Be vewwwy quiet. I'm hunting Neanderthals.

Sometimes it seems to me that a significant fraction of the media is not even trying to be accurate any more.

Oh, I know there are responsible reporters.  But ye gods and little fishes, some of them are awful.

Take, for example, Mike Hallowell's piece last week in the Shields Gazette, a newspaper out of Sunderland, England.  The article's title was -- and I swear I'm not making this up -- "Was Neanderthal Shot by a Time Traveler?"

In this bizarre little piece, we find out that in 1922, some archaeologists found a Neanderthal skull in Broken Hill, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).  This put me on alert right away; Neanderthals didn't live in Africa, they were a species confined entirely to Europe (if they constitute a distinct species at all, a point still being debated).

But that was only the beginning of the lunacy in Hallowell's article.  Because he claimed that this "Neanderthal skull" had a bullet hole in it.  Here's a direct quote:

On the left side of the cranium was a small, perfectly round hole. At first it was assumed that it had been made by a spear, or other sharp implement, but further investigation proved that this had not been the case. 

When a skull is struck by a relatively low-velocity projectile – such as an arrow, or spear – it produces what are known as radial cracks or striations; that is, minute hairline fractures running away from the place of impact. 

As there were no radial fractures on the Neanderthal skull, it was unanimously concluded that the projectile must have had a far, far greater velocity than an arrow or spear. But what? 

Another mystery was that the right side of the cranium had, in the words of one anthropologist, “been blown away”. Further research also proved that that the right side of the cranium had been “blown away” from the inside out. 

In short, whatever had hit the Broken Hill Neanderthal on the left side of his head had passed through it with such force that it had caused the right side to explode.

He then quotes René Noorbergen, author of Secrets of the Lost Races, who said, "This same feature is seen in modern victims of head wounds received from shots from a high-powered rifle.  The cranial damage to Rhodesian Man’s skull could not have been caused by anything but a bullet."

The skull of "Rhodesian Man," showing the alleged entry wound [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So, Hallowell concludes, the bullet came from the gun of a time traveler who had gone on a "trans-temporal hunting expedition."

Righty-o.  Because that makes sense.  It took me all of five minutes on Google to find out that this claim is Grade-A Unadulterated Bullshit.  Over at the wonderful blog Bad Thinking, we find out that everything about Hallowell's article is... wrong.

Rhodesian Man was discovered in 1921, not 1922.  The skull, as I realized right from the outset, wasn't a Neanderthal, it was Homo rhodesiensis, a species that is thought to be the common ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans.  The "bullet hole" actually shows signs of partial healing, and therefore the skull's owner survived whatever caused it.  Scientists (who, unlike Hallowell, actually know what they're talking about) suspect it was caused by a bacterial infection.

Worst of all, the opposite side of the skull is intact.  There's no exit wound, no part of the skull that's "blown away."  The unnamed archaeologist quoted in Hallowell's article either never actually looked at the right side of the skull, or more likely, he is as nonexistent as the rest of the evidence in this claim.

I suppose there's always been lousy, low-standards journalism, but because of the internet such foolishness now can travel much further than ever before.  This means it's even more important to insist on accuracy in reporting, and being willing to accept nothing but excellence in every media source.

I know that media also exists to entertain, and there's nothing wrong with amusing speculation, whose aim is only to make us scratch our heads a little.  But before Hallowell even got to the speculation part of the article, he misled the reader with outright falsehoods multiple times, and that is inexcusable.

As I've said more than once, I am all for keeping in mind our biases and assumptions.  I have a bias always to look for the natural explanation that is consistent with what we currently know of the laws of science.  People who accept the existence of the paranormal have a different set of biases.

But neither viewpoint benefits from liars and hoaxers, who serve no other purpose than to muddy the waters, making actual understanding less likely for everyone.

Holes in the truth

I know I have a lot of faults.  I can be prickly and snarky sometimes, I'm easily frustrated, and I have a broad streak of impatience.  Sometimes I swear too much.  (Okay, I often swear too much.)  I'm too hard on people when I feel like they're making excuses or are devolving responsibility that should rightfully be theirs onto someone else's shoulders.  Sometimes I'm not a team player when it would be easier (and kinder) just to cooperate and be pleasant.

