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Review of the Half of "Unexplained Files" S02E02 on the Peruvian "Alien" Mummy

8/7/2014

44 Comments

 
Yesterday a producer for the American Heroes Channel’s Codes and Conspiracies contacted me about doing an interview for an upcoming episode on the ancient astronaut theory. The conversation involved some very interesting information that I wish I could share, but while I am still under active consideration for an interview on the show, I can’t say any more. The show wanted me to fly out to Los Angeles for a shoot, but my schedule doesn’t allow me to drop everything for an L.A. jaunt right now. My participation will therefore depend on whether the production team will be doing any shoots in the New York City area.

So on to today’s subject… You’ll recall that Brien Foerster has been pushing the Peruvian “alien skull” claim for a while now, building off of earlier work by the late Lloyd Pye, and still earlier claims dating back practically to the dawn of the ancient astronaut movement. You’ll probably also be familiar with the story of a small, unusual Peruvian mummy found in 2011 and claimed to be that of an alien-human hybrid.
Well, the first half of the Science Channel’s Unexplained Files this week was about the little skeleton in Peru. (The second half, unwatched by me, was about the round shape in the Baltic that was briefly considered an underwater UFO.) The first half follows anthropologist Theo Paredes’s efforts to explore whether the skeleton is an alien or a “subspecies” of “humanoid.” The show does not disclose that Paredes—who holds a doctorate in anthropology—is not a disinterested observer but rather an activist who believes in the magic power of Incan “energy” manipulation as well as sympathetic magic. Paredes claims that when he was struck by lightning he was called to be a shaman and that he has the power to commune with the Incan gods to effect magical healing, which he does at various New Age centers around the world, including in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Here is Paredes speaking about how he manipulates energy vibrations:
Cusco is a particular place for us, like a vortex of energy. You can take this from different angles. One of the main things is that the vortex of energy is where this particular kind of vibration is running for different purposes. Healing could be one; harmony, strength, whatever. So I think this is the right place for at least this period of time, where we can have this center for everyone who might want to come, who might want to share his own knowledge, his own experience.
The Science Channel chooses not to mention any of this. Anyway, at his insistence the skeleton is hauled out of its tiny museum case and brought to a laboratory for “confirmation” of its genuineness. A doctor concludes that the skeleton is that of a child less than two years of age.

Next, the show considers whether the skeleton suffered from hydrocephaly, and in a particularly poor choice of timing, the Science Channel ran a banner saying their website is the source for the “coolest science videos” and asking viewers to submit their own while pictures of suffering children in pain from their horrible conditions fill the screen. Dr. Erick Flores takes an x-ray and says that the skeleton did not suffer from hydrocephaly or any other deforming disease. He says that skeletal evidence suggests that the Inca bludgeoned the infant to death.

An archaeologist named Elisa Orellana explains that the infant’s skull likely underwent ritual cranial deformation—that is, elongation—and she explains how the process worked. The skeleton is subjected to yet another examination, this time to calculate its brain volume to see if it matches that of a normal skull. The volume, at 169 cm (presumably they mean cubic centimeters), is 50% larger than that of a normal two-year-old’s skull, and the doctor who performs this scan says there is no sign of intentional deformation and no other medical case similar to this. Since he did not compare results to those from other elongated skulls, I am not sure his results are particularly convincing.

Here the show decides that relying on archaeologists and doctors isn’t enough to make the subject interesting. They bring in Ancient Aliens guest Brien Foerster and identify him as an author and researcher who has examined “hundreds” of ancient skulls across Peru. Foerster says that 5% of elongated skulls are “natural, in that I believe they were born that way.” He is wearing a blue t-shirt with a picture of a man with an elongated skull drawn in white outline. He may think he is being on-message, but the fashion statement does not quite inspire confidence.

