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Ginenthal, Velikovsky and Carl Sagan

Pseudo- and Junkscience

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Was Velikovsky right or wrong? How important were great catastrophes
in human history?
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This is a page about bad science. But what is bad science? Of course,
every scientist (like everybody) may have a bad day sometimes, or may
have a thesis, that sounds somehow funny. But in the most cases, he is
able to show evidence for his point of view. He has to convince other
people, mostly scientists. If he is not able to do so, his thesis will
be rejected, it must be rejected. Like Alfred Wegener and his theory
of continental drift. Of course, today we may say, that he was right,
and he was able to give evidence for his theory. But his mechanisms
for the moving continents was unknown. His theory was discussed and
rejected. But as soon as a mechanism was discovered that was able to
move whole continents, his thesis was `reborn´ as the theory of plate
tectonics, which is now widely accepted by all geoscientists. The many
predictions of this thesis were verified, all of them were confirmend
by findings. But what has this to do with bad science? Junkscience has
no evidence for its claims, junk scientists are construct their
`evidence´ by misrepresenting scientific sources. A good example how
this may be done is Immanuel Velikovsky and one of his followers,
Charles Ginenthal.

But first here is a comment about Velikovskian catastrophism from
Derek Ager, who calls himself a `new catastrophist´. This may show us
something about this kind of `science´.

_`The height of such idiocy is illustrated by the cult of Velikovsky,
who postulated major collisions up into historic times. I was
repeatedly urged to read his works by one of his adherents. Whilst
giving a course of lectures in Amsterdam and Leiden and left in the
evening with nothing to read, I chanced upon a copy of his works in a
back-street bookshop. I will not encourage such pseudo-science by
giving a reference. I will be presumptious enough, however, to quote
my own subsequent letter to my correspondent about the book I had
read: _

I was frankly appalled. It was far worse than I had been led to
suppose. I can assure you that 90 % of it is the most unmitigated
nonsense. He does not present any geological data whatever to
support his views. He merely cites very out-of-date authorities
(some 18th century!) in a highly selective manner. it is rather
like someone quoting medieval alchemists to disprove modern atomic
theory. He puts together observations which have no possible
connection with each other. He appears to have no concept whatever
of the geological time-scale and associates things which happened
tens of millions or even hundered of millions of years apart. He
seems oblivious of the hundreds of thousands of successive
fossiliferous horizons there are in the rocks of almost every part
of the earth´s surface and even seems to be unaware of the normal
mortality of living organisms. The idiocy of some of his dogmatic
pronouncements is illustrated, for example, in the (alleged)
transport of vast numbers of large vertebrates from the tropics to
the arctic by a great wave that did not apparently carry with it a
single marine organism.

I am so sorry if I appear to be neurotic about this, especially as
Velikovsky seems to be on the side of the catastrophists, but I do not
want to be associated in any way with such  nonsense´
Derek Ager (1993): The New Catastrophism, Cambridge University Press,
pp179-180)

In the 50´s Velikovsky proposed several near collisions of the Earth
with other members of the solar system, especially Venus.  Venus, he
said, was born from Jupiter and threatened the ancient people with a
comet-like appearance. These catastrophes he took as the cause of
several events that are descibed in myths and in the bible. From my
point of view, his theory has severe problems with astrophysics and
there are next to no evidence from the geological record, especially
about such devastating catastrophes. Severel people wrote papers or
books on this topic, supporting or contradicting the thesis of
Velikovsky. In my links you will find related pages with both.
I was not really concerned about his ideas, but I had always a great
interest in catastrophes. My first contact with Velikovsky´s thesis
was in a book written by Carl Sagan, Broca´s Brain. In this book he
told us about theories,  Velikovsky`s included. For a long time, this
was the first and only contact with the theory of ancient catastrophes
(in Germany, the ancient astronauts of von Daenicken are a little bit
more popular). It was just this summer, when I saw a book about the
dispute between Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky, written by Charles
Ginenthal. The cover text told me:

_While brilliantly defending Velikovsky´s work, Carl Sagan &
Immanuel Velikovsky mercilessly dissects Sagan, the blatantly
snide, dishonst and unprofesional `arguments´ and exposes the
sordid and unscientific side of `scientific´ controversy _

(By the way, reading this book, the `unscientific side´ took on new
meaning for me). He said, he wants to give evidence why Velikovsky
must be right and why Sagan and all his followers must be wrong. As I
read a lot of Sagan`s works and always interested in catastrophism
(but more in Ager´s way, see above), I was a little bit curious. But
what a surprise ( well, not really a surprise, I expected this),
everytime I had the chance to check any of the points Ginenthal
mentioned in his book, I found him wrong.
Along of his mistakes is the proposal of magnetic field reversals in
historic times. There on page 160 of his book he quotes Thomas
McCreedy (in Krupp vs. Velikovsky, KronosVI, 3, p45) who quotes a
paper by G.M Turner and R. Thompson, Earth and Planetary Science
Letters Vol 42 pp. 412-426.:

