal bones in the layer led to the estimation that the skull was the oldest known human-ancestor remains, at an age of approximately one million years in modern terms. Subsequent finds at the quarry through 1915 and work by leading British scientists seemed to confirm this unique human artifact.
The remains were classified as Eoanthropus dawsoni (Dawson’s Dawn Man). The large brain casing indicated modern brain capacity while the jaw and teeth indicated more ape-like dentition. Eoanthropus thus neatly fitted two popular ideas of the time, now known to be false:
First, the modern human line had evolved from ancestors that had first gained tremendous brain capacity, after which changes to the body (exemplified by Eoanthropus’ more ape-like jaw and teeth) had followed.
Second, our brainy human forebears were from Britain.
Keep in mind that while Charles Darwin’s research on evolution had helped in the latter half of the 19th century open the radical possibility of Homo sapiens developing from ancestral species over millions of years, just a few examples with poorly estimated ages were known, among them Neanderthal (currently known as 200,000 to 30,000 years old) and Java Man (now known as Homo erectus, dated approximately 700,000 years old) specimens.
Eoanthropus became a competitive paradigm in ideas about human origins. The problem is that Eoanthropus was a clever fraud. The piece of jaw and teeth are from an orangutan, and the cranium from that of a modern human scarcely several hundred years old. The anatomical clues were intentionally created to mislead: the hinge where the jaw would fit the skull was missing so that their mismatch would be less noticeable; the teeth had been smoothed down to seem more human-like, and the artifacts chemically stained to seem to have lain in the ground for ages.
Eoanthropus remained in play until 1953 when physical anthropologist Joseph Weiner began to work the hypothesis that Piltdown Man was fake, as it differed in kind from other accumulating hominid remains. Mid-20th century chemical testing by Weiner and colleagues finally revealed Piltdown Man was a fraud.
Nearly 90 years after the announcement of Piltdown Man, culprit and motives rest in anonymity, disturbed only by an industry of speculation. Of the many suspects, Jesuit priest and paleontologist Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was favored in heavy speculation by paleontologist Stephen J. Gould. Another bruit of suspicions is heaped on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), who, as a Scotsman was devoted to playing the properly Scottish national sport, and occasionally on the gorse-and-heather course at Piltdown, near the scene of the crime and some five miles from his home on the splendid Crowborough Beacon Gulf Club. Conan Doyle surely had better pastimes than salting amateur archaeology digs with bones chemically altered to feign antiquity.
Less salacious though more important than discovering Piltdown Man’s forger and motives is that scientists unmasked the fake, despite the appealing idea of brainy Piltdown Man’s place in early hominid evolution, by examining evidence and hypotheses.
The same process would have uncovered the Hwang affair, if doubts had not aired about the authenticity of some of the evidence. Given the high interest in the field of human stem cells, other researchers would have quickly found contrary results, leading in turn to reexamining Hwang’s claims.
Of course there will be more and perhaps greater fabrications as the 21st century unfolds. The century is young, and science, after all, is practiced by humans -- among them, a few who invent data or forge artifacts.
It's not like there are any more ground-breaking fossil specimens to support evolution today.
Umm, no. Please stop reading the bible literally.
What did he say that brought on that comment? It seems toatally unrelated to his ping list.
Unlike other ways of approaching the world around us, science has an inbuilt self-correcting mechanism. This is one of the virtues of science, not one of its vices.
""Unlike other ways of approaching the world around us, science has an inbuilt self-correcting mechanism. This is one of the virtues of science, not one of its vices.""
Can I steal this quote? You've managed to articulate in two sentences what I've attempted to articulate in paragraphs.
And the "Piltdown Man" hoax was discovered by evolution scientists, because it did not fit into the patern of other fossils in the evolution chain.
The lame attempt by the author to tarnish evolution by pointing out the rare scientific fraud is about as meaningful as trying to tarnish all Christians by comparing them to Jim Jones.
Archive?