Foerster has been happy to go along with identifying elongated skulls as extraterrestrial or Nephilim depending on who is paying for his opinion, but today he has yet a third hypothesis. This time he asserts that the skeletons belong to a different human species! “I think we’re looking at an ancient subspecies of humanoid,” he says, “and that these are the remnants of those people, and a subspecies of humanoid that conventional science has not recognized at this time.” His attempt to use inflated verbiage and pseudoscientific language is cute, but “subspecies of humanoid” doesn’t make a lick of sense. Presumably he means a different species in the genus Homo, not a subspecies of Homo sapiens, but it isn’t clear. “Humanoid” after all could apply to anything that vaguely resembles Homo sapiens sapiens in some way.

After the break, Paredes suggests that he agrees that the skeleton represents “a different line in the human evolutionary process.” How that would work with it being only a few hundred years old, I can’t fathom. (Radiocarbon dates place it around 1300 CE.) Where are its non-human parents and ancestors? How is it that their bodies have never been found? How did they cross the oceans to reach the Americas? The narrator correctly notes that the carbon dates all but exclude a subspecies. DNA tests of mitochondrial DNA (inherited only from the mother) conclude that the child is human, “but they can’t determine what species fathers the child,” says the narrator, as though that would be different from any mitochondrial DNA test—which can only test for maternal relationships.

“What is surprising,” Paredes says, “is that there is only information on the maternal line and not on the paternal line.” Apparently the energy vibrations have knocked a few facts out of his head, and he doesn’t realize that mitochondrial DNA never contains paternal DNA since they are descended solely from the egg—the mother’s contribution—not the sperm. (A minute amount is present in sperm but does not contribute to the embryonic mitochondrial DNA.) They are not part of the nucleus of the cell, so their DNA line is separate. Paredes, proving that the vibrations have knocked a few screws loose, says the lack of information about paternal DNA “makes us think it’s a hybrid” with a species “not from our planet.” I invite him to try testing his own mitochondrial DNA and see what he finds.

The narrator fails to acknowledge how mitochondrial DNA works and instead directs us to a discussion of Inca mythology. A shaman tells the story of how during an eclipse a man with an elongated skull descended from a hole in the sky.  He supposedly had flat ears and a flat nose, hence his name Orejones, or “Big Ears.” (The show doesn’t explain the meaning of the word because, presumably, it contradicts their sci-fi image of the alien.) I can’t find this myth in standard sources on Inca mythology, and it may well be of more recent vintage. I believe this may be an etiological myth related to the old Inca ruling class because the Inca rulers called themselves by a word given in Spanish as orejones. They elongated their skulls and put discs in their ears. The show asks us to believe that the story refers to an extraterrestrial with those characteristics. Paredes still thinks that the orejones are a separate species of human relatives, but I have no way of knowing what order the scenes were filmed to know if this claim came before or after the DNA results made him think of aliens.

Dante Rios, a journalist, claims that the mountain where tiny skeleton was found holds a giant geoglyph, which he says he sees in a Peruvian Air Force photo from 30 years ago. He and the narrator agree that it shows an alien’s face in profile, but I don’t see anything. It looks like a case of pareidolia. He’s seeing the alien from Alien in a pattern of light and shadow. But look for yourself. The yellow line was added by Unexplained Files.
Picture
As seen on TV! Screen shot from "Unexplained Files"
Rios said that the design must have been intentionally carved to be seen by passing spacecraft. He then goes into UFO claims, and this takes us right out of ancient astronauts and into modern Peruvian ufology, which the show asks us to believe involves spacecraft by dint of interviewing Peruvian UFO believers.

As with all Unexplained Files, the show reaches no conclusion but simply gives Paredes the last word. He tells viewers that the Inca bludgeoned the unusual infant to death so that the alien hybrid could return in spirit to the planet from which it came. Although the show is somewhat balanced, framing the investigation around Paredes—without disclosing his background—and giving the first, most of the middle, and all the last words to alien believers clearly leaves the impression that the viewer should not only agree that the skeleton is an alien hybrid but that aliens have visited Peru for thousands of years and continue to do so today.

