I still hear the myth repeated that “scientists” proved the ancient city of Sodom was in fact destroyed by a meteor, and this therefore became the basis of the Sodom & Gomorrah legend in the Bible. But that never happened. The science has been proved fraudulent. And those “scientists” were Christian creationists all along. We have to conclude it was a scam to steal scientific legitimacy by getting a bogus scientific paper through peer review, generating headlines. And as usually happens in our broken information economy, no one got the later, less-sensational memo that it was all debunked. Everyone hears the first headlines, and that becomes the urban legend ever after. “Common knowledge” as it were. Trying to get this false information out of that database of common knowledge can be a slog.

Is It That Bad?

The original story was so sensational it made it all the way into Forbes (“A Massive Meteor May Have Destroyed The Biblical City Of Sodom”). And it began with a published study in Scientific Reports (affiliated in some sense with Nature, “A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el‑Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea”). But that was debunked by a team of scientists in an article in the same venue a year later (“No mineralogic or geochemical evidence of impact at Tall el-Hammam, a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea” also available at NIH). The only evidence (as opposed to mere assertions) presented for the claim was that some scattered micromaterials that underwent high heat were recovered at the site—but not in any concentration or quantity as would entail a total destruction of the city. In fact (per the refutation), “the presence of ultra-high-temperature mineral phases and geochemical enrichments in melts” cannot be distinguished by the methods used “in the context of archeological debris where our ancestors had access to ceramic and smelting technologies.” In other words, all they found was evidence of ceramic and smelting industries. There was no other evidence.

As the debunking team pointed out (emphasis mine):

Much of the melt glass presented in their study is closely associated with pottery; many specimens are pieces of remelted ceramics like one might find in spoils and dumps; and many examples they provide to demonstrate ultra-high temperatures, such as the formation of baddeleyite rims on zircon and the embayment of refractory phases by dissolution in hot melts, are well-documented in ancient slags.

Likewise, the evidence the paper claimed of geologic shock in various microminerals does not differ from that normally expected from tectonic activity just about anywhere. The authors make the corresponding methodological point that the suspect study adduced no evidence capable of ruling these alternative conclusions out. That means this evidence is equally expected on both hypotheses—or worse, because they document many ways the evidence presented does not look like it should if produced in the way alleged, but rather look exactly like the usual ways they are made. And since these are vastly more frequent phenomena, the conclusion of any kind of astrophysical destruction doesn’t even have a significant prior probability. It therefore is to be rejected as a conclusion.

It’s Actually Worse

In no way should this have even passed peer review, even after allowing for the peer reviewers to be taken in by fraudulently represented data, as also documented by the debunking team. For the original paper was caught altering data to produce these fraudulent results (Retraction Watch, “Journal investigating Sodom comet paper for data problems”).

And its authors turn out to be shady as fuck. One of its main authors was a professor of Biblical Archaeology at Trinity Southwest University, “which describes itself as ‘a trans-denominational institution in the evangelical mainstream of the historic Christian Faith’ that has ‘chosen to remain non-aligned’ with respect to ‘traditional accreditation’,” and “Its address appears to be located in a strip mall between a cannabis dispensary and a bubble tea shop in Albuquerque.” Yeah. For realz. His PhD is likewise bogus (awarded by that same unaccredited “school”). Another main author was literally a con artist, “who, in 2002, was fined by California and convicted for masquerading as a state-licensed geologist when he charged small-town officials fat fees for water studies,” and is even suspected of faking this particular kind of “air burst” data several times before. Oh, and he has no science degrees. At all. Yeah. Seriously.

That guy also appears to be a co-founder of the mysterious “Comet Research Group” that may be the originator of the entire bogus study (see Mark Boslough, “Sodom Meteor Strike Claims Should Be Taken with a Pillar of Salt,” at Skeptical Inquirer), which appears to be itself a pet project of Trinity Southwest University, and another fundamentalist institution, Veritas International University (“formerly Veritas Evangelical Seminary”), which is another “Christian institution in a Santa Ana, California, office park” (founded by none other than Norman Geisler; atheist activists of my generation might remember him). Those are both Biblical fundamentalist institutions. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, VIU is comprised of only three schools, “Veritas College & Seminary, VIU School of Archaeology, and the VIU Norman L. Geisler School of Apologetics.” Yup. Oh, and most of the “authors” listed for the science paper “are all co-founders of the Comet Research Group.” And yeah, the CRG is “linked to the Rising Light Group,” a “charitable organization with a clear Christian and biblical agenda,” registered in the con artist’s name (see Elisabeth Bik, “Blast in the Past: Image concerns in paper about comet that might have destroyed Tall el-Hammam,” at Science Integrity Digest).

