The Darwin Fraud

 The Darwin Myth is bust by newly discovered empirical data 

You have been misled by those who pretend to themselves and to others that they are scientists, historians and proper academic scholars.

 

Science Fraud

 The cover of my forthcoming book is actually green. 

If you see a red cover then you almost certainly have the red mist of anger. Perhaps you are angry at the fact you have been duped all these years by the Darwin Industry? Or perhaps you are one of the Darwinite horde suffering from new data hater syndrome?  

There is only one cure. Buy my book and be inoculated against lies and other total nonsense about Charles' Darwin's genius originality. He was little more than a serial lying apex plagiarist. 

This book relies entirely on what Professor Michael Streven's calls the "Iron Rule" of science, namely empirical facts, and new BigData unearthed ones at that, to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace plagiarised the theory of evolution by natural selection from Patrick Matthew.

PRE-ORDER from the science publisher Curtis Press NOW to secure a first edition copy. 

Science Fraud: Darwin’s Plagiarism of Patrick Matthew’s Theory by Mike Sutton.

"Science Fraud" reveals how malicious New Data hater Darwin superfans and others, facilitated by members of the Darwin Industry, have committed repeat research plagiarism, tried multiple times without success to have the author fired from a senior academic position, and spread misinformation via Wikipedia and elsewhere in an attempt to re-bury the cast iron bombshell New Data on Darwin's and Wallace's plagiarism and associated lies. 

PUBLICATION DATE 12 FEBRUARY 2022 - INTERNATIONAL DARWIN DAY!

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SCIENCE FRAUD: DARWINS PLAGIARISM OF PATTICK MATTHEW'S THEORY ...
A telling snippet from Emma Darwin to Patrick Matthew about Matthew's theory of the natural process of selection ...
"... He is more faithful to your own original child than you are yourself ..." pic.twitter.com/WCBRSrYlyD

— Neil Shuttlewood, publisher with Curtis Press (@CurtisPress_) December 18, 2021

Am I Really the 24th Most Influential Criminologist of all time?

 So - in 2020 I've been ranked the 25th most influential criminal justice (AKA criminal justice discipline) expert in the world - of all time. (archived). My ranking went up a few days later making me one of the top 100,000 world influencers of all time! (archived).

But why? 

I'm ranked even higher in Criminology as my supposed sub-discipline!

Whilst flattered I wonder just how accurate that really is: https://academicinfluence.com/people/mike-sutton-1

 https://academicinfluence.com/people?text=&gender=&country=&discipline=criminal-justice&subdiscipline=&min-year=1200&max-year=2020

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I did influence the cartoon below though

The evil Orange Turd @realDonaldTrump has personally orphaned over 500 children! Many of them are under 5 years of age!

Cartoon of Trump's child catcher thanks to @CartoonKahuna https://t.co/2EcTRn7uMg pic.twitter.com/JlRyGEtIQh

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) October 23, 2020

Mike Sutton's Biography and Bragging Rights

Biography and Bragging Rights (BBR)

In 2020.Dr Mike Sutton was deemed the 25th Most Influential Criminal Justice Expert of all time! (archived here)). He was ranked even higher in Criminology as his sub-discipline. As an influencer Mike is in the top 100,000 influential people of all time 

Read my bombshell💣💥 BBR HERE 

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(Q) Do you know how to keep cyber-stalking obsessed raving loony idiots occupied for years and years?

(A) Publish your shameless boastful bragging rights. 🤣😂😆

Here are my #BraggingRights. "More swagger for more sway." https://t.co/hPYKulAQEH pic.twitter.com/QarC7njf6l

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Dysology) February 16, 2020

Ton Munnich, Patrick Matthew and Charles Darwin

The times they are a' changin'.

The paradigm change is here.

