A couple of weeks ago, the Wiley journal Archaeological Prospection raised eyebrows by publishing a paper by Daniel Natawidjaja, the geologist who wrote Plato Never Lied: Atlantis in Indonesia, and his team claiming that the volcanic hill of Gunung Padang was a 27,000-year-old pyramid. Natawidjaja did not provide any evidence that the radiocarbon dates he took from organic material within the hill were deposited by humans, or that there had been any human occupation beyond the relatively recent surface structures. Now the journal and its publisher have launched an ethics investigation into the flawed paper, according to a report in Nature: Archaeological Prospection and its publisher, Wiley, have since launched an investigation into the paper. Eileen Ernenwein, an archaeological geophysicist at Tennessee State University in Johnson City, who is co-editor of the journal said in an e-mail to Nature: “The editors, including me, and Wiley ethics team are currently investigating this paper in accordance with Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines.” She declined to elaborate on the nature of the concerns raised. The whole thing is rather bizarre. It was patently obvious to me--and I don’t have a PhD—that you would first need to prove an association between the material you are dating and human occupation, or else you are simply dating dirt. The earth has been making dirt for a long time, even without people around. Natawidjaja never had any evidence of human occupation, and surely someone should have noticed his oversight before the paper made it to publication.
Natawidjaja argues that the visual similarity of buried basalt columns to human-quarried stones is enough to claim them as the work of humans—a claim hat has led researchers astray since antiquity, when geological formations like the Giant’s Causeway sparked legends about mysterious ancient builders. I am more curious about what the ethics complaint entailed. I wonder what ethical violations someone alleged transpired.
10 Comments
Crash55
11/28/2023 06:57:16 pm
My guess is the ethics complaint is not about the paper itself but rather how it got published. Such rubbish is supposed to be filtered out during the peer review process. That it made it through raises questions about the process. Did the reviewers know the author personally? Did the author know who the reviewers were and pressured them to accept the paper? Did the author payoff someone to get the paper accepted? Etc.
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Kent
11/28/2023 11:12:05 pm
I don't understand the last sentence.
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AW
12/4/2023 01:51:33 pm
I’ll rephrase it for you:
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Frank
11/29/2023 10:54:07 am
"I am more curious about what the ethics complaint entailed. I wonder what ethical violations someone alleged transpired."
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Kent
12/2/2023 01:01:47 pm
Your complaint is itself an ethical violation. Plato told a story about someone telling about someone telling a story about someone telling someone about someone telling someone a story.
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An Over-Educated Grunt
11/29/2023 12:01:39 pm
Went back and read the original article, and it's just bad. Like the things he uses as evidence of infill are obviously breaks on the rock's natural fracture planes due to roots or water infiltration, which then just get wedged open further by roots or soil formation. The materials are all laid down in exactly the sequence you'd expect to see if they occurred naturally, with minimal churn of the deeper layers due to human activity, and he used exactly none of the tests you'd use to test rock for last atmospheric exposure, like luminescence testing. This is actually WORSE than the time Scott Wolter claimed he'd used the ASTM standard for thin slice petrography for the KRS.
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AAA
11/29/2023 02:19:26 pm
Instead watch Tucker Carlson's episode 42 on X. Aliens exist and are here!!!
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Clete
12/3/2023 05:22:24 pm
Tucker Carlson would certainly know, After all he communcates with them on each and every day. they take the form of his favorite breakfast cereal.
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Mean Re Queried
11/29/2023 08:43:13 pm
Hello, Jason. No idea what allegedly transpired other than digging. Coincidentally, I found this most recent post immediately after I found this article.
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Jessy Jay
12/4/2023 04:23:25 pm
We do know who built the Gian's Causeway - a *giant* (duh). Finn McCool was in Ireland when he heard his terrifying, murderous rival, the Scottish Cucillin, building it so he could 'drop by'. Finn's wife Oona disguised him as a baby ... when Cucillin finished the walkway, and walked over - he was impressed by such a huge kid, and Oona told him that the child's father was 'very large indeed' and invited Cucillin to put his fingers in the baby's mouth to feel it's brand new teeth, at which point Finn bit one off. Cucillin fled back to Scotland, pulling out the middle of the causeway in his terror, because if the baby could do that, imagine what the father was like?
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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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