{"id":955,"date":"2011-02-14T14:21:25","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T03:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/?p=955"},"modified":"2011-02-14T14:24:41","modified_gmt":"2011-02-14T03:24:41","slug":"bell-burnell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/2011\/02\/bell-burnell-955.html","title":{"rendered":"The Royal Society Laughs at 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, the highly-regarded\u00a0Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell gave a Royal Society lecture about the sham that is 2012. You can watch it online:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/royalsociety.org\/The-end-of-the-world-in-2012\/
\n<\/a>
\nNow for some criticisms!
\n<\/span><\/strong>
\nYou have to wonder about a scientist who doesn’t understand how search engines work, yet we should trust her skills in analyzing the 2012 meme. Seven minutes into the lecture\u00a0Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell tells us that there are 56 million Google results when she searches for end of the world in 2012<\/em>, and the audience laughs. There aren’t, merely 56 million web pages that contain all of those words, somewhere<\/em> on the page. Any professor should be smart enough to estimate that 56 million people have not made websites about 2012.<\/p>\n

Searching for:
\n \u201cend of the world\u201d 2012<\/em>
\nyields just 1.7 million results. Of these 95% or more will be computer-generated spam. Real websites with original content about 2012 probably number around one thousand. Not nearly as interesting or attention grabbing.<\/p>\n

I guess you would call this reverse-scaremongering, where smug Royal Society devotees marvel at how many 2012 idiots there must be out there.<\/p>\n

Of course she picks on the wackiest 2012 theories, which are the easiest to poke fun at. Yet she does not mention any of the websites where she found the wacky theories, so that people can make their own decisions. If those websites even exist…<\/p>\n

For example she dismisses the theory of a 2012 planetary alignments. If you do a Google search for this, you won’t find any websites describing a planetary alignment in 2012, which makes sense, for there won’t be such an alignment and it would be hard to prove otherwise. This would explain why she does not have a slide showing this purported alignment theory. Could it be it is the professor who is confused, or that she has deliberately ignored the topic of a galactic <\/em>alignment in 2012.<\/p>\n

Another wacky theory she picks on, where I am unaware of any serious website making such claims, is that we will be sucked into the black hole at the galactic center.<\/p>\n

Her science is also narrow-minded and out-of-date. Recent research suggests the magnetic poles might reverse rapidly, but she only mentions the old estimate of 5,000 years. Professor Bell Burnell gives lots of great detail about asteroids, yet fails to mention comets – comets are more likely to remain undetected until too late, and could have been predicted by ancient cultures.<\/p>\n

This intention of this post is not to pick on this particular professor. It is because it saddens me that so many very intelligent, well-regarded scientists have approached the 2012 meme in such a biased way, with no intentions to fully investigate the possibilities. They find the aspects of 2012 that are the easiest to dismiss, but avoid the difficult ones. I was really hoping an audience member would ask “what about comets?”, but alas, it was not to be.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, the highly-regarded\u00a0Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell gave a Royal Society lecture about the sham that is 2012. You can watch it online:
\nhttp:\/\/royalsociety.org\/The-end-of-the-world-in-2012\/<\/p>\n

Now for some criticisms!<\/p>\n

You have to wonder about a scientist who doesn’t understand how search engines work, yet we should trust her skills in analyzing the 2012 meme. Seven minutes into the lecture\u00a0Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell tells us that there are 56 million Google results when she searches for end of the world in 2012, and the audience laughs. There aren’t, merely 56 million web pages that contain all of those words, somewhere on the page. Any professor should be smart enough to estimate that 56 million people have not made websites about 2012.
\nSearching for:
\n \u201cend of the world\u201d 2012
\nyields just 1.7 million results. Of these 95% or more will be computer-generated spam. Real websites with original content about 2012 probably number around one thousand. Not …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[299,300],"class_list":["post-955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asteroids","tag-professor-jocelyn-bell-burnell","tag-royal-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=955"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":957,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions\/957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}