While there are many vernacular meanings of the term civilization, archaeologists tend to use it in a limited and precise way to signify a particular kind of society. For example, in his classic enumeration of the features that characterized humanity’s earliest civilizations, prehistorian V. Gordon Childe (1951) included labor specialization, social stratification, production of a food surplus, construction of monumental edifices, urban settlements, and a consistent system of record keeping (usually, but not always, writing). More recently, Joseph Tainter (1988) added the development of a formal government apparatus to that list.

Civilizations Lost

To many at the fringes of the historical sciences, the term civilization takes on an entirely different, often coded, meaning—especially when a seemingly innocuous modifier, such as “lost,” is applied to its front end. A vast amount of pseudoscience has been inspired by the simple phrase “lost civilization,” particularly by those who believe that they have found its archaeological spoor and can thus recast the history of a particular people, an entire continent, or in the most extreme cases, all of humanity (Childress 1992; Hancock 1995, 2003; Haughton 2007). The history of American archaeology for the aboriginal cultures of North America is especially rife with problems relating to the indiscriminate and often confusing use of the phrase “lost civilization” and its cohorts “lost race,” “lost city,” and “lost tribe.”

Many claims about the existence of a lost civilization in antiquity are, in effect, warmed-over versions of Plato’s Atlantis myth: Long ago (commonly placed at more than ten thousand years before the present) and far away (on an island in the Atlantic or under the Antarctic ice cap or off the coast of Japan, etc.), an enormously advanced and technologically sophisticated civilization existed whose impact on human history was vast. In extreme versions of the lost civilization myth, the society in question possessed technologies that even modern people have not mastered. Alas, as the result of some terrible accident or war or natural catastrophe, that civilization was destroyed virtually overnight and thus became “lost.” In such stories, conventional historians and archaeologists are described as being blind to the evidence for such a civilization or, in some cases, well aware of the evidence but part of a longstanding conspiracy to keep it all quiet, lest it upset the convenient apple cart of history concocted in their ivory towers.

In one subset of the lost-civilization genre of pseudohistory, the lost civilization is not a previously unknown group of people residing in the clichéd “dim mists of time” but instead an otherwise well-known ancient society that is remarkable primarily as a result of its geography, not for its precocious level of technological sophistication. Even restricting ourselves to just North America, the list of such claims is long—though evidence is short—and includes: Celtic kingdoms in the northeastern United States thousands of years ago (Fell 1976); Coptic Christian settlements in ancient Michigan (based on the so-called Michigan Relics) (Halsey 2009); Roman Jews in Arizona (the Tucson Artifacts) (Burgess 2009); the Lost Tribes of Israel in Ohio (the Newark Holy Stones) (Lepper and Gill 2000); and strange mixtures of various ancient Old World peoples secreted in hideouts in the Grand Canyon in Arizona (“Explorations in Grand Canyon” 1909) and in a cave in southeastern Illinois (Burrows Cave) (Joltes 2003). These claims are predicated essentially on the same notion: ancient Europeans, Africans, or Asians came to the Americas long before Columbus and long—perhaps thousands of years—before the Norse; they settled here and had a huge impact on the native people but then somehow became lost, both to history and to historians. Today, a group of “independent scholars” (a euphemism often used to mean writers without institutional affiliation, formal training, or archaeological experience) trumpet the evidence for these ancient settlers of the Americas, disseminating their revisionist histories—not in refereed, professional journals but in popular books, magazines, and, perhaps most broadly, on websites and in cable TV documentaries.

The Lost Civilizations of North America

A recent iteration of this “alternative archaeology” (another euphemism, this one used for claims about antiquity lacking in credible scientific evidence) can be seen in the documentary The Lost Civilizations of North America (produced by Steven Smoot, Rick Stout, and Barry McLerran), described on its DVD packaging as “the compelling account of the wanton destruction of an ancient history.” According to the video, this claimed “destruction” is both actual (in the sense of the physical, perhaps intentional, destruction of the archaeological evidence of this civilization) and metaphorical (in the sense of the intellectual denial of its existence). It is the embarrassing admission of the authors of this article that we naively agreed to participate in the program.

We do not agree with the vast majority of the interpretations of ancient American history presented in the documentary. While it is tempting to ignore the documentary as nonsense, the high production values coupled with the selective inclusion of academically credible scholars have resulted in its gaining international attention. Glenn Beck featured it prominently and favorably in the August 18, 2010, broadcast of his television program, and the website promoting the DVD claims it won the Best Multicultural Documentary Award at the 2010 International Cherokee Film Festival.

In a series of three articles, we will provide a scientific commentary on the interpretations expressed in this video concerning the ancient history of North America, using the documentary itself as emblematic of a far broader attempt to write an alternative history of the New World that is wholly unsupported by any archaeological or historical evidence. In this and two subsequent articles, we will address two questions that are particularly relevant: What is the evidence for the “lost” civilizations in North America? And how did this evidence come to be “lost”?

An Alternate Reality

Consensus among investigators in organized fields of knowledge is not a conspiracy to ignore, destroy, or sequester deviant or anomalous evidence, as is implied several times in the Lost Civilizations video. Consensus is based upon recognized rules of investigation and principles of interpretation that have been developed in relation to specific research problems. The emergence of consensus among anthropologists regarding the origin and antiquity of humankind in the New World is no exception.

Figure 1. This map shows the configuration of the modern coastlines of northeast Asia and northwest North America, along with the maximum Late Pleistocene extent of the Bering Land Bridge. Its existence, between thirty-five thousand and eleven thousand years ago, provided a broad avenue across which human beings first entered the New World from the Old.

The consensus view on this subject among archaeologists (together with geologists and biologists) is based on more than a century of excavating literally thousands of archaeological sites. A convergence of interdisciplinary data indicates that the New World was first populated at least thirteen thousand and perhaps as many as thirty thousand years ago by migrants from Asia (Meltzer 2009). These people entered the Americas via a wide expanse of land—called Beringia—connecting northeastern Asia with northwestern North America during periods of glacial expansion and concomitant lower sea levels (see figure 1). The first human migrants were few in number and entered a continent teeming with wildlife, including many now-extinct forms such as mastodons, wooly mammoths, giant ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats. Exploiting the richness of this “new world,” the human population grew quickly and expanded across the North and South American continents over a few thousand years. As settlers moved into new habitats and as the climate ameliorated at the end of the Pleistocene era (or “Ice Age”) ten thousand years ago, descendants of those first settlers adapted to a great diversity of new and changing environmental conditions, producing an abundance of differing ways of life. Each group adjusted to the natural conditions with which it was faced. In some regions, extremely rich habitats and, ultimately, the development of agricultural subsistence systems allowed for the production of a substantial food surplus and led to the growth of stratified societies with many of the characteristics outlined by Childe and Tainter that define a civilization. Among these were societies of the American Midwest and Southeast—the so-called mound builders—whose ability to marshal the communal labors of large groups of people is clearly seen in an archaeological landscape of monumentally scaled earthworks that include conical burial mounds, truncated pyramids of earth called “platform mounds,” effigy mounds (in the shape of various animals and birds), and vast areas enclosed by geometrically patterned earth embankments (Milner 2004) (figures 2a–2d).

