Scientific Reports is taking heat on social media and from data sleuths for publishing a paper implying that the Biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah might have been the retelling of the devastation wrought by an exploding asteroid in or around the year 1,650 BCE.
To the lay reader — and to peer reviewers and editors, evidently — the article, “A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea,” makes at least a superficially plausible and scientifically rigorous case.
According to the abstract:
We present evidence that in ~ 1650 BCE (~ 3600 years ago), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea. The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide detonated with ~ 1000× more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A city-wide ~ 1.5-m-thick carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contains peak concentrations of shocked quartz (~ 5–10 GPa); melted pottery and mudbricks; diamond-like carbon; soot; Fe- and Si-rich spherules; CaCO3 spherules from melted plaster; and melted platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite, and quartz. Heating experiments indicate temperatures exceeded 2000 °C. Amid city-side devastation, the airburst demolished 12+ m of the 4-to-5-story palace complex and the massive 4-m-thick mudbrick rampart, while causing extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in nearby humans. An airburst-related influx of salt (~ 4 wt.%) produced hypersalinity, inhibited agriculture, and caused a ~ 300–600-year-long abandonment of ~ 120 regional settlements within a > 25-km radius. Tall el-Hammam may be the second oldest city/town destroyed by a cosmic airburst/impact, after Abu Hureyra, Syria, and possibly the earliest site with an oral tradition that was written down (Genesis). Tunguska-scale airbursts can devastate entire cities/regions and thus, pose a severe modern-day hazard.
The paper has been a big hit, according to Altmetric, which ranks it as the top article for online attention among papers published at the same time. It also garnered coverage from a slew of news outlets — many of which reprinted an opinion piece about the findings by co-author Christopher Moore, of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of South Carolina.
But shortly after publication, Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, took to Twitter to raise several concerns about the article. (Boslough initially misidentified the publication as Nature, for which he later apologized.)
Boslough pointed out “my model of asteroid airbursts is cited as the mechanism by which God smote this evil city.” He then noted that the senior author of the study was Phillip Silvia, an “engineer, theologian, archaeologist” and the director of publications at Trinity Southwest University, an apparently unaccredited evangelical school located in a strip mall in Albuquerque, whose motto is “Flexible Adult Higher Education Upholding Biblical Authority.” (Silvia earned his PhD from Trinity Southwest in 2015.)
Earlier this week, Elisabeth Bik joined the critics, identifying an image in the paper with signs of having been doctored. Bik also wondered about the affiliation of two of the co-authors, Alan West and Timothy Witwer, which is listed as the Comet Research Group and is:
located in a residential area in Prescott, AZ. Registered to the same address is the “Rising Light Group Inc.” and a consultancy business.
Other members of the research team are affiliated with North Carolina State University, Northeastern Arizona University, Elizabeth City State University, New Mexico Institute On Mining & Technology, Charles University in Prague, and the United States Navy.
More criticism of the article can be found on PubPeer.
Richard White, the chief editor of Scientific Reports, told us:
We’re aware of the concerns that have been raised and are considering them carefully.
Silvia told us:
The accusation that the image was photoshopped is categorically false. The only edits made to that image are the additions of the colored dots to note the pieces that came from the same pots and the outlines to group them.
As far as the comments made in the link you provided are concerned… Note that they are all ad hominem attacks against the authors (including myself) and the institutions (like TSU) and affiliations (like the Comet Research Group) with which we are associated. None of their comments address the science within our paper, probably because they have nothing of value to add to the discussion. It’s a classic example of character assassination substituted for a rational discussion of the evidence. What motivates it? Who’s to say?
One of his co-authors, George Howard, of Restoration Systems, an environmental “mitigation banking business” in North Carolina — and who blogs on Cosmic Tusk about “abrupt climate change and pandemic induced by comets and asteroids during human history” — hit back at Bik, who’d tweeted:
This does not necessarily mean something, but it is remarkable that this archeological research was overseen by an unaccredited evangelical Christian institution that pursues a divine authority and the bible as the only written representation of reality.
In a post Boslough screen-shotted, Howard wrote:
‘This does not necessarily mean something.’ Wtf does that mean? Then why post you bigot? You are a prejudiced cheap shot artist anti-science punk, and need to quit tweeting and publish your attacks in peer-reviewed contexts. What other religion to [sic] you defame?
Update, 1530 UTC, 10/2/21: Howard responded on his blog, saying in part:
You are correct. Our graphic artist made minor, cosmetic corrections to five of 53 images. All of them were distant from any important scientific data and no changes were made to key data, such as bones or potsherds.
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I have to agree with Silvia that most of the challenges here are ad hominem against the authors – the same criticism we make about pseudo-science defenders. After all, it’s unlikely anyone except a bible-believer would make such an effort to find the cause of the destruction of these biblical cities.