But one fault I can say I do not fall prey to, and in fact cannot really understand; and that is being sneaky and dishonest.

If I tell you something, you can pretty much rely on its being the truth.  I've said it to my students, I've said it to my own children: you'll make mistakes, but when you do, own up.  Don't compound your mistakes by lying to me about them.  You get into a habit of lying, and you'll find it comes more and more easily -- and you become more and more facile at justifying your lies to yourself and others.  One lie, I've found, so often leads to another.

And another.

It's why I had a reaction of complete revulsion to the news yesterday that Rickey Wagoner, the driver for the Dayton (Ohio) Regional Transportation Authority who claimed that he'd been shot and stabbed by three black teenagers, seems to have made the whole thing up, including the claim that gunshots aimed at his chest had been stopped by a bible that he carried in his shirt pocket.  As Exhibit A, he had a small paper-bound bible with not one, but two bullets lodged in it.

A miracle, he claimed.

[image courtesy of Open Clip Art Library]

And so did a lot of his fellow Christians.  God had his hand over Wagoner, had shielded him from harm through an attack that could well have killed him.  A lot of non-theists were less impressed -- I was reminded of the wonderful quote from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Jingo:

"This belonged to my great-granddad," [the sergeant] said.  "He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great-gran gave him this book of prayer for soldiers, ‘cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me, and he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, ‘cos he couldn’t afford armour, and next day in battle - whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look, you can see the hole." 

"Pretty miraculous," Carrot agreed. 

"Yeah, it was, I s’pose," said the sergeant.  He looked ruefully at the battered volume.  "Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really."

But even so, even the atheists did admit that Wagoner had been (if nothing more) damned lucky.

It turns out instead that what he seems to be is a damned liar.

Not only did Wagoner apparently fabricate the whole attack -- the allegation is that he shot himself in the leg and inflicted several shallow cuts on his own body -- he seems to have shot the bible himself.  Forensics tests with an identical book, placed on a gel dummy, showed that at the distance the gunshots were discharged toward Wagoner, the bible couldn't have stopped the bullets -- they'd have gone right through, and traveled another fifteen centimeters into his body.  All of the injuries, investigators say, were consistent with self-inflicted wounds, and the entire story is not just implausible, but impossible.

What, exactly, was he hoping to accomplish by his fabrication?  To create the appearance of a miracle to edify the religious?  To convince the non-religious of the error of their ways?  Or, even worse, to cast aspersions on black teenagers, further ramping up the fear and suspicion of minorities and youth?  Or some combination of the above?

Whatever his motivation was, he's not saying.  He hasn't spoken to police or reporters regarding the allegations, and has refused to make a statement.  DRTA has apparently fired him, though, so the case against his story seems pretty solid.  "After conducting a comprehensive investigation that has spanned nearly four months, the police department has concluded Mr. Wagoner fabricated his statements," DRTA executive director Mark Donaghy said.  "All of us at RTA are angry at the thought that an employee would allegedly mislead the police, the public and us and use ugly racial stereotypes in doing so."

Yup.  And make all of the well-wishers, not to mention his fellow Christians who were duped into thinking they'd been touched by a genuine miracle, look like fools.  The whole thing is just repulsive.

And, for me, kind of incomprehensible.  What could possibly motivate someone to go to these lengths -- cutting himself, and shooting himself in the leg?  Wagoner had been employed by DRTA for ten years and had an "excellent work record" -- an indication, at least, that he wasn't showing any obvious signs of mental illness.  It seems to be a hoax, a fabrication, a lie outright, crafted for his own reasons, with deliberate intent to deceive.

That I cannot understand.  Although I disagreed from the start with the religious folks who praised Wagoner's apparent narrow escape from death as a miracle, I find myself feeling pretty sympathetic toward them at the moment.  It's always hard to have your trust betrayed, which is why dishonesty cuts so deep.

Other than charges of lying to the police, I'm not sure what legal action can be taken against Wagoner, but it certainly seems unjust that he should get off scot free after duping so many people.  I hope that at least, he is made to face the media and the public, and give a statement admitting that he lied.  Because to come back to where I started: dishonesty sucks.  There is no gentler way to put it.