Figure 2a. Miamisburg Mound, located in Miamisburg, Ohio, is one of the largest conical mounds in eastern North America. It is a burial mound built by the people that archaeologists have called the Adena culture, circa 800 BCE to 100 CE. (Ohio Historical Society) (K. Feder)

Figure 2b. The Fort Ancient Earthworks are a series of earthen embankments that extend for more than three and a half miles around a high bluff along the Little Miami River in southwestern Ohio. The earthworks were built by the Hopewell culture, circa 100 BCE–400 CE. (CERHAS, University of Cincinnati)

Figure 2c. Serpent Mound is the largest serpent effigy in the world. Located in Adams County, Ohio, it is thought to have been built by the Fort Ancient culture, circa 1000–1650 CE. (Center for the Electronic Reconstruction of Historical and Archaeological Sites [CERHAS], University of Cincinnati)

Figure 2d. Monks Mound, at Cahokia in Illinois, is by volume the fifth largest pyramidal monument in the world. Ultimately more than one hundred feet high, Monks Mound was constructed and maintained between 900 and 1300 CE. It served as the elevated platform on which stood the home of Cahokia’s ruler. Cahokia was, effectively, the capital of a powerful, indigenous political and economic entity. (K. Feder)

It is the archaeological consensus that the myriad cultures seen in native North America, including the mound builders, for the most part developed independent of any external inspiration. Contact almost certainly occurred between ancient societies in North America and the civilizations to the south—there is evidence, for example, of turquoise trade between the native people of the American Southwest and the cultures of Mesoamerica (Powell 2005), and maize, a Mexican domesticate, eventually made its way northward into essentially all regions of the continent in which it could be grown. But there is no credible scientific evidence for the wholesale movement of people from the Old World into sub-arctic North America after the initial incursion from northeast Asia at the end of the Ice Age. Furthermore, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that the cultural developments exhibited in the archaeological record here—like the monumentally scaled earthworks shown in figures 2a–2d—were in any way inspired by visitors or migrants from Africa, Europe, or Asia (Fritze 2009). Native Americans were fully capable of developing complex and sophisticated cultures on their own without help from other societies. The archaeological record of North America clearly shows the indigenous development of the technologies, art, architecture, social systems, subsistence practices, and engineering accomplishments seen in native America. There is no archaeological or biological evidence for the presence of interlopers, and there is no need for their presence in explaining the archaeology of native America.

The producers of the Lost Civilizations documentary clearly do not subscribe to this “mainstream” interpretation of American archaeology. Instead, what seems to emerge is the following less-coherent “diffusionist” alternative history:

Sometime toward the end of the last Ice Age, a few Asians stumbled into the New World across the Beringian land bridge. They developed indigenous societies, some of which may have been the beneficiaries of various unspecified contacts from the Old World over the millennia. By two thousand years ago, descendants of the original settlers living in eastern North America were building modest earthworks and scratching out a living by growing a few varieties of local plants. Then, a contingent of Israelites from the hills of Galilee arrived somewhere on America’s east coast, spreading through the indigenous cultures, acting like missionaries and igniting the cultural florescence of the mound-building cultures we know today as the Hopewell (as well as the subsequent Mississippian). These new migrants brought with them their religion (Judaism, apparently) and their written language (Hebrew), which appears in some regions as inscriptions on stone tablets or other artifacts of special significance. They also inspired the construction of vast cities across the Midwest and Southeast, raising up the locals to a high level of civilization, changing fundamentally and forever the cultures and histories of the previously benighted indigenous people.

In stark contrast to the elegant consensus achieved by the interdisciplinary work of archaeologists, geologists, geneticists, and linguists (Meltzer 2009; Goebel et al. 2008), recent issues of the diffusionist Ancient American magazine amply demonstrate that there is, in fact, no consensus among diffusionist researchers concerning which African, Asian, or European cultures arrived in America to serve as the elevators of Native American savagery, when they arrived, or which cultural achievements they are supposed to have introduced or inspired.

A Hidden History?

In support of the claim that there is a hidden history of ancient America, the documentary narrator asks a number of leading questions, such as: “Most Americans have no idea that ancient cities with advanced architectures once dotted the ancient North American landscape. . . . Why is it that top historians didn’t know about such things and why is it that they are not generally known among the modern public either?”

Here the documentarians use an unsupported assertion (top historians don’t know about the ancient mound-building societies of North America) to imply a scenario suggested throughout the rest of the documentary: that there has been some kind of conspiracy to keep the true history of North America quiet—so much so that even “top historians” don’t know about it. In setting up this assertion, the producers interviewed Roger Kennedy, who served as the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History from 1979–1992 and director of the National Park Service between 1993 and 1997. Kennedy admits that even into the early 1990s he was personally unaware of the fact that “massive city remains existed in North America.”

It is a curious statement given the state of archaeological knowledge in the early 1990s. It is possible that Kennedy either did not understand the question or misunderstood its specific context. But it does not follow from such a candid and honest personal admission by a single historian that, as a group, archaeologists and historians were similarly uninformed and that these recognized leaders in the scientific community are therefore the victims (or perhaps the perpetrators) of a conspiracy of silence. It is problematic that the producers based a conclusion on what was effectively a sample size of one before asking the leading question: “Why is it that top historians didn’t know about such things?” Was this really generally true in the early 1990s? Is it true today? In fact, it was not then, and it is not now. To better answer such a question, one might simply have skimmed through the Guide to Departments of Anthropology (published by the American Anthropological Association, a professional organization) for an answer. From that guide one would have determined that there are literally hundreds of archaeologists who have devoted their careers to the study of the mound-builder cultures and dozens of university programs that focus on them.

That many (likely, most) Americans don’t know much of anything about the mound builders is unfortunately true, but this ignorance is part of a larger issue. Most Americans don’t know much of anything about Native American cultures, which is of course a shame. But it is an enormous jump to imply from this sad reality that there is any kind of a conspiracy of silence about the sophistication of ancient American mound-building societies.

In fact, just the opposite is true. Professional archaeologists in universities and museums have made a concerted effort to get the word out about the mound builders. Archaeologists have written a series of popularly oriented books about mound societies, for example: Milner (2004); Lepper (2005); Pauketat (2009); and Iseminger (2010). Glossy magazines with a broad popular readership have published extensively on the mound-building societies. The magazine of the National Museum of the American Indian (a publication of the Smithsonian Institution) featured an article about Cahokia, the largest of the mound-builder sites, in its Winter 2010 issue (Adams 2010). As we were preparing this article in January 2011, National Geographic magazine published a major piece about that same site (Hodges 2011). It certainly is not the first time the mound builders have been highlighted in National Geographic. Also, over the past few decades there have been numerous articles about the mound-building cultures in Archaeology, the magazine published by the Archaeological Institute of America, aimed at a mixed professional and popular audience (see, for example, Iseminger 1996 and Lepper 1995), as well as in American Archaeology, published by the Archaeological Conservancy.

There are dozens of websites, many produced by universities along with the federal and state governments, dedicated to the mound builders in general and specific sites in particular. Typing “mound builders” into a Google search box returns nearly four hundred thousand hits! It’s not for lack of trying on the part of archaeologists and historians that most Americans are ignorant of the mound builders. To imply a conspiracy to keep the public unaware of them is to ignore the facts.

Secret Cities of Ancient America?

Beyond the factually incorrect conclusion that even at the end of the twentieth century historians were ignorant of the mound-building native societies of the American Midwest, there are additional problems with the Kennedy interview. The first results from an imprecision in terminology, specifically settlement and city. In fact, there is no archaeological evidence of widespread “massive city remains” in North America by any formal definition of the term city. With the possible exception of Cahokia, there are no archaeological settlements in North America that are comparable in size and population density to, for example, the earliest city-states in Mesopotamia, the first cities located along the Indus River in Pakistan, or any of the large urban settlements located in the Valley of Mexico. Even estimates for Cahokia rarely calculate its population at more than ten thousand people, a number sometimes used as a statistical cutoff point for the designation of a settlement as a city (see figure 3).