Science has no such thing, since it is merely a body of knowledge, without mind, means, or motive. Those things are the sole territory of the scientist, therefore, it would be better to argue that scientists have an inbuilt self-correcting mechanism....
...but how absurd would that be.
I'll never forget how Stephen Jay Gould accused Teilhard de Chardin of being involved in the Piltdown hoax.
Wyatt Archaeological Research (These guys claim to have found Noah's Ark, Sodom & Gomorrah, The Ark of the The Covenant and more!! Send $$ for the tour)
The Inca Stones/Acambaro dinosaurs
Perjury at Dover
Darwin's deathbed confession
NASA finds the missing day of Joshua
Apostolic Canons
Greater Ministries Scandal
Health Ministry / Biblical medical plan
So I guess by your logic, if evolution is false because of one fraud a long time ago, Christianity is also false because of all the past as well as present frauds.
Gould's articles about de Chardin and Piltdown:
http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_prim_suspects/Teilhard_de_Chardin/Chardin_Prosecution/piltdownrevisited.html
http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_prim_suspects/Teilhard_de_Chardin/Chardin_Prosecution/piltdownconsiracy.html
http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_prim_suspects/Teilhard_de_Chardin/Chardin_Prosecution/Piltinletters.html
Another detailed article:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/scams/piltdown_man/4.html
Actually they do correct things, all the time. They're always fixing their past errors. So yesterday's scientific truth is today's creationist lie. And they wonder why people are skeptical of their latest pronouncements.
Science is NOT a body of knowledge. Science is a method by which we learn about things. Science happens when people come up with ideas--usually, but not always about some aspect of nature--and test them, then, using the results of those tests, see that either
1) The idea is close enough to reality that we can't tell the difference between reality and our theory
or
2) The idea was wrong and we need to come up with something else to describe the thing in question.
That's all that science is. It isn't bald guys in white lab coats. It isn't thick dusty books. It isn't test tubes and Van de Graff generators. It isn't a bunch of big, incomprehensible gobledeygook understandable only by little old bald men in white lab coats.
I don't mean to sound grouchy. :) This is just something that needs to be taught in elementary school that very wise men and women don't understand, to the detriment of all.
Before you claim too much credit, please name the the non-evolution scientists who were allowed to examine Piltdown in the first place.
It's like giving the referees a bonus for being the last to recognize a bad call because, after all, it was the referees who finally reversed it.
Conspiracy theory here?
First, tell me the creationist who has the knowledge to have discovered the piltdown fraud in the first place.
I think it's indicative that there are not any qualified creationists who could have discovered the piltdown fraud. That's either because they don't really care about the subject, or because anyone with that belief in the beginning changed their mind by the time they gained enough knowledge to be able to spot such a fraud.
It's not only science that has a correction mechanism. The Catholic church also learned to stay away from the scientific arena after it attacked Galileo. They now accept that the Bible and evolution are not incompatible.
Today's fundamentalist churches leading the charge against science haven't been around long enough to have learned that lesson. They're only concerned with this Sunday's offering plate.
So in the acceptance of Piltdown, (or Hesperopithecus or Ramapithecus), was the method used, or not? And if it wasn't used, how come a generation of the brightest scientists were incapable of detecting that? The "method" appears a good bit sloppier than you suggest.
That said, sicence still has no such mechanism as argued earlier.
Piltdown was considered a fraud (or at least a mistake) by December 1912. Non-English scientists (German, American, French) didn't accept the find. Even in England, Piltdown was considered at best a dead-end branch. Of course, the longevity of creationists stories about these things will only grow.
The method needs some improvement. The biggest problem today is scientists who stand to benefit personally from their discoveries. That is a conflict of interest which leads to junk science. Good science comes mostly from the those that don't need the fame or money.
Another reminder that scientists should KEEP AN OPEN MIND.
I don't know of any churches that are against science. They may not accept the ToE but that is a far cry from being anti-science or anti-intellectual. *Evolution* and *science* are not necessarily interchangable terms. While evolution is a branch of science, not all science is evolution. If you rejected science, you would also be rejecting evolution, but the opposite is not true; that by rejecting evolution, you are rejecting science. There are plenty of branches of science where evolution does not come into play.