But the failure to disclose the limits of mitochondrial DNA analysis is unforgivable. It gives a false impression of hybridization and misleads viewers. It is irresponsible reporting and either outright dishonesty or (more likely) an admission that the producers are utterly ignorant of their own subject matter.
44 Comments
EP
8/7/2014 06:37:02 am

"DNA tests of mitochondrial DNA (inherited only from the mother) conclude that the child is human, “but they can’t determine what species fathers the child,” says the narrator, as though that would be different from any mitochondrial DNA test—which can only test for maternal relationships."

This is particularly ridiculous because if they tested mitochondrial DNA they should have tested nuclear DNA, which is what you'd test to determine species. No one would even bother looking at mitochondrial DNA of a single individual in isolation - certainly not when species identification is the task. It's informative only when we need to compare closely related individuals or groups.

If we follow their reasoning to its logical conclusion, then they cannot know whether the mother was human either, as opposed to a human-alien hybrid!

Since there is no way anyone capable of conducting DNA tests could fail to know this, I am strongly inclined to interpret this as deliberate dishonesty. Either they deliberately ordered the mitochondrial test only, knowing they'd have the "can't identify the father" angle to push, or they ignored and competely twisted the results they got.

Reply
spookyparadigm
8/7/2014 08:08:07 am

See Lloyd Pye's history with the starchild for similar behavior.

Reply
EP
8/7/2014 08:09:24 am

Can I just take your word for it? :)

On a completely unrelated note, have you read Jung's "Wotan"?

spookyparadigm
8/7/2014 09:18:42 am

No.

EP
8/7/2014 09:23:56 am

“He is the god of storm and frenzy, the unleasher of passions and the lust of battle; moreover he is a superlative magician and artist in illusion who is versed in all secrets of an occult nature… Wotan disappeared when his oaks fell and appeared again when the Christian God proved too weak to save Christendom from fratricidal slaughter. When the Holy Father at Rome could only impotently lament before God the fate of the grex segregatus, the one-eyed old hunter, on the edge of the German forest, laughed and saddled Sleipnir…”

“The emphasis on the Germanic race -- commonly called "Aryan" -- the Germanic heritage, blood and soil, the Wagalaweia songs, the ride of the Valkyries, Jesus as a blond and blue-eyed hero, the Greek mother of St. Paul, the devil as an international Alberich in Jewish or Masonic guise, the Nordic aurora borealis as the light of civilization, the inferior Mediterranean races -- all this is the indispensable scenery for the drama that is taking place and at the bottom they all mean the same thing: a god has taken possession of the Germans and their house is filled with a "mighty rushing wind”…”

“[W]hat do all the beauties of the past from totally different levels of culture mean to the man of today, when confronted with a living and unfathomable tribal god such as he has never experienced before? They are sucked like dry leaves into the roaring whirlwind, and the rhythmic alliterations of the Edda became inextricably mixed up with Christian mystical texts, German poetry and the wisdom of the Upanishads…”

Clint Knapp
8/7/2014 06:45:03 am

I don't know. I see a long head and an otherwise flat and featureless face in that yellow line. I can only conclude, therefore, that it was drawn to resemble StarCraft's Protoss.

Tassadar's dying message to humanity, warning of the coming of the Zerg? Or hucksters monetizing stupidity? Your guess is as good as mine.

Reply
Gregor
8/7/2014 08:42:46 am

En'Taro Adun! MY LIFE FOR AIUR!

Reply
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/7/2014 07:14:41 am

I'm going to have to pull a Walt on this one. That last paragraph is pure hyperventilation, and it's not so much unforgivable as it is par for the course. Should par be higher? Absolutely. But these shows aren't intellectually honest to begin with, you're essentially watching a sales pitch for scientific illiteracy.

Reply
EP
8/7/2014 07:29:05 am

By "unforgivable" I took Jason to mean something along the lines of "cannot be explained charitably". That's not even hypoventilation, it's just a statement of fact.

