Quote:
Originally Posted by To Be Quite Honest
But this link does not talk about the skull. This conversation here is about the skull! Lawyers, always trying to change the topic to suit their needs...  |
Just getting to that nonsense now . .
The Starchild Project
Anatomy of a Pseudoscience
http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/Di...%20Skeptic.htm
by Steven Novella, MD (Editor) The New England Journal of Skepticism Vol. 3 Issue 1 (Winter 2000)
What about their confident prediction that DNA testing will prove the child was alien? Well, a DNA sample was taken from the skull, and was subjected to DNA probes designed to detect sequences of DNA which are unique to humans (performed by Dr. David Sweet, Director of the Bureau of Legal Dentistry at the University of British Columbia). The Starchild skull DNA was found to contain both an X and a Y chromosome. This is conclusive evidence that the child was not only human (and male), but both of his parents must have been human as well, for each must have contributed one of the human sex chromosomes.
We will likely never know the whole story of the Starchild, but what is clear is that aliens need not be invoked. The child very likely suffered from untreated hydrocephalus, a mundane and simple explanation for the anomalies seen in the skull. DNA testing confirms, unsurprisingly, the child’s human ancestry. Still, the true-believers are likely to cling tenaciously to their preferred hypotheses, and will continue to spin tales of an alien-human breeding program. Science progresses forward, while pseudoscience remains fixed in predetermined desired beliefs.