_Furthermore there is evidence of a magnetic field reversal for
3500 years ago. Thomas McCreedy reported in Turner and Thompson´s
Earth and Planetary Science Letters, for 1979, that: _

"Other recent papers support the viewpoint. Turner and Thompson
(1978), examining sediments from Loch Lomond, Scotland, reported a
large magnetic declination swing in the middle of the first half of
the first millennium BC. This is in very good agreement with
similar findings at Lake Windermere, England (1971)"

I was happy to get a copy of the EPSL-paper and, what a surprise,
Turner and Thompson never said anything about a magnetic reversal,
instead, they proposed local, non global influence to the magnetic
field around Loch Lomond, because their findings correlate with
english, but not (!) with findings in America or Japan. This doesn´t
sound like a global field reversal to me! The only changes described
in this paper are a shifting field vector with a changing declination.
So they propose local non-dipol sources dominating the secular changes
of the magnetic field vector. I do not know, if Ginenthal ever read
the Turner & Thompson paper or if he is only quoting McCreedy without
knowing more about his references. But as he reproaches the scientific
community for passing judgement on Velikovsky`s thesis without reading
it, then he should be even more careful.

Later he wants us to know, how many craters there are on earth,
created during the time period of the catastrophe. On page 183
Ginenthal tells us about oriented lakes like the Carolina Bays in the
Carolinas ( North & South, and some in Georgia). First he quotes  R.F.
Black and W.L. Barksdale, Oriented Lakes of northern Alaska, Journal
of Geology, 57 (1949), pp. 105. In this paper, Black and Barksdale are
describing oriented lakes in the arctic coastal plains of Alaska. I do
not know, if there are more recent explanations about these lakes, but
in this paper  meteoritic origin is discussed and rejected. The lakes
appear only in the coastal plains and cover them completely, they do
not show any crater wall and not all lakes show the same direction.
For me, it looks like some permafrost soil pattern but not like
meteorite impact structures.

The next quotation is taken from L.P.Killigrew and R.J. Gilkes, Nature
Vol 247 (1974), p.454. This paper is about oriented lakes in south
west Australia. These Playa lakes show two different directions and
the long axis shows a good correlation with the direction of the wind
in the special region. Even the direction of the lakes differs between
the regions, near Moora it is 347° and in Corrigin, Hyden and
Newdegate it is 33°. Killigrew and Gilkes propose a wind controlled
origin of the lakes, because of the good correlation of the long axis
with the direction of the wind. The maximal erosional force of the
waves should be, if the angle between beach and wave is about 50°,
minimal force when it is 0°. In respect to the unconsolidated
sediments of the region, the erosional force of the waves should
develop oriented lakes. Meteoritic origin is not considered in the
paper.

The third quotation is a paper by G. Plafker, oriented lakes and
lineaments of northeast Bolivia, Bull. Geol. Soc. America 75 (1964),
pp. 503-522 . On page 185 of his book, Ginenthal informs us:
"Plafker also tells us about lakes he observed on the Old Crow Plain
of Canada in the Yukon Territory which are also oriented and
appear similar to those he described in Bolivia. It is quite
probable that all these oriented lakes were formed around the same
time by meteoritic explosions and then affected by the wind and
ice if they are located in areas with cold climate"

But what Plafker wants to show is how tectonic control can develop
oriented lakes. There in the Beni-Basin are two main tectonic
lineaments striking NW-SE and NE-SW. The shorelines of the 104 lakes
with more than 1 km length still show the same direction and even some
vegetational patterns, too. Some lakes are still showing both
directions and have a square or rectangular shape. I still wonder, how
a meteorite should do this! But in the whole paper no meteoritic
origin is considered, the word meteorite is not even mentioned.

And Ginenthal accuses Carl Sagan of telling lies? And what does he do
himself? He takes his references out of context and does not even care
about the explanations the original papers give. He only uses the
names of the authors and this may be the reason why people like Derek
Ager (see above) are so angry about the Velikovskians.

Another point that makes it clear how Ginenthal works, is shown on pp.
195 of his book. There he wants to let us know, that ancient people
have drawn pictures of animals known to be extinct long before the
ancient cultures. He is quoting Velikovsky´s _Earth in Upheaval _, p.
87 where Velikovsky cites L. Frobenius and Douglas C. Fox _Prehistoric
Rock Pictures in Europe and Africa _, Museum of Modern Art 1937, p 37.
There Frobenius and Fox are describing rock paintings of egyptian
subjects like gods, war chariots etc. Then Ginenthal tells us:
"Thus, there are bas reliefs in Egypt and Babylonia of extinct animals
and rock drawings made by Saharans who knew the Egypt god Set and
the war chariot which had to be of an historical period also
drawing pictures of extinct animals."

He informs us, that these animals should be extinct nearly 8000 years
before these human cultures. But does he tell us which animals he is
talking about? No! Why should he? It looks like Ginenthal has no idea
about the geological time scale (see Ager above).

