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

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...

I was the person who sent Herndon and Editor Dr. Tchounwou the attachments Herndon is referring to. Here is a copy of the email they received,which I advised them to share with Dane Wigington:
https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-j...nce-india-and-ijerph.t6456/page-7#post-164238

Considering the references show indisputably that aluminum, being one of the top three crustal elements, is commonly found in dry deposition of mineral dust back before the Industrial Age as shown in the ice cores from Antarctica.
The Editor knows that fact, Herndon knows it, and just getting that word out means they can no longer have deniability going forward. If they do, it can only be out of deliberate deception.
 
Ray Von Geezer said:
Ian Simpson seems to be pushing the idea that it was retracted due to a request by Mick/Metabunk.
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I doubt that Mick had any personal contact with the Editor, but I paid a five minute visit to him at his office and handed him some handwritten criticisms written into the margins on a copy of the Herndon paper. I asked him to look into it, but didn't insist on a retraction. Dr. Tchounwou told me that he was already aware of the controversy before I visited him, but a face-to-face likely showed him that there were probably serious problems in the paper and people were interested.
 
It seems that Herndon's other claim to fame, of a "georeactor" hypothesis has also been dis-proven as well. I guess all he has left is the adoration and attention from the Chemtrail Conspiracy promoters who seek anything that superficially seems credible to post to their websites.

Link

External Quote:
Recent measuments of "geoneutrino" fluxes in the KamLAND and Borexino experiments have falsified Herndon's "georeactor" hypothesis on the presence of an active nuclear fission reactor in the Earth's inner core.
 
Critical Thinker said:
It seems that Herndon's other claim to fame, of a "georeactor" hypothesis has also been dis-proven as well. I guess all he has left is the adoration and attention from the Chemtrail Conspiracy promoters who seek anything that superficially seems credible to post to their websites.

Link

External Quote:
Recent measuments of "geoneutrino" fluxes in the KamLAND and Borexino experiments have falsified Herndon's "georeactor" hypothesis on the presence of an active nuclear fission reactor in the Earth's inner core.
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Exactly! I edited myself that sentence with reference ;-) Italians are heavily involved in neutrino detection experiments :-)
 
I'm at a loss for words after watching this... I don't even know what this is. Should I cry or should I laugh?

 
skephu said:
I'm at a loss for words after watching this... I don't even know what this is. Should I cry or should I laugh?

Click to expand...


Probably both. It's sad that people are so deep into the belief. But also the more ridiculous they make things, the more it has the potential to prompt people to ask if the theory actually holds up to serious examination.
 
I've noticed that the mere fact that claims are so far out has a way of enhancing their believablilty because such claims draw more ridicule, which is then painted as part of a coverup. The more technical the subject matter, the better that works, because more people don't understand the details.
 
Some people think the fact that Herndon's paper was retracted indicates he is correct, and anyway he published a "Rejection Notice" where he rejected the retraction:
External Quote:
Dr. Herndon and his two papers have been viciously attacked, the second published paper retracted (this may be the biggest clue that he is correct, including the fact that exposed shill Mick West got involved), but Dr. Herndon published a Public Rejection Notice on the retraction and corrected minor errors in his paper (which he was not given an opportunity to do and which did not change his conclusions).
From here:
J. MARVIN HERNDON, Ph.D. — THE NEW WEAPON FOR THE ANTI-CHEMTRAILS COMMUNITY
http://socalskywatch.net/forums/top...new-weapon-for-the-anti-chemtrails-community/
 
The next Herndon paper is in the making:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/monumental-air-test-planned-examine-120000099.html
Seems two pilots (two paragliders!) will collect air samples at high altitude. Herndon will monitor the sampling and plans to publish a peer reviewed article about it
External Quote:
All tests will be monitored by Dr. J. Marvin Herndon, who will be submitting his report for peer review. Michael J. Murphy, whose previous work includes the award winning film, "WHY in the World are they Spraying?", will be filming and documenting this process along the way. The team plans on preforming the task sometime in the Spring of 2016.
 
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Trailblazer said:
That URL is a troubling trend. The Finance pages of Yahoo will be seen (rightly or wrongly) as a "reputable source". But in fact this is just a paid press release put out by PR Newswire and reposted by Yahoo.
Click to expand...
Do you mean that this is not going to happen?
 
Henk001 said:
The next Herndon paper is in the making:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/monumental-air-test-planned-examine-120000099.html
Seems two pilots (two paragliders!) will collect air samples at high altitude. Herndon will monitor the sampling and plans to publish a peer reviewed article about it
External Quote:
All tests will be monitored by Dr. J. Marvin Herndon, who will be submitting his report for peer review. Michael J. Murphy, whose previous work includes the award winning film, "WHY in the World are they Spraying?", will be filming and documenting this process along the way. The team plans on preforming the task sometime in the Spring of 2016.
Click to expand...


