- Any time you allege a
conspiracy is afoot, especially in the field of science, you are
treading on thin ice. We tend to be very sceptical about
conspiracies--unless the Mafia or some Muslim radicals are behind the
alleged plot. But the evidence is overwhelming and the irony is that
much of it is in plain view.
-
-
- The good news is that the
players are obvious. Their game plan and even their play-by-play tactics
are transparent, once you learn to spot them. However, it is not so easy
to penetrate through the smokescreen of propaganda and disinformation to
get to their underlying motives and goals. It would be convenient if we
could point to a plumber's unit and a boldface liar like Richard Nixon,
but this is a more subtle operation.
-
-
- The bad news: the
conspiracy is global and there are many vested interest groups. A
cursory investigation yields the usual suspects: scientists with a
theoretical axe to grind, careers to further and the status quo to
maintain. Their modus operandi is "The Big Lie"--and the bigger and more
widely publicised, the better. They rely on invoking their academic
credentials to support their arguments, and the presumption is that no
one has the right to question their authoritarian pronouncements that:
1. there is no mystery about who built the Great Pyramid or what the
methods of construction were, and the Sphinx shows no signs of water
damage; 2. there were no humans in the Americas before 20,000 BC; 3. the
first civilisation dates back no further than 6000 BC; 4. there are no
documented anomalous, unexplained or enigmatic data to take into
account; 5. there are no lost or unaccounted-for civilisations. Let the
evidence to the contrary be damned!
-
-
- Personal Attacks:
Dispute over Age of the Sphinx and Great Pyramid
-
-
- In 1993, NBC in the USA
aired The Mysteries of the Sphinx, which presented geological evidence
showing that the Sphinx was at least twice as old (9,000 years) as
Egyptologists claimed. It has become well known as the "water erosion
controversy". An examination of the politicking that Egyptologists
deployed to combat this undermining of their turf is instructive.
-
-
- Self-taught Egyptologist
John Anthony West brought the water erosion issue to the attention of
geologist Dr Robert Schoch. They went to Egypt and launched an intensive
on-site investigation. After thoroughly studying the Sphinx first hand,
the geologist came to share West's preliminary conclusion and they
announced their findings.
-
-
- Dr Zahi Hawass, the Giza
Monuments chief, wasted no time in firing a barrage of public criticism
at the pair. Renowned Egyptologist Dr Mark Lehner, who is regarded as
the world's foremost expert on the Sphinx, joined his attack. He charged
West and Schoch with being "ignorant and insensitive". That was a
curious accusation which took the matter off the professional level and
put the whole affair on a personal plane. It did not address the facts
or issues at all and it was highly unscientific.
-
-
- But we must note the
standard tactic of discrediting anyone who dares to call the accepted
theories into question. Shifting the focus away from the issues and
"personalising" the debate is a highly effective strategy--one which is
often used by politicians who feel insecure about their positions.
Hawass and Lehner invoked their untouchable status and presumed
authority. (One would think that a geologist's assessment would hold
more weight on this particular point.)
-
-
- A short time later, Schoch,
Hawass and Lehner were invited to debate the issue at the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. West was not allowed to
participate because he lacked the required credentials.
-
-
- This points to a
questionable assumption that is part of the establishment's arsenal:
only degreed scientists can practise science. Two filters keep the
uncredentialled, independent researcher out of the loop: (1)
credentials, and (2) peer review. You do not get to number two unless
you have number one.
-
- Science is a method that
anyone can learn and apply. It does not require a degree to observe and
record facts and think critically about them, especially in the
non-technical social sciences. In a free and open society, science has
to be a democratic process.
-
- Be that as it may, West was
barred. The elements of the debate have been batted back and forth since
then without resolution. It is similar to the controversy over who built
the Giza pyramids and how.
-
-
- This brings up the issue of
The Big Lie and how it has been promoted for generations in front of God
and everyone. The controversy over how the Great Pyramid was constructed
is one example. It could be easily settled if Egyptologists wanted to
resolve the dispute. A simple test could be designed and arranged by
impartial engineers that would either prove or disprove their
longstanding disputed theory--that it was built using the primitive
tools and methods of the day, circa 2500 BC.
