Oct 21 2008
That is so not a brain!
I learned of this bit of creationist pseudoscience through Pharyngula, and since it deals with an alleged human brain I had to comment. Larry and Debbie Skelf believe (apparently) that they have a petrified human brain. In a press release they state:
The bizarre rock, owned by Larry and Debbie Skelf, was just a sentimental token until about two years ago when research began on it.
“It was given to my mother, Eddie Mae Hodge, by uncle Luther Hodge, in Tullahoma Tennessee, forty years ago. Since mom passed away in 1986, I just called it my pretty brain rock. Since then, we often used it as part of different ornamentations” Debbie states.The rock, now certified to be a petrified human brain, is no longer a table ornament. It has been examined by many leading U.S. scientists, including acclaimed Neuro Anatomy
Professor Dr. Suzanne Vincent, Oral Roberts University.
Where to begin? Go to their dedicated website, and you will find a classic example of not just pseudoscience, but what Richard Feynman calls “cargo cult science.” The term “cargo cult” refers generally to the phenomenon of a native pre-technological tribe or community coming into contact with a non-native technological society, and then using rituals and magical thinking to control the cargo spirits or gods.
This derives originally from the people of New Guinea who observed planes dropping supply cargo during World War II. They were later found to have built control towers and runways out of bamboo and grass, hoping to summon the sky spirits to drop their magical cargo.
The bamboo mock ups of a landing strip has the same relationship to actual aviation as creationism has to genuine science. It has the outward superficial form, but lacks the actual mechanics or any understanding of how it works. While reading the petrified human brain website you have the distinct impression that these people are as likely (or less likely) to do real science as the New Guinea natives were to summon cargo planes to drop them cargo.
You have the love the jargon they throw around – clearly designed to obfuscate and impress, rather than inform. For example:
No data available for purpose of disclosure at this time.
Entire specimen mineral, not rock, bio chemical sedimentary propagated by chemical sediments resulting from the precipitation of ions in water , forming silicate crystals. This was further precipitated by the action of an organ of a formerly living creature. Typical lithification fossilization process.
The first line refers to the fact that they have no idea where the rock came from. If it were a petrified human brain it would be reasonable to expect that it was associated with a human skull, or at least some other human remains. We would also like to date the strata, see if it was geologically undisturbed, what other fossil animals it contains – you know, all that sciency stuff.
A “fossil” that was kept as a memento for forty years without any idea of where it came from is of dubious scientific value, even if it is a real fossil.
The second sentence is just geological babble, probably lifted without comprehension from a website or textbook. No evidence is offered to justify the mineral classification of the specimen. Also, the analysis contains the conclusion (again, without any justification or evidence) that it is a “typical” lithification process from living tissue. Yet, the site also states that “Fact is, nobody knows for sure how any natural fossil was created.” – so then what is a “typical lithification process” if nobody knows?
The site then descends from the ridiculous to the bizarre. I don’t want to reproduce the pictures without permission, so just visit the site (first link above) and look at the picture in the upper right corner of the page. That, it is claimed, is a scan through the middle of the specimen. The claim is made that this has a remarkable similarity to a human brain with “all the parts in the right place.” Compare that to the CT scan of an actual human brain below – it looks nothing like a human brain. There are no sulci or gyri, there are no ventricles, there are no midline structures – there is nothing that can be clearly related to a specific piece of brain anatomy.
I guess the holes in middle left of the piece (in the shape of a frown) they would claim are the occipital horns of the lateral ventricles (fluid filled spaces inside the brain), but their shape is all wrong, and these holes exist entirely in the left “hemisphere” of this rock, rather than symetrically in both hemispheres. The two halves of the rock themselves are very asymetrical.
Look at the outside of the rock here. This is just a lumpy rock that happens to have a cleavage roughly down the middle, without anything that resembles a brain. The human brain doesn’t just have squiggles (gyri), it has a very specific pattern of gyri that can be identified and named and are organized into different lobes. No real anatomy is apparent.
Farther down they label parts of a section through the spinal cord – but they are just hallucinating, as surely as Percival Lowell hallucinated canals on Mars. It’s truly laughable.
