Research
Tests you can check
Each of these asks one narrow question of public data, compares the real answer with what chance produces, and says plainly what it does not show.
How these tests work
Each test starts with a question I choose and, wherever that was possible, a plan written down before the data was looked at. It measures the real thing, then measures what chance would give for the same data, using shuffled or random versions. If the real result is not unusual, the claim has not been shown. If it is, the page says by how much, and what it still does not prove.
An AI model (Claude, by Anthropic) writes and runs the code on public data, because it does in minutes what would take me weeks, and I would rather say so than have you find out. Where something could not be checked, or depends on a reply I am still waiting for, the status tag says so.
Book 3 · Written in the Open
Book 4 · The Oldest Medicine
Is mushroom rock art found where the mushrooms grow? A test
11 places said to show psychoactive mushrooms compared with 51 ordinary sites and points, using public GBIF records. The claimed sites were not special, and two famous ones had too few records to test.
Read the test →What was Soma? Scoring seven candidates against the Rig Veda
Seven candidates for the Rig Veda's Soma scored against the hymns' own Sanskrit wording. Cannabis came top on the main scheme, but no candidate survived the checks. The text alone does not decide.
Read the test →Book 5 · The Man Out of Time
Wardenclyffe, Mars signals and the death beam: what physics allows
Three Tesla claims tested with published figures: power from Wardenclyffe, Mars in the 1899 sky, and a particle beam across 200 miles of air.
Read the test →Was Tesla forgotten? Fame, patent citations and legend dates
Tesla's name in print, the citations to his 111 US patents and the first appearance of eight famous stories, all counted. The forgotten-genius tale is half right.
Read the test →Which Tesla quotes are real? An audit of 46 famous lines
46 widely shared Tesla quotes checked against dated sources. 28 traced to Tesla, 13 had no source found and 3 were someone else's words.
Read the test →Book 6 · The Sky Remembers
Dendera zodiac: does the planet pattern really point to 50 BC?
1,643,625 days scanned for the planet patterns on the Dendera zodiac. Aubourg's 50 BC match is real but needs his second choice for Mercury, and about 40% of equally loose patterns match in that era anyway.
Read the test →Do the Nazca lines point at the Sun more often than chance?
How many of 2,308 Nazca lines would point at the Sun by chance? About 234 if the survey's 2 degree rule is literal, 117 to 121 if 1 degree, against 99 found. Awaiting the authors' reply.
Read the test →Göbekli Tepe Pillar 43: does the 10,950 BC date beat chance?
Does Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe carry the date 10,950 BC? The seasonal fit is good if the readings are fixed first, but 51% of random pillars fit as well once readings are free.
Read the test →Book 7 · The Ranch at the Edge of Time
Skinwalker Ranch 1.6 GHz signal: what is always overhead?
Which satellites sit overhead at 1.6 GHz above Skinwalker Ranch? One is always in view, so 'the signal appeared during the experiment' tells us very little on its own.
Read the test →Skinwalker Ranch by the numbers: five short tests of five claims
Five short, separate tests of Skinwalker Ranch claims on public data: sighting reports, the 1996 press, the show's experiments, a GPS time warp and a lidar hole.
Read the test →Book 8 · The Ones Who Lived Beside Us