Science is only as effective as the people who do it. If man is sinful and imperfect, what do you expect of his works? The Piltdown man, and attempts to shoehorn him into natural history, was as flawed as his forger.
Humanity has rarely done anything right the first time, and it is unreasonable to expect human scientists to be right the first time, every time. Scientists, those who aren't too full of themselves and don't live in their moms' basement, anyway, understand that and say so openly. The scientific method is clearly designed with that truth in mind.
The scientific method is like an algorithm. Consider Newton's Method. Those of you who took high school calculus should know this one, and if you don't it isn't hard to find it on the net. Newton's Method is an algorithm that finds the roots (the "zeroes") of a real-valued function. The first step in the process is to guess at where a root is. After an iteration of the algorithm, the value of the "guess" changes. If the function is poorly behaved, or if the guess was too far off, the algorithm will go off in the wrong direction, and a new guess will have to be made. Otherwise, the guess will converge to the value of the root over time. Sure, it isn't exactly right, but it gets you as close as you care to get to the "true" answer.
The analogy to science should be obvious. The first guess about the nature of some aspect of the natural world is a hypothesis. If it is way off, experiments will show it to be a bad guess, and a new one will have to be found. Also, just as you can't look for real roots at "infinity" or "square root of -1", you can't make scientfic hypotheses that aren't testable by experiment. You can't do science on them, just like you can't use Newton's method to find imaginary roots. It is out-of-bounds.
Eventually, someone will hit close to the truth, and experiment will fail to prove it wrong (note: nothing is ever proved "right" in science, and no one in their right mind ever utters the word "irrefutable" unless they are a raving nutter or getting too angry for good health) over time, the scientific method allows us to come to a clearer vision of the truth of what is being studied as more experiments, more powerful technology, and more data allow better and better estimates to be made.
A good example of this process is the progression of our understanding of gravity. Stuff Falls Down because That's The Way Things Are => Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation => General Relativity => Whatever comes next.
In conclusion (*turns off the overhead projector*), it should be pointed out that all of the so-called "failures of science" are not failures of the method. They are failures of men. If anything is to be indicted, it is not Science, but those who would use the mantle of "Scientist" to bring unearned glory to themselves. The scientific method is as clean a way to find things out about anything as there ever was, or will be.
Umm, no. Please stop reading the Bible liberally.
Nope, I just checked and it is still in my closet.
Maybe when I said italicized anything, I should have said "anything in the universe."
Material things.
Stuff. :)
That's all that science is meant to do. To use science to study anything else -- the natural and rightful territory of philosophy, as you point out -- is like using a screwdriver to tighten nuts.
I would also argue that the scientific method will never be superseded, since it is the simplest way of probing the inner workings of nature. No step in the process can be removed or altered without compromising the desired outcome: learning more about the internal workings of the natural world.
-There is no way to expand our knowledge without first forumulating new ideas.
-There is no way to test new ideas about how the universe works without experiments.
-If we cannot test new ideas, then they will proliferate, without any means of discarding those that do not reflect reality.
-When this happens, how could we ever say that we learned something about the physical universe?
Sooooooooooo...I think that science as we know it is here to stay. :)
Non-evo scientists?! Were there any between 1912 and 1953?!
Outside of the USSR?
Oui. Merci.
These are the men who laid the very foundations of science today. Considering what they had to work with, they made advances that are unequaled today. I don't hear of many men of this kind of genius anymore. Your comment is very condemning to these great men,
The only problem is, science tends to run around proclaiming it HAS the answer and that THIS time there will be no need for self-correction.
So yes, it will self-correct, but in the meantime, the prophets of science go about declaring The Way, and it's only after a few thousand have fallen off the cliff that they say, "No, wait! THIS is really The Way. Sorry about that, but aren't you glad we're self-correcting. Ignore all those bodies strewn on the rocks below and follow me again!"
