The conspiracy theories started flying just days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Over the decade since, several technically elaborate claims have been refined by the “9/11 Truth” movement. Do these intricate arguments—including the rapid collapses of the towers, alleged evidence of thermite usage at Ground Zero, and the collapse of World Trade Center (WTC) 7 (a forty-seven-story building damaged by the fall of WTC 1) “into its own footprint at freefall acceleration”—disprove the mainstream consensus that the September 11, 2001, attacks were the work of al-Qaeda terrorists using hijacked airplanes? In a word: No.

The Players

Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, the creators of the low-budget documentary film Loose Change, did much to give the 9/11 Truth movement significant momentum in 2005 and in following years. The film, which has undergone several revisions, has been shown on many television stations but is primarily an Internet and DVD phenomenon. Its basic claims are that Flight 77 could not have accounted for the damage at the Pentagon, that the Twin Tower fires were insufficient to cause their collapse, and that cell phone calls from the hijacked airplanes would have been impossible at the time (Avery 2009).

David Ray Griffin is a theologian whose voluminous writings on 9/11 are frequently cited by other 9/11 theorists. NASA scientist Ryan Mackey has written a very thorough critique of Griffin’s claims (Mackey 2008).

Once known as Fleischmann and Pons’s competitor for “cold fusion” research in Utah, Steven Jones has written several 9/11 Truth articles. His work with others (including chemist Niels Harrit of Denmark) on detecting nanothermite in WTC dust is frequently cited as “peer-reviewed research” that proves “inside job” claims.

Physics teacher David Chandler has produced several papers and Internet videos contending that high school physics easily shows that the tower collapses could not have happened from gravity alone. He claims this proves that explosives must have been used.

In the past few years, architect Richard Gage’s group, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911 Truth), has provided “Truthers” with the ability to claim that thousands of engineering and architecture professionals demand a new investigation into the cause of the attacks. Gage travels the world giving presentations, and his group puts on news conferences and mock debates several times a year (but most often around September 11, the anniversary of the attack) (Thomas 2009; Thomas 2010c).

Hollywood stars who have publicly supported 9/11 Truth claims include Rosie O’Donnell, Charlie Sheen, and Ed Asner. Sheen often talks 9/11 with radio host Alex Jones (www.infowars.com). These celebrities frequently cite (and sometimes mangle) claims made by Truther proponents like Griffin and Gage. Former wrestler and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura has done two 9/11 conspiracy shows on his TruTV series Conspiracy Theory (see “Dave Thomas vs. Jesse Ventura: The Skeptical Smackdown”).

The Claims

As with any well-developed pseudoscience, literally thousands of individual arguments can be advanced in support of the proposition that the United States secretly carried out the September 11 attacks. This report will examine the most enduring and oft cited of these claims: “free fall” of the towers, reports of thermite and molten steel, and WTC 7’s curious collapse. Some of the factions that have developed (such as the “no-planers”) will also be described briefly.

Claim One:
“The Twin Towers collapsed at free-fall accelerations through the path of greatest resistance.”

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of September 11 was the rapid destruction of both 110-story Twin Towers: after the collapses began due to cascading structural failures at the airplane impact locations, each tower fell completely in just fifteen to twenty seconds. Mainstream scientific analyses, including years of work by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), generally looked at the cause of each collapse: the intense fires (started by jet fuel and fed by office contents and high winds) eventually caused floor trusses to sag, pulling the perimeter walls inward until they finally snapped. At this instant, the entire upper section of each tower fell the height of one floor, initiating an inevitable, progressive, and utterly catastrophic collapse of each of the structures.

While the mainstream explanation (dismissed as the “official story” by 9/11 Truthers) usually ends with the initiation of these unstoppable collapses, the 9/11 Truth movement’s attacks begin there. Gage of AE911 Truth says on that group’s website, “Destruction [of the Twin Towers] proceeds through the path of greatest resistance at nearly free-fall acceleration” (Gage 2011; emphasis added). Many 9/11 Truther pundits drop the “nearly” and say simply that the collapses were at free fall. Truthers then insist that free fall acceleration indicates a complete lack of resistance, proving that the structures were demolished with explosives. We are also told that the sheer mass of the towers, “80,000 tons of structural steel,” would simply resist collapse.

View full-size chart.

How could the buildings fall so quickly? It’s been explained very well in the technical literature by Northwestern’s Zdenek Bazant, PhD, and others (see, for example, Bazant 2008). I’ve developed a simpler physics model of the progressive collapses that agrees quite well with the main points of Bazant’s more rigorous results (Thomas 2010b). Here are some of my findings:

• Each floor of the towers contained over two million kilograms of mass. The gravitational potential energy of a standing tower with twelve-foot floors extending upward 110 stories can be calculated straightforwardly; it comes to over 420 billion joules of energy, or the equivalent of 100 tons of TNT per tower. This energy, which was released completely during the collapses, is more than the energy of some of the smaller nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal, such as the W-48 (72 tons TNT) (Sublette 2006). This is where the energy required to break columns, pulverize concrete, and expel debris through windows came from. (Truthers often compare such expulsions of air and debris, visible several floors below the collapse fronts, to “squibs,” explosive devices often used in demolitions. However, they are readily explained by pressure changes as the towers, acting like a gigantic bicycle pump being compressed, collapsed.)
• The Twin Towers used a “tube within a tube” architectural design, which provided considerable open office space in the interiors of the Towers. Much of the structural support was provided by a dense grouping of thick central core columns in the interior and the perimeter walls on the outside. When the towers began to collapse, large parts of the inner cores (called “the Spires” in 9/11 Truth circles) were actually left standing, briefly, before they, too, toppled over. The perimeter walls were largely forced to peel outward in large sections, producing the iconic images of Ground Zero with which we’re all familiar. Between the outer perimeter and the inner core, the weight of the upper sections plowed through one floor after another, breaking the floor connection brackets and support columns, pulverizing concrete decks, and gaining momentum and mass with each additional floor failure. Had the buildings been constructed differently (the Port Authority was allowed to circumvent some existing New York buildings requirements for the Towers), the collapses might not have even happened (Young 2007).
• Even the 9/11 Truth movement’s most eminent physicists are confused about the basic principle of the difference between static and dynamic forces. A piece of paper, taped across a jar’s opening, will support a heavy coin such as a quarter indefinitely (static load). However, if the coin is dropped from just a few inches up, it will tear right through the paper (dynamic load). Given the information at hand—for example, the mass of the upper section of the north tower (fifty-eight million kilograms), the distance it fell (3.8 meters, about twelve feet), and the stiffness/rigidity of the lower structure itself, the dynamic force imparted on the lower section can be estimated as some thirty times the upper portion’s weight. This is many times the lower structure’s safety margin, which explains why it was quickly overwhelmed.
• Once progressive collapse began, there were decreasing time intervals of free fall (between floors), punctuated by very brief, incredibly violent collisions—decelerations—of the upper mass, for each floor in turn. There was resistance at every step of the collapse, as the upper section collided with and incorporated each floor below. Conservation of momentum shows that the reductions in falling speed were slight as each floor was impacted, going as the ratio of floors before to floors after (e.g. 14/15, or about 94 percent, for the first impact). Accordingly, the upper section fell from rest to about 19 mph, was slowed down to 18 mph by the first impact, continued to fall until a speed of 26 mph was reached, was then slowed down to 24 mph by another impact, and so on. While the first plunge lasted about nine-tenths of a second, the upper section took only four-tenths of a second to fall through the next floor, three-tenths of a second for the next one, and so on until the bottom floors, which were crushed at a rate of just seven-hundredths of a second each, at speeds of over 100 mph. Yes, there was resistance at every step, as many tons of structural steel was demolished; yet the entire process, like an avalanche, lasted only fifteen to twenty seconds, about 50 to 100 percent longer than true “free fall” would have lasted.
• Physics teacher David Chandler’s measurements of the first seconds of the collapse of the North Tower (WTC 1) showed that it fell with increasing speed but at only two-thirds of gravitational acceleration (g) (Chandler 2010). Chandler argues that this means the bottom section exerted a constant upward force of one-third of the upper section’s weight upon its mass, and he declares that this force should have been much larger, indicating that “some sort of controlled demolition was at work.”
• Second, Chandler argues that being a Newtonian action/reaction pair, the impact force of the upper section on the lower section was only a third of the upper part’s weight. However, I’ve found that his estimate of the downward impact force was too low by a factor of one hundred. In addition, I found that the actual process—a series of twelve-foot free falls punctuated by violent and brief collisions with each floor—would have resulted in an average acceleration of precisely what Chandler measured for the start of the collapse of WTC 1, namely 2/3 g. (By the end of the collapse, my calculations indicate an average acceleration of only 1/3 g, but this can’t be measured in dust-obscured videos.)

Claim Two:
“Nano-thermite and military-grade explosives were found in dust from the towers. Tons of melted steel were found in tower debris.”

The thermite reaction is very hot, but it is also very slow compared to high explosives.

Real controlled demolitions commonly use explosives to topple large buildings. However, the hallmarks of actual demolitions (the characteristic “boom-boom-boom-boom” sounds and the flashes of high explosives) were completely absent in Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001. Many 9/11 Truth advocates, including architect Richard Gage, insist that high explosives must have been used to bring down the Twin Towers, as they say this is the only process that can possibly explain the “ejection of debris hundreds of feet from the towers.” However, they simultaneously insist that thermite or a derivative (thermate, nanothermite, etc.) was used instead, so as to topple the towers quietly. (This is but one of many instances in which 9/11 Truth claims flatly contradict each other.) Thermite itself fails as an explanation for the destruction of the Towers on many levels:

• The thermite reaction, which takes place between iron oxide (rust) and powdered aluminum, is practical for welding train tracks in the field and for destroying engines of vehicles that must be left behind during combat operations. The self-sustaining reaction, once initiated with heat, produces significant volumes of molten iron, which can melt and cut iron structures beneath it. For thermite to melt through a normally vertical steel beam, however, special high-temperature containment must be added to prevent the molten iron from simply dropping straight down uselessly. The thermite reaction is very hot, but it is also very slow compared to high explosives. Thermite is simply not practical for carrying out a controlled demolition, and there is no documentation of it ever having been used for that purpose.
• Jesse Ventura hired New Mexico Tech to show how nanothermite can slice through a large steel beam. The experiment was a total failure—even in the optimum (horizontal) configuration, the layer of nanothermite produced lots of flame and smoke but no actual damage to the massive I-beam tested. However, Ventura’s TruTV Conspiracy Theory show slyly passed it off as a rousing success (Thomas 2010a).
• Niels Harrit and Steven Jones, along with several coauthors, published the “peer-reviewed” paper “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” in the Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal (Harrit 2009). This article does not make the case for thermite use on 9/11. The paper examined “distinctive red/gray chips” found in WTC dust (unfortunately, with no chain of custody for the dust), and these were claimed to be thermitic because of their composition (iron oxides and pure aluminum) and other chemical properties. However, the presence of rust and aluminum does not prove the use of thermite, because iron oxide and aluminum are found in many common items that existed in the towers. Furthermore, the authors admit that their “differential scanning calorimeter” measurements of the supposed thermitic material showed results at about 450 degrees C below the temperature at which normal thermite reacts (Fana 2006). Finally, the scan of the red side of the “thermitic material” of Harrit/Jones is a dead-on match to material Jones himself identified as “WTC Steel Primer Paint” in his Hard Evidence Down Under Tour in November of 2009 (“Sunstealer” 2011).
• Harrit’s article describes the red portion of the chips as “unreacted thermitic material.” But while thermite may be slow, it does not stop its reaction once it has begun. Because thermite supplies its own oxygen (via iron oxides), it can even burn underwater. Suggesting that the samples show partially reacted thermite is preposterous. Claiming that thermite would explain molten pools of steel weeks and months after the attack is equally preposterous.
• The article’s publication process was so politicized and bizarre that the editor-in-chief of the Bentham journal that featured Jones’s article, Marie-Paule Pileni, resigned in protest (Hoffman 2009).
• Thermitic demolition should have created copious pools of melted steel at Ground Zero, but nothing remotely like this was ever found. Truthers say iron microspheres found in the rubble indicate thermite; since hot fires and spot-welding do produce very tiny spheres of iron, though, these “microspheres” are not unexpected. Pictures of cranes holding red-hot materials in the rubble are said to show molten steel. Had this been the case, however, the crane rigs would have immediately seized up (Blanchard 2006). No reports of “molten steel” in the tower basements have ever been credibly verified (Roberts 2008). Some Truthers claim that a few pieces of sulfidized “eutectic” steel found in the towers proves thermate (thermite with sulfur) usage, but this occurred because sulfur, released from burned drywall, corroded the steel as it stewed in the pile for weeks (Roberts 2008).

Claim Three:
“Tower 7, which wasn’t hit by a plane, collapsed neatly into its own footprint.”

Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

The enigma of WTC 7 is becoming increasingly popular in Truther circles. We’re told that it wasn’t hit by a plane and was subjected to just a few “small office fires.” Yet it collapsed anyway, late in the afternoon of September 11, “falling neatly into its own footprint at freefall acceleration, just like a normal controlled demolition.” In particular, Truthers point to a brief period of freefall (2.25 seconds) that was confirmed by NIST in its WTC 7 final report (Sunder 2008; NIST 2010) as proving that the building was purposely imploded. However, WTC 7, too, fails to prove 9/11 was an “inside job”:

• What is often conveniently left out of the story are actual reports from NYFD firefighters at the scene, which describe huge, raging, unfought fires on many floors at once and visible deformations and creaking of the building prior to its collapse (Roberts 2008). Tower 7 was not hit by an airplane; however, it was struck by a 110-story flaming skyscraper, the North Tower. The fires raged for hours, and they eventually caused a critical column (#79) to fail because of thermal expansion; NIST determined that this column was crucial to the building and could even be considered a design flaw. Its failure would have collapsed the building even without the other structural damage from WTC 1’s collapse and the fires.
• WTC 7’s brief 2.25 seconds of free fall is now the Truthers’ best “smoking gun.” The claim usually goes like this: “The fifty-eight perimeter columns would have resisted and slowed the collapse to much less than freefall. The ‘freefall’ of WTC 7, admitted to by NIST, proves it was controlled demolition.” The problem is that this is a straw man argument. NIST found the collapse occurred in three stages. The first stage, which lasted 1.75 seconds, is when the fifty-eight perimeter columns were buckled; during this interval, the rooftop actually fell only about seven feet. This is because the breaking of columns saps speed, indeed making the collapse slower than free fall. In the second stage, which lasted 2.25 seconds, the already-buckled columns provided negligible support, and the north face of the structure free-fell about eight stories. (Try taking a plastic drinking straw and buckling it by folding it over and then pushing down on the bent straw with your hand. The crimped straw provides almost no resistance to vertical forces, and neither did the buckled columns of WTC 7.) The third stage described by NIST, which lasted 1.4 seconds, was again less-than-free fall, as the structure fell another 130 feet as it impacted more non-buckled structures toward the bottom of the building (NIST 2010).
• The other half of the equation is that WTC 7 resembles a “classic controlled demolition” because it supposedly “imploded, collapsing completely, and landed in its own footprint” (Gage 2011). In actuality, it twisted and tilted over to one side as it fell, and parts of the building severely damaged two neighboring buildings (the Verizon and Fiterman Hall structures). When challenged with the obvious fact that Tower 7 spilled far outside its footprint, however, Truthers will often change their tune and start saying that any resemblance to a natural collapse is part of the cover-up.

Factions within 9/11 Truth

Early on, it was mainly MIHOP (“Made it happen on purpose”) versus LIHOP (“Let it happen on purpose”). Nowadays most serious Truthers down-pedal the “no-planers,” who say no plane hit the Pentagon or even the Towers. There is considerable friction between some groups, with certain 9/11 Truth groups attacking others as “disinformation agents.” However, 9/11 Truth is mostly a big tent. Many “serious” groups such as AE911 Truth quietly champion “no-planers” such as former pilot Dwain Deets, engineer Anders Bjorkman, and Craig Ranke of Citizen Investigation Team (CIT) (Gage 2011). Gage formally withdrew his support of CIT in February 2011, even as his website touted 9/11 articles in Foreign Policy Journal, an online publication notorious for its frequent forays into Holocaust denial.

Conclusion

As Ted Goertzel pointed out in his recent Skeptical Inquirer article “The Conspiracy Meme: Why Conspiracy Theories Appeal and Persist,” “When an alleged fact is debunked, the conspiracy meme often just replaces it with another fact” (Goertzel 2011). In another ten years, will the 9/11 Truth movement have developed new arguments, or will it stick with the polished claims discussed here? Either way, it appears this American conspiracy theory classic is here to stay.

References

Avery, Dylan. 2009. Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup. Distributed by Microcinema International. Released September 22.

Bazant, Dzenek, J. Le, F.R. Greening, and D.B. Benson. 2008. What did and did not cause collapse of World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York? Journal of Engineering Mechanics ASCE 13(10): 892–906. Available online at www.civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Papers/476%20WTC%20collapse.pdf.

Blanchard, Brent 2006. A critical analysis of the collapse of WTC Towers 1, 2, and 7 from an explosives and conventional demolitions viewpoint. Journal of Debunking 911 Conspiracy Theories 1(2). Available online at www.jod911.com/WTC%20COLLAPSE%20STUDY%20BBlanchard%208-8-06.pdf.

Chandler, David. 2010. Destruction of the World Trade Center North Tower and fundamental physics. Journal of 9/11 Studies 28 (February). Available online at www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2010/ChandlerDownwardAccelerationOfWTC1.pdf.

Fana, Run-Hua, Hong-Liang Lü, Kang-Ning Sun, et al. 2006. Kinetics of thermite reaction in Al-Fe2O3 system. Thermochimica Acta 440(2) (January 15): 129–31.

Gage, Richard. 2011. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Available online at www.ae911truth.org.

Goertzel, Ted. 2011. The conspiracy meme: Why conspiracy theories appeal and persist. Skeptical Inquirer 35(1) (January/February): 28–37.

Harrit, Niels H., Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, et al. 2009. Active thermitic material discovered in dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center catastrophe. Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal 2: 7–31. Available online at www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.pdf.

Hoffman, Thomas. 2009. Bentham editor resigns over Steven Jones’ paper. Danish Science News Service (April 28). Available online at http://videnskab.dk/content/dk/naturvidenskab/chefredaktor_skrider_efter_kontroversiel­_artikel_om_911. (Translation available online at http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2009/04/bentham-editor-resigns-over-steven.html.)

Mackey, Ryan. 2008. On debunking 9/11 debunking: Examining Dr. David Ray Griffin’s latest criticism of the NIST World Trade Center investigation. Journal of Debunking 911 Conspiracy Theories 1(4). Available online at www.jod911.com/drg_nist_review_2_1.pdf.

NIST. 2010. Questions and answers about the NIST WTC 7 investigation (updated September 17). Available online at www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.cfm.

Roberts, Mark. 2008. World Trade Center building 7 and the lies of the ‘9/11 Truth movement.’ Available online at http://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/introduction.

Sublette, Carey. 2006. Complete list of all U.S. nuclear weapons. Nuclear Weapon Archive Organization. Available online at http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html.

Sunder, Shyam, Richard G. Gann, William L. Grosshandler, et al. 2008. NIST Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7. Available online at http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf.

“Sunstealer.” 2011. The sad case of Niels Harrit. JREF forum. Available online at http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=6959549.

Thomas, Dave. 2009. How I debated a 9/11 Truther and survived. Skeptical Briefs 19(4) (December). Available online at www.csicop.org/sb/show/how_i_debated_a_9_11_truther_and_survived/.

———. 2010a: The video Jesse Ventura doesn’t want the world to see! NM Skeptic Blog (March 24). Available online at http://nmskeptic.blogspot.com/2010/03/video-jesse-ventura-doesnt-want-world.html.

———. 2010b. Institute of Theoretical and Experimental 9/11 Physics 9-11 ‘Truth’ resources. New Mexicans for Science and Reason (August). Available online at www.nmsr.org/nmsr911.htm.

———. 2010c. 9/11 truth: The Coast-to-Coast AM debate. Skeptical Briefs 20(4) (December).

Young, Jeffrey R. 2007. A Berkeley engineer searches for the truth about the Twin Towers’ collapse. Civil and Structural Engineers on WTC Collapse. Available online at http://911-engineers.blogspot.com/2007/06/berkeley-engineer-searches-for-truth.html.

9/11 Internet Resources

The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) Forum
http://forums.randi.org, 9/11 Conspiracy Theory area.
If you need every single 9/11 Truth claim sliced and diced a 
thousand ways, this is your site.

Mark Roberts (“Gravy”)
http://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies

Screw Loose Change blog

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com

AE911Truth.Info (Joseph Noble) 

“Answering the questions of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth”
http://ae911truth.info/wordpress/

9/11 Myths: Reading between the Lies
www.911myths.com/indexold.html

An Evolutionary Algorithm Beats Intelligent Design

How an intelligent design theorist was bested in a public math competition by a genetic algorithm—a computer simulation of evolution.