More evidence of paradigm change in history of scientific discovery as highly respected Dutch historian of science Ton Munnich lands another veracious #clusterfact bombshell of awesome #supermyth destruction on fanatical inhabitants of Fantasy Darwin Land: https://t.co/lNczYflXvN

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) January 23, 2020

Uncovering the Most Sensational Science Fraud Since Piltdown Man

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The world's leading experts (including Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace and Richard Dawkins) agree that Patrick Matthew, not Darwin or Wallace, originated the full theory of evolution by natural selection. However, Darwin convinced the world that neither he nor any other naturalist had read it before he and Wallace replicated it and claimed it as their own. Darwin told several lies about the scientific readership of Mathew's book. Independently verifiable facts in this book prove it. Darwin's lies concealed what he had twice been told in writing about the pre-1858 readership of Patrick Matthew's prior-published theory. This discovery of Darwin's proven sly dishonesty, added to Sutton's original bombshell discovery of the "New Data" that several highly influential naturalists, who Darwin and Wallace knew, in fact did read and then cite Matthew's (1831) book containing his original breakthrough before Darwin and Wallace (1858) and Darwin (1859) replicated it without citing Matthew, uncovers the world's most sensational case of plagiarising science fraud by glory theft. The Latin phrase "Nullius in Verba" has been the motto of Britain’s famous Royal Society – one of the oldest learned societies in the world – since the 17th century. It means that we should not accept that something is true based solely on anyone’s word regardless of his or her authority or stature. Sutton has brought his considerable expertise in understanding what causes crimes of intellectual and property theft to the area of scientific discovery theft. He has unearthed compelling new evidence of the Royal Society’s egregious failure to faithfully follow its own oldest and most fundamental tenet resulting in the greatest scientific fraud in history. Just as new DNA analysis is changing traditional forensic science, Sutton has pioneered the use of newly available "big data" analysis of the literature to expose science fraud. His biggest catch so far, Charles Darwin – the same Charles Darwin credited with discovering the theory of natural selection. In his book "Nullius in Verba: Darwin’s Greatest Secret," Sutton reveals in compelling and convincing detail a huge cache of independently verifiable facts that, contrary to what is said in an untold number of documentaries, books and scholarly works, the theory of macroevolution by natural selection was not independently discovered by Charles Darwin, or Alfred Wallace. Avoiding any religious and philosophical entanglements, Sutton’s sharp objective eye of the criminal investigator and academic creates a vivid and authentic depiction of the times, the characters, and the cover-up that endured for over 130 years – until now. More than the clues and facts, Sutton brings to life the colorful personalities, professional rivalries, gargantuan egos, and scramble for notoriety and its riches of the people involved. This behind-the-scenes portrayal will be fascinating to anyone who loves a true-life detective story, where in this case, the victim was the truth. It will be very surprising if Darwin’s claim to have independently discovered the theory of natural selection will survive Sutton’s tireless investigative research and fact-driven discovery paradigm puncturing evidence. (Available on all Amazon sites e.g Amazon.com and Amazon.uk).

What is Crankery in Science

Those who discover paradigm changing and independently verifiable new data are often portrayed by desperately biased scholars, with vested career and in-group establishment interests in the old but newly myth-punctured paradigm, as cranks. But, with painful irony, the real cranks are those who let their bias interfere with their critical reasoning.

Dr Arlin Stoltzfus, referring to discussions between Dr Mike Weale and I on Weale's BlogsiteThe Patrick Matthew Project    explains why Weale's loyal 'belief-based' Darwinite bias cannot trump the fact-based uncomfortable - newly discovered - truth in the story of the history of discovery of natural selection.

Stoltzfus, A. Friday, August 05, 2016 (Writing on the Sandwalk blog site)   .

'Darwin, by repeating the idea that no naturalist read or noticed Matthew's book, repeated a self-serving statement that he knew to be factually incorrect, because Matthew himself had pointed this out. These facts are not in dispute. Sutton describes these facts by saying it is "100% proved" that Darwin "lied".