Good morning ~ [prying my eyes open, one by one].
Nice quote from Newton. Of course, he condemns himself by his belief in God. He's no good, now.
Oh---I wouldn't say that.
A real scientist (of any moral/amoral stripe) knows that you should
always be ready to question any published report.
And even your own ability to fully comprehend the observations in
your own research.
But even with all the human foibles in scientific research, it's
still better than other systems of inquiry into "how stuff works"
Here is an interesting article documenting more "ape man" mistakes and fraud.
2. THE "APE-MEN" FALLACY
This is a summary of "APE-MEN FACT OR FALLACY?"(3rd Reprint) by the writer of this paper. Enormous efforts have been made to discover fossils that could be claimed to be the "missing links" between Man and the apes. The results, however, are a small collection of unconvincing fossil bones.
1. RECONSTRUCTIONS.
(A) Artists' impressions. With each new discovery, invariably an artist's impression is given showing "what our ancestors looked like". In each case, however, drawings by various artists based on the same skull are completely different, proving that these pictures are figments of the imagination (Figs. 1,2,3). [To be inserted later]
(B) Java 'man' consists of only a (gibbon's) skull cap and a human leg bone. Yet on these a complete face and body have been reconstructed.
(C) Hesperopithecus (Nebraska man). One tooth was found in America and was claimed to be a new ape-man. A complete detailed picture was published in the London Illustrated News of the ape-man and his wife. The tooth was later found to be that of an extinct pig! Little publicity was given to this fact.
2. HOMO SAPIENS. (Modern Man)
Fossils have been found in older layers than those of the so-called ape-men, but these are classed as "forgeries" or "intrusive burials".
3. NEANDERTHAL MAN.
They were not Man's ancestor as Homo sapiens has been found in earlier strata. He was a degenerate variety of Homo Sapiens having a larger brain and suffering from rickets, osteoarthritis and syphilis. He vanished from Europe, being replaced by modern Homo sapiens from the Middle East.
4. PILTDOWN 'MAN'.
Now known to be a fraud, Dawson the amateur is usually considered to be the hoaxer. Teilhard de Chardin, however, who helped with the digging is by far the most likely culprit:
(A) A (radioactive) tooth was found, which certainly came from Ichkeul in N. Tunisia. Teilhard had visited this site.
(B) An elephant's bone was found which probably came either from the Dordogne in France or from Egypt. Teilhard was born near the Dordogne and was a teacher in Cairo.
(C) Chemical staining of the fake jaw was an involved technical affair. Teilhard lectured in Chemistry and Physics at Cairo University. Teilhard was a renowned authority in anthropology and palaeontology and could fool other experts.
(D) He found a fake flint and tooth in the first few days of digging, and later found the important canine tooth in spread gravel that had already been searched.
(E) He met Dawson in 1909, three years before the fake stained jaw was discovered. He was studying at the Jesuit College at Hastings where he was ordained in 1911 and had ample time to prepare any fakes.
LATER REVELATIONS.
In a letter to The Times (November 25th 1978), Dr. Halstead (who once worked in the Natural History Museum) claimed that "according to Hinton (a former Keeper of Zoology) the Piltdown man hoax was planned and executed within the Museum" and that others including Teilhard were involved. This is confirmed by the secrecy surrounding the fossil, experts only being allowed closely to examine plaster replicas. This indicates that the hoax was known at a very high level.
EVEN LATER REVELATIONS! - HINTON'S INVOLVEMENT
On May 22 1996 it was announced that a canvas trunk had been found in the British Natural History Museum containing bones stained and carved in the same way as those of the Piltdown fossils. The trunk had the initials of M.A.C. Hinton who had worked at the Museum at the time of the Piltdown discoveries and pinpoints him as the hoaxer inside the Museum.
This is confirmation of the accusation levelled by Halstead against Hinton in his letter to the Times dated 25 November 1978 quoted above.
There are three points to notice about the publicity that is given to this new discovery;
1. The lost bag
The bag was found in a tower of the Museum in the early 1970's with the items inside it. It has since been "lost".