-
-
- Why hasn't this been done?
The answer is so obvious, it seems impossible: they know that the theory
is bogus. Could a trained, highly educated scientist really believe that
2.3 million tons of stone, some blocks weighing 70 tons, could have been
transported and lifted by primitive methods? That seems improbable,
though they have no compunction against lying to the public, writing
textbooks and defending this theory against alternative theories.
However, we must note that they will not subject themselves to the
bottom-line test.
-
-
- We think it is incumbent
upon any scientist to bear the burden of proof of his/her thesis;
however, the social scientists who make these claims have never stood up
to that kind of scrutiny. That is why we must suspect a conspiracy. No
other scientific discipline would get away with bending the rules of
science. All that Egyptologists have ever done is bat down alternative
theories using underhanded tactics. It is time to insist that they prove
their own proposals.
-
-
- Why would scientists try to
hide the truth and avoid any test of their hypothesis? Their motivations
are equally transparent. If it can be proved that the Egyptians did not
build the Great Pyramid in 2500 BC using primitive methods, or if the
Sphinx can be dated to 9000 BC, the whole house of cards comes tumbling
down. Orthodox views of cultural evolution are based upon a chronology
of civilisation having started in Sumeria no earlier than 4000 BC. The
theory does not permit an advanced civilisation to have existed prior to
that time. End of discussion. Archaeology and history lose their meaning
without a fixed timeline as a point of reference.
-
-
- Since the theory of
"cultural evolution" has been tied to Darwin's general theory of
evolution, even more is at stake. Does this explain why facts, anomalies
and enigmas are denied, suppressed and/or ignored? Yes, it does. The
biological sciences today are based on Darwinism.
-
-
- Pressure Tactics: The Ica Stones of Peru
-
-
- Now we turn to another,
very different case. In 1966, Dr Javier Cabrera received a stone as a
gift from a poor local farmer in his native Ica, Peru. A fish was carved
on the stone, which would not have meant much to the average villager
but it did mean a lot to the educated Dr Cabrera. He recognised it as a
long-extinct species. This aroused his curiosity. He purchased more
stones from the farmer, who said he had collected them near the river
after a flood.
-
-
- Dr Cabrera accumulated more
and more stones, and word of their existence and potential import
reached the archaeological community. Soon, the doctor had amassed
thousands of "Ica stones". The sophisticated carvings were as enigmatic
as they were fascinating. Someone had carved men fighting with
dinosaurs, men with telescopes and men performing operations with
surgical equipment. They also contained drawings of lost continents.
-
- Several of the stones were
sent to Germany and the etchings were dated to remote antiquity. But we
all know that men could not have lived at the time of dinosaurs; Homo
sapiens has only existed for about 100,000 years.
-
-
- The BBC got wind of this
discovery and swooped down to produce a documentary about the Ica
stones. The media exposure ignited a storm of controversy.
Archaeologists criticised the Peruvian government for being lax about
enforcing antiquities laws (but that was not their real concern).
Pressure was applied to government officials.
-
-
- The farmer who had been
selling the stones to Cabrera was arrested; he claimed to have found
them in a cave but refused to disclose the exact location to
authorities, or so they claimed.
-
- This case was disposed of
so artfully that it would do any corrupt politician proud. The Peruvian
government threatened to prosecute and imprison the farmer. He was
offered and accepted a plea bargain; he then recanted his story and
"admitted" to having carved the stones himself. That seems highly
implausible, since he was uneducated and unskilled and there were 11,000
stones in all. Some were fairly large and intricately carved with
animals and scenes that the farmer would not have had knowledge of
without being a palaeontologist. He would have needed to work every day
for several decades to produce that volume of stones. However, the
underlying facts were neither here nor there. The Ica stones were
labelled "hoax" and forgotten.