In the cited web site, the case made by author Mike Weale is entirely based on quibbling about "lied" and "100 % proved", while bending over backward to give His Holiness Charles Darwin the benefit of the doubt. According to Weale, when His Infallible Holiness Charles Darwin says that "nobody read it", we must interpret this as the kind of harmless exaggeration that occurs every day-- of course His Holiness must have known that the book would have been read by *someone*, so obviously he wasn't intending to be taken literally (*). To accuse his holiness of "lying" would be to impute deception, which cannot be proved "100 %" because it requires an inference of motives (according to Weale).

Thus, Weale's case against Sutton rests on the same kind of scholarly double standard that we are now accustomed to seeing: (1) insisting on a literal interpretation of a rhetorically loaded version of Sutton's argument, while Darwin gets off easy precisely because Weale *refuses to hold Darwin to a literal interpretation*, and (2) insisting that Sutton can't rely on inferences or touch on the issue of intentions by invoking "lied", while Weale is free to defend Darwin precisely by appeal to inferences about Darwin's knowledge and motives (sentence above with *). '

Read the New Data that has so upset the brains of the biased Darwinite community in my latest peer reviewed science journal article on the topic

here

   

. Alternatively, as proof of the simple concept explained in my paper, simply Google (using double speech quotes just as I do here) the term "on knowledge contamination".

The way forward

Please do something (no matter how small) to support veracity in the war for veracity over claptrap in the story of the discovery of natural selection. Because Darwinites currently dominate the scientific community, but they are behaving like an authoritarian religious deification cult.

Modern advanced societies will be harmed by having an inaccurate history of scientific discovery, disseminated through the propagandising machinations of palpably biased salaried academics and other powerful establishment in-group members. Only a crank could not see that.

All Rights ReservedUsed only with express written permission

Follow Mike on Twitter

Follow me on Twitter: Here    

A Most Ironic Case of Claimed Independent Multiple Discovery of Prior Published Discovery and Ideas

Just for the record Frank Furedi.

To avoid any more ironic "Staes of Denial", I originally bust the Moral panic Myth in 2013, when I proved that despite 45 years of claims made by British criminologists that they invented both the phrase and the concept of moral panic in the late 1960s and early 1970s, new research of the literature reveals that both have in fact been in use throughout the last 183 years in the USA and Europe

This blog post is a story abut exactly how dysological academic myths start.

As if it was not enough that a bone-headed Wikipedia editor named "Orange Mike" gleefully deleted the link the reference on the Moral Panic page of that encyclopedia - which a kind soul posted in 2013 to my original and prior published busting of the myth that Stanley Cohen coined the term and concept of the moral panic on 10th April 2013    - now a brother criminologist, Frank Furedi, has written an article that implies very strongly, in my opinion, that it is he who has priority for my published discovery! Check out his article and my comment on the Times Higher Magazine   .

For those interested in winning the war of veracity over claptrap here is the original article that busts the Moral Panic Myth, which I wrote. It was published on January 15th 2013 at 6.57 US time: HERE on Best Thinking. At the time of writing (18th December 2015), that article has been visited by 4,896 distinct viewers.

Thinker Media IncUsed only with express written permission

Nullius in Verba

Of course, this sort of thing bothers me. That is why I wroteNullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret   , which is also published with ThinkerBooks.

My book reveals that many Darwinists are in what the late Stanley Cohen describes as a great state of denial    over their namesake's proven science fraud plagiarism by glory-theft of Matthew's prior publication of the entire hypothesis of natural selection.

Now the big question is: was Furedi's a genuine 'independent multiple discovery': or was the brain of Frank Furedi knowledge contaminated by my prior publication of the discovery he replicated?

Read-up on my escalating dynamic typology of Knowledge Contamination: Here

This is a social science question in need of an answer.

As well as being most weirdly ironic, the Furedi multiple is a very valuable case study, simply because it goes to the root of our need to appreciate and build on Robert K Merton's superb work on priority and independent multiple discovery in all the sciences - including social science. Professor Furedi claims to have been unaware of my earlier publication on the origination of the term and concept of "moral panic" whilst conducting a Google search that revealed the same as my earlier published finding. What I find mysterious, therefore, is that he never found my earlier myth bust using the same search technology - since it is the top three hits on the Google search term "Moral Panic Myth" - which any scholar writing on the topic of priority should surely have searched on to ensure THEY were not glory-stealing the original cognate labours of anther.How ironic!