Figure 3. Artist’s conception of Cahokia at its peak, focused on the elite precinct of the community. Archaeological evidence indicates the presence of an extensive palisade consisting of an estimated twenty thousand logs isolating an elite compound of a city of as many as ten thousand inhabitants. (Courtesy of Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. William R. Iseminger, artist. Reproduced with permission.)

Other than Cahokia, all of the other large mound sites in North America appear to have been a different kind of settlement entirely: not cities but rather ceremonial centers with relatively small residential populations surrounded by numerous hamlets dispersed in vast areas around them. The people living in these hamlets produced the surplus (in the form of food, wealth, and labor) that supported the ritual elites living in the mound centers. In a particularly egregious example of misuse of terminology, the documentary describes the earth embankment that encloses the Newark Earthworks in Ohio as “city walls.” This is nonsense. The Newark Earthworks include a spectacular array of more than four and a half square miles of geometric enclosures and mounds in a variety of shapes and sizes, but there is no archaeological evidence for an urban population here (Lepper 2004) or at any of the other monumental earthworks of the Hopewell culture (figure 4).

Figure 4. The Octagon Earthworks are one part of the much larger Newark Earthworks located in Newark, Ohio. The elaborate monumental earthworks, built by the Hopewell culture circa 100 BCE–400 CE, incorporate a sophisticated knowledge of geometry and astronomy in their form and alignments. The first of the Newark “holy stones” was found just east of the octagonal enclosure. (Tim Black and/or Greater Licking County Convention and Visitors Bureau)

To be clear: stating that places like the Newark Earthworks, Poverty Point in Louisiana (Gibson 2000), Etowah in Georgia, Moundville in Alabama (Welch 1991), Town Creek Mound in North Carolina, or Crystal River Mounds in Florida were not cities is not to disparage them or minimize the achievements of those who produced them. It merely points out the fact, as shown clearly by archaeological investigation, that this architecture was not urban in character and was wholly unlike cities as ordinarily defined. Indeed, one of the fascinating challenges posed by such structures is how a population dispersed in small hamlets without hereditary kings or pharaohs could have organized the labor to erect such massive earthworks.

About such sites, the documentary asks: “The real question is, why were these sites not preserved? And why are these advanced civilizations not commonly known of today?” To answer these questions about the perceived lack of preservation of sites from an ancient “lost civilization” in North America, the documentary points to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and the theory of evolution. It is asserted in the documentary that it was crucial for many Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to denigrate the cultural evolutionary status of the native residents. By either destroying or ignoring archaeological evidence of a sophisticated North American civilization, the film’s producers maintain, settlers were clearing their consciences about dispossessing native peoples of their lands.

This in itself is hardly a revelation. Manifest Destiny, the belief that the American republic was destined to colonize the trans-Mississippian West, was a largely unexamined assumption that affected scientific attitudes toward Native Americans and profoundly shaped federal Indian policy from the 1840s through the end of the nineteenth century (Horsman 1981). That the mounds were viewed as problematic to those who perceived Native American culture as fundamentally primitive and destined for extinction is an underlying theme of Robert Silverberg’s classic work, Mound Builders of Ancient America (1968). It is a point likewise made in the mound chapter of Kenneth Feder’s Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology (2011). So, any notion that the documentary has exposed a conspiracy here is nonsense. And it should be further noted that roughly half of the documentary is devoted to asserting that Native Americans were historically denied civilized status by destruction of their mounds, and the other half is devoted to asserting that the mounds were actually built by interlopers from the Middle East. That unsupported claim denies the cultural achievements and heritage of the mound-building peoples just as surely as did those in the nineteenth century who argued that the ancestors of prehistoric North American Indians had not built the mounds.

Implicit in the narrator’s statement that “whether intentional or not, whether motivated by religious or political agendas or not, modern experts agree that wanton destruction did occur” is the suggestion that the mound sites may have been singled out for deliberate destruction to eliminate evidence of an ancient native civilization in North America. This takes great liberty with history. There were those in the nineteenth century who believed they had a duty to both the past and the future to survey and minutely describe prehistoric sites while it was still possible to do so. They were regrettably a minority, but far from an insignificant one. Many of the survey maps used in the Lost Civilizations video, in fact, were the fruit of those historically conscious antiquaries of the nineteenth century (Barnhart 1998, 2005).

While the documentary focuses on the “wanton destruction” of prehistoric mounds and geometric enclosures, it largely glosses over the fact that there has been a concerted effort to preserve some of the most impressive of these sites for archaeological research and public education. Many mound sites are open to the public, and many have on-site museums where the public can learn the story of the site’s inhabitants in some depth. One recent compilation lists no fewer than seventy mound and earthwork sites in the states of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia that are preserved and accessible to the public (Woodward and McDonald 2002). Among the more prominent are Hopewell Culture National Historic Park, Serpent Mound, the Newark Earthworks, and Fort Ancient Earthworks (see figures 2b, 2c, and 4). These sites, along with Poverty Point National Monument, recently have been placed on a short list by the U.S. Department of the Interior to be nominated for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage List. Cahokia Mounds in Illinois is already one of the few prehistoric sites in the United States on the World Heritage List. Furthermore, recent figures from Hopewell Culture National Historic Park in Ohio show that between thirty and forty thousand people visit this mound site each year. Also in Ohio, more than twenty thousand people visited Serpent Mound in 2010. Cahokia reports an attendance of approximately 320,000 people annually. If there is a conspiracy within the “mainstream” scientific community to keep the mound cultures a secret, we haven’t been doing a very good job of it. The implication that such sites have been systematically and intentionally destroyed or kept hidden for the nefarious goal of concealing the truth about Native American societies is self-evidently ludicrous.

Beyond attempting to prove a nonexistent conspiracy to hide the mound-builder cultures from the public, the Lost Civilizations documentary presents what is to be interpreted as evidence of the movement of Old World people, specifically migrants from the ancient Middle East, to the New World. It then outlines the enormous impact these interlopers had on the already in-place indigenous societies. The bulk of this “evidence” consists of artifacts bearing written messages in Old World languages, especially Hebrew, and DNA that, it is claimed, proves a connection between the Hopewell mound builders of Ohio and ancient people from Israel. We will deal with these two sets of evidence in the second and third articles in this series, respectively.

Disclaimer:

We are well aware that a claim underlying the Lost Civilizations documentary—that the mound-building people of the American Midwest were migrants from the Middle East 2,000 years ago—may be informed by religious doctrine. It is our position in this paper, however, that whatever inspires this claim is not nearly as important as the fact that it is plainly wrong. As such, we will leave it to others to assess the role played, if any, by religion in shaping Lost Civilizations and focus instead on scientific evidence relevant to that claim.

References Cited:

Adams, J.R. 2010. Cahokia 101: A primer on a hidden past. National Museum of the American Indian, 11: 12–21.

Barnhart, Terry A. 1998. In search of the mound builders: The State Archaeological Association of Ohio, 1875–1885. Ohio History 107 (Summer/Autumn): 125–70.

———. 2005. Early accounts of the Ohio mounds. In Lepper 2005, 236–50.

Burgess, D. 2009. Romans in Tucson? The story of an archaeological hoax. Journal of the Southwest 51.

Childe, V.G. 1951. Man Makes Himself. New York: Mentor Books.