It wasn’t clear what Boslaugh was saying about his model being used: was it used correctly, or incorrectly?
Thank you.
This is not true. The challaenges are against the claims themselves The cricicisms are coming from actual scientists. These are not actual scientist. Are you capable of at least understanding that much.
The place were they are claiming this happened is NOT where the Bible says Sodom and Gomorrah were anyway.
Not that Sodom and Gomorrah actually existed. That is a mythical story as is every other story in the Book of Genesis. Not a single event or character in the book of Genesis is historical.
Well to give the authors their due, your post does not contain a single criticism of the factual content of that article. What I see above is meaningless and irrelevant.
As I’ve never before heard or read about that massive destruction layer, I have my doubts, but then I do not know everything. Is there such a thing? You don’t seem to consider that relevant.
I’m not an expert, but with the margin of error surrounding the dating of events this long ago, I’d put my money on the Thera explosion (dated around 1600 BC). This one wroke havoc all around the Mediterranean Sea and probably far beyond. The authors discuss and dismiss this alterantive account. I can’t judge whether they’re right or not; I’d just say that with the variability of dating such events, there are probably degrees of (un)certainty, not plain right or wrong.
I’m a minor co-author and agree. Thera too close for coincidence. I have a lot of thoughts about it.
I don’t think you understand the consequences of the image manipulation here. Yes, it’s true that their edits didn’t go onto “key data, such as bones or potsherds”. But what they did is take photos from previous publications, and edit out the labels put on the image in the other paper. Besides being grossly unethical on its own, that means they don’t have access to the original images, and presumably not the original data either. It makes all the claims in the paper untrustworthy because they’re making false claims about their use of the data.
There’s no real point in taking up the specific factual claims in the paper when those could simply be fabricated. Maybe they are real, but if they lied about this (and continue to), why should we trust them?
I worked on this excavation at Tall el-Hammam for 10 of the 15 years and present when the photos were taken. The photos that I saw in the report were the exact photos that I saw. Phil Sivia, the scientific director at Tall el-Hammam, provided the photos to the team and they cleaned them up as all photos are for publication. There was no doctoring of any of the images to be dishonest with the scientific research. Those who have issue with the article are simply anti-Bible minimalists. Dr D. E. Graves
Some of the responses are ad hominem and inappropriate for scientific criticism, but it’s irresponsible of Silvia to deny the obvious photoshopping.
Alan West (another co-author) has now acknowledged the photoshopping. https://pubpeer.com/publications/37B87CAC48DE4BC98AD40E00330143#18
Received: 5 June 2021; Accepted: 30 August 2021
How could such a long paper (64 pages post-formatting) with so many different subjects be reviewed in such a short time?
and from Sandia Nat Lab one cannot get their data for a re-analysis !
…interestingly, the German Wikipedia entry for Sodom and Gomorrah cites a theory by Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell that made the rounds in the 2000s — and basically state the same idea: a Tunguska-like event was responsible for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. They published their idea in 2008 as a book (https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/a-sumerian-observation-of-the-k%C3%B5fels-impact-event). For readers fluent in German, a synopsis of their arguments can be found in this report by German Newsmagazine DER SPIEGEL: https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/fruehe-astronomie-zerstoerte-ein-asteroid-sodom-und-gomorrha-a-546305.html
Bond and Hempsell are not mentioned in the new paper.
Bond and Hempsell claim to be describing an earlier event, and are soundly shredded in RationalWiki, https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/K%C3%B6fels_impact_event, and were inded best passed over in silence.
Boslough’s criticisms really are nothing but ad hominem, and given his previous “April Fools joke” about pi, he apparently has an anti-religious chip on his shoulder.
But Bik’s evidence of duplication in images is considerably more serious.
If the article actually is fraudulent, Boslough’s anti-religious rant is giving the authors cover. Now, if the article is retracted, even for legitimate reasons, the authors will have a plausible-sounding reason to claim the retraction was mere religious bigotry.
The PubPeer discussion states that “combine” was used to force all time estimates to refer to the same event. I am not a user of this software, but this is an easy claim to check, and extremely relevant scientifically if true: if you force everything to be an estimate of the same time, you cannot claim to have shown that everything is an estimate of the same time.
I am also very disturbed by “What other religion to [sic] you defame?” as the author seems confused about what he has published: is it a scientific paper or a religious document?
Using ‘combine’ is fine and correct to date the destruction layer. However, the fact that a consistent date is obtained is not evidence of synchroneity. That is derived from the context of the finds. There is a caption to one of the figures in the paper that probably misinterprets this, a minor error that doesn’t detract from the conclusions of the paper. The comments on twitter about this are massively overblown, and in my view disingenuous.
