The problem there is as pointed out in Day the Universe Changed is the very model you use determines the bias.
Burke give three examples: meteorites, Piltdown Man, and Plate Tectonics.
Burke glosses over how a handful of scientists bucked the consensus and said Piltdown was not what it was claimed to be.
David Waterston of King's College London in 1913 published in Nature his conclusion that the sample consisted of an ape mandible and human skull.
French paleontologist Marcellin Boule concluded the same thing in 1915.
American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller said the same thing.
In 1923, Franz Weidenreich stated the remains were in reality modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth ie a fraud.
But Piltdown Man so well fit the model of human evolution used back then that these observations (which could have been easily confirmed) were ignored.
And don't kid yourself the Pro HJ side has Piltdown Men all over the place be it Josephus Testimonium Flavianum (in its entirety), the 5000 Greek document claim, and nearly all the other stuff used as evidence.
The story of meteorites is an even better example:
Before the French Revolution French peasants would tell people of 'these here stones that fell from the sky'.
These stories were dismissed out of hand as no scientist had seen these falling stones (rock brought to them were of Earthly origin). As for the stories of peasants:
AFTER the French Revolution with those French peasants now in charge these exact same stories "became vital astrological data". A few years later a scientific book on meteorites was published.
Last edited:
