Comet Research Group

The Comet Research Group, Inc. (also known as the CRG) is non-profit organization whose members promote their research focused on cosmic impact events or meteor air bursts on Earth in the distant past,[1] including events of biblical significance.[2] Archeologist Carl Feagans and NASA astronomer David Morrison have described the group's theories as pseudoscientific and pseudoarchaeological catastrophism,[3][4][5] particularly where related to Abu Hureyra and the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis.[3][6] These proposals are typically proposed in opposition to what they view as uniformitarianism.[7][8][9]

History

The CRG was founded by paleoceanographer James P. Kennett and others who contend that the incidence of comet and meteoritic impacts of global significance is much higher than what is normally considered the rate. The CRG membership roster includes archaeologist Andrew M.T. Moore, physicist Adrian Melott, and astronomers Willam Napier and Dante Lauretta.[10] It is linked to the Rising Light Group, a "tax-exempt charitable organization with a clear Christian and biblical agenda," and is registered in the name of co-founder and director Allen West,[11] described by his attorney to Pacific Standard as "a retired geophysicist who has had a long and distinguished career". West was formerly known as Allen Whitt, and, as of 2017, West has no academic affiliation and had been implicated in a mining scam in the 1990s.[12]

Claims

Members of the CRG say they have discovered that a Tunguska-sized meteor air burst destroyed the Middle-Bronze-Age city Tall el-Hammam in Jordan[13] and that cosmic impact and/or airburst events destroyed the Pre-Pottery Neolithic village of Abu Hureyra in Syria around 12,800 years ago.[14][1] Its members have developed and tend to favor the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, which attributes climate change at the end of the Pleistocene to a massive impact extraterrestrial objects.[15] The role—if any—of comets in bringing about the end of the Pleistocene has been rejected by most subject matter experts.[6]

Members of the CRG have been criticized for promoting pseudoscience, pseudoarchaeology, and pseudohistory, engaging in cherry-picking of data based on confirmation bias, seeking to persuade via the bandwagon fallacy, and even engaging in intentional misrepresentations of archaeological and geological evidence. For example, physicist Mark Boslough, a specialist in planetary impact hazards and asteroid impact avoidance, has pointed out many problems with the credibility and motivations of individual CRG researchers and as well as with their specific claims for evidence in support of the YDIH and/or the effects of meteor air bursts or impact events on ancient settlements, people, and environments.[16]

Many doubts have been raised about the CRG's claims.[17] Image forensics expert Elisabeth Bik discovered evidence for digital alteration of images used as evidence that Tall el-Hammam was engulfed by an airburst.[18] CRG members initially denied tampering with the photos but eventually published a correction in which they admitted to inappropriate image manipulation.[19] Subsequent concerns that have been brought up in PubPeer have not yet been addressed by the CRG, including discrepancies between claimed blast wave direction compared to what the images show, unavailability of original image data to independent researchers, lack of supporting evidence for conclusions, inappropriate reliance on young Earth creationist literature, misinformation about the Tunguska explosion, and another uncorrected example of an inappropriately altered image.[20]

Members of the CRG have also supported the assertion that Indigenous people of the Hopewell tradition in the eastern United States were affected by an airburst event that occurred in the 3rd or 4th century.[21]

