What's Wrong With Science? An interview with Virginia Steen-McIntyre

An Interview with Virginia Steen-McIntyre, FMES, Idaho Springs, Colorado 
Originally published: MIDWESTERN EPIGRAPHIC JOURNAL, Vol 16, Nbr 1, 2002 

Note: This is a revised version of a manuscript first prepared in 1997 for investigative reporter Paul Williams Roberts, part of an article on maverick scientists for Harper's Magazine. According to Roberts, the article was accepted and, I assume, paid for, but never published.

Interview:

Q: WHAT'S WRONG WITH SCIENCE?

VSM: Nothing with science per se. It is a method used for looking at a small part of reality, mainly the physical universe. The problem arises when people, both scientists and the general public, try to make it something it is not -- a world view, for example. 

Q: BUT YOU OFTEN HEAR OF "THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD VIEW" 

VSM: A contradiction in terms. Science deals with measuring and manipulating concrete facts. A world view looks at those facts from a certain perspective. ALL world views are taken on faith, even supposedly scientific ones.

Q: SUCH AS? 

VSM: Such as the one that claims the physical universe we know is all there is, and that it developed by chance over time. 

Q: IS THAT SUCH A BAD THEORY? 

VSM: Not if we remember it is only one theory or philosophy, or religion or world view among many equally as valid. The danger arises when it becomes THE ONLY theory. Then it is only a matter of time until it is crammed down our throats as FACT.  When that happens, good-by free enquiry. 

Q: DO YOU SEE THIS HAPPENING IN WESTERN CULTURE?

VSM: Look around you. When was the last time you heard that particular theory seriously questioned by the scientific media? 

Q: BUT AGAIN, IS THAT BAD IF IT'S THE CORRECT WORLD VIEW? 

VSM: Do you mean politically correct? It obviously is that, but that would make me question it more than ever! 

Q: WHY?? 

VSM: Look at history.. Since when has any government, even the best, remained faithful to the ideal of the welfare of the common man? 

Q: WHY WOULD GOVERNMENTS BE SO INTERESTED IN THIS PARTICULAR WORLD VIEW? 

VSM: Because it's interwoven with the Theory of Evolution: accept one, you have to accept the other.

Q: AND IS "SOMETHING WRONG" WITH THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION?     

VSM: Not if you realize it is JUST a theory, and a shaky one at that. But think for a moment. Every major despot and would-be dictator since Darwin has loved that theory -- Marx, Hitler, Mao. It gives them such freedom to kill off those they don't like and to mess around with genetics to create superman. After all, when the Theory of Evolution is taken to its logical conclusion, the only moral imperative demanded is "survival of the fittest".

Q: SO YOU DON'T LIKE THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION? 

VSM: No, I don't like it, for scientific reasons: it goes against the Second Law of Thermodynamics for one thing. I don't like it for philosophical and religions reasons. I especially don't like it because it helped ruin my career. 

Q: HOW SO? 

VSM: The archaeologist in charge of the Hueyatlaco dig (where they had found well made stone tools) rejected our geologic dates of a quarter-million years1.' because, according to her belief, modern man, the maker of those tools, had not yet evolved 250,000 years ago.  He evolved only 100,000 years ago and that was in the Old World not the New. A classic case of arguing from theory to data, then tossing out the data that don't fit. 

Q: HOW COULD SHE GET AWAY WITH SUCH FAULTY THINKING? 

A matter of influence on her part and lack of it on mine. She was an anthropologist, a graduate of Radcliffe and Harvard with powerful friends; I was a geologist with a new PhD from the University of Idaho, looking for a job.

Q: IT SOUNDS LIKE A MAJOR CONTROVERSY EXISTS ABOUT THE HUEYATLACO SITE: ARCHAEOLOGISTS VS GEOLOGISTS.

VSM: There would be if all the facts were generally known. But the dates were run almost 25-30 years ago. Have you ever heard them mentioned? There is no controversy. The site and our geologic work are simply ignored. 

Q: NOT A VERY SCIENTIFIC APPROACH! 

VSM: No, of course not. But there it is. 

Q: WHAT CRITICISMS DO THE ARCHAEOLOGISTS BRING AGAINST YOUR GEOLOGIC WORK? 

VSM: None to my face: that's the frustrating part. Since the paper on Hueyatlaco was first published in 1981 only five scientists have contacted me on their own for more information.  And only one of those was an archaeologist.

