I imagine that by now you’ve heard about the Sirius documentary tied to the pseudo-Congressional UFO hearings going on in Washington. The “star” of the documentary is a six-inch corpse found in Chile that the filmmakers hyped as a potential extraterrestrial being. Apparently the body was discovered back in 2003. It looked to me like a carved doll, apparently but the film claims it is actually a six-year-old dwarf boy. Instead, an examination by a forensic specialist at Basque Country University determined that it is a mummified human fetus. This is sad and somewhat macabre, and I wonder why the Chilean government is OK with people digging up fetuses and selling them to hucksters and sideshow barkers like its current owner, Barcelona-based Ramon Navia-Osorio, of the Institute for Exobiological Investigation and Study, a UFO group.
But this sick display of grotesquerie is par for the course in the “alternative” world’s quest to exploit anything and everything in pursuit of a more satisfying and magical world. I was perhaps less shocked but more disturbed by Thomas Sheridan’s painfully un-self-aware rant about how skeptics and debunkers are mentally ill.
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In the current issue of Paranthropology: The Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal (4.2, April 2013), anthropologist Dr. Steven Mizrach of Florida International University has an interesting if unsatisfactory paper on “The Para-Anthropology of UFO Abductions.” Mizrach correctly notes the extreme unlikelihood of UFOs being alien spaceships, and he also correctly looks for anthropological and psychological origins for the Grays, lizard people, etc. However, Mizrach appears to be reading too much into U.S. government UFO reports and the skeptical position on UFOs in order to bolster an unusual conclusion that beings from another dimension are invading our minds, a conclusion he reached, he said, by using the methodology of Sherlock Holmes: eliminating every possibility until only one solution (alien mind invaders) remained.
The Voice of Russia reported that a 300-million-year-old piece of aluminum machinery turned up in a piece of coal a Russian man was using to heat his home. News reports alleged that the artifact resembled the teeth of a cog wheel, even though the object itself is not curved, and Sharon Hill of Doubtful News quickly explained that the object is in all likelihood a natural crystal. Russian media have been promoting false “ancient alien” artifacts since Soviet times, so this bit of tabloid hype is nothing new or out of character.
Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to write things. I try; goodness knows I do. Yet somehow, I only seem to manage to upset people. First Ben Radford became upset with me because I criticized his secondhand attack on a non-existent ancient astronaut documentary. Then Sonja Brentjes became upset with me for drawing what seemed to me a logical conclusion from published sources. Now Martin Kottmeyer is upset with me for my article “Alien Abduction at the Outer Limits” because he feels I misrepresented the Outer Limits alien he identified as the source for Barney Hill’s alien abduction claim.
Generally, I don’t discuss private correspondence on my blog, but since in an email to me Kottmeyer offered only a specific critique of my published work and no discussion of anything not already in the public record, I feel that his points are important enough to share with my readers to help us get to the bottom of the Hill abduction. Today, I have three odds and ends to discuss: the Maya apocalypse, Beowulf’s dinosaurs, and another black mark against Theosophy. What unites all three topics is a common theme about the need to believe and the pious fraud involved in exploiting one's own and others' beliefs.
Sonja Brentjes has taken great offense to the post I made back in October about an article she and Taner Edis wrote in Skeptical Inquirer about the shortcomings in the 1001 Inventions traveling exhibit on the Golden Age of Islamic science. After Aaron Adair wrote a thoughtful discussion of the degree to which Arab science was dependent upon the Greeks and Romans that preceded them, Brentjes weighed in last week with additional criticism of me.
In the interest of (finally) putting this issue to rest, I’m going to review Brentjes’s criticism. I will explain the points where she is correct about mistakes I made, and I will explain again where she is misrepresenting what I wrote. Get this: I—despite having only this blog as a forum—have annoyed Ancient Aliens star Philip Coppens enough that he deigned to blast me on his blog yesterday, and in flattering terms! He discusses me after complaining that Ancient Aliens Debunked filmmaker Chris White had the gall to respond to Coppens’ criticism of him after Coppens had specifically insisted that any such rebuttal was inappropriate, offensive, and “blablabla.” Coppens, you will recall, previously stated that he would no longer respond to criticism because he considered it an effort to goad him into personality-driven conflict, which is beneath him. That lasted a week: With the American election rapidly approaching, much of the talk in the media has been political. I don’t usually like to talk politics on my blog because it only serves to make people irrationally angry; however, there have recently been several stories that discussed the connection between politics, culture, and alternative claims, all trying to claim the moral high ground for a particular ideology.
Note: The following post has been edited in response to criticism from Sonja Brentjes. A discussion of the edits is available here.
In the current issue of Skeptical Inquirer (November/December 2012), Taner Edis and Sonja Brentjes have an interesting article challenging the traveling British exhibition 1001 Inventions on the great inventions of the Golden Age of Islam. The two authors find the exhibit offensive because it suggests that medieval and early modern Muslim societies engaged in technological and intellectual investigation that contributed to later European scientific developments. I find the article difficult because if combines serious criticism of the exhibit’s mistakes and flaws with what seems very much like a politically-motivated philosophical disagreement with the presence of Islam in science, which in turn colors much of their discussion. Today I have four brief points to cover that don’t quite warrant full blog posts, so I’ll present them as an omnibus.
First, I want to thank everyone who purchased a book in response to my request for support to help keep my website running ad-free. I just received my monthly sales report covering September, and I am happy to report that my readers purchased enough books that the royalties will cover the costs associated with upkeep and maintenance on the website. I hope all of you are enjoying the books, and I can’t wait to hear how you liked them. |
AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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