Debunked: J. Marvin Herndon's "Geoengineering" Articles in Current Science (India) and IJERPH

There was this posted this morning on CAKU:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/chemtrailsarekillingus/permalink/521779157975079/

untitled.jpg
 
http://retractionwatch.com/2015/09/...te-subject-of-conspiracy-theorists-retracted/

External Quote:
In June, a veritable cast of characters — including several active airline pilots, a biochemist, an artist, and a woman who currently works at home — began to pick apart Herndon's previous work on the topic of jet-spraying-toxins on the discussion board Metabunk.org. In a summary post on the now-retracted paper and another Herndon paper in Current Science, administrator Mick West says:

There are multiple problems with these papers: figures are incorrect, values given are off by several orders of magnitude, masses are calculated incorrectly, data sets appear to have been chosen arbitrarily.
 
On the lighter side of things, Herndon has inspired blog articles like this one:

http://eusa-riddled.blogspot.de/2015/09/a-pig-and-poke-cat-and-bag-and-thinking.html
External Quote:
The methods employed by the Geophysics Establishment to suppress Herndon's maverickrolls have progressed... once they forced him to publish them in PNAS and the Royal Society, now they provide Current Science and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health as outlets. The former does not lack for prestige, for it is published by a Bangalore university which describes itself as "India's finest institution in its field"; while the latter comes from MDPI, a publisher of negotiable virtue peer-review standards, familiar to readers of Jeffrey Beall (world's toughest milkman librarian).
 
Mick West said:
http://retractionwatch.com/2015/09/...te-subject-of-conspiracy-theorists-retracted/
Click to expand...
External Quote:

Herndon provided us with this statement:

"All I can say is that the matter is not closed."

We asked if he could say more, and he added:

"Be patient and perspicacious and you might find a story far bigger than you ever experienced. In the meantime, keep in mind the dust has not settled on the retraction matter, so may I suggest not rushing to press."
I think he wants to sue the journal or something.
Actually, with some justification, as they should have rejected the paper in the first place, thereby saving him from the public embarrassment of having his paper retracted.
 
skephu said:
External Quote:

...they should have rejected the paper in the first place,
thereby saving him from the public embarrassment of having his paper retracted.
Click to expand...

Amen.

I mean, after all, we hope that a 10 year-old has the sense to know that he can't fly,
but--just the same--if Dad says "Actually son, I think you likely can!" while the kid stands on the roof...
it's hard to feel that Dad didn't contribute to the injury.



(Dang...it sounded like an awesome analogy...in my head!) :p
 
I just sent this information to Dr. Herndon and Dr. Tchounwou with a request that they forward the info to Dane Wigington. They can't say they don't know!
==========================
thechief762 . <thechief762@gmail.com>
7:22 AM (0 minutes ago)
to mherndon, paul.b.tchounw.
Drs. Tchounwou and Herndon,

I see that Dr. Herndon is publicly stating, " keep in mind the dust has not settled on the retraction matter"

http://retractionwatch.com/2015/09/...te-subject-of-conspiracy-theorists-retracted/

For your edification I'm attaching several historical references for elemental analyses of rain and snow.
These include Antarctic ice cores 183 years old, the 1930's, 1960's and 70's. So, as you can see the dust has been settling for a very long time! I hope this information will be useful to you and am sure that with the vast resources out there you can confirm my own review of the subject many other ways.

Dr. Herndon, I would still enjoy seeing the data I requested from you a week ago to add to my collection. Finally, please share my references with your friend Dane Wigington as he has long been stating that zero aluminum should be found in rainwater.

Sincerely,
Jay Reynolds

On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 1:03 PM, thechief762 . <thechief762@gmail.com> wrote:
Dr. Herndon,
I would like to see the San Diego rain water analysis data and collection method which you mention in your recent IJERH paper,
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2015, 12, 9375-9390; doi:10.3390/ijerph120809375

"The author personally collected rainwater samples for chemical analysis and compared those data to corresponding average values of experimental leachate chemical analyses [10], which as shown below provides a firm basis for identifying the particulate substance being emplaced as an aerosol in the troposphere as coal fly ash. Because of persistent spraying, rainwater devoid of spray contamination was not available."