-
-
- The case did not require a
head-to-head confrontation or public discrediting of non-scientists by
scientists; it was taken care of with invisible pressure tactics. Since
it was filed under "hoax", the enigmatic evidence never had to be dealt
with, as it did in the next example.
-
-
- Censorship of "Forbidden" Thinking: Evidence for Mankind's Great
Antiquity
-
-
- The case of author Michael
Cremo is well documented, and it also demonstrates how the scientific
establishment openly uses pressure tactics on the media and government.
His book Forbidden Archeology examines many previously ignored examples
of artifacts that prove modern man's antiquity far exceeds the age given
in accepted chronologies.
-
-
- The examples which he and
his co-author present are controversial, but the book became far more
controversial than the contents when it was used in a documentary.
-
-
- In 1996, NBC broadcast a
special called The Mysterious Origins of Man, which featured material
from Cremo's book. The reaction from the scientific community went off
the Richter scale. NBC was deluged with letters from irate scientists
who called the producer "a fraud" and the whole program "a hoax".
-
-
- But the scientists went
further than this--a lot further. In an extremely unconscionable
sequence of bizarre moves, they tried to force NBC not to rebroadcast
the popular program, but that effort failed. Then they took the most
radical step of all: they presented their case to the federal government
and requested the Federal Communications Commission to step in and bar
NBC from airing the program again.
-
-
- This was not only an
apparent infringement of free speech and a blatant attempt to thwart
commerce, it was an unprecedented effort to censor intellectual
discourse. If the public or any government agency made an attempt to
handcuff the scientific establishment, the public would never hear the
end of it.
-
-
- The letter to the FCC written by Dr Allison Palmer, President of
the Institute for Cambrian Studies, is revealing:
-
-
- At the very least, NBC
should be required to make substantial prime-time apologies to their
viewing audience for a sufficient period of time so that the audience
clearly gets the message that they were duped. In addition, NBC should
perhaps be fined sufficiently so that a major fund for public science
education can be established.
-
-
- I think we have some good
leads on who "the Brain Police" are. And I really do not think
"conspiracy" is too strong a word--because for every case of this kind
of attempted suppression that is exposed, 10 others are going on
successfully. We have no idea how many enigmatic artifacts or dates have
been labelled "error" and tucked away in storage warehouses or circular
files, never to see the light of day.
-
-
- Data Rejection: Inconvenient Dating in Mexico
-
-
- Then there is the
high-profile case of Dr Virginia Steen-McIntyre, a geologist working for
the US Geological Survey (USGS), who was dispatched to an archaeological
site in Mexico to date a group of artifacts in the 1970s. This travesty
also illustrates how far established scientists will go to guard
orthodox tenets.
-
-
- McIntyre used
state-of-the-art equipment and backed up her results by using four
different methods, but her results were off the chart. The lead
archaeologist expected a date of 25,000 years or less, and the
geologist's finding was 250,000 years or more.
-
-
- The figure of 25,000 years
or less was critical to the Bering Strait "crossing" theory, and it was
the motivation behind the head archaeologist's tossing Steen-McIntyre's
results in the circular file and asking for a new series of dating
tests. This sort of reaction does not occur when dates match the
expected chronological model that supports accepted theories.
-
-
- Steen-McIntyre was given a
chance to retract her conclusions, but she refused. She found it hard
thereafter to get her papers published and she lost a teaching job at an
American university.
-
-
- Government Suppression and Ethnocentrism: Avoiding Anomalous
Evidence in NZ, China and Mexico
-
-
- In New Zealand, the
government actually stepped in and enacted a law forbidding the public
from entering a controversial archaeological zone. This story appeared
in the book, Ancient Celtic New Zealand, by Mark Doutre.
-
-
- However, as we will find
(and as I promised at the beginning of the article), this is a
complicated conspiracy. Scientists trying to protect their "hallowed"
theories while furthering their careers are not the only ones who want
artifacts and data suppressed. This is where the situation gets sticky.
