Comment by mdasen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdasen | Hacker News Reader

Except that their "expert" is completely wrong.

A simple trip to Wikipedia would show that he knows nothing. It's really bad when Wikipedia knows more about your field than you do. There have been several studies proving that the map is a forgery.

The problem is that most people don't understand the scientific method. With the scientific method, you take a hypothesis (that the map is authentic) and then you try to find evidence disproving it. Once you have found evidence disproving the hypothesis, it doesn't matter how good a forgery it is, it's still a forgery.

For real scientific analysis:

http://vinland-map.brandeis.edu/explore/material/clark.php

http://vinland-map.brandeis.edu/explore/material/mccrone.php

http://vinland-map.brandeis.edu/explore/material/cahill.php

Sure, there are things that point to it being authentic, but it isn't. If you're accused of murder, you had a grudge against the guy, people heard you say you'd kill him, and you bought a gun that day, that's all evidence that you might have killed him. But if a group of people all saw you at the time of the murder, then you didn't kill him no matter how compelling that other evidence is - in science, a single disproving fact invalidates supporting evidence because that's what truth is.

Sure, there are things that point to it being authentic, but it isn't.

Speaking of ignorance of the scientific method...

Look, this is what science is about. It's an accomplishment of multiplicitous scepticism over time. Imagine if people had harbored the same iron-clad certainty as to the completeness of Newtonian physics over Einsteinian. They'd probably say something along the lines of, "Sure, there are things that point to space-time distortion around heavy bodies, but that's not the case." And if they were feeling particularly sinister, they'd follow up with, "Look at the wikipedia entry for the facts."

Many things once held to be true are revolutionized by advances in technology. There is absolutely no reason to question the rigour and knowledge with which the Danish expert approached this study. A cursory look (which we seem so fond of today) at his credentials reveals a man of some experience: http://www.kons.dk/dk/site.aspx?p=176

Science is objective scepticism over many, many cycles. It's not a cursory look at a wikipedia page.

'"All the tests that we have done over the past five years -- on the materials and other aspects -- do not show any signs of forgery," said Rene Larsen, rector of the School of Conservation under the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, during an interview with Reuters.'

So they failed to refute the null hypothesis. In science, we call this "failure to find", NOT confirmation of the null hypothesis.

Why did you not provide a link to the Wikipedia page?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinland_map#Authenticity_contro...

I see nothing "proving" that it is a forgery. In fact, the wikipedia page presents an unclear picture, very similar to the article and the expert. Without definitive proof that it is a fake, further evidence like this is helpful. There isn't always a smoking gun.

Your 3rd link is a study that contradicts the findings from your 2nd link, invalidating the claim that it's fake!

If you read all of the reports on the left-hand side of the page you link to, you'll see that about half of them are part of an argument between McCrone and Cahill on whether McCrone's analysis is valid, with some others pitching in.

None of the reports seem to give strong evidence that the map is fake. They are research indicating the possibility of materials on the map which are not consistent with the time in which it was claimed to be created. However, this does not eliminate all possibilities that could explain why the map contains those materials.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com