In the summer of 2006, a different kind of war was waged on the Internet—a war between computer programs written by both evolutionary scientists and by intelligent design (ID) advocates. The war came to a climax in a public math competition in which dozens of humans stepped forward to compete against each other and against genetic ("evolutionary") computer algorithms. The results were stunning: The official representative of the intelligent design community was outperformed by an evolutionary algorithm, thus learning Orgel's Second Law—"Evolution is smarter than you are"—the hard way. In addition, the same IDer's attempt to make a genetic algorithm that achieved a specific target without "specification" of that target was publicly exposed as

a rudimentary sham. And finally, two pillars of ID theory, "irreducible complexity" and "complex specified information" were shown not to be beyond the capabilities of evolution, contrary to official ID dogma.

Genetic Algorithms

"Genetic algorithms" (GAs) are computerized simulations of evolution. They are used to study evolutionary processes and solve difficult (and sometimes intractable) design or analysis problems. Several novel designs generated with genetic algorithms have been patented (Brainz.org 2008). Evolutionary algorithms are currently used in a variety of industries to get effective answers to very difficult problems, including problems whose brute-force solutions would require centuries, even on superfast computers. In contrast, GAs can often produce highly useful results for the same problems in just a few minutes.

The basic idea for a genetic algorithm is simple. You start with a randomly generated "herd" of possible solutions to a given difficult problem, where the general structure of any conceivable solution can be represented with a chunk of memory in a computer program. Treat the members of this herd as "organisms," and test every herd member's performance with a fitness function. While the fitness function can be written in terms of proximity to a distant known "target," it is more often just a straightforward calculation of some parameter of interest, such as the length or cost of some component or feature, or perhaps the gain of a wire antenna. Any candidate organism can have its fitness readily measured, and the performances of any number of candidates can be impartially compared. The fitness test is commonly used to help decide which organisms get to be "parents" for the next generation of organisms. Throwing in some mutations, and letting higher-fitness organisms breed for a few hundred generations, often leads to surprising (and sometimes even astonishing) results.

Creationists and intelligent design proponents vigorously deny the fact that genetic algorithms demonstrate how the evolution of novel and complex "designs" can happen. They claim that GAs cannot generate true novelty and that all such "answers" are surreptitiously introduced into the program via the algorithm's fitness testing functions. The support for this claim stems mainly from a few pages of a book Richard Dawkins wrote nearly twenty-five years ago.

Dawkins and the Weasel

Creationists have been fixated for decades on Richard Dawkins's "Weasel" simulation from his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker (Dawkins 1986). Unlike real genetic algorithms developed for industry or research, Dawkins's Weasel algorithm included a very precise description of the intended target. However, this precise specification was used only for a tutorial demonstration of the power of cumulative selection rather than for generation of true novelty. In the Dawkins example, the known target is the phrase from Hamlet, "Methinks it is like a weasel." The organisms are initially random strings of twenty-eight characters each. Every generation is tested, and the string that is closest to the target Weasel phrase is selected to seed the subsequent generation. The exact Shakespearean quote is obtained in just a few dozen generations. Despite Dawkins's explicit disclaimer that, in real life, evolution has no long-distance target, creationists of all varieties have latched on to "Weasel" as a convenient straw version of evolution that is easy to poke holes in.

The main ID theorist dealing with genetic algorithms is William Dembski, who stated the ID/creationist position as of September 2005 with these words:

And nevertheless, it remains the case that no genetic algorithm or evolutionary computation has designed a complex, multipart, functionally integrated, irreducibly complex system without stacking the deck by incorporating the very solution that was supposed to be attained from scratch (Dawkins 1986 and Schneider 2000 are among the worst offenders here). (Dembski 2005)

Stephen Meyer is a top gun in the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the Seattle-based center of ID pontification and promotion. In Meyer's "peer-reviewed" ID paper, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories," he states:

Genetic algorithms ... only succeed by the illicit expedient of providing the computer with a target sequence and then treating relatively greater proximity to future function (i.e., the target sequence), not actual present function, as a selection criterion. (Meyer 2004)

Both Dembski and Meyer cite Weasel in these statements and go on to claim that all GAs are similarly targeted. And that is the gist of the formal ID response to genetic algorithms: paint them all with the Weasel brush, and pretend they all need predefined targets to work.

Steiner's Problem

In 2001, as I was preparing a response to an upcoming talk by ID's Phillip Johnson at the University of New Mexico, I decided to address the Weasel problem. I set out to develop a genetic algorithm of my own for solving difficult math problems, without using any specified target. I wanted something visual yet simple—a sort of miniature digital playground on the very edge of complexity. I ended up choosing "Steiner's Problem": given a two-dimensional set of points, find the most compact network of straight-line segments that connects the points (Courant and Hilbert 1941).

In Steiner's problem, there can be variable "Steiner points" in addition to the fixed points that are to be connected. If there are four fixed points arranged in a rectangle, the Steiner solution consists of five segments connected in a bowtie shape; each of the points on the rectangle's corners connects to one of two Steiner points in the interior of the rectangle, and a fifth segment connects the two Steiner points (figure 1).

A Genetic Algorithm for Steiner's Problem

In my Steiner genetic algorithm, the organisms are represented by strings of letters and numbers—a kind of primitive "DNA." Two such DNA strands are shown in figure 2. The strands, when read by the transcription routine, supply three types of information about the network represented by each organism: the number of Steiner points, the numerical locations of these points, and a true/false connection map that dictates which points are to be connected by segments.

Steiner points can be placed anywhere in the region encompassing the fixed points; for these simulations, the region is a square with 999 units on a side. Length is measured in these units; for example, the length of the horizontal segment joining points (550,600) and (650,600) is 100 units.

Some representative networks for a six-point Steiner problem appear in figure 3. These are the "phenotypes" that correspond to the transcription of DNA (or the "genotype"). The fitness function used tests for two things: Are the fixed points all connected? What is the total length of all "expressed" segments? It's critical to emphasize that the fitness function need not have any descriptions of the actual Steiner solution for any given set of points. Fitness, here, is not based on any specific future function but only on present function. For example, the two organisms of figure 3 are clearly not the optimum Steiner solution for six fixed points (solid circles) in a rectangle. Yet, they can both easily be evaluated for current function. Here, the organism on the right is considerably shorter than the one on the left, and thus it has a better chance of having its "seed" continue on to the next generation. If an organism fails to connect all the given points, it is given a large "death" length of 100,000 units, making it extremely "unfit."

The Cyber Battles Begin

I posted a detailed discussion of this work on the Panda's Thumb blog on July 5, 2006. The point of that report was to demonstrate that genetic algorithms can solve difficult problems without knowing anything about the answer(s) in advance. I demonstrated that, while occasionally producing the correct (Steiner) solution, most of the time the algorithm converged on imperfect solutions. I called these "MacGyver" solutions, after the television hero who often found clever ways to get out of tough fixes. While the MacGyver solutions are clearly not the optimum Steiner shape, they get the job done efficiently and are often within one percent of the length of the formal Steiner solution itself. The GA operates by seeding the next generation with those organisms that are shorter in length in the current generation. This GA does not, as Meyer falsely claims, select for future function (a precise target) rather than for present function (here, the lengths of the digital creatures).

The ID community responded to my article by simply reiterating their claim that the solutions were secretly introduced via the fitness function. IDers are desperate to make Dawkins's Weasel the poster boy for all GAs, and they continue to paint all GAs as similarly "target-driven" or "front-loaded." Some ID theorists have tried to skirt the obvious lack of specific target description in the Steiner genetic algorithm by claiming that its virtual environment—the condition "shorter is better"—is really a description of the "precise target" itself. They say, "After all, you wanted shorter networks, and the Steiner solution is defined as the shortest network, so you are selecting for a specific target!"

This ID argument fails because the specific details of complex solutions are not explicitly imbedded in the overall design goals. To use an analogy, simply stating the objective "Build a vehicle that can carry men to the Moon and back" does not result in the spontaneous appearance of the complete plans for an Apollo spacecraft (with separate command, service, and lunar modules), along with a Saturn V launch vehicle.

The Collapse of the Pillars of ID Theory

One reason I chose Steiner's problem was that Steiner solutions possess "irreducible complexity" (IC) and also exhibit "complex specified information" (CSI), two features that intelligent design theorists claim are impossible via evolutionary processes. I contend that the results of the GA—both Steiners and MacGyvers—exhibit IC: if any segment is removed or rerouted, basic function of the system (here, connecting the fixed points) is lost completely. In addition, the Steiner solutions themselves are CSI, by virtue of their being complex (in the sense that the correct answer is rare enough to be improbable) and by virtue of their nature as specified information (as the formal solution to a given math problem).

ID proponents responded by claiming that the Steiner solutions discussed were "not really IC," even though these solutions obviously represent "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning," the very definition of IC from Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box (Behe 1996). Behe goes on to claim that IC structures are impossible in gradual evolution (improvement by slight, successive modifications to precursor systems) "because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional."

The general ID response to my article was that the Steiner solutions could not be IC because they were derived from ancestors that were longer but still functional. So, the very existence of functional precursors is now being used to redefine irreducible complexity. IC apparently no longer has anything to do with the existence of critical, precisely interlocking components. This is classic goal-post movement. The concept of IC has become a useless tautology: if it's IC, it can't have evolved, and if it evolved, it can't be IC. Of course, Behe was thinking only about bottom-up evolution initially. In the Steiner GA, however, populations of organisms often become less complex through shedding of redundant complexity. This type of pathway to IC structures has been observed numerous times in nature.

The ID Version of a Genetic Algorithm

Bill Dembski's coauthor of his Uncommon Descent blog, software engineer Salvador Cordova, was the most prominent member of the ID community to weigh in on the series of GA articles. Cordova repeatedly misrepresented GAs as necessarily "front-loaded" and dismissed the results as "computational theatrics." On August 15, 2006, Cordova posted his code for a genetic algorithm, which he contended could solve for the sum of the first 1,000 integers without specifying the answer. He said this program was based on the same "theatrics" I was employing in my Steiner GA. However, I proved that his program was, despite copious amounts of smoke and mirrors, simply a direct method of specifying the answer, or target. Instead of matching the string "Methinks it is like a weasel," Cordova engineered his GA to converge on the specific target sequence 251, 252, 253, ... 750. Cordova then added these 500 numbers and doubled that sum, inevitably arriving at the sum of the integers from 1 to 1,000, or 500,500. It was easy to prove that his badly written and confusing program was a direct encoding of a fixed target, leading directly to the summation of the first N integers.