Public Domain

Moral Panic Myth on Google. Top 3 hits. My work going back to 2013.

Currently, I am in the middle of writing a sociology journal article on the topic of priority and multiples. Consequently, this blog post essentially does two things. (1) It stamps my desire to ensure my glory is not stolen and (2) it is a request for Frank to help me out with my research into this area in the comments section below.

After I tweeted him today on this topic Frank promptly and very kindly responded that he would acknowledge my priority (here   ) and claimed to have been unaware of my prior published work in the field (here   ) - (which is odd because we follow one another on Twitter. And I Twitter on and trumpet from the rooftops rather a lot about it) . On the question of the concept of 'knowledge contamination' - he responded that I should "grow up" (here   ). I think he thought better of it and deleted that one tweet just as I retweeted it back into life. Such are the dangers of social media where "delete never means delete". I've requested he retract that published statement. I have also written to the Editor of the Times Higher Magazine - informing him of my prior publications in the area of Furedi's article and asking if I might also be allowed just 1,000 words in that esteemed publication to share my ORIGINAL BigData findings with its readership.

Personally, I think the topic of claimed independent multiple discoveries - and implied discovery by academic failure to seek out and cite the cognate labours of others - is a most grown up and particularly serious topic in academia. I am very interested in studying the complex problem of claimed cryptomnesia in research replication of prior published work.

My hero on this topic is Rober K. Merton, who is widely considered a sociological genius, He spent an academic lifetime on research and publication focused on this very issue. That's good enough for me. Mind you, there is myth about Merton that I hope nobody overtly or implies they originally discovered independently of my prior discovery and publication on it.

Anyway, I replied to Frank via twitter    that perhaps he might care to help out with my research into such claimed multiple independent discoveries of prior published work via the comments section below. I have also made Frank aware of my research on this very topic and asked for his assistance with his own case of claimed independent multiple discovery of a prior published finding (here   ).

On which note, I'd like to begin by asking Frank very directly:

(Q. 1) "Since, in the Times Higher Education Magazine article    you say you used the very same BigData Google method that I used to debunk the moral panic myth, how is it you missed my prior publication of the busting of the myth?

The Sunday Times Explains the Spinach Supermyth

In his popular column "The God of Small Things", Matt Rudd (Senior Writer for the Sunday Times) writes on page 5 of the Sunday Times Magazine of May 10th 2015):

'Child A announces he no longer has to eat spinach. His teacher told him a 19th-century scientist got the decimal point wrong when they recorded its iron content, inadvertently exaggerating it tenfold.

Popeye's superpowers were founded on a myth he claims.

The Sunday Times Magazine May 10th 2015Attribution

Article by Matt Rudd, Senior Writer for The Sunday Times.

Wait there while I check, I say. Four days later, I have an answer. It is possibly the most convoluted answer in the history of this column, but I'll give you the short version.

The decimal point error was first mentioned in an article by Professor Bender in 1971. it has since been used as an example of the importance of accuracy in science.Which is ironic, because there never was a decimal point error in the first place.

Dr Mike Sutton of Nottingham Trent University spent many, many weeks getting to the bottom of the myth. The confusion comes from the fact that dried spinach conatains a lot more iron (44.5 mg per 100g) than fresh spinach (2.7mg per 100g). It was this, rather than an errant decimal point, that caused the initial muddle. There was another muddle involving iron oxide.

And then Professor Bender came along with his decimal point story, and now we have a myth about a myth.

Or a SUPERMYTH, as Dr Sutton calls it.

