Nighttrain responds to me:
quote:
Gulp, Rrhain, if the case is dropped, will this mean that the ossuary is really, really the resting place of James?
Personally? I don't think questions of archaeological authenticity are answered in court. I think they are answered by archaeological scrutiny. That's how all the various hoaxes have ever been discovered.
Why did it take Piltdown man so long to be shown to be a fraud? Because it wasn't allowed to be examined. The only way to find hoaxes and uncover frauds is to open up the results to review.
Look what happened with "cold fusion." Lots of claims, but the plans for the apparatus were held back, kept only partial, etc., etc. As a result, nobody could ever reproduce the results and, sure enough, it was fraud.
The hoax from China regarding early bird fossils was found to be a hoax because the evidence was opened up to scrutiny.
Note, not legal scrutiny but scientific scrutiny. Courts are not designed to find scientific results for they aren't equipped to do so. When the judge goes back to consider the case or the jury goes out to deliberate, it isn't like they're going to be performing their own tests upon things. Instead, they request "expert opinion" to inform them and make a judgement based upon how good they think those opinions are.
Edited by Rrhain, : Trying to get back to topic
Rrhain
Thank you for your submission to
Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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