I would say that they should have had some real scientists take a look at the rock before embarrassing themselves with a website, but apparently they did. Unfortunately, they chose a bunch of creationists who were blinded by their enthusiasm. Dr. Shipley is quoted as saying:
“More anatomy, I spent several years in medicine before obtaining my Doctorate in Theology. When I reviewed the x-rays of the rock and different brains, I chose incorrectly which was which!”
Well, Dr. Shipley, then you are an idiot.
But Skelf, who obviously hand-picked his “experts” to give a predetermined opinion, now declares that his rock is “confirmed” as a fossilized brain. He challenges:
Unless they can disprove these medical experts, then they must rely on them biologically and on petrology as to the viability of the correct minerology for this to be a fossil.
No, I don’t have to rely upon your panel of biased incompetents. The rock shows no specific anatomical features of a brain, nor any features that would confirm it is a fossil of any kind. It’s a rock.
What’s the point of all this? Here’s a clue:
Fact is, nobody knows for sure how any natural fossil was created.
Nobody knows for sure how long it takes.
Nobody has ever witnessed it.
We can only confirm or deny on sheer speculation.
You also have to love this:
Since the largest part of geology is theory which by definition is
unprovable and not disprovable, the theories of how this, or
coprolites, came into being are also not provable or disprovable.
Really – by definition theories are not disprovable? Actually, by definition a scientific theory must be disprovable, it must be something upon which evidence and reason can act. Clearly Skelf thinks that science is all about “sheer speculation” – and that no one really knows how fossils form, therefore all those fossils scientists keep digging up could be from a young Earth.
The entire purpose of this fossil brain charade is to attempt to drag real paleontology down to speculation and unfalsifiable “theory.” Therefore, this half-baked nonsense about a human brain fossil is just as good as anything the scientists have to say.
Skelf and his phony experts are attempting to build a bamboo runway and tower of pseudoscience, and then use them to wave the cargo planes of science over to their primitive island. Or at least they wish to distract the planes off course so that the public will not get their cargo.
34 Responses to “That is so not a brain!”
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Yahrens ago I think this guy was a user of the SGU message board. I remember him claiming his rock was a brain and a couple SGU users showed him photos of similar rocks know to be… you know… rocks.
I find this entire thing laughable. I’m a student in psychology and i really have to look HARD to see any resemblance to a brain
The funny thing is that an actual fossil coprolithe could resemble a brain, to a gullible fool.
Dr Novella, if you, an expert in human brains, says it is not a petrified human brain, that leaves only one explanation.
IT MUST BE A PETRIFIED ALIEN BRAIN!
Seriouly, I think they are just trying to hype it up so they can sell it on ebay.
Actually come to think about it, I recently saw a documentary on alien brains made out of quartz crystal. Harrison Ford did quite a good job portraying one of the scientists who studied them.
Oh yeah, just so happens a Minister found the missing link that proves creation “science.” I’ll buy that when God appears in the chair next to me and says, “Justin, it’s true.” And even then I will ask for some proof.
That’s no brain, it’s a space station!
I don’t know much about anatomy, especially of the brain, so I’m definitely going to take Steve’s word on this. Even I, though, was pretty flabbergasted that anyone could think that rock is a brain.
And Karl, best comment ever. Diet Coke literally came out my nose when I read that one.
Just when you’re having a boring day @ work, being crushed by the grindstone of monotony, you can check in with Neurologica and find a piece of Grade A Loony-Woo-Woo like that site. That is so awesomely funny, it made my day !
for some folks who are radically uncertain about how fossils are made they sure seem pretty impressed by the, um, “fossil”….
A creationist has a brain made of rock…
yup, sounds about right.
I have some coprolite on my desk and it sure does not have its original odor. Part of it does look something like a small animal brain. Maybe they found someone who actually has s–t for brains.
How weak one’s faith must be to rely on such nonsense.
Particularly galling among many galling photos on the initial page’s photo montage was the one where the caption informs us a grandfather is using the artifact to teach his grandson about brain anatomy. Yikes.
Perhaps some prehistoric creationist had his head so far up a wooly mammoth’s ass it became indistinguishable from the wooly mammoth’s scat.
I guess the grandfather could fashion the artifact into a cutting tool for cutting up real brains.
