John Major Jenkins Debunked Again
September 26th, 2009 by admin
see my video 2012 debunked
The following is from a researcher who was pointing out some of the many problems in Graham Hancock’s 2012 alignment assertions in a post called “The 2012 Winter Solstice Non-event”
It appears that good ol’ John Major Jenkins, a person who claims to be the uncontested king of all 2012 theories, replied to this persons post saying that first, Hancock stole the information from him, and then apparently got all the info wrong . Jenkins is pretty active in surfing around the internet and telling people how awesome he believes himself to be (see some of his comment’s on one of my own blog posts )
At any rate, the author of the article then took it upon himself to look into Jenkins pseudoscience in the stead of Hancock’s.
This is what he wrote:
2004 May 09 I have received a couple of emails from a “John Major Jenkins” who asserts that he is the original source of this 2012 stuff, and who alleges that the author of the immediately preceding nonsense has plagiarised him, albeit inaccurately. Jenkins objects that my comments above reflect badly on him. Jenkins (and anyone else) should be aware that (a) I was commenting on what was actually written on the site to which I referred, not to Jenkins’ writings (I do not comment on stuff that I have never read) and (b) objections to alleged plagiarism should be addressed to the alleged plagiariser, not to a third party.
Update, 2006 February 14:
(These comments refer to content in Jenkins’s web pages as at 2006 February 13.)
Jenkins, in various pages on his web site, has attempted to refute criticism, from here and elsewhere, of his astrocrud. I am not going to attempt to go into detail with respect to all of his attempted refutations. Some are based on Mayan history which I am incompetent to comment upon; there are so many that they almost qualify as a complex question fallacy and, to quote them all would mean quoting such a high proportion of Jenkins’s web site that it would be way beyond what is permitted by Fair Use clauses of copyright legislation (which I prefer to abide by, even if Jenkins — by quoting, in full and without permission, my private correspondence to him — evidently does not).
- “By mid-1999 I had received a statement from an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University to the effect that ‘it is not possible that the Maya could see the Galactic Center.’ My general response to this opinion is that the region of the Galactic Center should be more generally identified as the “nuclear bulge” which can be noticed with naked eye observation because the Milky Way is wider in that region and there are more bright stars there.”
- Note the “to the effect that ” ; i.e. he does not state what the actual objections were in order that we can see if he is actually addressign them.
- “there are more bright stars there“. Note that Jenkins is deliberately vague: he fails to specify what he means by “bright” or “here” or to what he is comparing “more”. This sort of vagueness is characteristic of pseudoscience:it makes it far more difficult to critically examine the claims. However, there is a greater density of naked-eye visible (magnitude 6.5 and brighter) stars in several other regions of sky (e.g. Cass/And/Lac region, Cyg region) than there is in the region of the galactic centre.
- The “nuclear bulge” as a rather large region. This (see later) introduces such a wide error-bar into his 2012 pseudo-hypothesis that it becomes even more meaningless.
- “the Milky Way was conceived as a Great Goddess and the dark-rift was her birth canal. This demonstrates that the Maya understood the region of the Galactic Center as a source-point or birth place.” .
- This (“source point“) is contradicted by his argument and his diagram #2 on this page. (See later)
- “Ancient Maya knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes is the hitch that most skeptical scholars invoke to discredit my work. The evidence for precessional knowledge is found in the academic data, (…) Citations to the work of Brotherston, Tedlock, Schele, Smiley, Hunt, Aveni, and others are available upon request (electronically) and are also contained in my book. ”
- But these citations are not provided with the assertions on his web page, so this is a clear case of failure to specify.
- “These assumptions or critiques are easily addressed:”
- Then why does he not address them?
- He states on the same page “check back in a week“, but to date the page is unaltered since 2004 May 29. Some of the “easily addressed” objections have languished there since May 2003!)
- In response to this statement: “True statement: “The solstice sun is in conjunction with the galactic equator in 2012.”” and the sun is half a degree wide and therefore your statement is factually wrong. (…) You should use the more accurate term “solstice colure” (…) It’s a question of linguistic accuracy; or, in your use, a misleading misuse of a term.”