Have you read the OxCal manual for Combine(), Martin? “Combination of dates should clearly only be carried out if there is good reason to assume that the events being dated all occurred within a short period (`short’ here implies small in comparison to the errors associated with the dating methods).” https://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk/oxcal3/arch_cmb.htm
It simply does not do what the authors think it does.
Yes this is a completely incompetent attempt at radiocarbon modelling that just reproduces their assumption of a single event. See:
https://twitter.com/joeroe90/status/1440443321894064136
https://twitter.com/joeroe90/status/1440624292136308743
https://twitter.com/MTB_Archaeology/status/1440473335687630865
The actual dates are consistent with anything from an instantaneous event to a span of 150 years, and the latter is more consistent with the stratigraphic evidence (the dates were from a 1.5 m thick layer of mixed trash and sediment).
The authors’ responses here are pure deflection. Boslough has commented on their background, yes, but he and others have also pointed out substantial flaws in the scientific content of the paper.
The paper also mentions that 20 out of 26 dates were modelled as synchronous. What happened to the remaining 6 dates? I don’t see them within the paper.
It is easy to get distracted by author affiliations and motivations, whereas there’s many Twitter threads and Pubpeer comments that focus on the data and analysis. A good example is https://twitter.com/petrabonegirl/status/1440833392006688768
Regarding the insertion of manipulated data, the “blink” analysis at https://twitter.com/AsteroidDave/status/1443774300532600832 is quite compelling.
My own small contribution to the concerns on this paper is the north arrow and shadows in Figure 44C, which imply the Sun is roughly north-north-east, which is just not possible at the Dead Sea.
Interesting observation. Looks like a minor error without consequence for the conclusions. Can probably be dealt with through a correction, if indeed it is incorrect. Certainly, retraction is unwarranted.
It’s not a minor error (for starters, an intentional act isn’t an error). It shows they plagiarized the photos from another publication, which in turn means they don’t have access to the either the site or the original photos.
“shows they plagiarized” nope”
“which in turn means they don’t have access to the either the site of the original photos” again, nope, given that it was the Comet Research Group itself which made the minor cosmetic alterations in 5 of the 53 images, as they explain here: https://cosmictusk.com/pebblegate/
what are you smoking?
“minor cosmetic alterations” — so, that’s what it is called this days, not photoshopping?
they removed measuring tapes and direction bords, why?
The Sun could easily be in the northeast shortly after sunrise near the summer solstice.
How compatible are “roughly north-north-east” and “easily […] northeast”? This depends on your and Brown’s notions of (respectively) “easily” (or of “in the”) and “roughly”, which might be worth teasing out. Or not.
I have worked for 10 of the 15 seasons at Tall el-Hammam and can confirm the photos of the report. We work with a Jordanian surveyor using the total-station and certainly know where north is located (both magnetic or true north). I have set up many archaeological square with a compass and then confirmed with the total-station. Your criticism is categorically incorrect. Dr. D.E. Graves
Seems no one looks good, including Elisabeth Bik by resorting to affiliations… By that ballpark a scientist that study Global Warming and are dependent on its existence for funding can do what?
I’m uncertain whether the concerns about institutional affiliations should be completely dismissed.
From the paper, “The project is under the aegis of the School of Archaeology, Veritas International University, Santa Ana, CA, and the College of Archaeology, Trinity Southwest University, Albuquerque, NM, under the auspices of the Department of Antiquities of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.”
Veritas is an accredited religious school, which suggests that their view of archaeology MIGHT be influenced by non-scientific factors and Trinity Southwest is wholly unaccredited, which suggests a PhD conferred by that organization MAY not necessarily be a scientific accomplishment.
This is a complex multidisciplinary project and one might be somewhat concerned that the lack of oversight by a mainstream *scientific* research institution, which MAY mean this paper COULD represent a form of advocacy rather than rigorous scientific inquiry. It isn’t probative, but it is concerning.
This is different that saying the conclusions or evidence is wrong. But I think these affiliations should be discussed and made clear to the readers, editors, and peer reviewers.
“This is different that saying the conclusions or evidence is wrong. ”
That and the evidence check like done with images is what Elisabeth Bik should do.
Instead this turns her credibility if she do not use the same ballpark to everyone else.
“Veritas is an accredited religious school, which suggests that their view of archaeology MIGHT be influenced by non-scientific factors”
Many of scientist, some greatest were religious persons.
Belief in Politics is also akin to a Religion, looking at XX Century you could even said that belief in Politics replaced it in the “West” . Besides every School and University and every scientist is influenced by non-scientific factors. Since Universities, Governments are restricting freedom of speech, warnings should come with every paper funded by them?