References
  1. Barbuzano, Javier (April 6, 2020). "A Comet May Have Destroyed This Paleolithic Village 12,800 Years Ago". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  2. Mathews, Kristin Claes (August 17, 2022). "Comet chemist Wendy Wolbach's research featured on 'Jeopardy!'". DePaul University Newsline. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  3. Feagans, Carl. "Buzzwords, Bogeymen, and Banalities of Pseudoarchaeology: Göbekli Tepe". Archaeology Review. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
  4. Kreidler, Marc (1 May 2010). "Did a Cosmic Impact Kill the Mammoths? | Skeptical Inquirer". Retrieved 19 November 2022.
  5. Sweatman, Martin (3 November 2017). "Catastrophism through the ages, and a cosmic catastrophe at the origin of civilisation". Archaeology & Anthropology. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
  6. Powell, James Lawrence (January 2022). "Premature rejection in science: The case of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis". Science Progress. 105 (1): 003685042110642. doi:10.1177/00368504211064272. ISSN 0036-8504. PMID 34986034. S2CID 245771840. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
  7. "The Younger Dryas Impact research since 2007". The Cosmic Tusk. 21 May 2017. Retrieved 19 November 2022. If J Harlen Bretz was to be right, then it was necessary that he should be right in a politically -correct way – in other words, in a way that could be redacted by skilled uniformitarian spin-meisters to edit out any hint of a global catastrophe lurking between the lines!
  8. Marvin, Ursula B. (January 1999). "Impacts from space: the implications for uniformitarian geology". Geological Society, London, Special Publications. 150 (1): 89–117. doi:10.1144/gsl.sp.1999.150.01.06. eISSN 2041-4927. ISSN 0305-8719. S2CID 128610726. In the final decade of that century, two books, one by Ernst F. F. Chladni of Wittenberg and one by James Hutton of Edinburgh, contributed to the rise of meteorite studies and uniformitarian geology, respectively. Although they arose almost simultaneously, these two branches of science, one of which postulated the fall to Earth of solid bodies from space while the other endorsed only strictly endogenous processes acting upon the Earth, evolved separately over the next 200 years. This paper traces the long estrangement between mainstream geology and the science of meteorites.
  9. Verschuur, Gerrit L. (24 October 1996). "Death Star or Coherent Catastrophism?". Impact!. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780195101058.003.0014. ISBN 978-0-19-510105-8.
  10. "Scientists & Members". Comet Research Group. 10 September 2016. Retrieved 2 February 2022.
  11. Bik, Elisabeth (2 October 2021). "Blast in the Past: Image concerns in paper about comet that might have destroyed Tall el-Hammam". Science Integrity Digest. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  12. Dalton, Rex. "Comet Theory Comes Crashing to Earth". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 2023-01-10.
  13. Bunch, Ted E.; LeCompte, Malcolm A.; Adedeji, A. Victor; Wittke, James H.; Burleigh, T. David; Hermes, Robert E.; Mooney, Charles; Batchelor, Dale; Wolbach, Wendy S.; Kathan, Joel; Kletetschka, Gunther; Patterson, Mark C. L.; Swindel, Edward C.; Witwer, Timothy; Howard, George A.; Mitra, Siddhartha; Moore, Christopher R.; Langworthy, Kurt; Kennett, James P.; West, Allen; Silvia, Phillip J. (December 2021). "A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea". Scientific Reports. 11 (1): 18632. Bibcode:2021NatSR..1118632B. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-97778-3. PMC 8452666. PMID 34545151.
  14. Fernandez S (2020-03-06). "Fire from the Sky" (Press release). University of California, Santa Barbara. Archived from the original on 2021-07-06. Retrieved 2021-08-07.
  15. Ogden, Leslie Evans (April 1, 2018). "Hot Theory About Cool Event". Natural History. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  16. Boslough, Mark (2022). "Sodom Meteor Strike Claims Should Be Taken with a Pillar of Salt" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer. 46 (1): 10–14.
  17. Marcus, Adam (1 October 2021). "Criticism engulfs paper claiming an asteroid destroyed Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah". Retraction Watch. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  18. Bik, Elisabeth (2 October 2021). "Blast in the Past: Image concerns in paper about comet that might have destroyed Tall el-Hammam". Science Integrity Digest. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
  19. Bunch, Ted E.; LeCompte, Malcolm A.; Adedeji, A. Victor; Wittke, James H.; Burleigh, T. David; Hermes, Robert E.; Mooney, Charles; Batchelor, Dale; et al. (22 February 2022). "Author Correction: A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea" (PDF). Scientific Reports. 12 (1): 3265. doi:10.1038/S41598-022-06266-9. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 8864031. PMID 35194042. Wikidata Q111021706.
  20. Bunch, Ted E.; Lecompte, Malcolm A.; Adedeji, A. Victor; Wittke, James H.; Burleigh, T. David; Hermes, Robert E.; Mooney, Charles; Batchelor, Dale; Wolbach, Wendy S.; Kathan, Joel; Kletetschka, Gunther; Patterson, Mark C. L.; Swindel, Edward C.; Witwer, Timothy; Howard, George A.; Mitra, Siddhartha; Moore, Christopher R.; Langworthy, Kurt; Kennett, James P.; West, Allen; Silvia, Phillip J. (September 2021). "A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea". Scientific Reports. 11 (1): 18632. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-97778-3. PMC 8452666. PMID 34545151. Retrieved 9 August 2022.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  21. Tankersley, Kenneth Barnett (2022). "The Hopewell airburst event, 1699–1567 years ago (252–383 CE)". Scientific Reports. 12 (1706).
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