On top of all that, several of these articles uncover the fact that the CRG isn’t just a dubious Biblical apologetics outfit, but might also itself be a con (of a kind we often encounter in religious institutions): its mission and promotional materials seem all directed at drumming up fears of comet and meteor destructions of modern cities in order to raise money (see its now-defunct Indiegogo page, which shows $35,000 raised, but who knows how much they gulled through other channels—or still are). The sensational headlines they won from “finding” a “Biblical” destruction of a city seem then aimed at simple greed: it could all be part of a promotional operation for earning donation money. That this kind of con is exactly what one of the authors was convicted of before, and that’s the same guy who seems to be behind the whole CRG in general and even this study in particular, only lends credence to that suspicion.

But of course it also worked out for Christian propagandists, who are still using this claim to promote their beliefs—without any mention of it having been debunked. And I must say, deep shame falls on John Bergsma and Steven Collins there. In fact, this Collins (another pseudoscientist with a fake PhD from a fake school) appears to have provided the impetus for this entire fraud, as he has been making bogus “air burst” and other claims (outside of peer review) about the archaeology at Tall el-Hammam since at least 2011. This Collins is intimately connected with the study’s authors (as documented, among other damning things, by Paul Braterman in “Tall el-Hammam; an airburst of gullibility; it gets worse”)

And indeed, now this fraudulent study is being used to claim “Sodom” has at last been found right where Collins claimed—when in fact we have no reason to believe Tall-el-Hammam was Sodom, but for this new bogus claim of astrophysical destruction. In fact there is no evidence there ever was a Sodom, even in the mundane sense; and what evidence there is, makes Tall el-Hammam in fact unlikely to be it (see Todd Bolen, “Arguments Against Locating Sodom at Tall el-Hammam,” at Bible History Daily, a blog of the Biblical Archaeology Society).

My Own Observations

The published debunking has focused on easily proved examples of data manipulation and bad methodology, and the dubious backgrounds and agendas of its producers. But I think a few other things have been overlooked that warrant more attention from experts.

For example, I think the evidence overall has a lower likelihood on the impact theory, because it predicts other observations should be in evidence: such as evidence of the physical destruction-by-fire-and-blast of all structures in the same stratigraphic layer in a radial or lateral pattern (as even claimed by Collins; but alas, they evidently couldn’t fake up photos good enough for that to include in the study, which just quietly pretends he never said it)—and a shit ton of human and animal bones. The city was destroyed, but all the evidence they claim is remarkable about that isn’t—it all looks like the product of ordinary human destruction (by fire, battle, and demolition, and subsequent continuing decay); it is not the kind of wide-scale radial or lateral slagging, scattering, and crushing expected from a nuclear-scale blast (despite such false claims having been made outside the published results of this study, such as by Collins).

Which brings us back to the bones. If an entire city was laid waste in an instant, and then abandoned for hundreds of years as these authors claim, then most of the corpses (particularly of animals) won’t likely have gone anywhere; they would have been buried all at once by the fallout of dust, ash, rubble, and debris. Any that were still exposed might be weathered away, eaten by scavengers, or buried by near-enough villagers, but quite a lot should still be there, unreachable but to archaeology. In fact even the mass graves that could have been dug for the population there should still be there. And they would not be blasted apart or turned to ash or “disarticulated” or converted into bone fragments as this study’s authors claim.

As we know from the Tunguska incident (photos), even trees were not incinerated or blasted apart, and wood is weaker (and has a far lower immolation point) than bone. We also have the horrifying example of Hiroshima, which confirms this. People are not incinerated. They are rarely even blasted apart. They are simply burned across the exterior and crushed by the pressure wave, ravaging internal organs but not skeletons as much. Most are not “dismembered” or “disarticulated” as the authors imply. And yet these authors still only found…ten human skeletons (I am not kidding: “Tunguska,” pp. 44–46), and not a single intact animal skeleton (where are all the dead cattle, pigs, and sheep?). And despite their insistence to the contrary, on their own information those human skeletons only show forensic signs of being killed by ordinary fire or combat. There should be a hell of a lot more bodies amidst a radially or laterally collapsed rubble, particularly of animals.