Well that's the fox watching the hen house!
 
Did he do it again? Did he again use 7% aluminum again instead of 14% for coal fly ash? The trace element of barium was 1380 mg/kg. So the ratio of aluminum to barium should be 101, instead of 50 as seen in his graph.

From here:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...08252.1073741826.1281098326&type=3&permPage=1

Herdon timeline snow screencap.png
 
Who knows? It's very hard to follow what he's doing with the numbers. His numbers are off by random factors everywhere.
 
And of course, he's still ignoring one of the main problems with his whole premise: that you get a very similar degree of "match" if you compare the results to the average prevalence of those elements in the crust of the Earth, meaning that he could easily be detecting simple dirt and dust:

HerndonSnowComparison.jpg
 
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Chew said:
Did he do it again? Did he again use 7% aluminum again instead of 14% for coal fly ash? The trace element of barium was 1380 mg/kg. So the ratio of aluminum to barium should be 101, instead of 50 as seen in his graph.

From here:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...08252.1073741826.1281098326&type=3&permPage=1

View attachment 16225
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According to a reply under Herndon's FB post, this is where the "sticky goo" sample was taken. It appears to be the last pile of snow melting in the shadows.

 
M Bornong said:
According to a reply under Herndon's FB post, this is where the "sticky goo" sample was taken. It appears to be the last pile of snow melting in the shadows.

Click to expand...

so his "debunk" is that snow mold isnt sticky?
External Quote:

Organo Lawn :: Winter Lawn Care Tips
www.organolawn.com/lawn-care/seasonal.../winter-lawn-care-tips/
The snow mold grows on the grass between the turf and the snow. When the snow melts thesnow moldremains on the turf and can often be sticky or tacky.
add: here he shows several years of his snow mold, looks like snow mold. wonder what the composition of snow mold is.
 
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deirdre said:
so his "debunk" is that snow mold isnt sticky?
External Quote:

Organo Lawn :: Winter Lawn Care Tips
www.organolawn.com/lawn-care/seasonal.../winter-lawn-care-tips/
The snow mold grows on the grass between the turf and the snow. When the snow melts thesnow moldremains on the turf and can often be sticky or tacky.
add: here he shows several years of his snow mold, looks like snow mold. wonder what the composition of snow mold is.
Click to expand...


It looks like different states of drying.
 
They still seem to have an idea that these tests are showing pure metallic elements, when of course they are just normal minerals. The test method breaks all compounds down into their constituent elements.
 
Link to Stanford News Service

External Quote:


November 16, 2015
Stanford researchers uncover patterns in how scientists lie about their data


When scientists falsify data, they try to cover it up by writing differently in their published works. A pair of Stanford researchers have devised a way of identifying these written clues.

BY BJORN CAREY

1d1125b8d9c6f9506542131b78376f2c.jpg

Stanford communication scholars have devised an 'obfuscation index' that can help catch falsified scientific research before it is published. (Photo: Andrey Popov / Shutterstock)
Even the best poker players have "tells" that give away when they're bluffing with a weak hand. Scientists who commit fraud have similar, but even more subtle, tells, and a pair of Stanford researchers have cracked the writing patterns of scientists who attempt to pass along falsified data.

The work, published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, could eventually help scientists identify falsified research before it is published.

There is a fair amount of research dedicated to understanding the ways liars lie. Studies have shown that liars generally tend to express more negative emotion terms and use fewer first-person pronouns. Fraudulent financial reports typically display higher levels of linguistic obfuscation – phrasing that is meant to distract from or conceal the fake data – than accurate reports.

To see if similar patterns exist in scientific academia, Jeff Hancock, a professor of communication at Stanford, and graduate student David Markowitz searched the archives of PubMed, a database of life sciences journals, from 1973 to 2013 for retracted papers. They identified 253, primarily from biomedical journals, that were retracted for documented fraud and compared the writing in these to unretracted papers from the same journals and publication years, and covering the same topics.

They then rated the level of fraud of each paper using a customized "obfuscation index," which rated the degree to which the authors attempted to mask their false results. This was achieved through a summary score of causal terms, abstract language, jargon, positive emotion terms and a standardized ease of reading score.

"We believe the underlying idea behind obfuscation is to muddle the truth," said Markowitz, the lead author on the paper. "Scientists faking data know that they are committing a misconduct and do not want to get caught. Therefore, one strategy to evade this may be to obscure parts of the paper. We suggest that language can be one of many variables to differentiate between fraudulent and genuine science."