Popeye, by the way, got his superpowers from the beta-carotene in his spinach. Iron had nothing to do with it. To confuse matters much further, spinach still has a relatively high iron content, even without moving any decimal points. But it's still no good. As Sutton points out: "Spinach contains oxalic acid and oxalic acid is an iron blocker."

So Child A's teacher was right for the wrong reason. And Child A is now trying to find a reason to avoid broccoli.

Big Data Discovery that Darwin's and Wallace's Science Fraud is More Likely Than Not

The British Society of Criminology has published my peer reviewed paper on the BigData facilitated discovery that Darwin and Wallace more likely than not committed the worlds greatest science fraud. Please click here  in order to read and then weigh the newly discovered - independently verifiable - hard facts for yourself.

Plagiarizing fraudsters Charles Darwin & Alfred Wallace  

Background

In 2014 I uniquely discovered that Darwin and Wallace more likely than not plagiarized the entire theory of natural selection form Patrick Matthew's 1831 book On Navel timber and Arboriculture. My e-book, which contains far more evidence than I could fit in a 6000 words journal article is available here or else you can buy it quite easily on all Amazon sites throughout the world.

Motto of the Royal Society and title of my book

Piratical Plundering of Navel Timber and Arboriculture

Charles Darwin is no paragon of science in this story. There is no place for respectability on a creaking wooden ship manned by a 'gentleman of science', hell bent on becoming an immortal great thinker in science, by plundering the unique discovery and ideas of another   , placing him only once removed from the villainous ancestor who accumulated the wealth in the first place, upon which his 'respectable' persona is built. In fact, that bloodthirsty yeoman of a robber baron who made the Darwins so privileged deserves our respect more than the World's greatest science fraudster could generate in a dozen science stories.

Trumpet from the rooftopsPublic Domain

Charles Darwin: The World's Greatest Science Fraudster

So I didn't go out of my way to look for honour in the face of Darwin in this book, as he is as good and bad as anyone who finds themselves caught up in the mad scramble for ill-gotten gain and it makes the tale of Darwin, Wallace and Matthew that much better.

Ralph Steadman - genius Gonzo Artist. Friend of Johnny Depp. Resident of Loose.Attribution

The Chequers Inn, Loose, Kent, as the Admiral Benbow.

Nulius in Verba: Darwin's Greatest Secret is a rollicking new evidence-led tale of piracy and plunder of the most important discovery in the history of science   . Published by ThinkerMedia Inc and available on this website for the price of no more than two flagons of ale or a double tot of rum at The Chequers Inn in Loose Kent, one of my favorite English pubs - caught posing here for Ralph Steadman as the Admiral Benbow Inn from Treasure Island. 

NOTE:

This blurb has been plundered, in no small part from Ralph Steadman   .

Were Wallace and Darwin Schnooks or Crooks?

Click HERE to listen to the interview between Myles Power and Me

Darwin's and Wallce's Science Fraud Exposed: How 'big data' discovered an immortal science hero

Patrick Matthew is generally acknowledged as the originator of the theory of natural selection.  He published his discovery of  ‘the natural process of selection’ in a book entitled  ‘On Naval and Timber and Arboriculture’ in 1831, which is 27 years before Charles Darwin’s and Alfred Wallace’s papers were read before the Linnean Society in 1858.

The current consensus is that Darwin and Wallace each discovered natural selection independently of Matthew and independently of one another. Moreover, Darwin is hailed as the immortal great thinker on the subject of evolution, because he alone is recognised as first to take his own discovery of the theory of natural selection forward, with many confirmatory evidences, convincing others of its veracity and importance.

In this talk, Mike Sutton will challenge this view with new evidence that proves that, pre-1858, Matthew’s book was read by at least seven naturalists. Three of the seven were at the epicentre of influence on Darwin’s and Wallace’s researches and two of those three were personal associates and correspondents of Darwin and Wallace. He will show that Matthew, not Darwin, should be celebrated as solver of the problem of species.