Childress, D.H. 1992. Lost Cities of North and Central America. Stelle, Illinois: Adventures Unlimited Press.

Explorations in Grand Canyon. 1909. Phoenix Gazette (April 5). Available online at http://grandcanyontreks.org/fiction.htm.

Feder, K.L. 2011. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Fell, B. 1976. America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World. New York: Demeter Press.

Fritze, Ronald H. 2009. Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-Religions. London: Reaktion Books.

Gibson, J.L. 2000. The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.

Goebel, Ted, Michael R. Waters, and Dennis H. O’Rourke. 2008. The late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans in the Americas. Science 319: 1497–1502.

Halsey, J.R. 2009. The “Michigan Relics”: America’s longest running archaeological fraud. Presented at the Midwest Archaeological Conference, Iowa City, Iowa.

Hancock, G. 1995. Fingerprints of the Gods. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Hancock, G. 2003. Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Haughton, B. 2007. Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries. Franklin Lakes, New Jersey: New Page Books.

Hodges, G. 2011. Cahokia: America’s forgotten city. National Geographic 219: 126–45.

Horsman, Reginald. 1981. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origin of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Iseminger, W.R. 1996. Mighty Cahokia. Archaeology 49(3): 30–37.

———. 2010. Cahokia Mounds: America’s First City. The History Press.

Joltes, R. 2003. Burrows Cave: A modern hoax. Available online at www.criticalenquiry.org/burrowscave/burrows.shtml.

Lepper, B. 1995. Tracking Ohio’s Great Hopewell Road. Archaeology 48(6): 52–56.

———. 2004. The Newark Earthworks: Monumental geometry and astronomy at a Hopewellian pilgrimage center. In Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South, edited by Richard V. Townsend and Robert V. Sharp. New Haven: Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University Press.

———. 2005. Ohio Archaeology: An Illustrated Chronicle of Ohio’s Ancient American Indian. Wilmington, Ohio: Orange Frazer Press.

Lepper, B., and J. Gill. 2000. The Newark holy stones. Timeline 17(3): 16–25.

Meltzer, D.J. 2009. First Peoples in a New World. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Milner, G.R. 2004. The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America. London: Thames and Hudson.

Pauketat, T.R. 2009. Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi. New York: Viking.

Powell, E. 2005. The turquoise trail. Archaeology 58(1): 24–29.

Silverberg, Robert. 1968. Mound Builders of Ancient America: The Archaeology of a Myth (original, unabridged edition). Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, Ltd.

Tainter, J. 1988. The Collapse of Complex Societies. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Welch, P.D. 1991. Moundville’s Economy. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Woodward, Susan L., and Jerry N. McDonald. 2002. Indian Mounds of the Middle Ohio Valley: A Guide to Mound and Earthworks of the Adena, Hopewell, Cole, and Fort Ancient People. Blacksburg, Virginia: McDonald and Woodward Publishing.

What’s even worse is that Polish universities do not protect themselves from this pseudoscience. Medicine and pharmacy students are offered courses on homeopathy and alternative medicine. Pedagogical studies are teaching educational kinesiology or the Doman Delacato patterning method. Even renowned universities include neurolinguistic programming (NLP), Bert Hellinger’s family constellation therapy, and Carl Simonton’s “treatment” for cancer (and many more questionable therapies) in their psychology curriculums. Polish scientists rarely protest against such practices. This is the reason we have founded the Polish Sceptics Club (PSC)––an organization focused on informing the public about the real value of pseudoscientific claims, promoting proper scientific knowledge, and guarding against pseudoscientific practices (particularly in medicine and psychology).

Our club officially came into existence in 2010, but our members have a lot of experience and have extensive achievements and merits in the realm of revealing pseudoscientific claims. Andrzej Gregosiewicz from the Medical University of Lublin is the “godfather” of the anti-homeopathic movement in Poland. In 2006 he lost a lawsuit with Boiron (a French manufacturer of homeopathic products) after he criticized Oscillococcinum (a popular “treatment” for common cold and flu). Two years later the district court in Warsaw rejected the case of the Polish Chamber of Commerce “Polish Pharmacy,” whose president claimed that professor Gregosiewicz’s publicity lead to a significant decrease in medical professionals “specializing” in homeopathy. This verdict was a precedent in a war with homeopathy: a single medical practitioner won a lawsuit in court against multimillion-dollar homeopathy manufacturers. For over ten years Gregosiewicz has published numerous peer-reviewed papers on homeopathy and other alternative “therapies.” Due to his activities the sales of homeopathic products recently dropped about 25 percent.

Debunking of pseudoscience in the fields of psychology and psychotherapy is the main activity of Tomasz Witkowski, a science writer. One of his most spectacular actions was the publication of a pseudoscientific paper popularizing nonexistant psychotherapy in a popular psychological journal. Detailed description of this hoax, its purpose, and the nationwide discussion that arose in Poland after his Sokal-style hoax can be found in the article Psychological Sokal-Style Hoax published in 2010 in The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice (Vol. 8: 1, 50–60).

Another important event initialized by Witkowski was an Open Letter in Defense of Reason addressed to the Polish government and protesting against including among government lists of legal occupations such “proficiencies” as astrologist, fortune teller, bioenergy therapist, reflexologist, and dowser, among others. This campaign was supported by over five thousand people, mostly scientists, and lead to numerous public discussions; it was described in Skeptical Inquirer (34, 2010).

Witkowski’s books also incite emotional debated among psychologists, therapists, and teachers. His book Forbidden Psychology. Between Charlatanry and Science was the first Polish book ever to discuss the problem of pseudoscientific abuses in psychology. The second part of this popular book is about to be published.

Maciej Zatonski is known for debunking unscientific therapies and claims in clinical medicine. He is a lecturer at Medical University of Wroclaw and is actively involved in encouraging people to trust in scientifically proven therapies rather than fairies, myths, and tricksters. He is a leader in public understanding of science in Poland and is highly engaged lecturer in this field. His struggle to clean up medical curricula from obsolete or bogus therapies was recently noted by the Polish Academy of Sciences. Zatonski is also known for promoting evolution and evolutionary sciences.

Before PSC was officially founded, we protested together against numerous absurdities in public spaces in Poland and were highly engaged in the popularizing of science and reason. One event widely covered in the Polish media was An Open Letter against the Spread of Pseudoscience, sent to the rector of the University of Opole. The authorities of the University allowed for the organization of a commercial event and a lecture with self-proclaimed healer Georg E. Ashkar, who claimed to “cure” 100 percent of all cases of cancer, AIDS, rheumatoid arthritis, and asthma—for a fee, of course. We have protested against organizing such events at public universities and against funding of public universities by pseudoscientific tricksters.

We have actively engaged in the actions of other European skeptical organizations during the fourteenth European Sceptics Congress in Budapest in 2010. Witkowski prepared a lecture entitled “Fashionable nonsense still in fashion” and Zatonski presented his speech, “Medicine––art, science or craft?”

Shortly after the Polish Sceptics Club was founded we organized the 10:23 Campaign in Poland in two major academic centers in Warsaw and Wroclaw. The first public overdose of homeopathic “medicines” was widely discussed in national media. After a few weeks the media was still writing critically about homeopathy. This was probably the first time in Polish history when the attention of the general public was focused on fake treatments.

