Conjuring Up a Lost Civilization: An Analysis of the Claims Made by Graham Hancock in Magicians of the Gods
Link to Skeptic magazine article
Entries by Marc Defant
A response to Napier and Howard and the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis
As I have indicated in an earlier blog, I wrote an article about the conjectures Graham Hancock makes in his book entitled Magicians of the Gods for Skeptic magazine (Conjuring Up a Lost Civilization: An Analysis of the Claims Made by Graham Hancock in Magicians of the Gods). I also appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) […]
Conjuring Up a Lost Civilization: updating the debate with Graham Hancock
My article entitled Conjuring Up a Lost Civilization: An Analysis of the Claims Made by Graham Hancock in Magicians of the Gods[1] was published in Skeptic magazine on Sept. 14, 2017 It has been an interesting road to the final publication. Michael Shermer (editor of Skeptic magazine) asked me to join him on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast #961 and Youtube video cast (JRE) in a debate […]
The Psychological Impact of Devastating Events and the Misuse of Terrorism
At some time between 5 and 7 pm on November 13, 1985, the Mayor of Armero, Colombia, Ramon Antonio Rodriguez, was notified to evacuate the city because of the potential for an eminent mudflow geologists call a lahar from recent activity on nearby Nevado del Ruiz volcano. Rodriguez was aware of the lahars that had […]
Science versus the “eye test” in selecting the college football playoff teams
Note: this paper will be published in Skeptic Magazine in March, 2017 In case you are not familiar with how college football determines the four teams that are picked to contend for the national championship, I refer you to the Selection Committee Protocol which is a guide on how the committee chooses the four playoff […]
Genomics – a brave new world
Embryonic stem cells (ES cells) are remarkable. They come from animal (including human) embryos and can morph into any cell in the body such as brain, bone marrow, intestine, muscle, or blood cells. Biologists call them pluripotent and can isolate them from an embryo and grow them in laboratory petri dishes. In the halcyon days […]
Taking the “pseudoscience” out of fingerprint identification
After the Madrid terrorist bombing on March 11, 2004, a latent fingerprint was found on a bag containing detonating devices. The Spanish National Police agreed to share the print with various police agencies. The FBI subsequently turned up 20 possible matches from their database. One of the matches led them to their chief suspect, Brandon Mayfield, because of his ties with the […]
The asbestos coverup
When the World Trade Center was being built in 1973, Dr. Irving Selikoff, an expert on asbestosis and cancers caused by asbestos, was an outspoken critic of the wholesale spraying of the floors of the two structures with insulator containing copious quantities of asbestos for fire-proofing. He knew the potential dangerous hazards of asbestos as […]
The new black gold – fracked methane gas and oil
The term fracking conjures up so many knee-jerk-bad reactions that I am hesitant to broach the subject. I suppose if I am going to wade into the topic I should give some bona fides to display my knowledge of the petroleum industry, but not too many bona fides so that I might be seen as a […]
Diamond rush
A few lucky souls have stumbled on diamonds in glacial debris around the Great Lakes and further north into Canada for centuries. Geologists have known that the sources of those diamonds represented a vast wealth of hidden treasure somewhere in the frozen tundra of northern Canada, but it was not until the late 1980s that a […]