Dr Michael "Mike" Sutton is Reader in Criminology at Nottingham Trent University (UK), where he teaches Hi Tech Crime and also Crime Reduction and Community Safety. Before that he worked for 14 years as a senior researcher in the Policing and reducing Crime Unit in the Home Office in London. Mike is the originator of the Market Reduction Approach (MRA) to theft and co-founder and Chief Editor of the open access Internet Journal of Criminology. He is a winner of the British Journal of Criminology Prize for virtual ethnographic research into a pan-European hacking group.

Doors 10.30, £5 in advance, £2 concs./Free to Ethical Society members
Tea & Coffee will be available. Book your tickets through the London Ethical Society: Here

Alfred Russel Wallace's Great Science Fraud

World's Greatest Science Fraud

Charles Darwin stole and replicated Patrick Matthew's discovery and unique ideas and then lied by claiming

Patrick Matthew

no prior knowledge of them.

Contrary to the Darwinist myth that nobody read it, with hi-tech research methods, I have discovered the hidden books in the library that prove Matthew's 1831 book was read and cited by at least seven naturalists before Darwin and Wallace each replicated the unique ideas within it. Three of those naturalists were in Darwin’s inner circle. Read more on my BestThinking blog on this topic 

Internet Dating for Academics Produces Some Very Disturbing Mismatches

Twenty First Century Knowledge Flux: The Impact of Internet Dating as a Research Technique to Determine the Veracity of the Knowledge Claims Regarding the Provenance of Words, Phrases and Concepts

Over the past few days I used freely available internet search engine technology to bust two myths that are credulously disseminated in numerous scholarly articles and books. Both myths were universally believed to be veracious academic ‘knowledge’. In effect, I used the internet simply to check whether the respective phrases “moral panic” and “self fulfilling prophecy” really were coined by the esteemed sociologists who are credited with coining them. They were not. You can read the two short essays that prove this beyond doubt (see Sutton 2013a and 2013b).

As a result of this research and its published results are on the Best Thinking web site, the phrase ‘internet dating’ now has two meanings, as does its equivalent ‘online dating’ (1) to use the internet to connect romantically with others - either solely online or else with an aim to meet potential partners face-to-face or else (2) to use the internet to check the veracity of claims made regarding the published provenance of words, phrases and concepts by researching whether others have in fact published earlier. As can be seen by these two inherent meanings of ‘internet dating’, the phrase is the concept. In this particular case the concept is either social dating or else dating the age of published words and phrases.

If the phrase is the concept, at least the most basic concept, as it is in the case of ‘moral panic’ and ‘self fulfilling prophecy’ then new discoveries that phrases such as these have an earlier provenance than purported by existing knowledge claims (see Sutton 2013a; 2013b) will undoubtedly open up new avenues of research into the work of previously neglected authors, events and themes. In the case of moral panics, for example, the use of this phrase in 1831 to describe potential problem escalation in the garrisoning of towns and cities during cholera epidemics reveals a whole new area for scholars to examine. Given the predicted certainly for a future flu pandemic this may be an extremely important discovery that will enable us to learn from the past – or at least to reflect upon what we have learned from it form a different perspective.

As more historical documents are scanned and uploaded, the latest knowledge regarding the provenance of words, phrases, concepts and the variety of concepts associated with particular words and phrases will be extremely unstable and short-lived.

Interestingly, internet dating as a veracity checking research method reveals that the phrase “internet dating” was first coined at least as long ago as 1994 on page 51 of Mindi Rudan’s book “Men the Handbook”, where it was used to explain the concept of using networked computers to arrange to meet potential love partners. Similarly, the internet dating method reveals that the term ‘online dating’ may have been first published in 1995 by David Fox in the title of his book Love Bytes: The Online Dating Handbook. However, this finding is limited to books and documents that have been uploaded onto the Internet and it may yet prove to be the case that these terms were in fact coined and/or published earlier and perhaps by different people. Only time will tell.

References

Fox, D. (1995) Love Bytes: The Online Dating Handbook. Waite Group.

Rudan, M. (1994) Men: the handbook Cool Hand Communications.