The Design Challenge

On August 14, 2006, I posted a public "Design Challenge" on the Panda's Thumb blog in which readers were given one week to submit answers for the tricky six-point Steiner system shown in figure 4. It was an open-book test. Since the ID person responding to this discussion, Salvador Cordova, had been claiming that the answer was "front-loaded" into the fitness test, I challenged him to follow that lead to the answer.

I had come up with the six-point problem two days earlier, while trying to design a system that would have the "double bowtie" as its Steiner solution (figure 5). Upon reviewing an overnight batch of three-hundred runs, however, I was surprised to see solutions with lengths much shorter than the double bowtie's 1,839 units. And when I checked out the GA's best solution, the odd design shown in figure 6, it was like finding a diamond in the rough. I realized the GA had found the correct Steiner solution, and it wasn't what I had been expecting at all. Instead of the double bowtie, the actual Steiner solution twists both bowties a bit, and they become conjoined in a three-segment "dogleg" along the center vertical. There are two possible Steiners, one with the bowties skewed up and the other with them skewed down. The GA found both solutions, along with hundreds of compact MacGyvers.

Dozens of Panda's Thumb readers responded to the Design Challenge. Most were pro-science enthusiasts, but ID theorist Cordova submitted several candidate answers as well. Cordova had repeatedly compared the Steiner GA's fitness function to a T-shirt with a large bull's-eye emblazoned on it and the Steiner solution itself to the person inside that shirt. He analogized shooting a paintball gun at the bull's-eye symbol and then telling the victim, "Don't be mad, I wasn't aiming at you, I was aiming at the shirt you were wearing." Curiously, Cordova did not reverse-engineer my publicly posted GA (the shirt) to deduce the solution (e.g., the person wearing the shirt). Instead, he went the traditional route and tried to design an answer using Fermat points and trigonometry. Interestingly, Cordova failed to deduce the basic network shape for the six-point solution, finding instead the slightly longer MacGyver solution of figure 7. Fifteen other "intelligent designers" (humans, in other words) were able to derive the correct answer—the true Steiner solution. However, all of these humans were pro-science skeptics of intelligent design creationism. Correct solutions were also found by not one but two independent genetic algorithms! An additional fifteen designers derived various MacGyver solutions, thus proving these, too, are complex specified information.

And that's how ID theorist Cordova learned the true meaning of what Daniel Dennett terms Leslie Orgel's Second Law: "Evolution is smarter than you are."

After being bested by an evolutionary algorithm, Cordova changed his tune and moved the goalposts over to computer speed. He said there was no shame in being beaten by the computer because computers are designed to do lots of math very, very fast and are thus superior to humans in that regard. But that argument doesn't wash either. The computer can check out lots of random solutions very quickly (about 8,000 per second), but simply guessing randomly at the answer is a terrible way to solve the problem. After dozens of hours, random guessing couldn't come close to matching even one of the efficient designs the genetic algorithm was pumping out every ninety seconds (figure 8).

Conclusion

The 2006 "War of the Weasels" was, to say the least, not kind to the ID movement. The central dogma of ID regarding genetic algorithms—the Weasel offense—was definitively and publicly shot down. ID theory's two main "evolution stoppers"—irreducible complexity and complex specified information—were shown to be child's play for an evolution-based program that evaluates current function only and is mindless of any specific future optimum. Finally, an ID "theorist" was bested by a program that used evolution to derive solutions. Check out the complete archives of the War of the Weasels on the Panda's Thumb blog, in the "Evo Math" category. l

References

Behe, Michael. 1996. Darwin's Black Box. New York: The Free Press.

Brainz.org. 2008. 15 real-world uses of genetic algorithms. Available online at http://brainz.org/15-real-world-applications-genetic-algorithms/.

Courant, Richard, and Herbert Robbins. 1941. What is Mathematics? London: Oxford University Press.

Dawkins, Richard. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Dembski, William. 2005. Rebuttal to reports by opposing expert witnesses. Design Inference, May 14. Available online at www.designinference.com/ documents/2005.09.Expert_Rebuttal_Dembski.pdf.

Meyer, Stephen. 2004. The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 117(2): 213–239.

This Online Extra is a follow-up to the article “War of the Weasels” from the May/June 2010 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (Volume 34.3, May/June 2010). The print article discusses the use of a genetic algorithm (GA) to solve tricky math problems and demonstrates that no specific “target” is required for such algorithms, contra the interminable creationist attacks on the “Weasel” simulation discussed in Richard Dawkins's book The Blind Watchmaker. The problem I developed the GA for is called Steiner's Problem; it involves finding the shortest straight-line-segment networks connecting an array of given fixed points. This problem provides a miniature digital playground on the very edge of complexity.

I first became interested in Steiner networks because of their connection to minimal surfaces and to physical analogs like soap films. These are useful in some minimization problems because surface tension in the soap films acts to minimize the total area of film. This property allows Steiner network problems to be solved directly with soap films. First, two parallel clear plates are connected by posts that represent the nodes or “cities” of the problem. Then, the assembly is dipped into a solution of soapy water and then carefully withdrawn to produce the Steiner solution (one hopes).

(Hover over images for more detail)

Figure 1. Soap film realization of Steiner Solution for four-node system.

Here is a soap-film realization of the five-node system. Seven segments are joined with three variable nodes to make the compact network shown—the proper Steiner solution for the five-node system. Again, the segments meet at 120-degree angles.

Figure 2. Soap film realization of Steiner Solution for five-node system.

It wasn’t until I started investigating whether some of the MacGyver solutions could also be realized with soap films that things really got interesting. I quickly found that several of the configurations that evolved from the genetic algorithm could also be obtained with soap films, simply by pulling the parallel plates out of the soap solution at angles other than horizontal. A soap film incarnation of one of the MacGyver shapes appears below.

Figure 3. Soap film realization of “MacGyver” Solution for five-node system.

Not all of the MacGyvers could be obtained with soap films, however. The shape below, which I named the “Face Plant,” features four segments meeting at a common point. While this presents no problem for DNA representations of solutions, it is almost impossible in real soap films, as the junction of four films is invariably a very unstable equilibrium. In soap films, such junctions of four segments will quickly resolve into a bow-tie shape as typified in the solution to a simple four-node Steiner system. The Face Plant turned out to be a MacGyver solution that could easily exist in the genetic algorithm but could not be realized with minimal-surface soap films.

Figure 4. The “Face Plant”: a viable genetic algorithm solution for a five-node system.

As if that wasn’t strange enough, I soon stumbled on the “Doggie”—a stable soap film configuration that never appeared during the genetic algorithms simulations. Even the formal (but topologically tricky) Steiner solution popped out one of two hundred runs on average—why did the Doggie never appear?

Figure 5. The “Doggie”: A viable soap film solution for a five-node system.

After several frustrated attempts at Doggie evolution, I decided to go ahead and do what Dembski implies I am doing for all such shapes—deliberately perform some “genetic engineering” to “front-load” the system with a specified solution. Accordingly, I deduced the DNA configuration for a typical Doggie and forced this particular organism to be present as one individual of the very first generation of a simulation.

“the Doggie” length = 1403

Figure 6. The “Doggie”: a nonviable genetic algorithm solution for a five-node system.

Sure enough, the Doggie was much more fit than most members of the initial (random) population and persisted for several generations. However, at 150 to 200 units longer than all of the MacGyver solutions, it was quickly out-competed and forced to extinction by such fitter solutions. After a dozen generations or so, the Doggie was simply wiped out by the competition.

Had I actually been feeding the proper Steiner solution into the algorithm—“front-loading” in Dembski’s parlance—it would have always triumphed, and I would never have found the bizarre and wonderful world of MacGyver also-rans. The same boring result would also have been obtained had I defined “fitness” as deviation from a single, specific “target”—the proper Steiner solution itself. Either way, I wouldn’t have found that some (but not all) of these new structures could be realized with soap films, and I wouldn’t have found that some stable soap film configurations are far longer than the minimum possible and are not retained in evolutionary algorithms. As I said, I have never been as astonished at the unexpected output of one of my digital programs.

As the ID community flailed about trying to answer the Design Challenge, reader Sam Garret commented, “Can’t they just figure it out with soap bubbles? Assuming they can remember the way to the lab, of course.” Alas, such was not the case.

Notes

The "War of the Weasels" on the Web: http://pandasthumb.org/archives/evolution/evomath

Having developed a reputation for my investigations of the Bible Code, the Roswell UFO incident, and other fringe beliefs, Tech officials asked me to present an opposing view at the upcoming event. The debate was on. I started reviewing numerous articles on Gage’s Web site and scoured many other sources for more information. Soon, a picture emerged of a massive pseudoscientific movement based on faulty physics, cherry-picked data, and demonization of opponents as complicit in the “conspiracy.” I’d long been dubious of 9/11 “controlled demolition” claims, and my perusal of Gage’s site left me even more skeptical of “Truth Movement” arguments.

On October 24, about thirty people assembled in the student union building for the debate. Before things got started, Gage asked for a show of hands on these three questions: “Believe fires brought down buildings” (seventeen raised their hands), “Unsure” (eight), and “Believe in explosive controlled demolition” (six). Then, alumna McGrade made a short presentation that mentioned only things agreed upon by both points of view, such as the width of the Towers, timing between the jet impacts and the collapses, and so forth. Gage followed with his thirty-minute presentation, which focused primarily on World Trade Center building 7 (WTC 7), which collapsed at approximately 5:20 pm on the afternoon of September 11. Gage argued that there are ten reasons WTC 7, which was not hit by an airplane, was intentionally demolished:

1. Rapid onset of ‘collapse’
2. Sounds of explosions at ground floor—a full second prior to collapse
3. Symmetrical ‘collapse’—through the path of greatest resistance—at free-fall acceleration
4. Imploded, collapsing completely, and landed mostly in its own footprint
5. Massive volume of expanding pyroclastic dust clouds
6. Several tons of molten metal reported by numerous highly-qualified witnesses
7. Chemical signature of Thermite (high tech incendiary) found in solidified molten metal, and dust samples by physics professor Steven Jones, PhD
8. FEMA finds rapid oxidation and intergranular melting on structural steel samples
9. Expert corroboration from the top European Controlled Demolition professional
10. Foreknowledge of ‘collapse’ by media, NYPD, and FDNY

After Gage’s presentation, he asked for another show of hands. This time, the results were: “Fires brought down buildings” (seven hands), “Unsure” (twelve), and “Explosive controlled demolition” (nine). Then I spoke for about half an hour. I began by giving a Big Picture of the differences between science and pseudoscience with several examples that I’ve studied (Bible Codes, UFO conspiracies, Chemtrails, etc.).