The brain is often described as having the consistency of jelly (I think in the US that is Jell-O?) so it must be incredibly rare for it to fosillise – has one ever been found?
I know that endocasts of brains are occasionally found but they are just casts of the insides of skulls.
The ‘experts’ purporting to identify this as a fossilised brain would make great subjects for endocasts as they obviously have empty skulls to start with!!
It’s a bit like Pye’s alien skull. He goes from doctor to doctor, each telling him it’s a birth defect, until he finds one who tells him what he wants to hear.
A scientific hypothesis that is not falsifiable-
abiogenesis
another-
causal closure of the physical
Do you want to admit that neither of hypothesis actually fit with the experimental evidence? Are you aware that neither does?
Are you aware that neither of these hypothesis is in agreement with the experimental evidence?
Why are they considered scientific?
Here’s a quote from James Clerk Maxwell-
“I believe, with the Westminster Divines and their predecessors ad Infinitum that “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”"
Do you want to throw out his work now?
Questions-
Have any of you seen the scans, tested the rock, determined that it is not possible for a brain to be fossilized, checked the work of these people?
You think you can determine the truth of a statement after seeing a fairly low res. JPEG over the web?
If they weren’t religious would you be in such a hurry to degrade their intelligence and education?
Just because someone is religious (or claims to be) is not a reason to disbelieve their ability to do good science. The claims about a fossil cannot be adjudicated by looking at a photo over the web.
Where are your standards for evidence? Why do you allow the fact that someone has a religious faith to get in the way of a dispassionate evaluation of the claims they are making?
Sonic,
Thanks for the logical fallacies.
I disagree that either abiogenesis or physical causal closure is incompatible with existing evidence – although is is hugely off topic and a non sequitur.
Noone is saying that someone’s scientific argument is wrong because they are religious – that is a straw man. My criticism of this website and the claims it makes was based upon its content alone.
The pictures provided on the website are more than sufficient to conclude that this rock is not a fossilized brain. The proponents show close up pictures of parts of the rock and label them as parts of neuroanatomy – while what they are labeling has no resemblance to actual neuroanatomy.
Further, the style of presentation and the arguments presented are laughably pseudoscientific – regardless of who wrote it and why.
It is worth noting that published scientific papers present pictures and graphics as evidence all the time. They should be presented in a fashion that a knowledgeable reader can evaluate them. Heck – I have had worse quality pictures than those on my medical exams and had to identify them.
Another example of this phenomenon. Better web design though.
http://www.seazoria.com
Sorry, I don’t know how to do hyperlinks on this site.
I love nothing more than watching people try to argue with Dr. Novella.
Steven-
I quote you-
“Really – by definition theories are not disprovable? Actually, by definition a scientific theory must be disprovable, it must be something upon which evidence and reason can act.”
I point out that abiogenesis is not falsifiable (perhaps I should say disprovable). Please tell me how it could be falsified(disproved).
I point out that it does not agree with the current experimental evidence- that is that all existing cells come from pre-existing cells. (That’s basic biology from around 1870, no experiment has shown otherwise despite decades of attempts. I would say the evidence from the experiment is still sound. What evidence would you present that life comes from something other than existing cells?)
I don’t think I’ve said anything controversial here.
I’m sorry if I seem to have doubts about the current unfalsifiable hypothesis in science. I admit freely that I have these doubts. Skeptical might be the word.
I can appreciate that you find the work of these people laughable. I don’t see any reason to believe they have a brain fossil, but I wouldn’t mind if they got other conformation. I’m certainly not against the idea they have something of an actual discovery. I applaud discovery. I understand people often make fools of themselves on the way to discovery. That probably is the case here.
But I don’t think we need to lower our standards of evidence just because somebody is a believer in a particular religon. I doubt that you would have the same reaction to seeing a picture of a fossil if the people were not associated with a religion.
Perhaps I’m wrong about that and I appologize if I have stated something untrue.
haha. That Seazoria site is amazing.
The first thing I thought of when I saw it was “Cargo Cult Science”
The guy is definitely a nut case with too much time on his hands.
Sonic,
I quote you-
“But I don’t think we need to lower our standards of evidence just because somebody is a believer in a particular religon. I doubt that you would have the same reaction to seeing a picture of a fossil if the people were not associated with a religion.”