- A classic case of proof by redefinition of words! Jenkins seems somewhat reluctant to accept the astronomical definition of Conjunction. Perhaps his own definition is that used in astrology or in pseudoastronomy; I’m not competent to say. However, if he wants to be taken seriously by astronomers, he might wish to start using astronomical terms correctly.
- When he made that statement about the colure, Jenkins seemed to be blithely unaware that solstitial colure always crosses the galactic equator (at two points), and does not only do so just at the 2012 winter solstice! The point above about correct use of astronomical terms applies.
- I have no doubt that the likes of Jenkins will continue to bluster against the preceding comments so, for the sake of argument, let us see where Jenkins’s “[Tonkin] overlooks the fact that the sun itself is one-half of a degree wide, and will in fact be touching the galactic equator on all winter solstices between 1980 and 2016 (which is 1998 plus/minus 18 years; 36 years = one-half (…) What he is doing is invoking a precise level of accuracy that is inappropriate to the real situation.” and “the region of the Galactic Center should be more generally identified as the “nuclear bulge” which can be noticed with naked eye observation” take us, i.e. let us see the consequences of what Jenkins himself insists to be the case.Jenkins insisted that it is “inappropriate” to use the real conjunction of the Sun with the galactic equator, and that we should really consider the entire disc of the Sun. Presumably we must then take an equally “fuzzy” view of the galactic equator, i.e. we must regard it as a band of at least 30 arcmin wide (same angular size as the Sun). So, if we are no longer concerned with the precision of what Jenkins falsely terms “abstractions”, i.e. the centre of the Sun and the galactic equator, and allow ourselves to consider the entire disc of the Sun and the region of the “nuclear bulge”, the period of “conjunction” is a great deal more than Jenkins’s ±18 years; it is at least double this. In other words, the consequence of Jenkins’s attempt to, although he does not appear to have said so, is that the period during which the disc of the winter solstice Sun is in geocentric line-of-sight contact with the middle region of the “nuclear bulge” takes at least 70 years! His 36 year error bar was imprecise enough; a 70 year error bar is ridiculuous. With either error bar he has so great a margin of error that any prediction is meaningless and is essentially untestable; i.e.Jenkins’s argument falls even deeper into the classification of pseudoscience.So why is he so insistent on 2012 and not 1962 or 2034 or any of the other intervening years? How about 2030, the year when the Sun is most central in the Cygnus Rift, thus allowing us to combine two bits of astrocrud into one? There is no way to get to 2012 without either circular argument or argument by scenario and affirming the consequent.Whatever his reasons, they clearly have no basis in astronomy, be it proper astronomy or Jenkins’s preferred species of pseudoastronomy.In other words, this is just another example of astrocrud.
- 6 Comments »
- Posted in Uncategorized
November 28th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Dear Anonymous debunker,
Your misunderstandings are due to, as you said, “Mayan history which I am incompetent to comment upon.” Your continued anonymity seems to give you permission to spew the crap loosely and widely. For example, I have never written or said that Hancock stole “my stuff.” He’s a friend whose work I respect, which you would know if you read my recent book The 2012 Story. I also do not claim to have originated all the “2012 stuff” (your clever generalizations only serve your debunking agenda, not clarity). What I have stated, quite clearly, perhaps 1000 times, is that I have shown how the solstice-galaxy alignment astronomy was embedded by the Maya into their important institutions, including the ballgame, the Creation Myth, king-making rites, and is found in the archaeoastronomy and iconogaphy at the early site of Izapa (which was involved in the formulation of the Long Count roughly 2,100 years ago). As you can see by reading Chapter 7 of my new book, The 2012 Story, there is now new evidence in the inscriptions which support the pioneering work that I put on the table 15 years ago. Nobody before this had made the connection between the galactic alignment astronomy and key features of Maya creation mythology — first and foremost being the dark rift in the Milky Way. So, keep on debunking or embrace the mounting evidence that my reconstruction work, much maligned by you and other clueless debunker priests, was and is on target.
January 26th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
I know I’m a late comer to this post, but I’ll be short and succinct; Jenkins is full of crap. His main cop out is always the excuse that his research is being misinterpreted, misused or plagiarized. FACT: No Mayanist alive that would be worth citing in even an undergrad paper would agree with him.
But what do I know? I only have a degree in this crap along with degrees in two hard sciences. One of my life goals is to get anthropologists to treat their pseudoscience like the hard sciences have for years. That is, outright criticism and calling it like it is.