Well, aren’t there examples of the opposite too? How long wasn’t the big bang theory opposed by the scientific community because they knew that would indicate that the universe had a beginning and would therefore support the christian world view. The problem goes both ways, either if you believe in a God outside of time and space which created everything, or you believe that first there was nothing, and then nothing exploded and created everything, you are biased to try to fit your worldview into your scientifical results… (Or worse, fit your results into your worldview)
Comet Research Group agrees with Elisabeth Bik: https://cosmictusk.com/pebblegate/
“Boslough pointed out “my model of asteroid airbursts is cited as the mechanism by which God smote this evil city.””
From the very outset this comment is an outright lie. The paper does not cite his airburst model as having anything to do with god. In fact, god isn’t mentioned in the paper once.
His model of airburst physics is cited as the mechanism for the destruction of an ancient Bronze Age city.
The paper only mentions the similarities to the most analogous ancient story of destruction that could potentially be related to the destruction of said city, before making clear that this is beyond the scope of the paper.
It is not unreasonable to assume that if such an event did occur at such a time where written language was a thing, that it would indeed be written down somewhere, and make its way to us today.
The fact that Boslough immediately jumps to God shows how offended he is that HIS work could be even loosely associated with religion.
This paper isn’t about religion, it’s not about Sodom. It’s about presenting physical, geochemical evidence that a cosmic impact destroyed the city of Tall el-Hammam.
The paper should not be retracted for things it does not address.
While the editing of the photos to be more presentable is regrettable, it was not done so deceptively to hide inconvenient or contrary evidence, or in order to make people believe the evidence is stronger than it is.
Such a thing, in my opinion, does not warrant the retraction of the paper. I do think all efforts should be made to track down the original photos and have them in there unedited.
Agreed.
The accusation that the image was photoshopped is categorically false. The only edits made to that image are the additions of the colored dots to note the pieces that came from the same pots and the outlines to group them.
The accusation that some images were photoshopped is categorically true. There might have been plausible reasons for filling in sections of the photographs (e.g. to replace unwanted areas of text, or superfluous arrows), but those alterations did occur.
Smut – see this: https://cosmictusk.com/pebblegate/
As an aside to this: people need to stop using the Hiroshima bomb, or nuclear weapons in general, as a point of comparison for the amount of energy involved in something. Nuclear explosions produce far less energy than people might intuitively think. The effects of a nuclear weapon are related to its power, but nuclear explosions take place on far shorter time-scales than most processes humans have some intuition for. If a nuclear explosion and an astrophysical or geological event have similar powers, the latter will always deliver far more energy. If a paper makes a comparison to nuclear explosions in terms of energy, one should assume the authors are incompetent.
An earlier article on the same topic was published 2.5 years ago:
https://www.universetoday.com/140752/a-meteor-may-have-exploded-in-the-air-3700-years-ago-obliterating-communities-near-the-dead-sea/
Frankly, I’m delighted to see this, and the newer article, indicating that archaeologists are FINALLY looking at bolide impacts as valid explanations. For FAR too long, otherwise-reputable scientists have flatly rejected any extraterrestrial explanation for events. It was only 40 years ago that Luis and Walter Alvarez finally convinced people that the dinosaurs might have perished because of the Chicxulub impact. And most geologists refuse to consider that a similar if larger impact might have caused the Permian extinctions 252 million years ago.
I don’t think anyone has suggested that the paper should be retracted just because it repeatedly cites the verse of Genesis that goes like this, “24 Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. 25 Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. 26 But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.” The fact that it passed peer review and editorial approval with this overtly religious citation is regrettable, but not the reason anyone has given for its retraction.
Concerning to read that an artist “made minor, cosmetic corrections” to a display item that was presented as scientific data. This should be a big red flag here. Are we seeing a new “divine” way to perform image manipulation in scientific data, perhaps?
‘A city-wide ~ 1.5-m-thick carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contains peak concentrations of shocked quartz (~ 5–10 GPa)…’
Frankly, 1.5 m of carbon and ash is an explitive deleted lot of carbon. And really, what are ‘peak concentrations’?
Per an email, Scientific Reports is aware of the PubPeer comments and is currently looking into them.
Frankly I see nothing whatsoever religious here. We have a Bronze Age destruction layer and a novel hypothesis of how it came about. The fact that if true the complete instantaneous destruction of a whole city and its surrouds by an asteroid would be remebered in oral history and that a garbled account may have found its way into written records hundreds of years later is an interesting aside worth mentioning in passing, but that’s it. Tee Bible may claim the Hand of God as the agent here, the authors of the present article don’t.
An internet search reports nothing for “Northeastern Arizona University” mentioned in the article. However, I can affirm the existence of “Northern Arizona University” in Flagstaff, AZ.
All of these struggles’ mankind goes to in order to destroy the
Biblical account of it, as well as, that God who makes things happen that do not exist, by simply speaking His word and it happens is the reason they will not submit and bow to this Sovereign God. They do not want to admit there is such a being existing at all. So, they work hard to find as they say, natural, event(s) that took place and it had nothing to do with God! How pitiful and how pagan can one become??