Also, I don't think I understand this criticism in general. Can't something be both par for the course and unforgivable? Or are you basically saying that you're frustrated someone's reaction on the internet doesn't exactly align with your own? :)

Reply
An Over-Educated Grunt
8/7/2014 07:52:32 am

"Unforgivable" implies a direct and personal sense of offense, that a measure might require forgiveness. If you're going to be directly and personally offended every time someone is an idiot, you get to spend all of your time in perpetual outrage. At a certain point, you have to accept that everything that comes from a particular source is tainted, and quit treating it as a personal offense. You're welcome to point out it's wrong as often as you like at that point, especially where (as here) it really is wrong, but a deep and personal level of outrage isn't sustainable.

Also, do me a favor - next time you want to insult me, skip the smiley face.

EP
8/7/2014 07:57:33 am

Where's the insult in what I said? :)

EP
8/7/2014 08:07:09 am

I don't want to belabor this, especially since I really wasn't being confrontational, but among the many senses of "unforgivable" there are several that do not carry any emotive implications. Also, I don't understand why you think we should stop being offended by offensive things. It's not like anything Jason said suggests unhealthy emotional involvement or obsessiveness...

Gregor
8/7/2014 08:47:40 am

@OverEducatedGrunt

There's nothing "personal" in the definition of "unforgivable" (lit. "to be beyond forgiveness or excuse"). Implications, if there are any, rely heavily on one's own vernacular and personal opinion. Taken directly, the usage above is proper in that there is no excuse for presenting a "scientific" case while knowingly omitting evidence that speaks to the inaccuracy of said case.

One can argue that they - personally - would not have used such a term as part of their own particular speech pattern to describe the event, but that does not invalidate it universally.

Walt
8/7/2014 09:55:45 am

Not that you care Grunt, but I agree "unforgivable" implies one has personal and emotional feelings about a topic. I would've used "inexplicable" in that context, but I wouldn't have had expectations that needed forgiveness if they weren't met.

Jason Colavito link
8/7/2014 10:23:45 am

It's an unforgivable journalistic sin to intentionally mislead viewers. It isn't a statement of outrage. The dictionary defines the word as "so bad as to be unable to be forgiven or excused." It is inexcusable. And I'm not sure why I'd be interested in forgiving them anyway, regardless of whether it made me angry.

Walt
8/7/2014 11:32:08 am

The thought that these were actual journalists with any sort of journalistic integrity never crossed my mind.

EP
8/7/2014 11:39:39 am

I really don't understand what your problem is with Jason expressing his opinion. Is he saying something false? No. Is he writing for the sole benefit of those who already share your viewpoint? No.

Some people who may read this would indeed benefit from being told (or reminded) that a program purporting to be factual and investigative (especially one that advances radical claims) should be answerable to the same standards as programs that are genuinely factual and investigative.

Why don't you complain that Jason often reminds his readers who some of his well-known subjects are?

Walt
8/7/2014 12:18:33 pm

EP, I don't have any idea how you interpreted my two harmless comments to this blog as me having a problem with Jason expressing his opinion. Grunt went after Jason, not me. I didn't read the blog since I've never seen the show. All I did was explain why I, and most likely Grunt, didn't read Jason's words as he had intended. We don't consider them journalists.

EP
8/7/2014 12:56:11 pm

It was an indefinite "you", Walt. I don't know why you assumed it referred to you specifically. :)

Walt
8/7/2014 01:24:32 pm

I guess I just never imagined you'd reply a third time to Grunt, after having not received a reply to your first two replies to him.

EP
8/7/2014 01:31:12 pm

Again, indefinite "you" - I wasn't specifically addressing Grunt either :)

Walt
8/7/2014 01:38:34 pm

Admitting you made a mistake isn't a bad thing, and it's certainly better than looking silly. I'll leave it at that.

EP
8/7/2014 01:49:36 pm

Please tell me more about how anything I said is mistaken...

.
8/7/2014 07:46:00 am

thusly akin to Ken Ham's "flooded orchards" that
drop zeros in a ritual manner from all given dates?