(a) If it was found in the early 1970's, why has it taken over 20 years for its contents to be publicised?
(b) The bag itself was discarded "as being of no real interest"!
Who do they think they are fooling. This is just another part of the cover-up that surrounds the whole of this incident.
2. The "prankster",
It is interesting that Hinton is immediately described as a "eccentric" or having a "passion for pranks", making the whole subject just a "bit of a joke". He is said to have done it to get his own back on the "stuffy" Prof. Smith-Woodward. This explanation is nonsense, for who would risk his whole career on such an adventure? This is exactly the same excuse provided when Teilhard was suspected of involment inthe hoax. This and much else has been covered in an updating of the Piltdown hoax in appendix 2 of my "Science vs. Evolution".
It is quite certain that this was far from being a "practical joke" that "misfired" as we will see. It was a deliberate attempt to forge a link between man and ape to bolster the theory of evolution in this particular and vital subject.
When he was 16 Hinton published a paper showing how fossils in a river could be stained brown by the oxides. The contents of the trunk also showed that he had been carrying out staining experiments. He joined the Museum as an unpaid "voluntary worker", but rose to become the Keeper of Zoology - an important post. Whilst reading this latest account, it struck me that he may have been rapidly promoted as a reward for his supplying and correctly staining the necessary 'items' for the Piltdown pit.
But this, of course, is pure speculation and should have no part in a serious scientific investigation.
3. Teilhard de Chardin's involvement
What has not been considered in this latest revelation is how Hinton got the fraudulent items into the Piltdown pit for Dawson and Woodward-Smith to then "discover".
We have shown that Teilhard was very directly involved in this part of the operation. He picked up a Stegodon (an early Elephant type) tooth from the North African site of Ichkeul and dropped this into the Piltdown pit. He did not realise that its high level of radioactivity would enable it to be pinpointed to this particular site thereby completely incriminating him.
We have examined his devious answering to questions when he revisited this country in 1954 in my "Science" p 181. Yet even with these latest revelations, Teilhard's involvement will be hardly mentioned. Hinton AND OTHERS at a very high level, planned the whole "hoax", the victims being the members of the public who would be brainwashed into thinking that they had descended from apes. Hinton's name can now be blackened, but Teilhard, the darling of the Establishment and the New Age Movement, must be protected at all costs. If his involvement were to be publicly accepted, this would badly damage his "Omega point" philosophy which is used by these two groups as the pseudo-religious link between science and life.
We await with interest the time when Teilhard's key involvement in this serious hoaxing of the nations is eventually acknowledged. With the support that his philosophy still enjoys from those in positions of power it may be many years yet.
5. PEKIN 'MAN'.
Teilhard de Chardin worked on this site also, with Dr. Davidson Black (who had also visited the site at Piltdown).
(A) Almost every skull was broken into small pieces.
(B) Only (incomplete) skulls were found, virtually no limb bones (Fig.4). [To be insterted later] To explain this, the experts said that Pekin man was a head hunting cannibal! It is obvious that they are only the skulls of large monkeys broken open by real men to obtain the brains for cooking.
Professor Breuil visited the site and saw:
(a) stone and bone tools of an advanced type in large quantities,
(b) a 23 ft.(7m) high heap of ash. This was referred to as "traces of fire" by the investigators! The whole subject was dismissed in one short paragraph in the official report of the site investigations.
In 1934, skulls of modern men were found alongside the site. Dr. Black died of a heart attack whilst examining them. His successor, Dr. Weidenreich, did not publish anything about them for five years. All the fossils were "lost" at the time of Pearl Harbour and cannot now be examined to check the reconstructions.
The ten vanishing skeletons!
In December 1923 world wide publicity was given to the discovery of the skeletons of ten men on the Pekin Man site. Dr. Davidson Black promised to make an important announcement about the new discoveries. Nothing more was ever mentioned about them in any scientific periodical. They simply vanished ! What could have happened ? It seems likely that, after the blaze of publicity, they were later were found to be human beings and not ape-men missing links. An admission of their existence on the site would have destroyed any credibility in the "ape-men" they claimed thay had discovered on the site and were therefore quietly ignored.