None of the 9/11 “Truth” claims really hold up under scrutiny. For example, regarding the Twin Towers’ collapse “through the path of greatest resistance—at free-fall acceleration,” Gage often uses a demonstration using three cardboard boxes to make his point. He holds two small boxes in either hand, representing the topmost floors of either Twin Tower. He then drops both boxes; one is dropped on top of a thirty-inch-high strong cardboard box that represents the base of the towers (below where the planes struck), and the other is dropped onto empty air, whence it falls the thirty inches to the table top. In his online videos with this demonstration, Gage announces that “The one that had no resistance under it falls at freefall speed…. The one that has 80,000 tons of structural steel on it —it doesn’t even give. It resists. As met by an equal and opposite reaction known as the conservation of momentum. It doesn’t fall.” Gage then cites the supposed “freefall” speed as evidence that the towers were demolished with explosives. I mentioned this demonstration, citing it as an excellent example of pseudoscience. What’s actually relevant here is load vs. structure: the fact that dynamic loads are not the same as static loads. A plate can easily support the weight of a hammer carefully placed on it, but if the hammer is dropped on the plate, the dynamic load is more than it can bear, and it can crack. Once the top floors of the towers fell even one floor’s height, the horrifying “piledriver” collapse became inevitable.

I also showed simulations of why the towers fell, focusing on the interlocking structural components that reinforced the towers. I showed how WTC 7 had been severely damaged by debris from Tower 1 and showed evidence (routinely ignored by “Truthers”) of the severe fires that burned for many hours in Tower 7. I discussed the claims that thermite was used and showed a test filmed at Tech in which a large quantity of thermite failed to cut a large steel beam.

A twenty-minute question and answer period followed my talk. As the meeting was adjourned and everyone was poised to leave, I asked for one more show of hands. This time, the results were almost the same as when the afternoon began: “Fires brought down buildings” (sixteen hands), “Unsure” (eight), and “Explosive controlled demolition” (six).

A few days after the talks, Gage posted only the first two votes on his Web site, misreporting the second vote severely (making his 56–44 percent margin of victory into an 86–14 percent landslide). After I protested, Gage corrected his numbers and even included the third vote, while dismissing it as “useless” because of the brevity of the presentations and the fact that some audience members arrived late.

Gage wants to debate me again, on Denver public television station KBDI. While I normally prefer not to provide platforms for conspiracy theorists to push their cases, in this instance KBDI has already been running Gage’s 9/11 “Truth” documentaries during fundraising specials. No counter-programming has been offered during these showings (the NOVA episode on why the towers fell would have been an excellent antidote). Negotiations for a debate in the spring of 2010 are underway.

Finally, I offer this caution for readers: don’t smugly assume this conspiracy is confined to the lunatic fringe. After years of polishing and refinement, 9/11 “Truth” efforts have persuaded many citizens, including some of my relatives and close friends, to consider the attacks of 9/11 an “inside job.”

Chemtrails (CTs) look like contrails initially, but are much thicker, extend across the sky and are often laid down in varying patterns of Xs, tick-tack-toe grids, cross-hatched and parallel lines. Instead of quickly dissipating, chemtrails expand and drip feathers and mare’s tails. In 30 minutes or less, they open into wispy formations which join together, forming a thin white veil or a ‘fake cirrus-type cloud’ that persists for hours. . . . (Thayer 2000)

“Chemtrails” have been described as either a means of carrying out biological warfare upon the citizenry of the United States or as a method of weather modification, perhaps related to mitigation of global warming. The subject was popularized by late-night radio host Art Bell over a decade ago and is still hyped as a daring and dangerous conspiracy by numerous Web sites.

In 1999, the New Mexico Attorney General’s office contacted New Mexicans for Science and Reason (NMSR) member Kim Johnson to help answer questions from constituents regarding the alleged dangers of “chemtrails.” After his investigation, John­son told the Attorney General,

I have viewed a number of photos purporting to be of aircraft spraying the chemical or biological material into the atmosphere. I have also discussed these letters with another scientist familiar with upper atmospheric phenomena from Sandia National Laboratory and a retired general and fighter pilot who is an Air Force Hall of Fame Member. . . . In summary, there is no evidence that these “chemtrails” are other than expected, normal contrails from jet aircraft that vary in their shapes, duration, and general presentation based on prevailing weather conditions. That is not to say that there could not be an occasional, purposeful experimental release of, say, high altitude barium for standard wind tracking experiments. There could also be other related experiments that occur from time-to-time which release agents into the atmosphere. However, not one single picture that was presented as evidence indicates other than normal contrail formation. . . .

“Chemtrails” are said to last much longer than normal contrails from before 1995, but proponents are curiously oblivious of photographs of long-lasting contrails from as far back as World War II. The supposedly ominous “grid patterns” of contrails are easily explained as the expected effect of wind movement across frequently used east/west and north/south aircraft travel lanes. And one of the defining characteristics of “chemtrails”—gaps in the trails, supposedly caused by turning the “sprayers” on and off—is quite simply explained as normal humidity variations in the atmosphere. The sky often displays varying levels of humidity with spotty clouds, and the same conditions apply to the clouds condensing from jet trails. And, as far as attacking the populace with biotoxins, what dispersal vehicle could be less effective than a craft spraying indiscriminately at 35,000 feet? A low-altitude crop duster or a land truck spraying for mosquitoes would be far better at such a task.

One of the most strident promoters of “chemtrails” is Santa Fe’s Clifford Carni­com, who maintains the “Aerosol Operation Crimes and Cover-Up” Web site (Carni­com). His site is a frantic hodgepodge of pictures of alleged spray attacks, appeals to media and government officials to take the issue seriously, and detailed “analyses” of metals like barium in the “trails.” While Carnicom bemoans the fact that the media won’t give him his due, he turned down a 1999 invitation to speak to NMSR, which could have attracted some of the media attention he was demanding so shrilly. Incensed that NMSR had published a joke linking “chemtrails” to the threat of “Dihydrogen Monoxide” (i.e., H2O), Carn­icom refused to even acknowledge the invitation. Anyone who doesn’t buy into the conspiracy theory is treated as an active member of that conspiracy. Conversely, anyone who signs on to “chemtrails” is em­braced as a fellow traveler, no matter what their other beliefs. And so, Carnicom has formed a mutual admiration society with “Naturopathic Doctor” Gwen Scott, who writes on Carnicom’s site,

My interest is, primarily, finding natural medicines that can help ALL people mitigate the devastating effects of a multi-leveled assault on human health. Mr. Carni­com has provided immeasurable help in identifying contents so that I may design some natural medicine protocols around them . . . it is important that you understand one of the founding principles of natural medicine . . . Herring’s Law of Cure. This law presents that your body will rid itself of anything unwanted (diseases, etc.) from top to bottom, from the inside to the outside, and in the reverse order in which it entered your system. As you will see, much of the work on my own body follows this law exactly. . . . (Scott 2008)

(Whew! I’m glad she cleared that up for us!)

Since NMSR hosts some skeptical articles on chemtrails (Thomas), I often get e-mails from angered readers. One person demanded that I watch a YouTube video of a November 9, 2007, “Chemtrails” report by Louisiana station KSLA, in which investigative reporter Jeff Ferrell discussed tests the station had conducted on supposed “chemtrail residue” collected in a bowl by a farmer outside his house. Ferrell said, “KSLA News 12 had the sample tested at a lab. The results: A high level of barium, 6.8 parts per million, (ppm). That’s more than three times the toxic level set by the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA.” I had to inform my angry correspondent of a problem—the actual video clearly shows 68.8 µg/L (micrograms per liter), or equivalently, 68.8 ppb (parts per billion). The reporter overestimated by a factor of one hundred, because he read the “68.8” as “6.8,” and also confused million with billion. The measured levels were far less than EPA limits. When I asked my correspondent why I should be convinced by such poor reporting, he just repeated his insistence that I take down my “stupid website.”

I’ve also been e-mailed photographs of the interior of planes filled with large containers connected by tubes, accompanied by the exclamation that “This is the spraying equipment!” But these photographs turned out to be pictures of ballast tanks used in flight testing of new airliner designs; the tubes simply allow water to be pumped from tank to tank, simulating passenger motion in the cabin for the aircraft test. Kennedy assassination and 9/11 conspiracy theorists are mere pikers compared to “chemtrail” buffs. You will rarely find a more virulently self-deluded group, anywhere.

References:

• Carnicom, Clifford. “Aerosol Operation Crimes and Cover-Up.” Available online at www.carnicom.com.
• Scott, Gwen. 2008. “Morgellons . . . A Natural Medi­cine Approach.” Available online at www.carnicom.com/natural2.htm.
• Thayer, Toni. 2000. “Chemtrails—Frequently Asked Questions.” Available online at www.rense.com/general4/fre.htm.
• Thomas, Dave. “Chemtrail Fears Thrive on Internet.” Available online at www.nmsr.org/chemtrls.htm.

While this is indeed puzzling, it is not a logical flaw in relativity. The twins do not have similar experiences during B’s long journey, and that resolves the “paradox.” (While the fiction of very short deceleration/acceleration periods is useful to keep this discussion from getting into general relativity theory, it should be noted that such accelerations would almost certainly reduce twin B to a thin red puddle. It would take weeks to make the velocity changes at tolerable accelerations, say 5 to 10 g. See my accompanying sidebar “On Problems with Near-light-speed Travel” for more on this type of difficulty.) The journey of B, as viewed by twin A, is depicted in figure 1.

The workings of the “Twin Paradox” can be explained with the aid of space-time diagrams. A space-time diagram for the stay-at-home twin, A, appears in the left half of figure 2. The grid marks show years on the vertical axis and distance in light-years on the horizontal axis. The thick lines represent A’s and B’s positions over time, while the thin lines with arrows represent the paths of light beams sent between the twins. During the fifteen years (in A’s frame of reference) of outbound travel by twin B, B gets out to a distance of nine light-years (0.6c315 years) from twin A. However, signals or light rays sent from B’s turnaround point won’t even reach A for another nine years, or until twenty-four years (15+9) after B’s departure. That is, A will see his brother B recede for twenty-four years, and then approach for just six years, arriving thirty years after his initial departure.

This is in marked contrast to B’s observations: B will see his stay-home brother recede for twelve years. After B turns around, he will see A approaching for twelve years and will return a total of twenty-four years after his departure. However, the same interval is thirty years by A’s calendar. The difference is that, during the short but intense accelerations experienced by B, B’s velocity relative to the universe (and to A) is changing. Twin B effectively “loses synch” with the rest of the universe, including his twin brother, A. Twin B is not in an inertial reference frame over the entire trip—and his bouts with intense accelerations will certainly remind him of that fact. Of course, A won’t be aware of B’s velocity changes until many years later.

The space-time diagrams for B’s journey appear on the right of figure 2. These can’t be represented as a single diagram, because they are views of two different inertial frames (B outbound versus B inbound). The twin that undergoes acceleration will be the one who returns home younger than his stay-at-home brother. The loss of synchronization due to acceleration is the key and the reason it’s not a logical “paradox.”

Figure 2: Twin paradox space-time diagrams for stay-at-home twin A (left) and traveler B (right).

This point is crucial: the time discrepancies between the twins are absolutely real. Here is a quick example, presented with the “radar method”: since any radar beams sent from A meet the target (B) at only one point in space-time, those beams must spend equal times outbound and inbound with respect to the sender. Figure 2 shows that a radar beam emitted by twin A at his time of two years will be reflected from B at some unknown time, and received again by A when his (A’s) calendar reads eight years. Likewise, a beam emitted by twin A at four years will be reflected from B and received by A when his calendar reads sixteen years.

Twin A can calculate the time and distance (in A’s frame of reference) of reflections from B, knowing only his own sending and receiving times and that the signals propagate at the speed of light. Since A’s two-year pulse returns at eight years, the reflection occurred (by A’s calendar) at the midpoint of the send/receive times, (2+8)/2=5 years. Since A’s four-year pulse returns at sixteen years, the reflection occurred at (4+16)/2=10 years by A’s calendar. Therefore, A measures the interval between these reflections (at five years and ten years) as being five years long.

Because the twins are separating rapidly, there will be a delay in B’s receipt of A’s transmissions. In particular, while A’s transmissions were sent two years apart by his clock, they were received by B over an interval longer than two years, say, K*2 years, where K is a factor greater than 1. However, the same must hold true for B’s “transmissions” back to A: whatever period separates the reflections from B’s craft, A’s measurement of receiving times will be longer—in fact, precisely K times longer—since B is moving away from A exactly as fast as A recedes from B (“relativity”). So, A’s original pulses were sent two years apart; these were received by B at K*2 years apart and received again by A at K*K*2 years apart, or eight years. Clearly, K must equal 2, and B’s interval between receipt of A’s two signals must be 2*2=4 years, while A’s measurement of the time for the pulses to return from B is K*4=8 years, as required. This is how “Time Dilation” comes to be measured by twin A: the five-year interval that A experiences in his own frame of reference takes only four years in B’s frame of reference.

Klass’s previous books include UFOs: The Public Deceived and UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game, both published by Prometheus books. He has spent over thirty years investigating famous UFO incidents, hoping to find credible, scientific evidence of extraterrestrial visitors. He currently publishes the Skeptics UFO Newsletter (SUN), and is a Fellow of CSICOP and chair of its UFO Subcommittee. Klass, in short, is well qualified to separate the truths from the myths about the alleged Roswell crashed saucer. Through impartial research and meticulous documentation, Phil Klass has written the definitive book on the Roswell myth.

Klass starts off with contemporary accounts from 1947 — cold, hard facts that are not subject to the whims of memory. He details the UFO “craze” that swept the country in the summer of 1947, the Army Air Force announcement of the capture of a “flying disk,” and the explanation of the find as weather balloons and radar targets. Nowadays, UFO promoters maintain that the announcement of the “flying disk” came from high up the command — Col. Blanchard himself. (And, of course, top brass wouldn't have been fooled by a “balloon.”) But original reports indicate that the “disk” claim came from the intelligence office at the Roswell Army Air Force base — namely, one man, Major Jesse A. Marcel.

After its correct identification as weather equipment, the Roswell event drew no attention for decades. Klass details how both leading UFO groups (NICAP and APRO) did not even mention Roswell in their lists of “most important UFO cases” submitted for the Condon Report in 1966.

Details of Marcel’s earliest Roswell interviews, in February 1978, are provided by Klass. Marcel did not save any news clippings from this “historic” encounter; he couldn't even remember what year the incident took place.

Klass describes, and demolishes, the accounts of the long string of witnesses who waited decades before coming forward to claim their 15 minutes of fame: Grady Barnett, Glenn Dennis, Walter Haut, Gerald Anderson, Jim Ragsdale, Frank Kaufmann, Frankie Rowe, Col. Thomas Dubose, and more. Page 105 lists the wildly different estimates of the numbers of alien bodies (three living; three dead; four dead/one living; three dead; one living; and, one dead). The search for mortician Glenn Dennis’s “missing nurse” (Naomi Marie Selff) is detailed, along with strong evidence that she never existed. Witness Anderson’s diary copying and phone-record tampering severely damage his credibility.

Klass takes on all of the major pro-Roswell authors as well: Stanton Friedman, William Moore, Kevin Randle, Donald Schmitt, and others. He clearly documents how Friedman, Randle, and Schmitt all have changed the day rancher Brazel brought the debris into Roswell from Monday, July 7 (the actual day), to Sunday, July 6. They did so because that’s the only way they could reconcile events with witness Dubose’s testimony that the famous photographs of the debris in General Ramey’s office were taken at least two days after the debris was supposedly flown from Roswell to Fort Worth. (In actuality, the pictures were taken the same afternoon as the flight). Original reports, and Brazel’s comments that he came to Roswell to sell wool, clearly show that he did not go into town on the last day of a (then) rare three-day weekend. Klass also describes how author Donald Schmitt was caught faking his credentials.

The book also turns to UFO researcher Robert Todd’s discovery of the connection of the debris to New York University experiments performed in support of secret project Mogul, and the further evidence for this explanation developed by physicist/balloonist Charles B. Moore, UFO author Karl Pflock, and by the United States Air Force. The General Accounting Office report was portrayed by New Mexico Congressman Steve Schiff as leaving unanswered questions regarding some missing message traffic. But, Klass points out that the bottom-line conclusion of the GAO report was completely missed by most of the media: there is not one shred of evidence in the archives of the federal government that lends any credence to the supposed alien crash at Roswell (or any other locale). He also relates how once pro-Roswell pilot Kent Jeffrey came to agree that the Roswell Incident was due entirely to misidentification of weather equipment.

A major theme of the book is the continuing coverup of the truth about Roswell — not by the government, but by producers and authors of television shows, movies, and books. Klass tells how he has repeatedly tried to get TV producers to show formerly secret documents that prove the US did not have any physical evidence of alien visitors, even after Roswell. And Klass tells how, time and again, the truth has ended up on the cutting-room floor.

Klass concludes the book by discussing his work at Aviation Week and Space Technology. Aviation Week has revealed so many sensitive aerospace secrets that many government employees disparagingly refer to it as “Aviation Leak.” Yet, this fiercely independent magazine has never uncovered even a trace of a sinister coverup of alien visitation.

This book is a very valuable addition to the shelf of anyone with an interest in Roswell, or in the UFO movement in general. It does seem to hop around from topic to topic at times, and there is some unnecessary duplication. For example, a story from the Fort Worth Morning-Star Telegram appears on pages 17 and 18, but again (in its entirety) on pages 85 and 86. The same goes for the McCoy briefing (page 175, and repeated on page 208). But the biggest flaw of the book is the material that’s missing, such as Klass’ resounding debunking of the supposed “Majestic 12” forgeries. (Klass’s MJ-12 exposës are nevertheless available in book form, reprinted in the 1997 SI anthology The UFO Invasion.)

When I give talks about Roswell, I always show how Klass found that President Truman’s alleged signature on an MJ-12 letter was really just photocopied from a different, legitimate letter (see Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 14, No.2, Winter 1990). As transparencies of both signatures are overlaid, the audience always gasps in surprise as the different signatures blend into a single trace. Incredibly, Stanton Friedman still maintains the validity of MJ-12. When I confronted him on a radio show last year, he said Klass’s methods were shown false in his new book Top Secret/Majic. And what is Friedman’s new attack on the signature analysis? “The signatures are clearly not identical.” Simply outrageous!

Similarly, there was no mention of the supposed alien autopsy, or the Penthouse “photograph” of the alien’s body. I'm hoping that someday, some of these gaps will be filled, and that we'll be treated to a second edition of this excellent book. But even with its minor omissions, this book destroys the “Roswell” mythos once and for all.

I have derived a formula for how many occurrences of given words you would expect to find in a text of a given number of random letters. One must calculate the probability of selection for each letter, which depends on the particular text being examined. This is just the number of occurrences of the letter divided by the total number of letters. Typically, the probability for getting an E is above 0.1, while that for a Q can be just 0.005. For a given word like “Roswell,” you multiply the chances for an R with that for an O, then an S, and so on. The final product is multiplied by the total possible number of equidistant letter sequences for the word, which is roughly the square of the number of letters in the entire text divided by one less than the number of letters in the candidate hidden word.

This formula works quite well. I estimated that I would find 18.7 occurrences of “Clinton” in War and Peace, Book 1 (212,000 characters, 7.5 billion possible seven-letter equidistant sequences); the actual number was 21. I estimated I would find 128.1 matches for the name “Apollo” -- and got 129. With each additional letter in candidate words, the chances fall, because you must multiply your product by another number invariably less than one. And rare letters reduce the expected matches greatly.

At a reporter’s suggestion, I downloaded the chapter excerpt of Michael Drosnin’s book, The Bible Code, from Simon and Schuster’s Web site and began searching away. Even though the chapter was only about 4,000 characters in length, I was able to produce a number of hits. One puzzle held a lunar theme: “space,” “lunar,” “craft,” and several “moon’s,” all authentic hidden words. I found the ubiquitous “Hitler/Nazi,” even though the excerpt did not mention those words directly, talking instead mainly about the Rabin assassination. One puzzle has the hidden message “The code is a silly snake-oil hoax.” And I even found “The code is evil” hidden in Drosnin’s book (a mixed message he is sending us here).

Reporter Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune had me look for the name of a very recently disgraced Chicago alderman in Zorn’s old editorials. Sure enough -- the alderman’s demise had been predicted years before. The Zorn Code was announced on October 27, 1997, in the Tribune.

Drosnin has been stumping Australia and the world, flattering code-buster Brendan McKay with compliments such as “clown,” “liar,” “fraud"; and me with, “Thomas appears not to understand the Bible Code at all.” Drosnin accuses us of “counterfeiting” codes, even though McKay and I do not need to alter even one letter of various texts -- either the puzzles are there, or they're not. (And to Drosnin’s dismay, the puzzles continue to turn up everywhere). But Drosnin is also attacking us because our puzzles allegedly do not have “minimality.” Not only must hidden words appear close together in a puzzle, they must also be the shortest skip distances for the given word in a fair-sized portion of the text. Drosnin only mentions minimality in passing, buried in the chapter notes at the end of his book: “All of the Bible code print-outs displayed in this book have been confirmed by statistics to be encoded beyond chance. The word combinations are mathematically proven to be non-random. . . . The computer scores the matches between words, using two tests -- how closely they appear together, and whether the skips that spell out the search words are the shortest in the Bible. (For a more detailed explanation see Appendix.)”