How did Novella or anyone on here lower standards of evidence? Standards of evidence seem to always remain high here at Neurologica, yet you claim standards are lowered because, in this instance, religion is associated. I think you are way off base.
News flash – this blog isn’t dedicated to bashing religion. I’m sure plenty of religious or non-atheist peoples, who also enjoy science & learning, come here to read up on what is and isn’t qualifying as science these days. Don’t you see? Novella doesn’t cross over into religious topics in order to denigrate – in fact HE doesn’t cross over into religion AT ALL, per se. Religion IS drawn out and quartered, however, when it is apparent that it’s the sole impetus behind a “scientific” movement. Which is certainly the case here, no?
The commentary provided wasn’t of a religious nature at all, it was concerned only with the bad science of creationists(who are the ones guilty of dragging religion into everything) and debunking their idea about this funny looking rock and its supposed implications.
Further yet, you close “Perhaps I’m wrong about that and I appologize if I have stated something untrue.”
I see this all the time here. Someone doesn’t like the science presented here, or they think we are closed minded god-haters, so they fire off a fallacious response in haste and Novella summarily dismisses it with logic & science. Then you secure yourself a nice trap door exit by making your(off base) point one more time and proposing that you might be wrong. Well, yes you are wrong.
Sonic wrote: “I point out that abiogenesis is not falsifiable (perhaps I should say disprovable). Please tell me how it could be falsified(disproved).
I point out that it does not agree with the current experimental evidence- that is that all existing cells come from pre-existing cells. (That’s basic biology from around 1870, no experiment has shown otherwise despite decades of attempts. I would say the evidence from the experiment is still sound. What evidence would you present that life comes from something other than existing cells?)”
This is a scientifically absurd premise. That is like saying that because the earth has been orbiting the sun for as long as it has been observed, it must have always orbited the sun and therefore had no beginning.
First, falsifiability applies to scientific theories, not basic observations. That life exists today is a basic observation, not something that has to be falsifiable. If we combine this with the findings of astronomy (which are themselves falsifiable) that the earth formed 4.5 billion years ago (and certainly was not around, say, 10 billion years ago) then it stands to reason that life on earth did not exist at some point in the past.
So looking at all the findings of science (and not some absurdly narrow slice of it) we can conclude that life began on earth at some point in the past after the earth formed. There are several theories as to how this occurred. One theory is that life was seeded from space. This is plausible, but only removes the problem one step, for that life must have formed elsewhere.
Another theory is that life arose through self-organization of organic molecules. Right now this is the best contender. Preliminary research shows that this is plausible – the raw materials were there, there are several candidates for conditions or templates that could have kick started the process, and energy was available. There is no science that says self-organization is not possible. Such theories are falsifiable in principle, but challenging because we are talking about microscopic processes that happened in the distant past. Also we are talking about processes that likely happened on a scale of millions of years.
We therefore may never be able to reconstruct exactly how life arose on earth (perhaps we may catch it in the act on other planets, and this will give us our best info, but that is for the distant future). But that is entirely different than determining that it did arise.
It is a god-of-the-gaps logical fallacy (and out of the bounds of science) to say that because we do not currently know how life arose, it was magic. And it is simply not true to say that it does not agree with current evidence.
There are some experiments that would falsify the abiogenesis hypothesis. If it was not possible to form certain molecules abiogenically that would be a very serious blow to the hypothesis. If there were many hundreds of key metabolites that could not be formed abiogenically, the hypothesis of abiogenesis would be untenable.
So far, just about every key building block and metabolite can be synthesized abiogenically, including amino acids, nucleotides, sugars, lipids, organic acids, even porphyrins. Polypeptides can form spontaneously from amino acids through dehydration.
Judging from how a few simple experiments have produced these key building blocks and metabolites in abundance, it is extremely likely that they were present in abundance in some places on Earth before there was an oxygen atmosphere and before there was abundant life to consume them.