Another such proposed piece of evidence for a worldwide velikovskian
catastrophe is loess. Ginenthal want to let us know that the loess
deposits were laid down by a huge tidal wave. He denies that loess is
a wind transported sediment, because it is not well as rounded as it
should be if it is transported by wind. The grains would be rubbed
agains each other or the surface.
Yes , it is true that loess grains are mostly not well rounded, but
Ginenthal does not inform us, that the grainsize of the loess grains
is too small to be well rounded. Loess is mainly out of quartzgrains
(60%) and feldspar, clay (10-20%) and up to 40% carbonates. The
grainsize is mostly 0,006 - 0,06 mm and therefore too small to get
rounded during the transport, but this is exactly the grainsize one
would expect to be transported by wind. A tidal wave would take also
some bigger grainsizes and leave not so well sorted deposits. The
bigger quartzgrains are well rounded. In europe, the biggest loess
deposits are to be found leeward of hills and this is a clear evidence
for wind transport. There is no marine fauna, very few mammal bones
and still some land mollusces buried in the loess. I can´t see any
hint of a tidal wave in the loess.

Among Ginenthals other evidences for the tidal waves are several
fossil whales. But he is not able to tell us, to which whale species
the bones belong. The only species he mentiones is _Zeuglodon _, a
tertiary whale. But the tertiary is a long period in  earth history.
Its beginning is the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago
and it ends with the beginning ice age, 2 million years ago. So the
question for me is: When was the exact time the Zeuglodon lived? It
lived in the older part of the tertiary, the paleogene, which ended 24
million years ago. This animal was not living at the time of the
proposed velikovskian catastrophe and so it cannot be evidence for it.
So this may be the problem for the other mentioned whale fossils, too.
He does not tell us, to which species the bones belong, only that
these are whale bones and there are possible glacial deposits nearby.
That this may be no evidence, shows a finding near Hamburg. In 1984
and then again in 1989 several big bones were found in a claydeposit
in a gravel pit in Gross Pampau / Hamburg (Germany). The bones belong
to Praemegaptera pampauensis, a whale of the miocene aera, 24 - 5
million years ago. The clay lies beneath glacial deposits which
contain several bones and fossils. These fossils have their origin in
the clay, but the glacier and the meltwater of the ice took the
fossils out of their original bedding. So it is quite possible in this
place to find miocene fossils in pleistocene sediments. As long as
Ginenthal is only collecting whale-bones without telling us more, I
can´t take this as an evidence for his thesis. ( Another mistaken
whale can be found at: [5]The Whale of a Tale , which shows, how
original references can be mistaken.)

On page 226 - 227, Ginenthal tells us about deep quakes on earth and
on the Moon, which cannot occur, because the rock in depth over 60
kilometers (earth) and 200 km (moon) should be so hot that it became
ductile. Ginenthal quotes an article of Cliff Frohlich, Scientific
American, Vol 260, Jan 1989, p. 48 (Spektrum d. Wissenschaft, 3/1989,
p. 94). He informs us:
"The same should also hold true to the Earth. Frohlich shows that
since 1964, over 60 000 earthquakes have originated well below the
Earth´s surface in the same deep regions in which such events are
considered impossible. This also implies that both the Earth and
the Moon experienced a large catastrophic recent event to leave
these pressure signatures of the event that are relaxing."

For me it is a clear evidence, that Ginenthal has not read Frohlich´s
article, because Frohlich gave an explanation for the deep quakes that
is in conformity with the plate tectonic thesis. No recent catastrophe
but the dynamic Earth is the reason of these quakes. They occur in
special zones, called Wadati-Benioff-Zones, on destructive plate
margins. These are the places where one crustal plate is subducted
beneath another, cold crustal material dives into the hot mantle. The
quakes occur in the cold crustal slab, not in the mantle. And because
this diving crustal material is much colder than the surrounding
mantle, it is not ductile. The hypocentres of the deep quakes dip away
from near surface up to depths around 700 km. This is one of the major
predictions of the plate tectonic theory! And in great depths, there
are other mechanisms for quakes like phase transitions of minerals due
to the enormous heat and pressure in the mantle. At the high pressure
the mineral olivine will change into ringwoodite. Ringwoodite has a
lesser volume than olivine and so the whole rock may shrink, if
greater quantities of olivine undergo this phase transition.

Another page about Ginenthal´s book can be found at [6]Wayne
Throop´s page

All the references about Ginenthal are taken from his book: Carl Sagan
and Immanuel Velikovsky. New Falcon Publication, Tempe, Arizona, USA,
1995.

© 1998 [7]Gunnar Ries

seit 23. April 1998
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References

1. LYNXIMGMAP:file://localhost/www/sat/files/pseudo.htm#button2
2. http://geocities.yahoo.com/addons/interact/mbe.html
3. http://geocities.yahoo.com/addons/interact/mbe.html
4. LYNXIMGMAP:file://localhost/www/sat/files/pseudo.htm#forum
5. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/whale.html
6. http://sheol.org/throopw/ginenthal-on-sagan.html
7. mailto:amphibol at geocities.com
8. http://www.geocities.com/
9. http://www.geocities.com/