How may I access that information?

Jay Reynolds
6 Attachments
AE1976.jpg
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aluminum in rain 1976.jpg
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CJES1967.jpg
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Robinson 1936.jpg

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Typical Troposheric aerosols.jpg
 
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Here's more comment from Herndon regarding the retraction:

External Quote:
Now the forces of deceit have struck again and successfully caused my second paper on coal fly ash, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health to be retracted; I was never provided a verbatim copy of the complaint received. While in certain respects this is a setback, it is a clear indication of their fear of discovery of their heinous secret, the insidious spraying of the toxic-nightmare that is coal fly ash. And there will be additional evidence of toxic coal fly ash being sprayed into the troposphere; some additional evidence is already in hand, some is being analyzed, and some is in the process of being obtained.
I have no doubt that at some point there will be litigation, civil and/or criminal. Remember this: Deceiving people about the health risks of the ongoing toxic geoengineering activity clearly makes accomplices of those who deceive, including their corporate officers, and their corporate directors. Legal action, I submit, should include all those officials, should deprive shareholders of ill-gotten gains, and should cause the corporation to be debarred from receiving federal contracts.
He doesn't appear to have understood what the problem is with his paper.
 
skephu said:
Looks like the chemtrailists have not yet noticed the retraction. Not a word about it anywhere.
Click to expand...

As is often the case is the Conspiracy Community, they take one piece of incorrect information and they build upon it further and so the Conspiracy evolves. In this case Syd Stevens from San Diego, the person behind the pseudonym Socal Skywatch, has posted this to his page;

Capture.JPG
 
Critical Thinker said:
As is often the case is the Conspiracy Community, they take one piece of incorrect information and they build upon it further and so the Conspiracy evolves. In this case Syd Stevens from San Diego, the person behind the pseudonym Socal Skywatch, has posted this to his page;

View attachment 14920
Click to expand...

I noticed that with the "Planet X" people. They(or their leader, Nancy Lieder) would take a false "fact", declare it proved, then build on that. Over and over and over again until they had what appeared to be a veritable mountain of "evidence" proving them right.
 
External Quote:

Herndon conceded in interviews withLaboratory Equipmentthat he had made a transcription error in one of his headings. But that warranted a correction, not a full retraction - since the substance of the paper is still correct. But the quick retraction is "good evidence I'm correct," Herndon added.

"This is a further instance of trying to deceive people," Herndon said.

The Environmental Protection Agency has said the visible trails that follow a plane's path in the sky are condensed masses of frozen water vapor. Herndon told Laboratory Equipment that he was aware of the contrails left by frozen vapor - and that chemtrails are different and distinct.

"The cat's out of the bag - and you can't get it back in again," Herndon added.
http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/...ted-not-sufficiently-scientifically-objective
 
Auldy said:
Yes, but there is a surprising amount of rational and sensible people there too, which is always refreshing. Go team brains!
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Yes, absolutely I was thinking the same

Simply trying to explain the science

Then the inevitable "disinfo / shill" in response
 
Chew said:
Herndon replies again.

https://www.facebook.com/ralph.ely.7/posts/324967814294137


External Quote:
Yes, I mislabeled a column heading and erroneously showed a value of 70,000 instead of 140,000, an error that does not contradict the conclusions of the paper...
"instead of 140,000"??? Dude, it should have been 140,000,000!
Click to expand...
Yes, but all the other values in the table are also off by a factor of 1000, so the fractions are only off by a factor of 2, not a factor of 2000.
I believe basically he mistakenly wrote micrograms instead of milligrams in the heading.
 
Yes, the most important problem with the paper (in terms of pure science) is the statistical irrelevance of his results, with or without the correct figures. Unfortunately it's harder to explain this, and easy to point out the numerical errors. But it's a poor quality retraction, even if the paper obviously need retracting.

Regarding 70,000 vs. 140,000, I don't think he simply wrote down the wrong value there, as it's not written down in Moreno. You have to calculate it from the AlO2 percentage, and I think he calculated it incorrectly, which is a bit more telling than simply transcribing it incorrectly.
 