In less than a year after creation of PSC we have managed to set up a “new tradition”: monthly meetings in the Falanster bookstore café in Wroclaw. During those meetings we organize lectures promoting science and critical thinking and debunking myths and pseudoscientific claims in psychology, medicine, and other areas of knowledge. The meetings are open to the general public and everyone is welcome to join the lectures and participate in open discussions. The meetings start in the late afternoon and sometimes the discussions end very late at night. They are becoming increasingly more popular among citizens of Wroclaw and are a thorn in a side of those making a living by tricking their customers into pseudoscientific claims and treatments.

We have also started to prepare an online version of a dictionary of various therapies. It is an attempt to collect, systematize, and describe various therapies and psychotherapies in single place on the web. Many people from Poland have volunteered to work on the project. Therefore we hope to offer to the public a complete source of knowledge that could prove useful when choosing a therapy or rehabilitation technique.

The latest idea that we are currently trying to launch is a large-scale media campaign entitled “Psychology is Science, not Witchcraft.” We would like to continuously be able to focus public attention on numerous false beliefs and scientific absurdity in psychology. In the spring of 2012 we will concentrate our efforts on presenting the real values (or actually the lack of them) in projective tests in psychological diagnosis––especially in the opinions prepared for Polish courts and jurisdiction. Students, scientists, and lecturers from five major universities have already engaged in our project. We believe that soon others will follow as well.

The above-mentioned brief examples of our work were chosen from our most spectacular activities. Our plans still require a lot of work and discipline to make them a real success. Most members of PSC spend their time working with patients and students and chatting with their friends and relatives, which creates strong foundations for critical thinking every day. The biggest obstacle we face is conformity and ignorance of a large part of the academic world and a very strong support for pseudoscience that has rooted deeply into Polish soil.

Once upon a time in a little village at the edge of a forest, there lived a little girl and her family. This little girl was the sweetest, kindest child there ever was. In 2011, she’s Amanda Seyfried playing Valerie in Little Red Riding Hood.

Seyfried doesn’t have to try hard to capture an audience’s attention. In the movie adaption of the famed fairy tale, she plays a captivating character torn between two men. In an age-old tale of arranged marriages and true love, she desires to be with mysterious and handsome Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), but it is well-off Henry (Max Irons) who she is supposed to wed. Her porcelain face covered with a red hood, of course, is the perfect symbol of innocence against the werewolf that just killed her older sister and continues to prowl the dark forest surrounding her village. This recent development prevents Valerie and Peter from running off together.

The themes of war and trusting thy neighbor are continuous throughout the film as a team of characters reveal the uneasy truce that has existed with the beast for years as long as the creature is offered a monthly animal sacrifice. The villagers call upon celebrated werewolf hunter Father Solomon (Gary Oldman), whose unexpected actions causes the death toll to rise.


Valerie’s ability to understand the wolf soon leads to the looming possibility and conclusion that the real beast is indeed someone she loves. Whose side does she choose? Who can she trust? Is someone so good, pretty, and perfect capable of trickery and siding with a monster? Definitely a quandary worthy of the DVD player.

The following is a statement from the Menrva Foundation for Science and Reason, a group working to promote science in Indonesia.

Recent rapid developments of science have profoundly altered the course of human life. Literacy of science has improved life expectancy, built massive structures, sent the Voyager out of heliosphere, collided protons in particle accelerators, crafted a vaccine that have saved numerous life, and more importantly, shaped mankind’s way of thinking. However, although it has been proved that science works, pseudoscience and superstition are still rampant among mankind. Astrology, homeopathy, channeling, mid-brain activation and other voodoo-sciences are applied by tremendous number of people to ease their problems instantly. Those superstitions are not only deceiving, but also amazingly hazardous to, inter alia, physical and psychological health.

The saddening fact is that the superstitions are too widespread in Indonesian civilization. Astrology, mid-brain activation, alternative medicines, inter alia, is far more popular than science. The reasons behind these are obvious: the Indonesian society’s eyes are not opened to science and skepticism. The poetry of reality is hardly known, and, as a result of long-term dictatorship, critical thinking is regarded as “rebel” or “subversive.” The eye of the Indonesians must be awakened since both the former and the latter are significant for the advancement of Indonesian civilization.

Therefore a foundation is constructed in order to solve the mentioned problems. Founded in 2011, Menrva Foundation for Science and Reason is striving to popularize science in Indonesia. In addition, the foundation also struggles to build a rational and critical society in Indonesia. In order to fulfill these visions, several programs are launched:

1. Article

The program is to write popular and newest science article in Indonesian language in order to facilitate the access of knowledge to the community. The article may be in form of translation or new article written by scholars from Menrva.

2. Video

Some segments of the society are more interested in absorbing information via video. Therefore Menrva shall satisfy the demand by creating subtitle for popular science and debunking videos.

3. Science Club

The agenda of this science club is to discuss popular science in a moderated and relaxed fashion. This program is held every week on Friday with various topics. Several theme that had been discussed are “Science of Love”, “Astrobiology”, and “Science v Pseudoscience.”

4. Debunking

The goal is to review, investigate, and criticize superstition, mysticism, and pseudoscience in Indonesian society. This debunking program will be commenced in the form of documented live investigation or debunking article.

The Menrva Foundation for Science and Reason's website is available at http://menrvaindonesia.org/.

“I was fifty-five years old when I began to understand the world in my view. . . . I’m actually quite certain, and I don’t want to believe it . . . that the people we call the government murder us in order to start wars that make money for them.” ¹

In his article “The Conspiracy Meme: Why Conspiracy Theories Appeal and Persist” (SI, January/February 2011), Ted Goetzel suggests conspiracy theorizing is a meme—a way of thinking that spreads, survives, or dies according to a process analogous to genetic (termed mimetic) selection. The conspiracy meme competes with others, such as the scientific meme or the fair debate meme, as a way of describing and making sense of the world.

Conspiracy theorizing is, according to Goetzel, a rhetorical meme that “transforms scientific controversies into human dramas. . . . It uses controversial facts and speculations to undermine scientific evidence.” It is a surprisingly resilient and successful meme, a growing body of scholarly literature suggests, because of a growing mistrust in “experts” and established sources of knowledge (Hardwig 1991); an ideological response to structural inequalities (Fenster 1999); and a natural human tendency to seek order in an ever more complex, confusing world (Popper [1945] 2006). Once implanted, it is incredibly difficult to shake.

Over the past year we have been watching and confronting one particular version of this meme: the 9/11 Truth movement. In August 2010, we released a paper about conspiracy theories, “The Power of Unreason.” Within hours, the online conspiricist community hit back. Our paper was featured, or mirrored, on literally thousands of websites, blogs, and discussion forums; appeared as a topic on conspiricist radio shows; was mentioned in a dozen YouTube videos; and attracted hundreds of pages of comments and critique from the 9/11 Truth movement.²

The crucial point is that “The Power of Unreason” was not actually about the 9/11 Truth movement. As a study of the role of conspiracy theories in extremist and terrorist groups, it mentions 9/11 Truth sparsely and incidentally. That the 9/11 Truth movement responded in such an aggressive manner prompted us to analyze the response itself as a means of understanding this broadly nonviolent movement that nonetheless represents a damaging cultural habit.

The response illustrated, and continues to illustrate, Goertzel’s conspiracy theory meme in action. First, the online conspiracy community wrapped the report around faulty preconceptions. The paper was misrepresented in an exaggerated, distorted, inaccurate way that was soon recycled and re-presented within the conspiricist community. The recommendation to teach critical thinking in schools became “pushing propaganda on our children.” The recommendation to introduce alternative information into conspiracist sites became a dark, Orwellian plot to end free speech. The key finding that terrorist organizations often use conspiracy theories as part of their propaganda became “Demos accuses the 9/11 Truth Movement as [sic] being terrorists.”³ Many of these comments came from people who freely confessed that they had not read our paper.