The results showed that fraudulent retracted papers scored significantly higher on the obfuscation index than papers retracted for other reasons. For example, fraudulent papers contained approximately 1.5 percent more jargon than unretracted papers.

"Fradulent papers had about 60 more jargon-like words per paper compared to unretracted papers," Markowitz said. "This is a non-trivial amount."

The researchers say that scientists might commit data fraud for a variety of reasons. Previous research points to a "publish or perish" mentality that may motivate researchers to manipulate their findings or fake studies altogether. But the change the researchers found in the writing, however, is directly related to the author's goals of covering up lies through the manipulation of language. For instance, a fraudulent author may use fewer positive emotion terms to curb praise for the data, for fear of triggering inquiry.

In the future, a computerized system based on this work might be able to flag a submitted paper so that editors could give it a more critical review before publication, depending on the journal's threshold for obfuscated language. But the authors warn that this approach isn't currently feasible given the false-positive rate.

"Science fraud is of increasing concern in academia, and automatic tools for identifying fraud might be useful," Hancock said. "But much more research is needed before considering this kind of approach. Obviously, there is a very high error rate that would need to be improved, but also science is based on trust, and introducing a 'fraud detection' tool into the publication process might undermine that trust."

 
cmnit said:
Another spin on the paraglider project advocated by Marvin Herndon:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/fi...mtrail-samples-2-para-gliders-collect-samples
Click to expand...
Trying very hard to not laugh hysterically. The more they advertise this, the bigger deal it becomes IMHO. So according to this site,
External Quote:
military fets (jets?) flying at high altitudes often leave behind vapor trails, known as contrails. Chemtrails differ in that they do not dissipate in a short time. Many people believe that this is due to chemicals being sprayed into the atmosphere in order to artificially fabricate climate change and/or alter weather patterns.
AND
External Quote:
What makes this extraordinary endeavor so critical is that the results may very well prove, beyond any doubt, that coal fly ash is being introduced into the chemtrail formulations. Such a finding would immediately implicate the EPA and the U.S. Military in a criminal conspiracy to pollute the skies across the American continent. Coal fly ash is mandatorily removed by coal-fired power plant as per current EPA rules and regulations.
 
A very enlightening paper on the problem of detecting coal fly ash:

http://www3.epa.gov/ttnchie1/conference/ei20/session5/smueller.pdf
External Quote:

Separating Road Dust and Fly Ash from Background Particulate Levels Individually quantifying road and fly ash disposal contributions to measured hourly CPM2.5 and CPMc (=CPM10 - CPM2.5) was difficult because there is no direct means of knowing the degree to which airborne particles were derived from soil or fly ash (soil and ash chemical signatures are too similar). We used an indirect phenomenological approach based on camera information, measured bscat​ and derived statistical relationships between various measured parameters. This method was not perfect but it captured the majority of local sources and enabled us to isolate those events that were most likely associated only with fugitive fly ash emissions. If anything, the approach may have enabled some contributions from unknown sources to impact the fly ash calculations thereby slightly overestimating fly ash fugitive emissions.
So there's the root problem (as has been said several times in the thread above). You can't tell the difference between fly ash and soil dust by chemical analysis.

http://www.greenpeace.to/publications/philflyash.pdf
External Quote:

Of the three fly ashes, the sample from the Mauban plant contained many elements at concentrations significantly above those found in the samples from the Masinloc and Sual plants. The fly ash from the Sual power plant contained the lowest concentrations of elements for the three samples. Although the concentrations of elements detected in the fly ash samples are not significantly higher than those typical found in soil, the ashes pose a potential environmental hazard due to the very large quantities produced, and the tendency for a significant fraction of the toxic and potentially toxic elements contained within them to leach into the immediate environment.
 

Attachments

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Belfrey said:
And of course, he's still ignoring one of the main problems with his whole premise: that you get a very similar degree of "match" if you compare the results to the average prevalence of those elements in the crust of the Earth, meaning that he could easily be detecting simple dirt and dust:

View attachment 16226
Click to expand...

I've added this to the OP, together with shorter quotes from the two papers above.
 
Herndon has a new article out in the journal Frontiers in Public Health (June 30 2016).

PDF is here: http://nuclearplanet.com/frontiers1.pdf

upload_2016-7-12_13-11-2.png


I haven't had time to read it properly yet, but a brief skim suggests more of the same, viz comparing dirt from different sources and finding a roughly dirt-ish elemental composition. This time he has also tested "fibrous mesh" found on grass after snow melt, aka snow mould.

upload_2016-7-12_13-18-48.png
 
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Trailblazer said:
Herndon has a new article out in the journal Frontiers in Public Health (June 30 2016).