That no such evidence was found actually argues against the blast theory. Instead, this study’s authors make a bunch of dubious claims about salt encrusting the bones, and lots of salt being around in the abandoned layer, which does not even make scientific sense. Such a blast would not “create” salt, nor have “sucked” salt inward from the Dead Sea—it would have blown it away from the blast, and in fact have reduced its concentration here. And their own report shows that the concentrations they claim to have found (but provide no documentation for) were common enough even today (“Tunguska,” pp. 49–50, w. fig. 49).

We won’t expect to find an impact crater, of course, because the theory advanced was of an airburst. But these other effects should still be expected. Exactly as in other cases (most famously, the Tunguska airburst). And apart from countless assertions made without supporting photographic evidence or even descriptions of methodology (How did they get their salt data? What procedures were used? At what locations did they take samples? How did they take samples? How did they test their samples? Their study never says), none of the expected evidence appears to be there. They make claims. But they don’t document them. And the claims they do document, have been proved a fraud. The paper seems therefore written to create the appearance of having found all the things they claim, without ever backing that up as actually having happened.

Not Just Scientists but Historians Should Be Vetting This

I’m a historian. My skill-set teaches me something the scientific critics might not have thought to do: to check this paper’s citations on historical data. Because its authors also claim a coterminous disinhabitation of the whole region around, but cite no evidence for that claim—because all their footnotes point to peer-reviewed articles and books that say no such thing, except one that is itself bogus: Steven Collins’s fake dissertation. Which suggests experts need to check all of their citations for validity. I notice at a glance many are, indeed, to questionable publications by Steven Collins, for example. So their bibliography might be loaded with all kinds of padding or questionable sources. It certainly contains bullshit.

As in this case. For their “massive coterminous disinhabitation” claim they cite (but identify no pertinent page number in) Mo ‘Awiyah Ibrahim, James Abbott Sauer, Khair Yassine, “The East Jordan Valley Survey, 1975,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 222 (April 1976), pp. 41-66. I read that all through. Nowhere does it say there was any instantaneous disinhabiting of the same valley, or even disinhabiting at all. It merely says there was a settlement decline in the Middle Bronze Age III (1650–1550 B.C.) that started recovering in the Late Bronze Age I (1550–1450 B.C.). That decline wasn’t even a hundred years long, much less the “hundreds” of years the paper claims, and it was only a decline. The valley remained inhabited, and thus evidently agriculturally sound (contrary to these authors’ assertions). They must want us to mistake sentences like “Many of the MB II sites…were not reoccupied in the Late Bronze period” (“Survey,” p. 54) as saying “All,” and to imagine a hundred-year-long slouch as a single day. Moreover, that survey reports the slouch spanned the entire Jordan valley, all the way to the Sea of Galilee, and not just the area supposedly blasted. They also only found a burn layer for the Late Bronze Age I, and only at Tell el-Mazar, thirty miles away from Tall el-Hammam. Wrong place. Wrong century.

That paper was also quite old. The study’s most recent citation on this claim (also without page number) is to Khair Yassine’s Tell Nimrin: An Archaeological Exploration (University of Jordan, 2011). I don’t have immediate access to that, but I did find out that Yassine’s earlier reports on which that study is based (according to David Graves at Deus Artefacta) said “The 500 year gap of occupation from ca. 1500 to 1000 B.C. [LB/IA] must be due to significant sociopolitical and/or environmental phenomena that remain to be explained.” This might be the right place (Tell Nimrin is eight miles, a three hour walk, away from Tall el-Hammam; the Tunguska blast did span as much as twenty miles), but it is definitely the wrong century: this decline starts 150 years after these authors claim for the blast event. And, notably, this illustrates a regional decline in inhabitance not due to a blast from space—so we have ample reason to suspect a similar cause anywhere else we find the same effect. No need for blasts from space.

Their other sources illustrate the sham.