Quickly, the focus turned onto our organization, Demos, a non-government public education charity. The Greek letter theta, taking the place of the o in the Demos logo, became the eye of the Illuminati.⁴ As authors, we were roundly accused of being part of the conspiracy itself: at best unknowing, naive, and myopic writers; at worst disinformation specialists or government agents openly supporting state terrorism.⁵ This technique of folding any dissenters into an ever-growing conspiracy is precisely what Goertzel predicts: cascade logic. Here, it was a spontaneous, semi-concerted effort to discredit the report and its arguments.

According to various polls, belief in the 9/11 conspiracy is incredibly high. In the United Kingdom, only 56 percent of the population believes al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks; some smaller polling suggests that as many as one-third of Americans consider it “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that U.S. government officials either allowed or actually carried out the attacks on September 11, 2001.⁶ In fact, it is not quite as simple as that. Based on our encounters, we believe the 9/11 Truth movement is composed of different kinds of people who are involved in the movement for different reasons and derive different types of fulfillment and satisfaction from this engagement. This is a story of a dominant meme finding fertile ground in several psychological habitats.

We’ve observed groups from three of these habitats. The first can be called the “hardcore” group. Much of the noise of the 9/11 Truth movement is caused by a relatively small, tight-knit group of highly connected, highly motivated individuals. They are prodigious producers of information and theories who spot anomalies and technical inconsistencies. They are veterans of the John F. Kennedy assasination and Moon-landing-hoax theories, and so their worldview favors the “super-conspiracy,” linking conspiracies to a hidden overarching, sinister master plan (Cline 2007).

In our debates with them, hardcore 9/11 Truthers claim to be interested only in “facts”: the physical “fact” of the free fall speed of the Twin Towers, the collapse of World Trade Center (WTC) 7—which to them proves a demolition—or the “fact” that traces of super thermite have been identified in the Lower Manhattan dust by Steven Jones.

Their arguments, however, are not scientific at all, because the methods used are nonscientific: proponents decide on the answer and then search for corroborating evidence while ignoring the overwhelming peer-reviewed, independent research that suggests that, for example, WTC 7 collapsed in a manner consistent with severe damage from falling debris and fire (National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] 2008). This self-avowedly dispassionate search for truth is emotional.⁷ The hardcore group’s involvement in 9/11 Truth is monochrome and Manichean: it’s a “good/bad,” “black/white” struggle against an oppressive influence whose existence hardcore members believe they are on the cusp of proving.

The second layer could be called the “critically turned” group. It is often a source of surprise that many young students and political activists are part of the 9/11 Truth movement. Some are influenced heavily by that heady bundle of postmodern theory and the critical turn that Geoffrey Elton so memorably termed “the intellectual equivalent of crack” (Elton [1991] 2002). Their approach and language center on the dizzying ideas of relativism and subjective truth and the post-structural deconstruction they allow and demand (Sokal and Brickmont 1998).

But more than anything, the critically turned’s membership in 9/11 Truth arises from anger at the political order they will soon inherit. It is too closed. There is too much power in the hands of too few. Their sense of justice and idealism is rudely confronted by a world of state espionage, links between big business and government, and lies over weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). These are as significant as any specific theories about WTC 7 or the size of the hole in the Pentagon outer wall. Their interests often span to other forms of resistance against perceived oppression and injustice: support for Palestine, affiliation with the anti-war movement, and hatred of greedy bankers. It is this group that produces much of the cool, countercultural content of the movement. A recent YouTube video about Demos was set to the electronic dubstep track “Could This Be Real (Joker Remix).”⁸ Some of the most popular conspiricist films, such as Loose Change and Zeitgeist, make great use of atmospheric drumbeats and eye-catching graphics.

Finally there is a much larger, more diffuse group, which we term the illiterati. They are people for whom membership in 9/11 Truth is as much a social and recreational pursuit as an exercise in critical inquiry.⁹ Their involvement is predominantly through web 2.0 social networking. Often this user-generated commentary really acts as interactive entertainment masquerading as a public-spirited, free-thinking quest for the truth. They are the worst offenders for flouting the basic tenets of good journalism—accurate quotation, avoidance of misrepresentation, and fidelity of source—and their contributions, almost entirely devoid of genuine intent to find truth, are almost always nakedly and transparently propagandistic. For them, it is the thrill of the chase and participating in a largely online struggle that animates their involvement, not the end result.

Though the conspiracy theorizing meme is the same, its success within the 9/11 Truth movement depends on quite different characteristics depending on its adherent. These unlikely comrades in arms have joined to make a formidable movement. The hardcore group supplies much of the physical organization and structure: its members organize events, discussions, and marches; distribute leaflets; and edit the “peer reviewed” journals. The critically turned have done much to manufacture its broad appeal—giving it a countercultural street cred and, through the production of content and the skillful exploitation of virtual networks, exposure to millions. The illiterati form the group’s mass-membership backbone. They provide the thousands of comments and millions of YouTube hits on which the movement’s exaggerated claims of popularity and influence are founded. So can anything be learned from this?

The hardcore group claims to share at least the same epistemological rules—rationalism, empiricism, and a grounding of basic scholarly practice and conduct—as skeptics. Yet the emotionalized substrate of this conduct makes broad attempts at logical reasoning—such as pointing out the cascade logic suggested by Goetzel—insufficient. Any chance to believe conspirators exist is good enough for them. Any hanging anomalies or unanswered challenges of the official narrative will be taken as proof of the conspiracy. So the necessary response here is most painstaking: their claims must, as far as is possible, be rebuffed fact by fact, anomaly by anomaly, with the scientific tools they claim to be using.

The critically turned might not accept this approach, because conspiracy theories for them fit in with what they see happening in the world—it is part of a bigger story. The use of logical reasoning could help. Highlighting cascade logic might stick, as might emphasizing other tools of logic and rhetoric. For example, why would the American government, if it wanted to keep this secret, fly planes into the Twin Towers before bringing them down with a controlled demolition? Was flying fully fueled passenger jets into the Pentagon and the center of U.S. business not sufficient? Why did the U.S. government not plant WMDs in Iraq—a far easier and equally important subject?

The illiterati have not actually looked at much of the material, but it fits not only with their worldview but also with an explicit position to which they have committed socially and around which they have formed an identity. This makes ideas very difficult to dislodge (Riso et al. 2007). Neither facts nor logic are likely to do much here. We can only address the real structural inequalities that condition a milieu as fertile for such beliefs. This, of course, is a major endeavor. Some smaller changes may help too, such as more critical thinking in schools: a recent study by an independent organization in the United Kingdom found that 43 percent of sixteen- to twenty-four-year-olds base their trust in web content on how the site looks, while 32 percent of twelve- to fifteen-year-olds believe that Google search results are listed in order of accuracy.¹⁰

Memes must exist within a human ecology. Conspiracy theorizing is not only, or even predominantly, an intellectual process. It is “whole-person”: both emotional and social. That is why changing the dominant meme must be done in person: the hard graft of speaking, discussing, and arguing face-to-face. The 9/11 Truth movement has successfully done that. The skeptics must continue to do the same.

Notes

1. A direct quote from a very angry man at an event we attended (publicized by 9/11 Truthers as “Demos vs. 9/11 Truth”). He sat in the front row directly across from coauthor Carl Miller and yelled this fairly typical outburst into his face. (Available online at www.vimeo.com/16395101, approximately forty-six minutes and twenty seconds into the video clip.)