Sutton, M. (2013a) The British Moral Panic Creation Myth is Bust. Best Thinking.com:http://www.bestthinking.com/articles/science/social_sciences/sociology/the-british-moral-panic-creation-myth-is-bust

Sutton, M (2013) The Merton Myth is Bust. Best Thinking.com: http://www.bestthinking.com/articles/science/social_sciences/sociology/the-merton-myth-is-bust

On Supermyths

What do we know about the impact of modern myths on society by way of their misinforming and therefore misdirecting central and local policy making, professional practice, teaching, learning and the media?

The above question is of core importance in a topical area that is likely to grow in popularity, not least because international recognition of the importance of veracity in a wide variety of areas is reflected in a growth industry of recent publications that both inform and reflect the increasing number of experts and the international growth of interest groups promoting anti-quackery and skeptical inquiry in the natural and social sciences.

What is a supermyth?

The modern myth is defined simply as a widely believed falsehood, which sets it apart from the older notion of myths as stories that are understood at some level to represent deep and enduring truths about social, spiritual or other psychological conditions of mankind. I hypothesize that the supermyth is a most powerfully influential sub-type of the modern notion of myth.

The starting point of a supermyth is when an orthodox expert in its subject area publishes a statement of purported fact that is based upon an error in reasoning (fallacy) or else upon a factual error. That published claim then takes on a life of its own as it is credulously reinforced as veracious by numerous orthodox respected sceptics who each cite it unquestioningly in their own scholarly publications, in news paper articles, on television and websites.

According to my thesis, what sets my idea of supermyths apart from other fallacies and myths serves as a unique and timely warning for those promoting the virtues of skeptical inquiry, because the great irony is that, unlike ordinary myths, what I have named supermyths are created by respected orthodox scholars and then credulously disseminated by other experts distinctively in the spirit of promoting skeptical enquiry.

As if the existence of supermyths is not enough to be sceptically concerned about, I have refined the concept further by way of the identification of what I call braced myths. Braced myths are supermyths that have been reinforced by other scholars in that they have not just been disseminated by but also been utilised by credulous experts who have erroneously deployed them as ‘argument winners’ to bust other myths. By using a myth to bust a myth, I argue, these experts have braced the supermyth by dint of such powerful association with expert myth busting verity. Put simply, a braced myth is influential counterknowledge (misinformation packaged to look like fact) that is created by an expert authority and then believed by credulous yet highly influential skeptics, who not only fail to adequately check its accuracy by way of primary data sources and/or fail also to question the rationality of its premises. They then promote it as veracious ‘knowledge’ and, with unintended irony, ignorantly deploy it as an intellectual myth busting weapon targeted at specific knowledge claims made by others.

The Spinach Myth is not only the first supermyth discovered it is also the first braced myth. This widely believed myth goes as follows: A published 19^th century decimal point error in the iron levels of spinach led bio-chemists to reprint the error without checking the iron levels of spinach for themselves leading to generations of children being forced to eat unpalatable spinach, above other tastier leafy vegetables, for no good reason and this ten-fold error is the reason that Popeye ate spinach for strength.

The Spinach Myth was finally busted after I was kindly assisted by clues provided by a friendly US skeptic who emailed me after reading my initial publication of a primary research paper that first bust the Popeye part of the myth. Further research led me to discover that it was firstcreated by Professor Arnold Bender (an orthodox nutrition expert) at his inaugural lecture at Queen Elizabeth College, London in 1972 and then spread  by many other respected academics, who, believing it to be true but not checking the facts, used it unwittingly in what ironically turns out to be a number of deeply embarrassing, hypocritical and self-defeating exhortations of the general need to be healthily skeptical by always checking the primary sources of claims made by others.The myth was then braced when a number of other credulous 'skeptics' portrayed it as an exemplar of veracious knowledge to criticize various specific research findings.

I have written several articles on the Spinach Myth: the first one as a primary research paper on the importance of adequate citation and the second, which completely busted the myth here on the Best Thinking site.