Q: THAT'S INCREDIBLE! AND WHAT DO THE ARCHAEOLOGISTS SAY AMONG THEMSELVES? 

VSM: Nothing nice, I imagine. I worked with a group of them in a laboratory setting back in the mid-60's. It was a different world. No matter their specialty, each graduate student left that place with an extra-curricular BS degree -- BS for Back Stabber.  First thing you learned in the coffee room was who was "in the know" and who was "out of it". It became almost a game, verbally cutting to pieces those who didn't count. C.S. Lewis caught the flavor of the game in his novel.

Q: THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH. I TAKE IT YOU HAVE BEEN DELEGATED TO THE "OUT OF IT" CATEGORY?

VSM: That seems evident. And once you get a bad rep in the scientific community, even if it's the result of rumor and down right lies, it spreads. In 1973, when we first announced the results of our new excavations and the fission track dates, I was sitting pretty. I had the beginnings of an international reputation because of my basic research on volcanic ash layers, a wide correspondence with my peers, a part-time job in a government laboratory that I assumed would lead to better things, and later, an adjunct professorship in the anthropology department of a state university. Today, all that is gone. My last job was as a gardener, caring for flower-beds in a local nursing home a few hours a week.

Q: ARE YOU BITTER? 

VSM: I fight against bitterness. But that emotion, if it becomes chronic, will ruin your life. I'm certainly not happy with how things turned out. It hurts! 

Q: MAVERICK SCIENTISTS OBVIOUSLY DO NOT HAVE IT EASY. DO YOU SOMETIMES FEEL LIKE THE LONE RANGER? 

VSM: More like one of a bunch of Davids slinging stones at Goliath. Hueyatlaco isn't the only censored early man site in the New World, it's the tip of an iceberg.  There's the late Tom Lee, a Canadian archaeologist. He had the misfortune to find an early site on an island in one of the Great Lakes in the 50's. Not only did he lose his government job, he actually was committed to an insane asylum for a time!  There's Dee Simpson and her Calico site in the Mojave Desert of California. The soil developed on top of the sediment column containing the artifacts is 200,000 years old, which makes the sediment layers and artifacts beneath it much older.  Louis Leakey of African fame recognized the stone tools as tools -- not the result of natural causes -back in the 60's. Then there's George Carter and his sites in the San Diego area. He's been battling the archaeologic establishment for 50 years! And many more.

Q: WHAT DO YOU THINK SHOULD BE DONE NOW?

VSM: Several things.

First of all, there needs to be more research in the Valsequillo area: more radiometric dates, more field work, more archaeologic excavations. Fortunately, through support of a wealthy philanthropist, this is happening. Scientists from the USA and Mexico have been working there since the fall of 1997.  I have not been told the results of their research -- I'm certain that they will want to report on it themselves -- but I have been told that it should make me very happy!

Second, we must somehow reverse an alarming trend that has appeared in the research community today, a trend towards "feel good" science, where facts no longer count if they question a politically correct world view. It was precisely that type of "science" that reigned in the Soviet Union for decades. And what a headache it caused to all concerned! 

Third, the censorship of our work and the work of our colleagues MUST STOP! Scientists cannot afford to be rigid in their theories, at least if they are searching for truth.  We must separate science- as-a-method, which is available for all to use, from our world views. Each one of us has a world view we live by, whether we are aware of it or not.  Each is unique, developing out of our personal life experiences. Each is taken on faith.  Recognize the fact! Work with it! A knotty problem such as the age of the first humans in the New World can only benefit from a multi-pronged attack by scientists with different world views.     

My ideal: a search for truth in an atmosphere of free inquiry and mutual respect. After all, isn't that what science should be all about? 

END OF INTERVIEW
1. VC Steen-McIntyre, "A Quarter-Million-Year-Old Habitation site Found in Mexico", Ancient American, NO. 19/20, 72-78 (1997). 

2. VC Steen-McIntyre, "Has Man Been in the New World for a Quarter - Million Years? " , Midwestern Epigraphic Journal 12/13, 35-42 (1998-99); Barnes Review, $(I), 31-36 (1998)

Source: http://www.s8int.com/wrong-science.html

Additional Source: http://www.robertschoch.net/

Further information: Midwestern Epigraphic Society
Facebook: MES--Midwestern Epigraphic Society

Oldest Civilzation Discovered: Hueyatlaco Archaeological Site and the "Extreme Dating Controversy"

The following is an Article Originally from:

Early Sites Research Society, Newsletter Volume 1; No 1, by Neil Steede  

 

The Hueyatlaco Archaeological Site has found remains of human habitation at about between 250,000 to 350,000 years ago.