Reply
.
8/7/2014 07:49:04 am

if they use each show's budget as an excuse, they then
fail to do the battery of tests that pick up on mistakes???
pseudoscience on the cheap when on the fly? okaaaay.

Gregor
8/7/2014 08:57:06 am

In keeping with the "fundamentally dishonest" theme, I found it infuriating that they introduced such an obvious hoaxer, fringe-theorist and all-around asshat (i.e. not understanding libel, threatening frivolous lawsuits, apparently claiming to violate international law) as some kind of 'expert', but not mention that "oh, by the way, he also believes that this "human ancestor" is half alien, has received money to espouse such opinions, operates a business based on said unproven fringe theories, and has absolutely no qualifications to be making any of the judgements he pronounces upon the various human remains".

The show promotes itself as "separating fact from fiction"... then offers an hour's programming constituted almost entirely of fiction, and fiction of the worst kind.

Secondary to that... comparing his dilapidated appearance in this show, it makes me wonder if either A, he was intentionally trying to give a different persona... or B, just more evidence as to the questionable "shooting schedule" / clip rehashing of Ancient Aliens (in which he appears quite differently).

To me, at least, it goes back to the previous posts on NAZI esoterica and its "cleaned up version" promoted in fringe theories & programs - it's like watching a thug be brought in to trial for assault... and he's put in a clean suit with a fresh haircut so as to inspire "really? could such a nice young man have done all this?!" thoughts. BUT THIS MAN SEEMS SO WISE AND AMICABLE, WHAT WITH HIS GRANDFATHERLY READING GLASSES... COULD HE REALLY BE THE SAME GUY WHO THINKS ALIENS MAKE BABIES WITH US AND BIGFOOT IS THEIR BODYGUARD / DUDEBRO?!

Reply
EP
8/7/2014 09:09:39 am

At least he doesn't think it came from "an alien female who was inseminated by a human which resulted in an overwhelming pregnancy which simply exploded by killing both."

Reply
Gregor
8/7/2014 09:36:46 am

*An alien The Female. ;)

EP
8/7/2014 09:39:08 am

I don't get it...

Gregor
8/7/2014 09:45:24 am

Combining the "explosive vagina" insanity with von Däniken's "the female". If we just say "an alien female", you might start to empathize with her!

Only Me
8/7/2014 11:16:43 am

Sounds to me like he would enjoy Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes. It has Bigfoot (naturally) and "demonic" creatures appearing in our world through portals. Not only that, the creatures look similar to Bigfoot, only with horns, reptilian eyes and cloven hooves...which prey on Bigfoot...who, in turn, has some poorly defined role as a "protector", keeping the transdimensional creatures in check.

Yep, right up his alley.

Reply
A.D.
8/7/2014 11:46:10 am

Brien is playing the same old games clown man Lloyd Pye pulled when he was still around.Same old tap dancing excuses.

http://www.skepticblog.org/2009/03/19/some-starchild-feedback/

Reply
EP
8/7/2014 01:12:26 pm

The mother is human because her mitochondrial DNA is human. The child is a human-alien hybrid because its mother's mitochondrial DNA is human. Sounds legit.

Reply
Gregor
8/7/2014 01:29:05 pm

Regarding the mitochondrial DNA... part of me wonders if they just couldn't get their shit together enough even for their own inane claims. I recall at least one point Foerster proclaimed that the two skulls were "so similar as one could say they are related". Obviously that's both unscientific and about as racist as "well, you two are white... you're probably cousins, huh?"... but it would at least make *some* sense, then, to be looking at mitochondrial DNA (assuming they had gained access to a second sample).

As for what followed, still bullshit as usual.

I think what get's me the most is... what exactly WOULD you (indef.) be looking for? If you assume that all DNA is roughly the same... why would their DNA be so different from ours as to stand out? And if you assume that they have significantly different DNA, we've already demonstrated that sufficiently different creatures HERE ON EARTH cannot interbreed - if creatures from the same planet can't produce viable offspring, why would aliens? It's not a matter of time, or effort, or technology. To make it work you'd effectively have to just engineer your own being from scratch... at which point, tell me why (again) they need to blenderize cow anuses and ransack human uterii?