2. See, for example, www.infowars.com/government-think-tank-calls-for-infiltrating-conspiracy-websites and www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20100829144303310 (both accessed October 11, 2010).

3. See the Demos blog for a good overview of the response at www.demos.co.uk/blog/engaging-.

4. http://seeker401.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/demos-calls-for-governments-to-infiltrate-conspiracy-sites (accessed October 11, 2010).

5. http://kevboyle.blogspot.com/2010/10/demos-meets-911-truth.html (accessed October 11, 2010).

6. See www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/535.php and Lev Grossman’s article “Why the Conspiracy Theories Won’t Go Away,” Time magazine in 2008 (www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1531304,00.html).

7. See, for instance, the “personal validation effect”: a cognitive bias of considering a piece of information to be correct if it has a personal significance. See B.R. Forer’s 1949 article “The Fallacy of Personal Validation: A classroom Demonstration of Gullibility,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology (volume 44, pp. 118–21.)

8. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqLOtQb1DwE.

9. See Cass Sunstein for a study of reputational cascades, in which people “profess belief in a conspiracy theory, or at least suppress their doubts, because they seek to curry favor.” Sunstein and Vermeule, University of Chicago Law and Economics Research Paper Series, Paper No. 387, p.12.

10a. UK children’s media literacy. 2009. Ofcom. London.

10b. Digital lifestyles: Young adults aged 16–24. 2009. Ofcom. London.

References

Cline, Austin. 2007. Flaws in reasoning and arguments: Subjective validation, seeing patterns and connections that aren’t really there. About.com (September 10).

Elton, Geoffrey R. (1991) 2002. Return to Essentials: Some Reflections on the Present State of Historical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fenster, Mark. 1999. Conspiracy theories: Secrecy and power in American culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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

Hardwig, John. 1991. The role of trust in knowledge. Journal of Philosophy 88(22).

National Institute of Standards and Technology. 2008. Final report on the collapse of World Trade Center building 7.

Popper, Karl. (1945) 2006. Conspiracy theory of society. In Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazele, eds, Rights, Bodies and Recognition: New Essays on Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right, 13–16.

Riso, Lawrence P., et al. 2007. Cognitive Schemas and Core Beliefs in Psychological Problems: A Scientist–Practitioner Guide. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Sokal, Alan, and Jean Bricmont. 1998. Fashionable Nonsense. New York: Picador.

Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore by Benjamin Radford. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2011. ISBN: 978-0-82635-015-2. 202 pp. Softcover, $24.95.

Benjamin Radford is a longtime scientific investigator of fringe-science topics with an emphasis on cryptozoology. The University of New Mexico Press has published Radford’s latest book, Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore. Though modestly titled, this book is arguably the greatest cryptozoological book ever written. It’s a winner in every way, a slam-dunk debunk of the mystery surrounding the new monster on the block: el chupacabra.

Radford builds his case methodically, starting off with a history of vampire legends in general. After all, chupacabra literally means “goat sucker” in Spanish and as such falls squarely within the realm of vampiric tradition. Many people become familiar with vampires through popular media such as books or movies. In America, the emphasis is on European or American monsters. Yet Radford demonstrates that vampiric legend is a worldwide phenomenon that goes far back in history. Not surprisingly, each culture has a slightly different spin on the legend, and the culture of Puerto Rico, where the first chupacabra reports originated, is no exception.

The Puerto Rican version of the chupacabra legend incorporates elements of anti-American sentiment as well as conspiracy theories and religious “end times” notions. The chupacabra myth sprang up to explain dead animals left behind that had been killed (and supposedly left bloodless) by unknown predators. Radford methodically investigates how these animals probably died.

There’s an entire branch of science, taphonomy, that deals with what happens to animals after they die. Radford’s account is both accessible to the lay reader and sparing in unnecessary gore; all photos are in black and white. A near-reprise of the cattle mutilation flap of the 1970s, virtually all cases of alleged chupacabra attacks involve animals dying by ordinary predation, not by having their blood sucked. Using both photographs and drawings, Radford illustrates how an untrained individual might come to misinterpret an animal’s death as the result of a blood-sucking beast.

Sometimes asking a simple question leads to a surprising result. By the time the chupacabra legend went north to the United States, the beast had changed from a bipedal being with spikes down its back to a quadruped, something along the lines of a dog, wolf, or coyote. These animals are all canids, and as such have certain familial characteristics. Radford works through a very simple, non-intuitive question: Is a canid even physiologically capable of sucking blood from an animal’s wound?

The technology behind DNA analysis has progressed so quickly during the beginning of the twenty-first century that it’s not surprising that it has been used to identify the carcasses of animals claimed to be chupacabras. Without fail, DNA analyses of these animals have shown them to be known species or, occasionally, hybrids of known species. In many cases the carcasses are hairless, or nearly so. Radford includes a treatment of the nature of sarcoptic mange, which can cause an animal to lose most if not all of its fur. Hairless canids often look very different from normal, healthy animals.

The real death blow to the chupacabra legend was Radford tracking down and personally interviewing the first known chupacabra eyewitness, a Puerto Rican woman named Madelyne Tolentino. To borrow a term from epidemiology, Tolentino was “patient zero,” i.e., the single person from whom the tale originated and spread. This is the point at which everything falls into place, giving Radford’s investigation an almost Euclidian elegance. A careful examination of Tolentino’s account demonstrates virtually beyond a doubt that her sighting was a confabulation with a work of fiction.

As with a geometric theorem, the elegance lies in the process of the proof, not just the result. Radford freely admits that it may seem like overkill to put so much time and energy into debunking an intrinsically unlikely monster. Yet the beauty of Radford’s book is that we get to watch how things ought to be done. The investigative process is as important as the ultimate conclusion. Radford’s book is a must-have in any good crypto-library.

We are deeply concerned about Walmart's irresponsible marketing and promotion of Boiron Oscillococcinum, an ineffective homeopathic "flu medicine," through its website, www.walmart.com. Walmart's website states that the product" manufactured by Boiron, is to be used "for flu-like symptoms." ¹ The website further states that the product's alleged active ingredient, Anas Barbariae Hepatis Et Cordis Extractum 200CK Hpus, is used "to Reduce The Duration and Severity of Flu Symptoms." The website also features an image of the product's package, which indicates that the product "Reduces [the] Duration and Severity of Flu Symptoms," including "Fever, Chills, Body Aches and Pains."

Walmart's misleading promotion of this "homeopathic medicine" as a treatment for flu is not limited to the webpage on which the product is displayed. Consumers will reach this page only after visiting Walmart's "Medicine Cabinet" page,² which assures customers that the products Walmart carries will "fight colds and the flu." From there, website visitors will navigate to the "Cough, Colds & Flu Wellness Shop" page,³ which promises to help the customer "Stay on top of cold and flu season by learning about products that can help you and your family stay well, relieve symptoms and recover fast." In its "Cough, Cold, and Flu Buying Guide,"⁴ Walmart asserts that its products will provide the customer "with everything you and your family need for battling a cold or the flu."

In short, Walmart's entire website is replete with assurances that the products Walmart offers as flu remedies are, in fact, effective for preventing and treating the flu. People are buying Boiron Oscillococcinum based on these assurances.

