This page last modified 2006 July 22
Some Astronomical Errors of Graham Hancock
Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods (Century, 2001) contains these gems:
- A conjunction of five planets that can be expected to have profound
gravitational effects will take place on 5 May in the year 2000 when Neptune,
Uranus, Venus, Mercury and Mars will align with earth on the other side of the
Sun. (p 245)
Did anyone notice these "profound gravitational effects"? (Actually, I did -- I broke my ankle that day, much to the amusement of my students, whom I had been assuring that this so-called alignment would have no noticeable effect! [g]) However, Hancock's statement is wrong in almost every important respect, including what planets are involved in this so-called "alignment". See here.
Error of Fact is one of the common Flaws of Argumentation that characterises pseudoscientific (or, in this case, pseudohistorical) writing. However, it is even more astounding that Hancock would publish such a claim after the event, when it is obvious that the "profound gravitational effects" did not occur. - Earthquakes, for example, occur more often when the moon is full or
when the earth is between the sun and the moon; when the moon is new or between
the sun and the earth; when the moon crosses the meridian of the affected
locality; and when the moon is closest to the earth on its orbit. (p246)
This is utter nonsense and is parrotted straight from Velikovsky. In 1975, when I first encountered this nonsense, I got hold of earthquake data and analysed them statistically — there was no statistical difference between earthquake frequency at syzygy and at quadrature. No statistical study of earthquake frequency has found the phenomenon that Hancock claims.
Update 2003 May 24: On 2003 May 19, in a post on Hancock's message board, one of Hancock's sycophants claimed that my statements above are false, and proceeded to cut-and-paste some entirely irrelevant material from an excellent web site on vulcanism. Despite having been informed that vulcanism and earthquakes are different things (and despite the intervening tragedy of the Algerian earthquake being nearer to quadrature than to syzygy), the said sycophant has declined to correct the misleading post. This sort of behaviour (i.e. the discarding of inconvenient evidence, and the ignoble tactics of arguing by red herring and erecting straw-man fallacies) is typical of those who adhere to astrocrud.