Herndon has issued a public rejection to the retraction. http://nuclearplanet.com/public_rejection.pdf

The explanation of the Leachate error:

External Quote:
The author uses 70,000 µg/kg, while the correct value resulting from the unleached European coal fly ash samples measurements published by Moreno et al. [2]) is 140,000,000 µg/kg. Wow! That looks like a huge error, and the half-truth makes it seem so. What should have been stated is that the un-leached column heading was mistyped as µg/kg, but should have read µg/g; the data were tabulated as µg/g. The error was in listing the aluminum value as 70,000 µg/g when it should have been 140,000 µg/g, a factor of two. In scientific literature, this is the kind of error that is usually allowed to be corrected as it should have been in the present instance.
 
M Bornong said:
Herndon has issued a public rejection to the retraction. http://nuclearplanet.com/public_rejection.pdf

The explanation of the Leachate error:

External Quote:
The author uses 70,000 µg/kg, while the correct value resulting from the unleached European coal fly ash samples measurements published by Moreno et al. [2]) is 140,000,000 µg/kg. Wow! That looks like a huge error, and the half-truth makes it seem so. What should have been stated is that the un-leached column heading was mistyped as µg/kg, but should have read µg/g; the data were tabulated as µg/g. The error was in listing the aluminum value as 70,000 µg/g when it should have been 140,000 µg/g, a factor of two. In scientific literature, this is the kind of error that is usually allowed to be corrected as it should have been in the present instance.
Click to expand...
And this is why the retraction was so poorly done. Focusing on minor errors like that just makes it look petty, and gives the impression that the basic science is sound, but there were a few typos.

What the retraction should have done is demolished the entire proposition Herndon made, and called out the pseudoscience for what it is.
 
Trailblazer said:
And this is why the retraction was so poorly done. Focusing on minor errors like that just makes it look petty, and gives the impression that the basic science is sound, but there were a few typos.

What the retraction should have done is demolished the entire proposition Herndon made, and called out the pseudoscience for what it is.
Click to expand...

I'm still reading Herndon's corrected paper linked in his rejection, is his only correction the leachate graph? http://www.nuclearplanet.com/ijerph-original.pdf

I'm just a dumb plumber and drummer, some of this kind of stuff does go over my head. :rolleyes:
 
M Bornong said:
I'm still reading Herndon's corrected paper linked in his rejection, is his only correction the leachate graph? http://www.nuclearplanet.com/ijerph-original.pdf

I'm just a dumb plumber and drummer, some of this kind of stuff does go over my head. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
but in his letter to the publisher people he says that his "unleached" was wrong by only a factor of 2. but doesnt the 5 here.... well is the 5 wrong too?

hh.PNG
 

Attachments

This is his reply to the second point of criticism which was "The chemical compositions obtained for rainwater and HEPA air filter dust are only compared to chemical compositions obtained for coal-fly-ash leaching experiments [2]. The author did not attempt to compare his results to chemical compositions of other potential sources.":
External Quote:
Not true. I stated that there were no sources of industrial pollution in the area, and provided reason why coal fly ash from China was unlikely.
How about rocks and soils from the region of San Diego?
Apparently he doesn't realize that one cannot prove that a car of unknown make X is a Mercedes by only comparing it to a Mercedes. Because then one will find the car of make X has four wheels, one engine, one steering wheel, and one transmission, just like the Mercedes, so it must be a Mercedes. Even if it's a Land Rover in reality.

By the way, he simply omitted the statistical analysis from his revised manuscript. He expects the reader to just look at the figures and conclude that the rain contains coal fly ash.
The fact that the revised version contains no statistical analysis is by itself enough to warrant another rejection.
 
Could someone explain what I am missing here?

upload_2015-9-25_10-58-30.png


He claims that the black bars are the element ratios for "leach data", i.e. the leachate from Figure 1 [sic: "Figure 1" is his photos of contrails; he means "Table 1"].

Here is Table 1:

upload_2015-9-25_10-59-45.png


The leachate figure is the second column of values for each element. So how is he working out his ratios?

For instance, for Ba/Al I get:

5.34 x 10-1​ / 5.37 x 103​ = 9.94 x 10-5​, or 0.0000994.