Walmart's assurances regarding Boiron Oscillococcinum, however, are false and irresponsible. Boiron Oscillococcinum is ineffective against the flu and flu symptoms. Homeopathic oscillococcinum solutions were first produced in the early 20th century on the mistaken assumption that they contained "oscillococci," microscopic bacteria that proved to be imaginary.⁵ The allegedly active ingredient of Boiron's Oscillococcinum consists of mere liquefied duck liver and duck heart, substances that were thought to contain the nonexistent bacteria. Moreover, manufacturing a "200 CK" homeopathic preparation requires repeatedly diluting the "active ingredient" in water until the odds that the solution contains even a single molecule of it are effectively zero.⁶

There is no credible scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of Boiron Oscillococcinum's "200CK" homeopathic preparation beyond what is expected from the placebo effect.⁷ The premise upon which the effectiveness of this "homeopathic medicine" is founded—that highly diluted preparations of substances that cause symptoms in healthy individuals will reduce similar symptoms in patients—has no basis in reality and has been disproved repeatedly.⁸

This statement should not be interpreted as offering a legal opinion. By marketing Boiron Oscillococcinum through its website, however, Walmart may be in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act ("FFDCA")⁹ and the regulations it implemented. The Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission have issued warning letters¹⁰ to other marketers of Boiron Oscillococcinum stating that online marketing of the product for the treatment of flu symptoms violates the FFDCA.

Regardless of whether Walmart is violating the law, its marketing of this product is a profound disservice to the public. Influenza is a serious illness. It can lead to complications resulting in hospitalization or even death, especially among the elderly, the very young, and individuals with certain health conditions.¹¹ It is imperative that consumers not be led to believe that effective preventive and therapeutic measures can be ignored in favor of something that amounts to "snake oil." A product that is useless is a product that is harmful.

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and the Center for Inquiry wrote to Walmart in November 2010 regarding its inaccurate and misleading marketing of Boiron Oscillococcinum. To date Walmart has neither issued a response to nor acknowledged receipt of CSI and CFI's letter. Because Walmart has misled consumers about the product's effectiveness and ignored private pleadings to correct the situation, we are compelled to speak out publicly against Walmart's irresponsibility.

We urge Walmart to cease marketing this ineffective product immediately. Although we recognize that doing so might not serve Walmart's financial interest, we hope Walmart will act appropriately out of a sense of ethical obligation. The cooperation of good corporate citizens is indispensable if public consumers are to rely on the claims of health-remedy producers and the companies that market their products.

Signed,*

Center for Inquiry and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Representatives

Ronald A. Lindsay, J.D., Ph.D.
President and CEO, Center for Inquiry and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Barry Karr
Executive Director, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Derek C. Araujo, Esq.
General Counsel, Center for Inquiry

Signatories from the Scientific and Medical Community

Kimball C. Atwood IV, M.D.
Assistant Clinical Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine

Stephen Barrett, M.D.
Psychiatrist, Author, Consumer Advocate

Willem Betz, M.D.
Professor Emeritus of Medicine, University of Brussels VUB
Chair, Medicine Branch, European Council of Skeptical Organisations

Edzard Ernst, M.D., Ph.D., F.Med. Sci., FSB, FRCP, FRCP (Edin.)
Laing Chair in Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth

David H. Gorski, M.D., Ph.D., FACS
Managing Editor, Science-Based Medicine blog
Leader, Breast Cancer Multidisciplinary Team, and Co-Leader, Breast Cancer Biology Program, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute

Harriet Hall, M.D.
Physician (ret.); Writer

Steven Novella, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine

Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.
Nobel Laureate (Chemistry, 2009)
Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine (2007)

Wallace Sampson, M.D.
Clinical Professor, Emeritus of Medicine, Stanford University
Former Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine

Simon Singh, Ph.D., MBE
Author, Critic, Television Director and Producer

* Titles for purpose of identification only.

____________________

¹See http://www.walmart.com/ip/Boiron-Oscillococcinum-Homeopathic-Flu-Medicine-6ct/10316942#ProductDetail.

²See http://www.walmart.com/cp/Medicine-Cabinet/976798.

³See http://health.walmart.com/health-tips/cough-cold-flu/20/.

⁴See http://health.walmart.com/health-advice/cough-cold-flu-buying-guide/689/.

⁵See http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/spip.php?article39; see also http://www.homeowatch.org/history/oscillo.html.

⁶See http://www.homeowatch.org/history/oscillo.html.

⁷See, e.g., http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343%2807%2900876-5/abstract.

⁸See, e.g., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12492603.

⁹Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 21 U.S.C. §§ 331, 352.

¹⁰See, e.g., http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/ucm215236.htm.

¹¹See http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/.

Dear Outlaw,

After suffering a sharp pain behind my eyeballs, I visited my doctor, who immediately diagnosed the problem. His treatment was to get plenty of rest and apply Head-On to my forehead twice a day. What is a “skeptoid” anyway?

—Forgot to Ask My Doctor

Dear Forgot,

A skeptoid is a mild but sometimes painful protuberance on the brain. Although a specific cause has remained elusive, some scientists theorize that it’s triggered by a “skeptical strain in the brain.” In other words, overindulging in skepticism. Currently, there’s no real cure except for time, although some researchers are tirelessly testing a promising new product, tentatively referred to as “Preparation S.” I suggest you follow your doctor’s advice (think of the Head-On as a placebo), lay off any heavy, irritating doses of skepticism for a while, and avoid tight headgear.

The BCSE is fully supported by its members throughout the UK, and draws on the experience and expertise of like minded professional people resident in North America, Australia, South Africa and continental Europe. Our members come from a broad variety of fields - science, business, theology, education, academia, engineering, IT and research. We have two things in common - knowledge of the creationist movement and a deep concern for the proper science education of children.

BCSE is a part of the broader international campaign against Creationism. The creationist movement itself is international with strong connections in the USA, where much of the money comes from, and Australia. We believe that working with similar groups throughout the world considerably strengthens the organisation in terms of contacts, knowledge and expertise.

The United Kingdom is faced with a highly organised, well-funded coalition of fundamentalist Young Earth Creationist groups. These include, but are not limited to: Truth in Science, Answers in Genesis, the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, the Christian Institute, Creation Research UK, Genesis Agendum, the Creation Science Movement and the Biblical Creation Society.

The creationist movement receives money and assistance from other parts of the world including Australia, through Creation Ministries International and Creation Research International and the United States, through such organisations and individuals as Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and Howard Ahmanson, the American billionaire recluse who also funds the Discovery Institute.

These organisations have long-established tactics for infiltration and are active in bringing bogus creationist science into the classrooms of British state schools, frequently without the knowledge of parents or local education authorities. The movement has already taken full control of three state schools and has the funding and intention to control many more.

They actively discredit or subvert the teaching of all subjects taught in schools that contradict their extreme fundamentalist religious opinions, which are based on strictly literal biblical interpretations. Most notably they state that all of science is wrong because it does not agree with their dogma that the world was created 6,000-10,000 years ago, there was a world-wide flood with dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark, and that these dinosaurs roamed the countryside in Tudor times.

The position has become so serious that two well respected and established British universities, Leeds and Leicester, are introducing compulsory remedial courses to undo the damage done.

We have built up a database of the structure and activities of fundamentalist organisations that are active in teaching creationism in UK schools, which will be available for use by the organisations we support. It will also be made available to: teachers and other educators; local education authorities; local and national politicians; students at universities with active fundamentalist staff; businesses recruiting from schools and universities; the media and trade unions and other professional bodies involved in science and education.

In September 2006, BCSE launched its first campaign to raise awareness of the problem of creationism in education.

Further information about the BCSE can be found on its website http://www.bcseweb.org.uk .