Only Me
8/7/2014 01:48:10 pm

"you (indef.)"

I see what you (Gregor) did there;3

EP
8/7/2014 01:50:35 pm

Oh you :)

spookyparadigm
8/8/2014 04:37:52 am

"what exactly WOULD you (indef.) be looking for?"

Something mysterious and anomalous, of course.

If they find something actually worthwhile, that ends the game. Some of those playing at science even admit this. I've heard several times in interviews ufologists and cryptozoologists complain that if something was actually found (a Bigfoot body, disclosure of alien visitors either via government or a White House lawn landing), real scientists would completely muscle them out and take the subject over.

That pretty much makes the point, doesn't it?

I would further note that the examples I can think of who have said this were on the younger side, and had recently been involved in some kind of investigation, rather than being "established" and cranking out books and presentations for a para-career. The least charitable read is that the para-elders know this isn't going to happen. But a more likely read, IMO, is that the elders' activities aren't going to be muscled out by anyone, they thrive on rhetoric tweaking the scientific establishment, that's the whole point. The young'ins more naively are out doing "investigations".

Gregor
8/8/2014 02:13:18 pm

@SpookyParadigm

I must admit, the questions were mostly rhetorical. It's perfectly clear that any "genuine discovery" would quickly be set upon by actual scientists (biologists, chemists, astronomers, physicists, etc.)... what, with the "results must be verifiable and repeatable" thing... and I'm aware of the "they don't really want to find what they're looking for " paradox.

It just bugs me that the things these "investigators" say don't even make sense at the most fundamental levels. It'd be one thing to talk a good show, but have it fall apart under intensive investigation... but when it takes a 'layperson' less than a minute to find serious issues with your claims... what are you really doing besides talking out of your ass?

As for the market... I agree with you without a doubt - even if they *did* "find bigfoot" (complete with 3 idiots and a pseudo-scientific amazon), those same "experts" would simply shift gears and point out that its not the REAL bigfoot (*especially* if it just turned out to be a gorilla / chimpanzee-ish primate), or somehow they now have to prove the Yeti / Skunk Ape / Hairy Grassman / Orang Pendek / Wild Man.

I suppose that's the "beauty" of mystery mongering: there's always wiggle-room for more, no matter how bright the light becomes.

To borrow (sorta) a line from the Joker: This world deserves a better class of idiot.

EP
8/8/2014 03:07:35 pm

"there's always wiggle-room for more, no matter how bright the light becomes."

-- Anal Probing 101

spookyparadigm
8/8/2014 03:37:06 pm

@gregor

I agree. I get annoyed about it I think because I have found these questions interesting, only to realize that most of the people generating and then 'investigating" the questions are either charlatans or are involved in a kind of deep play kind of like subconscious LARPing.

Which is why I'm particularly fascinated by those who have shown enough smarts to eventually figure it out. A few leave the 'field" and constructively critique and explain it from the other side, like Susan Blackmoore. Some just drop out. But quite a few end up doing ridiculous mental gymnastics to stay in (this is where a lot of the Keelian ultradimension/consciousness people come from, IMO), or just give up any sense of shame and sell out to what the fans want (say like going from interesting if eccentric ideas about a Fortean topic to writing Finding Bigfoot level guidebooks or spec "Greatest Mysteries of X" books, not to point to any obvious usual suspects).

I guess I can sort of empathize with someone who went too far down that path to mentally get themselves out.

Gregor
8/8/2014 05:12:39 pm

@SpookyParadigm

Agreed - I actually have a fair bit of empathy / sympathy for the folks who honestly seem like the "hey, it pays cash and I need to eat" type... I understand what it's like to work a job you loathe on multiple levels simply because you need to make ends meet. I don't agree with (or forgive) choosing this *particular* avenue (pushing obviously fake / racist Fringe material), but "love the sinner, hate the sin".

....