6. JAVA 'MAN'
In 1890 Dubois found a skull cap (of a giant gibbon) and a human leg bone 45 ft. away (Fig. 5). [To be inserted later] He put them together and said he had found a "walking ape" (Pithecanthropus erectus). For thirty years he kept secret two skulls and other fossils of modern men he had found at the same time. The Selenka Trinil Expedition could find no further trace of Dubois' ape-man. Von Koenigswald found only a few broken skull pieces and parts of jaws which he claimed confirmed Java man's existence (Fig. 6). [To be inserted later]. Four years before he died Dubois admitted that he had only found the skull of a large gibbon, but this was dismissed by experts as Java man had become too well established!
7. SOUTH AFRICAN APE-MEN. (Australopithecenes)
In a symposium, edited by Sir Julian Huxley, Sir Solly Zuckerman completely rejects these fossil apes. Similarly Oxnard claims that they are not ancestral to man.
8. EAST AFRICAN FOSSILS.
(A) Ramapithecus The only fossils of this ape are some thirty jaws and teeth!
(B) Richard Leakey's "1470 Man" [To be inserted later]. Almost certainly this is a small human skull as it has many human features, and human leg bones have been found in the same strata. First radiometric dating of strata gave the impossibly high figure of 220 million years. This was rejected and a second sample gave 2.6 million years. It was this latter date which received great publicity. The human characteristics of 1470 man are so embarrassing that it has been reclassified as Homo habilis and is now quietly ignored.
(C) Johanson's "Lucy" is about 40% of the skeleton of an ape. There is virtually no evidence that this fossil was evolving into Homo sapiens. The remainder of Johanson's discoveries is a meagre collection of ape bones.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/malcolmbowden/ape.htm
How 'brainy' has Einstien's offspring turned out to be?
I was taught that in public high school as science in a science class by a science teacher and public university, 30 some years ago. My son was taught that in a public school science class taught by a science teacher as science less than 3 weeks ago.
Yet every time a creationist mentions it they're accused of lying and deliberately spreading *creationist lies* and questioned as to why they are out deceiving people and accused of being *Liars for the Lord*.
Yet the responsibility for that *creationist lie* lies squarely at the feet of scientists. First, because they were the ones who came up with it and taught it as fact to a great number of people. Second, because if their opinion of the truth of that statement has changed, they are the ones responsible to make sure that accurate information is being dispelled and that hasn't happened. Apparently no one has gotten word out to the public school science teachers of textbook publishers.
Probably that stumbling stone thing Isaiah talked about:
Isaiah 8
13. The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread,
14. and he will be a sanctuary; but for both houses of Israel he will be a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare.
(The writer of Romans talked of it at the end of chapter 9)
Discovered by: but who perpetrated it?
You've said, in ONE sentence, what sums it up quite well!
This means, of course, that TODAY'S scientific 'truth'....
That was the other way I had thought of putting it. It , of course, follows.
"Unlike other ways of approaching the world around us, science has an inbuilt self-correcting mechanism. This is one of the virtues of science, not one of its vices."
Yes, I agree, but for True Believers in the "evolution" sciences, that mechanism is seriously broken.
So how long are we to endure the current Scientific Fraud termed ID/Creationism?
It reminds me of the numerous "findings" of Noah's ark.
Back in 1993, CBS was duped into broadcasting a special about the "discovery" of the Noah's arc. Even though the whole show was orchestrated by a prankster, many people still believe the hoax.
Credudility is one of those human weakness that will never be erradicated.
One of my dad's best friend told me about this myth when I was a kid, and I believed him for many years.
When I found out the truth during my college years, I never had the heart to tell him that he had been duped.
A lot of good folks believe in the hoaxes you posted. I hope that some of them are reading this board and feeling curious enough to do research on those subjects.
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