Interestingly, some of Drosnin’s own puzzles are not “minimal.”

His match for “Clinton” has the largest step of all four “Clinton’s” found in the Hebrew Torah, and the other three occur entirely within the chosen match. Each of these three serves to give the chosen “Clinton” a “domain of minimality” of zero. (In contrast, the close matches of “Hitler” and “Nazi” I found in Drosnin’s own book are both minimal over the entire chapter, and the mention of “Roswell” I found in the King James Bible is minimal over the complete text of the Book of Genesis.)

I downloaded the Torah (Koren edition) from McKay’s Web site, and modified my program to handle the Hebrew characters via the Michigan-Claremont transliteration scheme (in which, for example, the Hebrew letter “Shin” is represented as “$”). I have since reproduced a number of Drosnin’s puzzles to the letter, including his nonminimal “Clinton/President” match. I also contrived a method for printing the puzzles out in the actual Hebrew characters. (Pretty good for someone who doesn't “understand the Bible Code at all.”)

Amazingly, Drosnin found “Shoemaker-Levy” (transliterated as $WMKRLWY, eight characters), not in the five books of the Torah, but in Isaiah. Eliyahu Rips used Isaiah as a control, an example of an ancient Hebrew text without the “code,” and found no unlikely codes therein. Drosnin also found “computer” in the book of Daniel. Perhaps he forgot that the code is supposed to occur only in the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

McKay is vigorously pursuing a response to the 1994 Statistical Science article by Rips et al. that gave the “code” its first big boost. Rips studied the Genesis “code” by finding names of post-Biblical rabbis linked to birth/death years, appellations (titles), etc. But using the very same rules restricting choices of names, appellations, and so forth, McKay was able to find an “impossible by chance” result -- in the Hebrew text of War and Peace. Full details can be found on the Internet at cs.anu.edu.au.

A new book written by Jeffrey Satinover has appeared, published by William Morrow. The book, called Cracking the Bible Code, strongly supports the code phenomenon. Interestingly, most of the true-blue code promoters despise Drosnin as the proverbial bull in the china shop -- Satinover alludes to him, but won't even mention him by name.

In the September 1997 Notices of the AMS (American Mathematical Society), Harvard mathematics professor (and Orthodox rabbi) Shlomo Sternberg blasted the code phenomenon. In particular, he pointed out that the elaborate “codes” found by both Rips and Drosnin would collapse even if just a few letters were added to or dropped from the text they used.

And Sternberg notes, “but any serious student of the Talmud knows that there are many citations of the Hebrew Bible which indicate a differing text from the one we have. . . . One of the oldest complete texts of the Bible, the Leningrad codex (from 1009) (also available electronically) differs from the Koren version used by Rips and Witztum in forty-one places in Deuteronomy alone. In fact, the spelling in the Hebrew Bible did not become uniformized until the sixteenth century with the advent of a printed version that could provide an identical standard text available at diverse geographical locations.”

The search for the truth about equidistant letter sequences goes on. One thing I am looking at is how “clumpiness” of letters in real texts sometimes produces many more or fewer matches than would be expected for a purely randomized text. I found one 934-letter chunk of a book about science by Isaac Asimov that produced an amazing seven matches for the word “Nazi,” even though only one was expected. This result is apparently “beyond chance,” with odds of at least two thousand to one against. But it is not really that surprising -- the chunk of text happened to contain several instances of the word "generalization.” And inside every instance, at a step of three, lurks a Nazi: geNerAliZatIon.

It looks like we have to be more careful about what we write!

Bible Code: The Book

A new book entitled The Bible Code (Drosnin 1997) came out last June and has occupied the bestseller lists since then. It is written by journalist Michael Drosnin, who claims that the Hebrew Bible contains a very complex code that reveals events that took place thousands of years after the Bible was written. Drosnin contends that some foretold events later happened exactly as predicted.

The book has been reviewed widely and has stimulated pieces in Newsweek and Time. Drosnin has also been making the rounds of the talk-show circuit, including the Oprah Winfrey Show in June. Time said that Warner has reportedly bought the movie rights (Van Biema 1997).

Drosnin’s technique is heavily based on that of Eliyahu Rips of Hebrew University in Israel, who published an article entitled “Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis” in the journal Statistical Science (Witztum, Rips, and Rosenburg 1994). Like Rips, Drosnin arranges the 304,805 Hebrew letters of the Bible into a large array. Spaces and punctuation marks are omitted, and words are run together one after another. A computer looks for matches to selected names or words by stepping to every nth letter in the array. One can go forward or backward; and for each value of “step distance,” n, there are n different starting letters. Drosnin’s match for “Yitzhak Rabin” had a step value n equal to 4,772.

Both Rips and Drosnin work with the original Hebrew characters, which are said to have been given by God to Moses one character at a time, with no spaces or punctuation, just as they appear in “the code.” The code is considered to exist only in the Hebrew Bible and not in translations or any other books. The code concept, however, can be easily demonstrated with English characters. Consider the following verse from the King James Version (KJV) of the Book of Genesis:

31:28 And hast not suffered me to kiss my sons and my daughters? thou hast now done foolishly in so doing.

If you start at the R in “daughters,” and skip over three letters to the O in “thou,” and three more to the S in “hast,” and so on, the hidden message “Roswell” is revealed! This message has a step value of 4, as shown in Figure 1.

When Drosnin finds a name or word match for a given step value n, he then rearranges the letters into a huge matrix (which he calls a “crossword puzzle”). The matrix is n letters wide, and inside this puzzle, the letters for the “hidden message” line up together vertically. (Sometimes, a slightly different procedure is used to make the hidden word run diagonally, every other row, and so forth.) The analyst or the computer can then look for more keyword-related “hits” around the given hidden word. Secondary matches can be picked off vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Drosnin found the word “Dallas” (connected with keywords “President Kennedy”) in one of his puzzles by starting at a D, and then picking the next letters by moving one space over to the right and three spaces down several times.

An example of such a matrix for the “Roswell” mention in KJV Genesis appears in Figure 2. The letters of “Roswell” now appear vertically at the center of the puzzle. The actual matrix of unique letters is only four characters wide here (dashed box), but I took the liberty of showing extra letters for context. A companion hidden message — “UFO” — is indicated within circle symbols. This “UFO” is itself a hidden message with a step value of 12. Drosnin accepts any such messages, even words running horizontally (i.e., the actual words of the Bible strung together). If either “Roswell” or “UFO” had been found encoded in the Hebrew Bible, Drosnin would not have hesitated to use words from the direct text as a “match” (for example, the words “thou hast now done foolishly.”)

The unusual pairing of “Roswell” and “UFO” is shown in linear form in Figure 3. This match is as stunning as any described in Drosnin’s book — yet none claim that the Bible code would have translated gracefully over to the KJV Genesis.

Drosnin claims mathematical proof that “no human could have encoded the Bible in this way” (Drosnin 1997, 50-51). He says, “I do not know if it is God,” but adds that the code proves “we are not alone.”

Hidden Messages

Most of the data cited in favor of the purported intelligent alien construction of the “Face on Mars” is based on mathematical relationships among various Martian structures and locations. For example, author Richard Hoagland finds the “Cydonian” ratio (the “face” lies on the Cydonia plains region of Mars), e/p, in the tangent of the face’s latitude of 40.868 degrees north, in the ratios of angles of the D&M; Pyramid, and in numerous other places (Hoagland 1992). Does that mean the “face” and “city” on Mars were “designed” for the express purpose of spreading that very message? Hoagland emphatically says, “Yes!” My inner skeptic says, “Not so fast!”

In my research into such phenomena, I have found numerous instances of Hoagland’s Martian ratios on objects we know were not designed or built by aliens, such as the U.S. Capitol rotunda (Figure 4). Does that prove that Martians built this structure? Or is this phenomenon related mainly to the determination and skill of the person looking for a special message? Any special message?

There are dozens of books about Nostradamus. In one (Hewitt and Lorie 1991), the authors find hidden predictions by scrambling the seer’s quatrains (in French, no less), and then decoding according to an extremely complicated and mysterious formula. The back cover prominently displays one such unscrambled prediction: “1992 — George Bush re-elected.” (Wrong.) The authors should have known that it’s much safer to find hidden predictions of events that have already happened.

Some critics of Drosnin say the journalist is just “data mining.” Mathematician Brendan McKay of Australian National University and his colleagues searched Hebrew texts besides the Bible. They found fifty-nine words related to Chanukah in the Hebrew translation of War and Peace. But McKay doesn't think someone engineered this remarkable feat for his or anyone’s benefit. Since then, McKay has responded to the following challenge Drosnin made in Newsweek:

< >“When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them” (Begley 1997).

McKay found assassination “predictions” in Moby Dick for Indira Gandhi, Rene Moawad, Leon Trotsky, Rev. M. L. King, and Robert F. Kennedy (see http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html). Eliyahu Rips himself has denied Drosnin’s implication that they worked together, and has said, “I do not support the book as it is or the conclusions it derives” (Van Biema 1997).

Hidden Names in KJV Genesis and Edwards v. Aguillard

One would expect that special biblical messages hidden in the Hebrew Bible would simply not make it into the King James Version, much less into Edwards. And since the Hebrew alphabet doesn't include vowels, it should be much harder to find matches in the English texts, because an additional character match is required for each vowel.

Drosnin’s control was the Hebrew text of War and Peace. Drosnin claims that when they searched for words (such as “comet,” “Jupiter,” etc.) in the Bible, they often found them there, but not in War and Peace.

I picked a set of names carefully. The list contained five names of four letters, five of five letters, five of six letters, five of seven letters, and five of either eight or nine letters. I was more whimsical in my choice of subjects and chose talk show hosts, scientists, and just plain folks as well as political or historical figures. I found thousands of hidden occurrences of these names in both Genesis and Edwards. The results appear in Table 1.

It is striking that tens of thousands of hidden occurrences were found for the twenty-five names submitted, for both Genesis and Edwards. More matches were found in the former, but it does have 50,000 more letters to work with. Another important observation is immediately apparent in Table 1 — short names like “Leno” or “Reed” were found much more frequently than long names like “Gingrich” or “Matsumura.” ("Matsumura” is, of course, Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education, in Berkeley, and “Romero” is Albuquerque boxer Danny Romero). “Martin Gardner” was found hidden in Edwards, much as Gardner anticipated could happen in his discussion of gematria and the work of Rips and his colleagues (Gardner 1997).