• They cite Collins’ fake PhD pushing this very same Sodom-blast theory (all the way back in 2016). Well, that’s bullshit.
• They cite Yassine, who as I just noted actually contradicts what they cited that for.
• And they cite another survey report by Ibrahim’s team, a 1976 survey of that same valley, which I couldn’t check but I am doubtful it says anything different on this point from their 1975 survey, for two reasons…

First, because that’s what a more recent report says (A.M. Maeir, “‘In the Midst of the Jordan’: The Jordan Valley during the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000–1500 BCE) — Archaeological and Historical Correlates,” Contributions to the Chronology of the Eastern Mediterranean, vol. 26 (2010), esp. pp. 161–75), which references that 1976 survey among its evidence. Meier concludes that “there is no evidence for destruction at the end of the [Middle Bronze Age] at all sites in the Jordan Valley” and “not all of the late MB strata at sites in the Jordan Valley end simultaneously” and “most of the larger sites in the Jordan Valley display a strong degree of continuity between the MB and the LB, even after the late MB destructions” (p. 169), and “the radiometric dates from several sites indicate a mid-to-late 16th century B.C.E. date for end of the relevant MB III strata,” which is actually Late Bronze Age I, circa 1550–1500; up to which nearby Jericho also flourished (p. 165), yet, like Nimrin, it would have depended on agriculture in the southern valley exactly where this bogus study claims agriculture is supposed to have ceased because of “too much salt.”

The second reason I suspect the 1976 Ibrahim-team survey didn’t say anything differently is because the only other source the bogus study cites is J.W. Flanagan and D.W. McCreery, “First Preliminary Report of the 1989 Tell Nimrin Project,” Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 34 (1990), pp. 131–152, which corroborates again Yassine, not the bogus study. First, this is only a study of Tell Nimrin (not the whole valley). Second, this also says that the evidence is clear that this Tell was well inhabited all the way to 1500, thus evidently not noticing the el-Hammam blast for over a century.

I have to conclude these authors are using fraudulent citations for their claims. And if so in this case, I can expect so in others. With so much evidence of fraud around this paper now, I think we can be certain not a single claim in it is to be trusted.

What to Learn

Unfortunately, this example illustrates the fact that we cannot trust anything that sounds suspicious. You should always check to make sure its evidence holds up, and that it has survived legitimate scrutiny. Even if it appears in a prestigious science journal of all places.

I give advice for this in From Lead Codices to Mummy Gospels: Essential Links on Dubious Tales and A Vital Primer on Media Literacy. As of a year ago, Nature advises that “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.” Nothing has happened since, even though we know that journal can quickly retract fraudulent articles (such as a similar bogus claim made for ancient Cincinnati, which was published in 2022, debunked in 2023, and retracted almost immediately thereafter). It appears that this one is hanging on out of respect for the religious, or in result of the manipulation of the con artist—who literally was on the editorial board of that journal until a month or so before this article was published. Oh. Right. Did I forget to mention that? A con artist was on that journal’s board of editors, and resigned possibly only a month or so before it published his fraudulent paper. Not a good look for that journal, I’d say.

Fraud has unfortunately become rampant in the scientific community (a problem I’ve noted before; see also my discussion of The Korean “Comfort Women” Dust-Up and the Function of Peer Review in History). And it is not being adequately policed. Which means we all need to be critical thinkers, and learn how to vet the quality or merits even of a peer reviewed study.

Peer review still matters. It weeds out most garbage and is adequate more often than not. It proves that we should at least take what passes seriously, in the sense that it is then worth our time to vet. But that still leaves the possibility of exploits sneaking through the gap. To check that does not require us to be experts in those fields of study; it only requires us to look for expert critiques of suspect papers and to be smart enough to follow logic in evaluating the arguments of either side, to see who is playing games, and who is being straight with us. Sadly, “suspect papers” now means pretty much any paper whose results haven’t been independently replicated. But I give advice on how to vet peer-reviewed work as lay readers in Galatians 1:19, Ancient Grammar, and How to Evaluate Expert Testimony and On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus, both of which are on Biblical history subjects but their principles can be adapted to any science or field of study.

Fortunately we had many competent experts addressing and exposing this fraud and the agendas of its perpetrators. But it does not seem that news of this having happened is getting much attention. So hopefully my summary will be of help.