PDF is here: http://nuclearplanet.com/frontiers1.pdf
Click to expand...

The first comment has been made on the Frontiers in Public Health site. http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpubh.2016.00139/full
External Quote:

Andras Szilagyi This article has a fundamental methodological flaw in that it only compares the composition of rainwater and air particulates to coal fly ash and nothing else. Soil samples should have been used as controls. Also, a statistical analysis is completely missing. The total lack of controls and the lack of statistical analysis renders the article unsound and its conclusions invalid.

  • Today at 06:12am


Andras Szilagyi's website: http://www.szialab.org/
 
i'm getting a bit 'annoyed' because i dont know the chemical letters used for each of these elements.. so maybe someone can tell me easier:

-herndon lists 9 elements in the sticky snow goo -1 sample!- that "match" fly coal ash (although they match different coal ash samples, but that's another story)
-Robert West tested 28 elements
-According to this paper 1992, page 14, there are 33 elements* in fly coal ash..although this paper doesnt list Lithium but Herndon does ?

so my question for those who dont have to look up each element for their letters (ie Be, Ca etc) how many of the elements Robert West tested are also in Coal fly ash? or in other words.. how many elements in Roberts sample don't match the signature of coal fly ash?

*the elements in the 1992 paper are Al,As,B,Ba,Ca,Cd,Ce,Cl,Co,Cr,C?,F,Fe,Hg,I,K,Mg,Mn,Mo,Na,Ni,P,Pb,Rb,S,Sc?,Se?,Si,Sr,Th,U,V,Zn

hrgoo.JPG
 
deirdre said:
so my question for those who dont have to look up each element for their letters (ie Be, Ca etc) how many of the elements Robert West tested are also in Coal fly ash? or in other words.. how many elements in Roberts sample don't match the signature of coal fly ash?



View attachment 19893
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There might be a mistake or two, but this is what I saw:

Elements in common:
Aluminum (AL)
Arsenic (As)
Barium (Ba)
Boron (B) [tested but not detectable (ND) in West]
Cadmium (Cd)
Calcium (Ca)
Chromium (Cr)
Cobalt (Co) [detected but below quantifiable amount (<LOQ) in West]
Iron (Fe)
Lead (Pb)
Potassium (K)
Silicon (Si)
Strontium (Sr)
Vanadium (V)
Zinc (Zn)

Elements in '92 paper, not Robert West
Cerium (Ce)
Chlorine (Cl)
Carbon? (C)
Fluorine (F)
Mercury (Hg)
Iodine (I)
Rubidium (Rb)
Sulphur (S)
Scandium (Sc)
Selenium (Se)
Thorium (Th)
Uranium (U)

Elements in Robert West, not '92 paper
Antimony (Sb) [ND]
Beryllium (be) [<LOQ]
Copper (Cu)
Lithium (Li)
Magnesium (Mg)
Manganese (Mn)
Molybdenum (Mo) [<LOQ]
Nickel (Ni)
Silver (Ag) [ND]
Sodium (Na)
Thallium (Ti) [ND]
Tin (Sn) [ND]
Titanium
 
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I made it through about half of the paper and it reads like a rehash of his previous work.

Two comments:

1. Frontiers has an interesting background and not without controversy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontiers_Media

http://www.nature.com/news/backlash...ed-to-list-of-questionable-publishers-1.18639

2. I was looking at one of Herdon's tables:

Tabulation of Data.png

It is just a list of numbers. And footnotes 2-5 for the "Internet-posted ICP-MS data" are here:
Footnotes.png

Yea gods. I am having a distinct feeling of deja vu.
 
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@Marin B i just realized R. West's test has the letters there too. o_O

so basically, Herndon has 2 more elements in his fly ash than my 1992 paper, which means there are at least 35 elements in coal fly ash. and herndon "matched" 9. AND he counts "lithium" as an indicator even though his hepa tests show Lithium in only 1 of 5 tests. add: actually only half of his hepa filters show the elements he matched in his snow goo.

I'm so confused as to where he got his conclusions from.
 
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deirdre said:
@Marin B

I'm so confused as to where he got his conclusions from.
Click to expand...

I'd like to know what Nobel Prize-winning chemist Harold C. Urey and Hans E. Suess would think about Herndon's work in general?

External Quote:
Between 1975 and 1978 he engaged in postdoctoral work at the University of California at San Diego under the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Harold C. Urey and Hans E. Suess, the co‑discoverer of the shell structure of the atomic nucleus (for which Suess's collaborator, J. Hans D. Jensen, earned a share of the 1963 Nobel Prize in physics).
http://nuclearplanet.com/Current Biography Profile.html
 
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