Many things are happening with this site, which have not been reported in other magazines such as "the Ancient American." We would like to report some of these events to our readers at this time. Hueyatlaco was excavated at first by an archaeologist by the name of Cynthia Irwin-Williams.
 

Williams found that she had a very early occupational site. She found some crude stone tools and also found many animal bones from which meat had been butchered.  The animal bones consisted of such things as the wooly rhinoceros and other pre-glacial fauna. She realized, having such an early site, that she must get laboratory dating done on the site, and requested that to be done by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The U.S. Geological Survey sent down a three member team who dated the site and found the range of very ancient dates mentioned above. Much of their controversy has been reported by Geologist Virginia Steen-McIntyre.

We consider Virginia to be a very good friend of ours, and have helped channel some of the financing that she needed to complete her work more recently. We will not attempt here to cover ground which she has already covered in her articles. What we do wish to relate to our readers in this article are the steps that we took in parts of the investigation of this enigma.

Shortly after the excavation of the Hueyatlaco site, and shortly after the dating of the site was made public, the Mexican Government came to be directly involved. The head of the Archaeological Department of the Mexican Government was very upset at these very ancient dates at this site. 

It is also believed by us that he did not like the fact that Americans were finding this site, nor did he like that the Americans involved were women. Whatever his motive, he had the Mexican army go and close the site down, and confiscate all of the artifacts and related materials. 

The man who was in charge of this was a very powerful man in the Mexican archaeological community, and no one would confront him directly with these misdeeds. About three years ago, this gentleman passed on to that "big dig in the sky where all archaeologists go."

When that happened, it was once again a subject that could be talked about in the archaeological world. We began doing interviews with different people that were related to the site or to the area at that time, We found archaeologists who now are very famous, but who were students then.

One of them related to us the story that the head Mexican archaeologist had come to him and told him that since his site, that he was excavating, was several hundred feet up the mountain from the site at which these people were excavating, that he should claim that he had found some more artifacts at his site, and that artifacts from his site probably had washed down to their level in ancient times.

He also told us that, in fact, this was not true. He had not found any artifacts. In fact, he had found no artifacts whatsoever, and had a barren dig at the site.

After the death, some thirty years later, of the "head honcho" of Mexican archaeology, this now-famous archaeologist published a paper simply claiming that he had found nothing.

To him, that was very important, from the standpoint that he could report honestly for the first time in three decades what he had really found. He was well aware that the head Mexican archaeologist was trying to destroy the validity of the site.

For the sake of continuity, we will give this head Mexican archaeologist the name of "Dagwood." "Dagwood" had an immense amount of power. He controlled all archaeology executed within the Mexican borders. He was a very opinionated man, and was a man whom very few people liked.

"Dagwood" not only controlled what archaeology and what sites were excavated, but also controlled what was published about them. It is obvious the amount of power he had, since he could muster up the Mexican army to carry out his purposes.

The young archaeologist, located farther up the mountain that we have referred to, we will call "Rusty." "Rusty" was very intimidated by "Dagwood." He knew that his whole future lay within "Dagwood's" grasp, and he would be crushed if he did not do "Dagwood's" bidding.

Therefore, "Rusty" decided simply not to write a report on his site. Only thirty years later, after "Rusty" had become a well-known and respected Mexican archaeologist, and after "Dagwood" had passed away, did Rusty, feel comfortable enough to publish on the excavation he had done hundreds of feet above the Hueyatlaco site.

His report simply says he found "barren ground." All of this is important to understand to what point "Dagwood" would go to control what was said about the site of Hueyatlaco. Once "Dagwood" had stopped the excavations at the Hueyatlaco site, he realized that he was not finished. He realized that he had to control more information and more knowledge. Other people had found similar things to this site. Those collections lay in private hands, and under the control of the University of Puebla.

Therefore, he sent the Mexican army to seize those collections, also; and they also disappeared. "Dagwood" never gave his permission to reopen the site, though there were several requests.

Even after "Dagwood" retired, he had named "puppets" to take his place which would follow his bidding and follow his orders not to allow the site to be opened. Time passed. An immense amount of people who had never heard that any of this had happened, continued their daily lives. The few who had been scarred, "licked their wounds and went to their corners."

One last step "Dagwood must take to fulfill his plan:

 
There was still the problem of the U.S. Geological Survey team's date. That date placed the site of Hueyatlaco at 250,000 to 350,000 years ago, as previously mentioned. 