-
-
- The Waipoua Forest became a
controversial site in New Zealand because an archaeological dig
apparently showed evidence of a non-Polynesian culture that preceded the
Maori--a fact that the tribe was not happy with. They learned of the
results of the excavations before the general public did and complained
to the government. According to Doutre, the outcome was "an official
archival document, which clearly showed an intention by New Zealand
government departments to withhold archaeological information from
public scrutiny for 75 years".
-
-
- The public got wind of this
fiasco but the government denied the claim. However, official documents
show that an embargo had been placed on the site. Doutre is a student of
New Zealand history and archaeology. He is concerned because he says
that artifacts proving that there was an earlier culture which preceded
the Maori are missing from museums. He asks what happened to several
anomalous remains:
-
-
- Where are the ancient
Indo-European hair samples (wavy red brown hair), originally obtained
from a rock shelter near Watakere, that were on display at the Auckland
War Memorial Museum for many years? Where is the giant skeleton found
near Mitimati?
-
-
- Unfortunately this is not
the only such incident. Ethnocentrism has become a factor in the
conspiracy to hide mankind's true history. Author Graham Hancock has
been attacked by various ethnic groups for reporting similar enigmatic
findings.
-
-
- The problem for researchers
concerned with establishing humanity's true history is that the goals of
nationalists or ethnic groups who want to lay claim to having been in a
particular place first, often dovetail with the goals of cultural
evolutionists.
-
-
- Archaeologists are quick to
go along with suppressing these kinds of anomalous finds. One reason
Egyptologists so jealously guard the Great Pyramid's construction date
has to do with the issue of national pride.
-
-
- The case of the Takla Makan
Desert mummies in western China is another example of this phenomenon.
In the 1970s and 1980s, an unaccounted-for Caucasian culture was
suddenly unearthed in China. The arid environment preserved the remains
of a blond-haired, blue-eyed people who lived in pre-dynastic China.
They wore colourful robes, boots, stockings and hats. The Chinese were
not happy about this revelation and they have downplayed the enigmatic
find, even though Asians were found buried alongside the Caucasian
mummies.
-
-
- National Geographic writer
Thomas B. Allen mused in a 1996 article about his finding a potsherd
bearing a fingerprint of the potter. When he inquired if he could take
the fragment to a forensic anthropologist, the Chinese scientist asked
whether he "would be able to tell if the potter was a white man". Allen
said he was not sure, and the official pocketed the fragment and quietly
walked away. It appears that many things get in the way of scientific
discovery and disclosure.
-
-
- The existence of the Olmec
culture in Old Mexico has always posed a problem. Where did the Negroid
people depicted on the colossal heads come from? Why are there
Caucasians carved on the stele in what is Mexico's seed civilisation?
What is worse, why aren't the indigenous Mexican people found on the
Olmec artifacts? Recently a Mexican archaeologist solved the problem by
making a fantastic claim: that the Olmec heads--which generations of
people of all ethnic groups have agreed bear a striking resemblance to
Africans--were really representations of the local tribe.
-
-
-
-
- STORMTROOPERS FOR DARWINISM
-
-
- The public does not seem at
all aware of the fact that the scientific establishment has a double
standard when it comes to the free flow of information. In essence, it
goes like this... Scientists are highly educated, well trained and
intellectually capable of processing all types of information, and they
can make the correct critical distinctions between fact and fiction,
reality and fantasy. The unwashed public is simply incapable of
functioning on this high mental plane.
-
-
- The noble ideal of the
scientist as a highly trained, impartial, apolitical observer and
assembler of established facts into a useful body of knowledge seems to
have been shredded under the pressures and demands of the real world.
Science has produced many positive benefits for society; but we should
know by now that science has a dark, negative side. Didn't those meek
fellows in the clean lab coats give us nuclear bombs and biological
weapons? The age of innocence ended in World War II.
-
-
- That the scientific
community has an attitude of intellectual superiority is thinly veiled
under a carefully orchestrated public relations guise. We always see
Science and Progress walking hand in hand. Science as an institution in
a democratic society has to function in the same way as the society at
large; it should be open to debate, argument and counter-argument. There
is no place for unquestioned authoritarianism. Is modern science meeting
these standards?
