Advocates of Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) “Independently” Evaluated Their Own Results
Malcolm LeCompte, a co-founder and director of Comet Research Group, collaborated with original authors of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis to “independently” evaluate their own evidence.
LeCompte et al (2012) “Independent evaluation of conflicting microspherule results from different investigations of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis,” was published 10 years ago. Its lead author is one of four directors/cofounders of the Comet Research Group (CRG). The other three are Allen West, Ted Bunch, and George Howard, who were all coauthors of Firestone et al (2007), the paper that introduced the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH) and that is being "independently evaluated" by LeCompte et al (2012). Other CRG co-founders include Richard Firestone, James Kennett, and Wendy Wollbach, who were also coauthors of Firestone et al (2007). The second coauthor of LeCompte et al (2012) was Albert Goodyear, a CRG member and another coauthor of Firestone et al (2007). Dale Batchelor, another coauthor of LeCompte et al (2012), is also a member of the CRG.
Albert C. Goodyear (left) is second author of LeCompte et al (2012) “Independent evaluation of conflicting microspherule results from different investigations of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis” which evaluated the microspherule results of Firestone et al (2007), which he also coauthored. Photograph location is the Topper quarry in South Carolina, one of the YDB locations where samples were collected for both papers. George Howard (right) is also a coauthor of Firestone et al (2007) and is co-founder and director, along with Malcolm LeCompte, of the Comet Research Group, which funds YDIH research and promotes the hypothesis. Goodyear’s institution, University of South Carolina, published a story quoting LeCompte, “Surovell's work was in vain because he didn't replicate the protocol. We missed it too at first.” According to Lecompte, “"Al Goodyear was instrumental in our approach to getting samples at Topper." It was only when Goodyear showed LeCompte exactly where to collect the samples from, and how to do it, that he was able to reproduce Goodyear’s Topper result that had been published in Firestone et al (2007).
According to the CRG website, “The Comet Research Group, Inc. cooperates with and provides funding for selected impact research scientists around the world.” Three coauthors of LeCompte et al (2012)--Malcolm LeCompte, Albert Goodyear, and Dale Batchelor--are listed by the CRG as “supporters of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis” and cited as “a few of the many scientists who have collaborated on comet research over the years from 2007 to 2016.”
This is not the only institutional relationship between the authors of LeCompte et al (2012) and the Firestone et al (2007) paper that it is “independently evaluating.” Both Malcolm LeCompte and Allen West have been listed on the Elizabeth State University staff page since 2008.
The institutional, professional, and personal connections between the two papers--LeCompte et al (2012) and Firestone et al (2007)--are broad and deep. LeCompte et al (2012), in their acknowledgements, wrote, “We are also grateful… for Ted Bunch and Allen West, who offered technical advice for this project.” They also wrote, “Our thanks to Joanne Dickinson, who collected the BWD sediment…” Joanne Dickinson, another CRG member (possibly without her knowledge) coauthored Firestone et al (2007) under the name “O. J. Dickinson”.
Two panels from Fig. 1 of Firestone et al (2007) showing concentrations of asserted “impact markers” from two locations: Blackwater Draw and Topper. LeCompte et al (2012) acknowledged Joanne Dickenson, a Firestone et al (2007) coauthor, for collecting the Blackwater Draw sediment they used in their evaluation but did not reveal the chain of custody or the identity of the collaborator who prepared and distributed the sample. For unexplained reasons the concentration of magnetic spherules do not appear on the Firestone et al (2007) Topper graph (right panel). LeCompte et al (2012) did not mention the fact that the carbon spherules at another Clovis location, which correlate with the magnetic spherules, have been shown to be modern contaminants.
The CRG maintains a bibliography of YDIH papers and classifies them according level of support for their hypothesis. According to the bibliography notes:
“Supporting papers are those that directly support the notion of a cosmic event at the Younger Dryas Boundary. Some papers are also deemed ‘Crucial’ to reflect their relative importance to the debate, in our estimation, or tentative where they add important context to the debate without directly attributing their findings to the cosmic impact.”
Of the 28 papers classified by the CRG as “crucial” in their support for the YDIH, LeCompte has coauthored 10 of them, all in collaboration with coauthors of the Firestone et al (2007) that LeCompte et al (2012) represented in its title to be an independent evaluation of.
Moreover, LeCompte et al (2012) published in PNAS using a prearranged editor, thereby bypassing conventional peer review. The prearranged editor was Stephen M. Stanley who has also handled several other “crucial” papers in the CRG database by YDIH supporters, beginning with Firestone et al (2007) and including Kennett et al (2009), Bunch et al (2012), Israde-Alcántara et al (2012), and Wittke et al (2013).
Given that the sample collection, preparation, and distribution was handled by LeCompte’s cofounders and directors of the Comet Research Group, his coauthors on many papers supporting the YDIH, and coauthors of the Firestone et al (2007) paper he was evaluating, it is clear that there is no independent provenance or chain of custody of the samples that were used by LeCompte et al (2012) to come to an independent conclusion.
I only have a single question for the authors at this time. Given the long and enduring professional, institutional, and personal relationships with the authors and supporters of Firestone et al (2007), collaboration with them on this paper, overlap between the authors of Firestone et al (2007) and LeCompte et al (2012), and the same prearranged editor that has been used repeatedly by the YDIH team to sidestep normal peer review, what is the basis for the assertion, in the title, that this is in fact an “independent” evaluation?
Originally published in PubPeer. Authors of LeCompte et al (2012) are encouraged to respond, on the record, in that forum.