He must get that date changed. He went to the United States Ambassador and told him in no uncertain terms, that no more Americans would be allowed to excavate in Mexico, unless that date were changed. In fact, he would try to make all relations with the United States extremely difficult. 

The Ambassador reported this to the Secretary of State of the United States, who "leaned upon" the U.S. Geological Survey to change their dates. The U.S. Geological Survey went back to their team and told the members that the date was going to be changed. They were going to take away one zero, thus making the date "35,000" years ago.

This still would be an incredible date, it was claimed, and still would be the oldest date known, they claimed. But one member of the team would have nothing to do with it. The other members reluctantly agreed, knowing that their jobs were "on the line."

One single member stood her ground. Her name was Virginia Steen-McIntyre. Virginia would go on to carry the torch for years, trying to force the truth to come out. If not for her, very possibly all of this would have been lost in the "brambles" of history.

At that time, I was a student in Mexico. I heard in class of the Mexican army's coming and containing the artifacts. I heard how the excavation had been forced to shut down. However, I was guilty, along with many others, of laughing at the story of the "foolish archaeologists" who were finding the dates of early man at hundreds of thousands of years ago in the Americas.

"We simply know it could not be." So I was guilty of lack of judgment at the time, and later I felt guilty about this. However, there was nothing I could do till years later.

By a very happy circumstance, I was brought to meet Virginia Steen-McIntyre. And I had long ago decided that whether I believed her or not, that was irrelevant; the point was, at least she was standing her ground and saying, and practicing something she believed.

When I met her, of course, I asked her many things about the excavation, now some thirty years old--I asked her for clues that I might be able to pick up, and she was very giving with her information.

I decided to re-open the case. You see, during that thirty year lapse, several people had found similar finds in the Americas. One of those people was Dr. Leakey. He had found a very similar ancient site in California called "Calico." So the feasibility of what Virginia was claiming seemed to be true.

First, we must find out if the artifacts still existed. Through a friend, I contracted a "mole." This " mole" worked for the National Institute of Anthropology in the warehouses where all the artifacts from all excavations were kept. And we had him look, and he found the artifacts from Hueyatlaco.

For, you see, "Dagwood" had been so egotistical that he did not think he would have to destroy them. Upon finding the artifacts and examining them, we determined that, in fact, they were authentic. Then, we went to the site and looked at the strata. The strata (the layerings of soil and rock) were all in order. The site did, in fact, seem to be very old, and very ancient.

Could, in fact, man have arrived to the Americas 200,000 years ago? Only time will tell as we develop this site. We are hoping that we resolve this question one way or another within the next year. We will keep our readers informed as this project develops. Whichever side you are for in this controversy, we ask that you "keep your fingers crossed" that everything occur with integrity.

Source: http://www.s8int.com/hueyatlaco.html
Originally Published: Early Sites Research Society, Newsletter Volume 1; No 1, by Neil Steede

Documentary - Forbidden Archeology: Suppressed New Evidence of Early Man

New Evidence of Early Man: SUPPRESSED

Video Published on Aug 30, 2012

This Documentary includes interviews with Virginia Steen-McIntrye and other leading scientific experts in Archeology, Geolochronology and Palaeontology, including Dennis.J Standford Paleo-Anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, George Carter Prof. Geography at Texas A&M University and Marshall Payn the benefactor who sponsored the new expedition to Hueyatlaco in 1997 to re-investigate the work by Cynthia Irwin-Williams.

This Documentary is from the EMMY AWARD WINNING Producers of "The Mystery of the Sphinx" and the Producers of "The Mysterious Origins of Man", this is a new ground breaking film about "New Evidence of Early Man: SUPPRESSED." What happens when scientific evidence conflicts with theory? In the early sixties, discoveries were made in Central Mexico, which were the handiwork of early man. Exquisitely carved animal bones and advanced spear points caused much excitement, including a Life Magazine article, until the dates came in. 5 mutually exclusive geological tests revealed they were over 250,000 years old.

In spite of the geochronology, archaeologists insisted the dates were too ridiculously old. This world-class archaeological region became off-limits for official research, a "professional forbidden zone."

This is the story of the shocking events that occurred, told first-hand by many of the actual participants. It reveals how one field of science can conflict with another and how new discoveries must battle evidence vs. belief, exposing what some have called "the dark side of archaeology."

Source: http://www.UFOTV.com