Steven,
Can we agree that, “Either abiogenesis is true or life arose by magic,” might be a false dilemma?
pious fraud
I was specific. I thought determining the validity of a fossil find by seeing a picture over the web was a lower standard of evidence than would be generally accepted here. I realize that they make other claims at their website. I think that the validity of this find can be adjudicated using the usual slow and careful methods of science. That would include many of the things they claim to have done. It would include other people checking their work. This is how such claims are usually dealt with. Am I really wrong about that?
Sonic,
It depends upon how you define abiogenesis and magic. The way I see it, either life was brought to earth from elsewhere, or it spontaneously formed on the earth through natural processes. I would include under the umbrella of being brought to the earth things like advanced aliens making life on earth – anything that just means we then have to explain where that life came from and only pushes the problem to a previous step.
Anything that involves life arising from a non-natural process or agent can loosely be defined as “magic”, and that is exactly how I intended it.
Is it your position that:
1) life always existed
or
2) life arose through a natural process that would not be considered abiogenesis?
If it is, then those would be additional categories. Please clarify.
Regarding the standard of evidence, I can tell from a low res picture of an elephant on the internet that it is not a giraffe, and then someone could uncharitably complain “is that the proper scientific method for species identification?”
I am not making any positive claims for that alleged fossil. I am claiming that it is not a human brain, and I think the pictures are more than sufficient for any unbiased and competent neuroscientist to make such a determination.
I am also saying that the claims the proponents are making for it are not supported by, and are in fact contradicted by, the evidence they present.
Sonic,
Surely if you are, as I am, a person of faith (albeit an idiosyncratic one) you must be hideously embarrassed by claims that those whackos and their rock ‘brain’ are anything to do with serious science, or for that matter, serious religion. I believe St Augustine wrote that religious people should not follow blindly their faith into positions where men of learning would find them ridiculous. As Dr Novella says, that thing is so not a brain..
I wanna seazoria T-shirt from hallettensonian institute
To be more precise, Dr Novella said it was not a human brain. I think he left open the possibility that it is a brain from an organism that he has no experience with. Perhaps a silicon based life-form.
I think we can agree that pictures over the internet would be insufficient to confirm that it is the brain of a silicon based life-form. That would be a much more exciting discovery than a fossilized human brain.
Steven-
I get your point about the picture of the fossil. I really do think that you use excellent judgement, in general, and I stand corrected about this specific case. (I was willing to have more experts investigate the object first-hand before writing it off. Perhaps I am being too conservative.)
I am suggesting that life may have arose by means that we are currently unaware of, or by means that we might not think of as ‘natural’ now, but may be found to be later.
The situation that I find myself in is this: I know from physics that recent experimental evidence concludes:
“We believe that our results lend strong support to the view that any future extension of quantum theory that is in agreement with experiments must abandon certain features of realistic descriptions.”
In the paper ‘An experimental test of non-local realism’ (Nature, April 2007), Gröblacher et al.
What that means to me is that our thinking and philosophies over the 1000′s of years are not working well.
Afterall, the physicist, talking about our most fundamental and tested and proven to be correct science, has concluded that “Reality isn’t real.” (No ‘realistic description’)
From Feynman “Six Easy Pieces”
“Philosophers, incidentally, say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.”
So you can see why I don’t think much of a philosophical or logical objection to experimental outcomes. We know our philosophy and logic have not been true enough to produce a concept that allows the physicist to form a realistic description of the universe we currently inhabit.
I am very interested in your work as a doctor. I am fascinated with the discoveries that are being made about the brain.
But I object to calling philosophy science and tying science to any philosophy.
If science has to agree with a philosophy, then what are we going to call the subject that agrees with the facts.
Have I come to the wrong blog???
wertys-
I’m not sure what faith that would be. Certainly not a faith that has a name I am aware of.
Interestingly enough, if you look at the second comparison (the side by side rock/CT scan) the way they line the two pictures up, covering half of the rock, it makes it look at least a little plausible, in so far as the “lateral horns” on the rock look more evenly spaced. Sneaky. But maybe my brain is just finding patterns in randomness, like the clouds.
All of it way too funny. Just proves you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet – simply because, you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Although, anyone with the balls to publish dedicated web pages (more than one even) to the hallucination that a family’s beloved pet rock is really a pet-rified brain probably should be rewarded – with what I’m not sure, maybe the Doesn’t-Get-It award.
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