Yes I stole that from Fallout: New Vegas.

Anyways, it's kind of amusing to imagine some kind of offer of amnesty from academia... "It's ok... just put the fringe down.. walk away... we never have to come to this place ever again..."

And, like you, I find genuine interest in this kind of material... it can serve as valuable thought experiments (if nothing else), and open up new lines of inquiry. I think that's what makes me hate things like "Mermaid: The Body Found" so goddamn much. They take a single piece of genuinely anomalous material (the signal) and build up an entire fortress of bullshit around it. They play on a person's natural desire to experience the fantastical... to believe... to trust... they let the audience think its new and interesting and *real*... only to pull the rug out at the last minute. I wonder often if they even realize the kind of damage that can do to a person... how you can literally slam their mind shut on all sorts of other things in our world because they feel like they were made a fool of.

spookyparadigm
8/9/2014 07:55:14 am

I don't have any sympathy for the straight-up hucksters. Here I don't mean random schmo having to write the copy for Time-Life's Mysteries of the Unknown. That's a job.

A lot of those folks also leave too much on the table, because their point isn't to keep the game going forever. They keep the target moving so often, the details changing so much, it becomes pretty clear that they're having you on, getting you to enjoy the stories just long enough to get your money. This is what the Discovery Channel is doing to itself. If every year they have another round of BS, they start to get the reputation as BS artists.

They are doing damage, don't get me wrong. But this sort of thing does have a way of getting corrected as people notice. Discovery may be making more money by promoting BS, but they're flushing away their cultural capital, which will have consequences down the line.

But away from companies and obvious entertaintment, some of the hucksters have to go much farther than that. They have to invest creative energy. They make it all about themselves. It is their name on the book, their voice and face in the interviews and conferences etc. They meet and interact with true believers and keep a straight face. Many of them fake or imply credentials and experiences that never happened. And so on.

I'm not saying everyone who does that is a sociopath, but it is worth considering. I doubt someone who does all that doesn't get a bit of a thrill of suckering the rubes, and if you make that your full-time profession and your identity, what does that say about you? That gets back to your "pulling the rug out at the last minute," except in the case of a true mystery monger, they never pull the rug out, and they give excuses when someone else pulls the rug out, using emotional appeals (often of a partisan and tribal nature) to keep the game going.

That's what makes the "mystery" franchise of History/H2 so unique (now that it is a persistent cast of characters and multiple shows). It has become a venue to mainline a world of professional mystery mongers into the mainstream. The folks on Megalodon or the Mermaids show were actors and staffers in the entertainment world. But as Jason documents, H2 features a host of fringe authors and promoters, some of whom have seriously problematic records.

That's also the answer to Walt's persistent "It's just entertainment!" If it were just entertainment, they'd do what Discovery did, and just make it up. The Discovery shows aren't harmless, but from the perspective of the production crews and management, you can at least sort of understand what they were trying to do, before they went for PT Barnum style framing. By going to the sketchy cast of their mystery franchise, History is doing something decidedly different. They're exploiting a market of people that they know believe in this stuff being real, and while the managers may not personally care if anyone believes in it, their bottom line is improved if they can influence more people to believe in it and watch and talk about the shows.

EP
8/8/2014 12:17:39 pm

I stand partially corrected. In my criticism of mitochondrial DNA testing I implicitly ignored that apparently nuclear DNA decays much easier than mitochondrial DNA, so it is indeed often only possible to recover the latter.

That almost makes the claims more ridiculous. It's no longer just "the mother is human because her mitochondrial DNA is human, but the child is a human-alien hybrid because its mother's mitochondrial DNA is human." Now it is that corrupted nuclear DNA + uncorrupted human mitochondrial DNA = human-alien hybrid. It follows that corrupted nuclear DNA + corrupted mitochondrial DNA = alien!

Reply
Michael
3/28/2018 11:00:59 pm

Yeah, except the recent DNA tests have proven Brien Forester rignt.

Reply

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          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
      • James Dean's Scrapbook
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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