-
-
- In the Fall of 2001, PBS
aired a seven-part series, titled Evolution. Taken at face value, that
seems harmless enough. However, while the program was presented as pure,
objective, investigative science journalism, it completely failed to
meet even minimum standards of impartial reporting. The series was
heavily weighted towards the view that the theory of evolution is "a
science fact" that is accepted by "virtually all reputable scientists in
the world", and not a theory that has weaknesses and strong scientific
critics.
-
-
- The series did not even
bother to interview scientists who have criticisms of Darwinism: not
"creationists" but bona fide scientists. To correct this deficiency, a
group of 100 dissenting scientists felt compelled to issue a press
release, "A Scientific Dissent on Darwinism", on the day the first
program was scheduled to go to air. Nobel nominee Henry "Fritz" Schaefer
was among them. He encouraged open public debate of Darwin's theory:
-
-
- Some defenders of Darwinism embrace standards of evidence for
evolution that as scientists they would never accept in other
circumstances.
-
-
- We have seen this same
"unscientific" approach applied to archaeology and anthropology, where
"scientists" simply refuse to prove their theories yet appoint
themselves as the final arbiters of "the facts". It would be naive to
think that the scientists who cooperated in the production of the series
were unaware that there would be no counter-balancing presentation by
critics of Darwin's theory.
-
-
- Richard Milton is a science
journalist. He had been an ardent true believer in Darwinian doctrine
until his investigative instincts kicked in one day. After 20 years of
studying and writing about evolution, he suddenly realised that there
were many disconcerting holes in the theory. He decided to try to allay
his doubts and prove the theory to himself by using the standard methods
of investigative journalism.
-
-
- Milton became a regular
visitor to London's famed Natural History Museum. He painstakingly put
every main tenet and classic proof of Darwinism to the test. The results
shocked him. He found that the theory could not even stand up to the
rigours of routine investigative journalism.
-
-
- The veteran science writer
took a bold step and published a book titled The Facts of Life:
Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. It is clear that the Darwinian myth
had been shattered for him, but many more myths about science would also
be crushed after his book came out. Milton says:
-
-
- I experienced the
witch-hunting activity of the Darwinist police at first hand it was
deeply disappointing to find myself being described by a prominent
Oxford zoologist [Richard Dawkins] as "loony", "stupid" and "in need of
psychiatric help" in response to purely scientific reporting.
-
-
- (Does this sound like stories that came out of the Soviet Union
20 years ago when dissident scientists there started speaking
out?)
-
-
- Dawkins launched a
letter-writing campaign to newspaper editors, implying that Milton was a
"mole" creationist whose work should be dismissed. Anyone at all
familiar with politics will recognise this as a standard Machiavellian
by-the-book "character assassination" tactic. Dawkins is a highly
respected scientist, whose reputation and standing in the scientific
community carry a great deal of weight.
-
-
- According to Milton, the
process came to a head when the London Times Higher Education Supplement
commissioned him to write a critique of Darwinism. The publication
foreshadowed his coming piece: "Next Week: Darwinism - Richard Milton
goes on the attack". Dawkins caught wind of this and wasted no time in
nipping this heresy in the bud. He contacted the editor, Auriol Stevens,
and accused Milton of being a "creationist", and prevailed upon Stevens
to pull the plug on the article. Milton learned of this
behind-the-scenes backstabbing and wrote a letter of appeal to Stevens.
In the end, she caved in to Dawkins and scratched the piece.
-
-
- Imagine what would happen
if a politician or bureaucrat used such pressure tactics to kill a story
in the mass media. It would ignite a huge scandal. Not so with
scientists, who seem to be regarded as "sacred cows" and beyond
reproach. There are many disturbing facts related to these cases.
Darwin's theory of evolution is the only theory routinely taught in our
public school system that has never been subjected to rigorous scrutiny;
nor have any of the criticisms been allowed into the curriculum.
