Comet Research Group

The Comet Research Group, Inc. (also known as the CRG) is non-profit organization whose members promote their research focused on cosmic impact events or meteor air bursts on Earth in the distant past,^[1] including events of biblical significance.^[2] Archeologist Carl Feagans and NASA astronomer David Morrison have described the group's theories as pseudoscientific and pseudoarchaeological catastrophism,^[3][4][5] particularly where related to Abu Hureyra and the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis.^[3][6] These proposals are typically proposed in opposition to what they view as uniformitarianism.^[7][8]

History

The CRG was founded by paleoceanographer James P. Kennett and others who contend that the incidence of comet and meteoritic impacts of global significance is much higher than what is normally considered the rate. The CRG membership roster includes archaeologist Andrew M.T. Moore, physicist Adrian Melott, and astronomers Willam Napier and Dante Lauretta.^[9] It is linked to the Rising Light Group, a "tax-exempt charitable organization with a clear Christian and biblical agenda," and is registered in the name of co-founder and director Allen West,^[10] described by his attorney to Pacific Standard as "a retired geophysicist who has had a long and distinguished career". West was formerly known as Allen Whitt, and, (As of 2017), West has no academic affiliation and had been implicated in a mining scam in the 1990s.^[11]

Claims

Members of the CRG say they have discovered that a Tunguska-sized meteor air burst destroyed the Middle-Bronze-Age city Tall el-Hammam in Jordan^[12] and that cosmic impact and/or airburst events destroyed the Pre-Pottery Neolithic village of Abu Hureyra in Syria around 12,800 years ago.^[13][1] Its members have developed and tend to favor the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, which attributes climate change at the end of the Pleistocene to a massive impact extraterrestrial objects.^[14] The role—if any—of comets in bringing about the end of the Pleistocene has been rejected by most subject matter experts.^[6]

Members of the CRG have been criticized for promoting pseudoscience, pseudoarchaeology, and pseudohistory, engaging in cherry-picking of data based on confirmation bias, seeking to persuade via the bandwagon fallacy, and even engaging in intentional misrepresentations of archaeological and geological evidence. For example, physicist Mark Boslough, a specialist in planetary impact hazards and asteroid impact avoidance, has pointed out many problems with the credibility and motivations of individual CRG researchers and as well as with their specific claims for evidence in support of the YDIH and/or the effects of meteor air bursts or impact events on ancient settlements, people, and environments.^[15]

Many doubts have been raised about the CRG's claims.^[16] Image forensics expert Elisabeth Bik discovered evidence for digital alteration of images used as evidence that Tall el-Hammam was engulfed by an airburst.^[17] CRG members initially denied tampering with the photos but eventually published a correction in which they admitted to inappropriate image manipulation.^[18] Subsequent concerns that have been brought up in PubPeer have not yet been addressed by the CRG, including discrepancies between claimed blast wave direction compared to what the images show, unavailability of original image data to independent researchers, lack of supporting evidence for conclusions, inappropriate reliance on young Earth creationist literature, misinformation about the Tunguska explosion, and another uncorrected example of an inappropriately altered image.^[19] On February 15, 2023, the following editor’s note was posted on this paper, "Readers are alerted that concerns raised about the data presented and the conclusions of this article are being considered by the Editors. A further editorial response will follow the resolution of these issues."^[20]

Members of the CRG have also supported the assertion that Indigenous people of the Hopewell tradition in the eastern United States were affected by an airburst event that occurred in the 3rd or 4th century.^[21]

References

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