Journal investigating Sodom comet paper for data problems

A paper that caught flak for its claims that an ancient city in the Middle East was destroyed by an exploding celestial body – and the authors’ suggestion that the event could have inspired the Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah – now has an editor’s note acknowledging the journal is looking into concerns about its data and conclusions. 

The note follows a litany  of criticism on Twitter, PubPeer, and in a “Matters Arising” response, as well as an extensive correction published last year. It appeared just days after Retraction Watch asked the publisher for an update on the case.

The article, “A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea,” was published in Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature title, in September 2021. It has been cited six times in the scientific literature, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, and Altmetric shows it has gotten more online attention than most other papers of a similar age. 

Soon after the article’s publication, its claims attracted scrutiny on Twitter, as we reported at the time. Mark Boslough, a retired physicist at the University of New Mexico and expert in planetary impacts and airbursts (when celestial bodies explode above the earth’s surface) kicked off the criticism, and other scientists quickly joined in. 

Elisabeth Bik examined images of the dig site published in the paper and found that many had signs of tampering. One of the authors, Philip J. Silvia of Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque, N.M., told us at the time that “the accusation that the image was photoshopped is categorically false.” But another author later acknowledged in a blog post that a graphic artist “made minor, cosmetic corrections to five of 53 images.” 

Trinity Southwest University describes itself as “a trans-denominational institution in the evangelical mainstream of the historic Christian Faith” that has “chosen to remain non-aligned” with respect to “traditional accreditation.” Its address appears to be located in a strip mall between a cannabis dispensary and a bubble tea shop in Albuquerque.

In response to comments about the images on PubPeer, corresponding author Allen West, whose affiliation is listed as “Comet Research Group,” located in Prescott, Ariz., posted original versions of seven images in the paper alongside the altered versions to show what was changed. 

Silvia wrote on PubPeer: 

We maintain that we have correctly represented the key original data — nothing of importance to the conclusion was changed. We have asked Scientific Reports to weigh in, and now it is up to them to decide.

A correction to the paper in February 2022 listed several dozen figures that had been altered, and published original versions of them. The erratum stated: 

Some of the figure panels have been manipulated to remove the features irrelevant to the scientific content depicted in those (e.g. measuring tape, previous image labels, visible fingers etc.). The Authors recognise that this level of manipulation was inappropriate, and provide original images. 

The next month, the journal published a “Matters Arising” in response to the original paper, titled, “No mineralogic or geochemical evidence of impact at Tall el-Hammam, a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea.” 

Conversation continued on PubPeer, sometimes with West and Silvia replying to questions. 

Last  September, Boslough collected four outstanding issues with the paper in a PubPeer post.    Among these, he wrote, was “an egregious misrepresentation of my own work” in the paper’s figure 53, a depiction of an airburst simulation Boslough had presented at a conference. 

West responded in detail: 

Some of the issues that you raise in your Comment are questions that are answered here. Others can be resolved with corrections in Bunch et al., and I have already asked Scientific Reports for guidance on how to proceed. We will consult with you once I hear from them.

West and his collaborators have previously published controversial claims about other putative comet impacts, including one about 13,000 years ago that they say led to the extinction of wooly mammoths and the Clovis culture in North America. But, as Rex Dalton reported in 2011: 

West is Allen Whitt — who, in 2002, was fined by California and convicted for masquerading as a state-licensed geologist when he charged small-town officials fat fees for water studies. After completing probation in 2003 in San Bernardino County, he began work on the comet theory, legally adopting his new name in 2006 as he promoted it in a popular book. Only when questioned by this reporter last year did his co-authors learn his original identity and legal history. Since then, they have not disclosed it to the scientific community.

According to archives of Scientific Reports’ website, West had been a member of the journal’s editorial board as recently as March of 2020, but was no longer listed on the site as of August 2021. He has not responded to our request for comment. 

Beginning soon after the Tall el-Hammam article’s publication, Boslough has been in contact with Rafal Marszalek, chief editor of Scientific Reports, about the issues he saw in the paper, his posts on PubPeer, and critical articles he was working on for the publication Skeptical Inquirer.  

Boslough emailed Marszalek again in December, following West’s PubPeer comment about working with Scientific Reports on corrections to the article, and asked if the paper couldn’t at least be marked with an editor’s note while the journal considered what to do: 

Forgive me for my increasing rate of messages asking for Bunch et al (2021) to either be retracted or corrected, but this is becoming urgent. It has been a year and a quarter since it has been published and there are still many instances of false claims and wrong data that have not yet been corrected. In some cases, the authors agree that the information is false (such as their incorrect labeling of my simulation in Figure 53, and the false claims about trees at Tunguska). Allen West acknowledged these problems three months ago and promised to work with you to correct them. 

Marszalek responded the next day: 

I am incredibly sorry for the lack of responses from me. I am working on this, but my recent business travels have slowed me down. The urgency is not lost on me, but as you can imagine it takes time to piece together all of the information here, esp. given the rate at which the exchange progressed on PubPeer earlier this year going beyond what your early comments as well as authors replies to us may have covered (and diverging into directions that while important, are not something we can address editorially, as I explained in the past).

I hope you can bear with me for a while longer.

Earlier this month, Boslough copied Retraction Watch on his latest email to Marszalek, writing: 

​​As I’ve noted several times since we started corresponding in 2021, Scientific Reports needs to either retract or make several more immediate corrections to the paper by Bunch et al (2021). Most important to me is the removal from your journal of their Figure 53, which shows a photoshopped version of one of my airburst simulations with added labels that are wrong and a caption that misrepresents it and changes its meaning in an apparent attempt to use my model to support their hypothesis. I do not want their false claims to be misattributed to me… ​​Can you please put a statement of concern on this paper until it is retracted or until these and other corrections are made? 

We also emailed Springer Nature’s press office to ask if correction was indeed underway, and on February 10 got the following response attributed to Marszalek: 

The investigation into this paper is still ongoing. The editors are looking into the concerns raised, which include but are not limited to those issues raised in the PubPeer comments. This process may take some time while we carefully consider available evidence and give all parties involved the chance to respond.

We will update our readers with further information as soon as we are able to.

This editor’s note was posted on February 15: 

Readers are alerted that concerns raised about the data presented and the conclusions of this article are being considered by the Editors. A further editorial response will follow the resolution of these issues.

We asked what prompted the note’s publication, given the longstanding critiques of the paper. Marszalek responded: 

When concerns are raised about papers we have published, we look into them carefully, following an established process. These issues are often complex and as a result, it can take time for editors and authors to fully investigate them.  Given that it is taking significant time to unravel the concerns in this case, we felt it was in the best interests of the readership to add a note at this stage.  For confidentiality reasons, we are unable to comment further at this time.

Responding to the editor’s note, Boslough told us: 

This is a positive development that is long overdue. Frankly, I think the paper is unsalvageable and no amount of correction would be sufficient to make it publishable. For example, data points in their map of debris directionality (Fig. 17) appear to be fabricated and the authors don’t seem to be capable of providing the raw data or methods so others can see how they arrived at their claimed wind vectors on which their conclusions are based. I hope this expression of concern leads to more scrutiny on the same group’s other papers with similarly troublesome claims based on data and methods that they have never revealed.

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