Yet, the value on the bar graph is approximately 0.1.

Similarly, for Sr/Al the ratio is:

5.09 / 5.37 x 103​ = 9.48 x 10-4​ = 0.000948

Whereas the value on the bar graph is approximately 1.



The ratios appear to bear no relation to the leachate figures. How can boron, with a leachate value of 3.32 ug/L, have a higher ratio than magnesium, with a leachate value of 2.85 x 103​ ug/L, almost 1,000 times higher? How come iron (1.22 x 102​ ug/L) has the lowest ratio, when it is present at over 200 times the concentration of barium (5.34 x 10-1​ ug/L)?


I'm sure I am missing something simple here, but what is he actually comparing on this graph?
 
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Trailblazer said:
I'm sure I am missing something simple here, but what is he actually comparing on this graph?
Click to expand...
The table is a mess, most values are off by several orders of magnitude. We discussed this earlier (see around post #146). But the figure is actually correct, except that he shows the ratios of the averages instead of the averages of the ratios.
 
skephu said:
The table is a mess, most values are off by several orders of magnitude. We discussed this earlier (see around post #146). But the figure is actually correct, except that he shows the ratios of the averages instead of the averages of the ratios.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I saw that his figures were out by several orders of magnitude, but I hadn't done all the calculations. So the figures on the graph are actually correct (ish), they just bear no relation to the table that he claims is the source for the graph? How did he manage that? :)
 
And surely the major point of the retraction ought to be that the central thrust of the article - that the "fingerprints" match - is utterly untrue! Even if you assume that this graph is correct, the ratios are clearly not similar.

From Mick's spreadsheet, these are the ratios (rainwater first, then leachate).

Ba: 0.129, 0.100
Sr: 0.170, 0.933
Fe: 0.912, 0.022
Ca: 38.0, 63.1
Sr: 12.9, 27.5
Mg: 19.1, 0.525
B: 0.240, 0.617

Putting those values on a linear rather than logarithmic axis (and removing aluminium, because showing that 1=1 doesn't add anything but clutter), they are clearly not alike at all.

First, showing all the values:

upload_2015-9-25_11-50-43.png


And now, adjusting the axis to show only the trace elements (Ca, Sr and Mg not shown - although note that the leachate bar for Mg would fit on this scale, despite the rainwater one being up at almost 20!)

upload_2015-9-25_11-55-55.png


As "fingerprint matches" go, this is pretty abysmal!
 
skephu said:
Excerpt from Herndon's email to the editor at http://www.nuclearplanet.com/email-Sept21.pdf

View attachment 15174

So he argues that the 1967 rain data are irrelevant because coal fly ash was then released into the air.

BTW he also cites us in his rejection notice:
View attachment 15175
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Wow.

For the benefit of any lurkers (including possibly Dr. Herndon), here is a thread where we collected a bunch of references showing aluminum content in precipitation, ranging from the 1960s to the modern day: https://www.metabunk.org/chemical-composition-of-rain-and-snow-aluminum-barium-etc.t135/
 
Belfrey said:
Wow.

For the benefit of any lurkers (including possibly Dr. Herndon), here is a thread where we collected a bunch of references showing aluminum content in precipitation, ranging from the 1960s to the modern day: https://www.metabunk.org/chemical-composition-of-rain-and-snow-aluminum-barium-etc.t135/
Click to expand...
Ian Simpson seems to be pushing the idea that it was retracted due to a request by Mick/Metabunk. He doesn't mention what issues he has with the paper, but I wonder if it's that all those "100% PROOF!!!!" links to it on chemtrail sites now show it's been retracted?

HerndonRetraction.jpg


Ray Von
 
Ray Von Geezer said:
Ian Simpson seems to be pushing the idea that it was retracted due to a request by Mick/Metabunk. He doesn't mention what issues he has with the paper, but I wonder if it's that all those "100% PROOF!!!!" links to it on chemtrail sites now show it's been retracted?

View attachment 15180

Ray Von
Click to expand...

Metabunk is concerned for different reasons than he is willing to recognize.

And "MI5K WEST"? Really? I thought he was CIA?
 
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