Don’t worry, Mr. Jenkins. Once 2012 fizzles you can jump on the Apophis band wagon, though I doubt the astrophysicists will be as kind to you as the Mayanists have been.
June 3rd, 2010 at 6:02 pm
[...] 2! The shame. And B, when it comes to 2012, they did a straight interview with John Major Jenkins, a guy who makes all sorts of weird claims about the Mayans. Apparently, unlike almost every 2012 crackpot out there, Jenkins says there’s nothing to [...]
June 7th, 2010 at 10:55 am
Dear Shock,
Who are you? For some reason you don’t have the courage to announce your real name. You do gloat over your degrees, however, which means absolutely nothing regarding your ability to debate me on Maya cosmology, astronomy, and how the ancient Maya were conceiving 2012. Like many boastful degree holders, you assert falsehoods with a cock-sure arrogance that makes me hope that you are not a teacher of young people. For example, contrary to your statement above, my work has in fact been cited in numerous places, by undergrads as well as PhD holding Mayan scholars. You’ve chosen to be anonymous so that you can avoid a real conversation. So, whoever you are, I challenge you to a debate. Let’s talk about the evidence for how the ancient Maya conceived of 2012. Can you do it? You can email directly at john@alignment2012.com
June 14th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Mr. Jenkins,
I can think of four things that might help you convince your detractors:
1. You’ve said in various places that the ancient Maya were time travelers to whom the works of modern physics would seem like childs’ play. Can you tell us whether this is still your belief? And if so, do you believe that the Maya chose Dec 21, 2012 based upon insights they gained via that route, or via naked-eye astronomy and analysis of their observations?
2. You’ve said that the Maya were targeting the Galactic Equator with the end-date of their calendar. As you know, that equator is a convenient fiction developed by modern Western astronomers. Do you maintain that the Maya somehow chose that same Equator as a target? If so, your case would be strengthened if you could show that most people who are unfamiliar with the modern Galactic Equator would draw that same “Equator” through the Milky Way. Have you ever tested that idea? For example, by giving a reasonable-sized group of people (say, 100) a photo of the relevant part of the Milky Way and asking them to draw its “equator” by eye? If so, how closely did their “equators” agree within the group, and with the Galactic Equator as defined by modern astronomers?
3. As you know, there are over a hundred consecutive years ca. AD 2000 during which the Sun aligns with the Dark Rift at the instant of the Winter Solstice. There are many more during which the Sun is within the Dark Rift at dawn in Maya lands on the day of the Winter Solstice. (That is, at the sunrise closest in time to the instant of the Solstice.)
In view of the above, what would be you objection to the following statement: “The Maya wanted 13 Baktun to end on some date when the Sun was aligned with the Dark Rift at the moment of the Winter Solstice. Since they knew the approximate rate of precession, they knew there would be a range of approximately 100 such years. As any sensible person would do, they ‘aimed for the middle’ of that estimated range when they selected the end date. The date they estimated in that way was the one we now know as Dec 21, 2012.”
Would that statement be satisfactory to you, or do you maintain that 2012 is somehow special among those 100 or so years?
4. Have you ever published a detailed explanation of how the Maya might have estimated the date of the alignment? That is, have you ever written an analysis like the following?
“Here are the observations the Maya could have made of stars A, B, C, D, and E within the three centuries prior to the first known use of the Long Count calendar (ca. 100 BC). From those observations, the Maya would have obtained a “vector” v, with uncertainty dv, for the “velocity” with which the Solstice Sun appeared to be approaching the Dark Rift, as seen from Earth.
“Now, let’s make things easier for the Maya, and say that their target was the point RA = R, Decl = D, known to be along v, and centered within the Dark Rift. What we want to know, is what year they would have identified for alignment of the Solstice sun with that point, and what the range of uncertainty would be.”
This analysis shouldn’t be all THAT difficult, and might satisfy your critics. Until you at least attempt it, I think your critics will be justified in saying that you’re evading the issue.
July 13th, 2010 at 10:05 am
[...] 2012 will see the Earth cracking in half like an egg or something, but by how much is unclear. John Major Jenkins Debunked Again Do something. If it doesn't work, do something [...]