-
-
- This is an interesting
fact, because a recent poll showed that the American public wants the
theory of evolution taught to their children; however, "71 per cent of
the respondents say biology teachers should teach both Darwinism and
scientific evidence against Darwinian theory". Nevertheless, there are
no plans to implement this balanced approach.
-
-
- It is ironic that Richard
Dawkins has been appointed to the position of Professor of the Public
Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is a classic "Brain
Police" stormtrooper, patrolling the neurological front lines. The
Western scientific establishment and mass media pride themselves on
being open public forums devoid of prejudice or censorship. However, no
television program examining the flaws and weaknesses of Darwinism has
ever been aired in Darwin's home country or in America. A scientist who
opposes the theory cannot get a paper published.
-
-
- The Mysterious Origins of
Man was not a frontal attack on Darwinism; it merely presented evidence
that is considered anomalous by the precepts of his theory of evolution.
-
-
- Returning to our bastions
of intellectual integrity, Forest Mims was a solid and skilled science
journalist. He had never been the centre of any controversy and so he
was invited to write the most-read column in the prestigious Scientific
American, "The Amateur Scientist", a task he gladly accepted. According
to Mims, the magazine's editor Jonathan Piel then learned that he also
wrote articles for a number of Christian magazines. The editor called
Mims into his office and confronted him.
-
-
- "Do you believe in the
theory of evolution?" Piel asked.
-
- Mims replied, "No, and
neither does Stephen Jay Gould."
-
- His response did not affect
Piel's decision to bump Mims off the popular column after just three
articles.
-
-
- This has the unpleasant
odour of a witch-hunt. The writer never publicly broadcast his private
views or beliefs, so it would appear that the "stormtroopers" now
believe they have orders to make sure "unapproved" thoughts are never
publicly disclosed.
-
-
-
-
- TABOO OR NOT TABOO?
-
-
- So, the monitors of "good
thinking" are not just the elite of the scientific community, as we have
seen in several cases; they are television producers and magazine
editors as well. It seems clear that they are all driven by the singular
imperative of furthering "public science education", as the president of
the Cambrian Institute so aptly phrased it.
-
-
- However, there is a second
item on the agenda, and that is to protect the public from
"unscientific" thoughts and ideas that might infect the mass mind. We
outlined some of those taboo subjects at the beginning of the article;
now we should add that it is also "unwholesome" and "unacceptable" to
engage in any of the following research pursuits: paranormal phenomena,
UFOs, cold fusion, free energy and all the rest of the
"pseudo-sciences". Does this have a familiar ring to it? Are we hearing
the faint echoes of religious zealotry?
-
-
- Who ever gave science the
mission of engineering and directing the inquisitive pursuits of the
citizenry of the free world? It is all but impossible for any scientific
paper that has anti-Darwinian ramifications to be published in a
mainstream scientific journal.
- It is also just as
impossible to get the "taboo" subjects even to the review table, and you
can forget about finding your name under the title of any article in
Nature unless you are a credentialled scientist, even if you are the
next Albert Einstein.
-
-
- To restate how this conspiracy begins, it is with two
filters:
-
- credentials and peer
review. Modern science is now a maze of such filters set up to promote
certain orthodox theories and at the same time filter out that data
already prejudged to be unacceptable. Evidence and merit are not the
guiding principles; conformity and position within the established
community have replaced objectivity, access and openness.
-
-
- Scientists do not hesitate
to launch the most outrageous personal attacks against those they
perceive to be the enemy. Eminent palaeontologist Louis Leakey penned
this acid one-liner about Forbidden Archeology: "Your book is pure
humbug and does not deserve to be taken seriously by anyone but a fool."
Once again, we see the thrust of a personal attack; the merits of the
evidence presented in the book are not examined or debated. It is a
blunt, authoritarian pronouncement.
-
-
- In a forthcoming
instalment, we will examine some more documented cases and delve deeper
into the subtler dimensions of the conspiracy.
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