Discovery CHannel: Mystery of the Crystal Skulls

[X]

Anybody want to weigh in on the show?

It's just started, and already has copious amounts of questionable statements.
Maybe they clarify things towards the end, but as the show is centered around a race agianst armageddon to find the missing skulls, I rather doubt reason will dominate.

Sorry if a thread exists, the search function is broken.
(Lisa did it)

[Madalch]

I had to stop watching after about ten minutes, when they started talking about the supposed extraterrestrial origins, the amount of information that could be stored in such a skull (since it is made of silica, the same material used in microchips, you see, so it obviously is an alien floppy disc), and how there are thirteen perfect skulls, but only six have ever been found.

[Marmaduke]

Not long into the program, they had Richard C. Hoagland of Coast to Coast fame on, talking about how he found an android's head in a moon picture.

It was all I could take.

[skeptigirl]

They played this program a while ago here. I can't recall if I posted about it or just wanted to. I was appalled by the lack of skepticism in the program. I think there was one mention of the fact there were objections to some evidence and the entire rest of the program was just repeating woo claims as if they had credibility. And interviewing Hoagland, that topped off the quackery.

I was thoroughly disappointed.

[X]

Indeed.

I wonder if they felt that skepticism would not sell?
Perhaps they didn't want to offend people's preconceptions.

For the record: they don't clarify things towards the end. There is no rationality, just woo.

[Drudgewire]

Yeah, Hoagland pretty much poisoned the pot for me... although I'm betting the rest of the show would have been just as factually void if he hadn't used his powers of suggestion to make me turn the channel and never look back so early on. :p

[Seismosaurus]

It was almost painful to watch.

Example. At one point a man suggested that the Apollo missions located a robot head on the moon. The reason we want to go back to the moon now is that they have got the head to start talking and it has told them of the wonderful treasures to be found on the moon.

At another point they took some crystal skulls and put them in a triangle pattern around another, with a modern day reproduction skull in there as a "control". The idea was that they thought energy would be generated in this fashion. To test whether the skulls were generating energy they brought in a psychic and pointed a thermal camera at him. His body temperature went up a little during the "experiment".

From this, they concluded that the skulls "were not producing heat, but were producing energy that turned into heat in the psychic's body."

They also seem to have loaded in every single conspiracy theory they could find. Atlantis, energy lines in the Earth, moon conspiracies, you name it, it's here. It's like an entry in the woo olympics.

And I have never, ever seen a program so loaded with phrases like "some people believe..." "there are those who think..." "This could mean..." "If that is true then..." "Many argue that..."

[Ove]

Is this the same Dicovery Channel that broadcasted Arthur C. Clarkes excellent de-bunking of the crystal skulls? I believe he actually traced some of the makers and he certainly killed the idea of them being "stunningly similar" -in fact they are marked different.

[Beerina]

It was almost painful to watch.

Example. At one point a man suggested that the Apollo missions located a robot head on the moon. The reason we want to go back to the moon now is that they have got the head to start talking and it has told them of the wonderful treasures to be found on the moon.

At another point they took some crystal skulls and put them in a triangle pattern around another, with a modern day reproduction skull in there as a "control". The idea was that they thought energy would be generated in this fashion. To test whether the skulls were generating energy they brought in a psychic and pointed a thermal camera at him. His body temperature went up a little during the "experiment".

People accept this, and yet people find it hard to believe that The Bible and other Holy Writ could possibly be made up by frauds and the delusional for purely economic purposes. :eye-poppi

[Ove]

It was almost painful to watch.

At another point they took some crystal skulls and put them in a triangle pattern around another, with a modern day reproduction skull in there as a "control". The idea was that they thought energy would be generated in this fashion. To test whether the skulls were generating energy they brought in a psychic and pointed a thermal camera at him. His body temperature went up a little during the "experiment".



Every time i see ghostbusters or other paranormal goofs playing with thermal cameras i cringe. I have worked a lot with thermal imaging professionally and belive me i KNOW all the traps you can fall into. EVERY time those jerks produce "infra red image proof" og some paranormal activity i have been able to tell what they actually have been seeing :) You can f.inst see your own (ir)reflection on a white wall and your footprints stay "glowing" for a while after you have left a carpet.