The results are clear and compelling, and certainly not surprising. It is much easier to find short names than long names. There might be thousands of occurrences of the four-letter name “Rich,” for example. But matching “Gingrich” is much harder, since few or none of the thousands of instances of “Rich” will be preceded by “Ging” at exactly the right step locations. But there are 2,554 hidden occurrences of “Newt” in KJV Genesis, so one could imagine that the Speaker of the House is certainly mentioned copiously.

There is, of course, another factor in the success of hidden word searches. Simply put, some letters are more common than others. Figures 5a and 5b give the relative frequencies for the letters in Genesis and Edwards.

There is, of course, another factor in the success of hidden word searches. Simply put, some letters are more common than others. Figures 5a and 5b give the relative frequencies for the letters in Genesis and Edwards.

The charts show that certain letters (such as A, D, E, H, I, N, O, R, S, and T) appear more often than others. Obviously, words made with these “hot” letters (such as “Reed,” “Deer,” “Stalin,” or “Hitler”) have a better chance of being found than words containing any “cool” letters like J or Q. “Rosie” had 202 Genesis matches, more than the 49 for “Oprah” — but “Oprah” contains a cool P. (I also searched for “Harpo,” which is just “Oprah” backwards, and found 62 hits).

When I performed a separate search for “Roswell” in KJV Genesis, I only found one hidden match for this seven-letter word. But I found 5,812 matches for “UFO,” 187 for “disk,” 5 for “MOGUL,” 4,798 for “NYU,” 2 for “weather,” 1,552 for “gear,” 77 for “crash,” 4 for “dummy,” 295 for “alien,” and 2 for “saucer.” I couldn't find “Roswell” in Edwards at steps of 1,000 or less, but I did find most of the others, and in similar numbers.

How Unusual Are Paired Messages?

Drosnin and others sometimes admit that finding isolated hidden names or messages can be the product of random chance. But they claim that finding linked pairs or triples of names or words is so improbable that doing so proves the supernatural, divine, or alien origin of the "message.” In Drosnin’s words,

Consistently, the Bible code brings together interlocking words that reveal related information. With Bill Clinton, President. With the Moon landing, spaceship and Apollo 11. With Hitler, Nazi. With Kennedy, Dallas.

In experiment after experiment, the crossword puzzles were found only in the Bible. Not in War and Peace, not in any other book, and not in ten million computer-generated test cases. (Drosnin 1997, 26)

Perhaps there was a bug in Drosnin’s computer program. Or perhaps he didn't really want to find hidden message pairs outside of the Hebrew Bible. All I know is that I was able to easily produce complex hidden messages in all the texts I worked with.

I developed a computer program that takes various words already located as hidden codes (such as “Hitler” and “Nazi”) and plays them against each other to find the best-linked pairs. The starting letters and equidistant steps provide all the necessary information, provided one learns how to manipulate it.

I then used this approach to develop the puzzles shown in Figure 6a (Genesis, step = 500) and Figure 6b (Edwards, step = 157), both with direct coded linkages of “Hitler” and “Nazi.” These puzzles are striking counterexamples of Drosnin’s claims.

In response to Drosnin’s challenge, I decided to look for “Hitler” and “Nazi” linked in Tolstoy’s War and Peace as well. I found an English translation of the epic novel on the Internet, and downloaded the first twenty-four chapters of Book 1, giving me about 167,000 characters. By the time I got to steps of just 750, I already had found more than half a dozen excellent puzzle linkages of “Hitler” and “Nazi.” The best appears in Figure 7: this entire puzzle text spans just five paragraphs of Chapter 2 of Book 1 of Tolstoy’s novel.

Drosnin uses many methods to improve the odds of “impossible-by-chance” linkages. For one, he uses horizontal words taken directly from the original text. For example, when Drosnin found “Clinton” linked to “president,” the word “president” was just the Hebrew word for “chief,” taken from its actual context in the original Bible. Secondly, Drosnin found some hidden dates referring to the Hebrew calendar; for example, Gulf War activity on January 18, 1991, was found in the words “3rd Shevat.” But, he found other dates referring to the Gregorian calendar, such as that of the Oklahoma City bombing, which was linked in the Bible by the hidden date “Day 19,” and interpreted as a reference to both April 19, 1995, the date of the bombing, and April 19, 1993 (Waco). And finally, Drosnin takes full advantage of the eccentricities of the Hebrew language, in which words can be condensed and letters occasionally dropped.

My study generated several other examples that are just as spectacular, and just as unlikely (if not more so), than most of Drosnin’s matches. Now, Drosnin and his colleagues would probably say that the “Roswell/UFO” connection in KJV Genesis was just a lucky break and couldn't happen again. But I found 5,812 hidden “UFO’s” in Genesis, and dozens of these happen to be flying right around and through the hidden word “Roswell.” As the puzzle step is changed, linked matches appear and disappear with astonishing frequency. Three such examples appear in Figure 8, for steps of 88, 589, and 753. Hoagland claims multiple discoveries of the same hidden message are indicative of “redundancy” used by the code-maker to assure us the message is real (Hoagland 1992). But all that is really happening here is that codes can be engineered — made to happen. You just have to know how to harvest the field of possibilities.

Figure 9 is another striking linkage I found in KJV Genesis, 42:18 through 45:21. Here, the name “Regis” appears at a step distance of 808, but also at a step of 810, which makes a nice “X” pattern if the puzzle step is 809. (Perhaps someone should notify Regis Philbin and agents Mulder and Scully).

If you work at any given puzzle for a while, large numbers of unexpected names and words invariably turn up. Consider the puzzle of Figure 10. This text is a contiguous rendition of Genesis 41:38-46. This particular puzzle is easy for the reader to verify manually, since it has a relatively small step of 40. The puzzle itself is 41 characters wide, so the rightmost column is a repetition of the leftmost. I used the computer to find several diagonal messages here: “Deer,” “Regis,” “Nazi,” “Leno,” “Dole.” Many vertical messages were simple enough to be found just by poring over the puzzle: for example, “Oprah,” “here,” “Leia,” “Hale,” “sent,” “nude,” “pure,” “hate,” “data,” “Roe,” “Reed,” “Meg,” “hood,” “pins (snip),” “Deion,” and “lone.” “Newt” is in there too, but at an offbeat step that makes for a jilted arrangement. And then, there are all those horizontal words too!

I suspect that with diligence, one could find enough matches to make almost all of the characters in the puzzle parts of hidden words. The puzzle below is literally dripping with additional hidden surprises. Rips himself appears in “spirit” read backwards. “Pour,” “Alan,” and “sash” run vertically. And diagonal messages of varying complexity lurk everywhere. Can you find the “apes” swinging between “data” and “Reed"? “Love” intersecting with “nude"? How about “Ares,” “reel,” “deft,” “lion,” “dogs,” “pony,” “hard,” “diet,” “trace,” “card,” “Poe,” and “wart"? They are all in there — and more.

There are dozens of linked messages in the puzzle above. But how are we to know which words are linked by the secretive author? Is the “real” message “Nazi sent pure hate here,” or is it “Deion pins nude Oprah?” All of these hits are authentic, encoded names that have lurked inside the text of the King James Version of Genesis for hundreds of years. But the whimsical combinations they appear in show that these surprises are simply lucky breaks, and not authentic messages from above.

What Are the Odds, Really?

But their core conclusions are based on severely flawed probability arguments. Drosnin’s formulation of the improbability of the occurrence of linked pairs is implicitly based on the assumption that you have only one opportunity to get the match. But, with the help of the computer, Drosnin gets to take advantage of billions of opportunities.

Let’s look at Drosnin’s approach with a lottery analogy. The probability of winning a lottery with a single ticket is very small, and Drosnin says the probability of getting an improbable match (such as “Clinton” and “president”) is also very small. But what happens if you buy more than one ticket?

In the New Mexico “Daily Millions” lottery, the odds of winning the $1 million jackpot with just one ticket are about ten million to one against. With two tickets, the odds plummet, to about five million to one. If you buy one million tickets, your odds drop to only about ten to one against. And if you invest $10 million in tickets, the odds become approximately two to one in your favor! Most people can't afford to buy millions of tickets. Those who do have that kind of money usually don't dump it on the lottery, because you almost always end up losing.

But in Drosnin’s game, you don't have to win more than you lose. You don't even have to break even. All you need for success is to win every once in a while. And, you can have what amounts to millions of “free lottery tickets” simply by running a computer program, or poring over crossword-puzzle printouts. Drosnin routinely tests billions of letter sequences for matches to selected words or names, and goes to steps of many thousands. By using steps lower than 1,000 only, I limited myself to using only about 3 percent of the potential of Genesis or Edwards. Brendan McKay (in personal communication) showed me how to find hidden words much more efficiently, and a search of KJV Genesis at all possible steps for my list of twenty-five names came up with over one million additional matches. These include six hits for “Clinton,” fifteen for “Gardner,” three for “Hillary” and “Einstein,” and two for “Kennedy.”

Conclusion

The promoters of hidden-message claims say, “How could such amazing coincidences be the product of random chance?” I think the real question should be, “How could such coincidences not be the inevitable product of a huge sequence of trials on a large, essentially random database?”

Once I learned how to navigate in puzzle-space, finding “incredible” predictions became a routine affair. I found “comet,” “Hale,” and “Bopp” linked in KJV Genesis, along with “forty” and “died,” which could be interpreted as an obvious reference to Heaven’s Gate. I found “Trinity,” “Los Alamos,” “atom,” and “bomb” encoded together in Edwards, in a section containing references to “security,” “test,” and “anti-fascist.” And I found “Hitler” linked to “Nazi” dozens of times in several books. When I set out to engineer a “hidden code” link of “code” and “bogus” in KJV Genesis, I was able to produce sixty closely linked pairs. And every single one of these pairs could fit inside a reasonably sized puzzle.

The source of the mysterious “Bible code” has been revealed — it’s homo sapiens.

Now somebody go tell Oprah.

References

• Begley, Sharon. 1997. Seek and ye shall find. Newsweek, June 9, pp. 66-67.
• Drosnin, Michael. 1997. The Bible Code. New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Gardner, Martin. 1997. Farrakhan, Cabala, Baha'i, and 19. Skeptical Inquirer 21 (2): 16-18, 57.
• Hewitt, V. J., and Peter Lorie. 1991. Nostradamus: The End of the Millennium. New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Hoagland, Richard C., 1992. The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books.
• Van Biema, David. 1997. Deciphering God’s plan. Time, June 9, p. 56.
• Witztum, Doron, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenburg. 1994. Equidistant letter sequences in the Book of Genesis. Statistical Science 9 (3).