Other Supermyths

The second braced myth that I have discovered is the only other known example of the braced myth sub-type identified to date. I named the Zombie Cop Myth, and this one is a widely believed myth about beat policing. You can read about it here on the best thinking site.

Unlike the Spinach Myth, which is solely based upon an error of fact, the Zombie Cop Myth is based upon a combination of unrealistic assumptions about the nature of foot patrol beat policing that informed an exercise in arithmetic ‘on the back of an envelope’ - to demonstrate the lack of efficiency of beat policing - and an error of fact concerning the widely held belief that the origin of the findings of such lack of efficiency lay in an empirical study of real police officers on the beat. My jointly authored paper on this myth explains in detail the origin of the myth, where and how often it has been perpetuated, how it has been used, and most curiously how it has begun to mutate.

The third supermyth that I have identified is the myth that the widely accepted Routine Activities Theory and Situational Crime Prevention Theory notion of opportunity can be a cause of crime. Myth busting Crime Opportunity theory with logic reveals precisely how the widely accepted criminological notion of crime opportunity is based upon a simple error of reasoning. In a number of papers on the subject I have discussed the harmful implications for society of basing such theories upon irrational premises, or within irrational frameworks for theory building. I would recommend my paper Opportunity Does Not Make the Thief as a useful place to begin reading abut the Crime Opportunity Myth.

Conclusion

Here on Best Thinking, I have revealed several cases, which I have so far discovered, where highly respected experts - whose work is in turn supported by respected scholars in the same field - all failed to check the evidence and have been found to have accidentally created what appear to be influential supermyths. More research is required to seek likely causes and to understand the nature, known progress and impact of such myths.

It is my hypothesis that supermyths are particularly deeply socially and academically embedded and harder therefore to limit than other modern myths. Furthermore, supermyths remind all who promote themselves as experts in their field to pay more attention to fact checking primary sources, providing adequate citation to statements of fact and to consider more thoroughly the premises upon which accepted theories and approaches are built.

I began this brief article with a question and so it seems fitting to end it with another. The particularly telling question I would like to ask here is designed in part to serve as an embedded warning of the dangers of failing to check primary sources and of taking for granted the premises of theories. It is this: Might braced myths, such as the Spinach Myth and the Zombie Cop Myth, rank among the most exquisitely ironic discoveries of the unintended consequences of mankind’s purposive action?

Repeat Victimization by Theft: Re-configuring Crime Reduction and Policing Post-Ratortunity Mythbusting

With theft, nothing is certain, nothing ‘known’ until the act is over

As I am only too aware, I have rather tiresomely written quite a number of blogs and articles over the past year in order to argue the case that two major criminological theories: Crime Opportunity Theory and Routine Activity Theory are wrong. And that they are wrong because both theories are based on the premise that the characteristics of a criminal opportunity are certain. Yet, as I argue (e.g: see Sutton 2012a), only once a crime has been unsuccessfully attempted, or successfully completed, are its offender and guardianship characteristics certain. Only then does the opportunity relinquish all its uncertainty. Up until that point, offenders are rolling the dice. They might think those dice are loaded in their favour, sometimes they might think the opposite and still attempt the crime. But they never ‘know’ how the dice might bounce and land. Therefore, the Routine Activity Theory notion of ‘opportunity’ cannot be a cause of crime (as Crime Opportunity Theorists claim) and is not – at least according to any dictionary definition or rational understanding of the meaning of the word – an opportunity at all. For the purposes of the blog, as I have done elsewhere, I will refer to it hereafter as a ratortunity.

So be it, but how might this new knowledge that ratortunity cannot be a cause of crime configure the way we actually tackle crime any differently? To answer that question I have taken the following text from my latest article on Best Thinking (Sutton 2012b), which is based upon two incidences of ram-raiding of my neighbour’s garage this year.

My Neighbour’s Garage: a specific and real-life example of disconfirming evidence for ratortunity as a cause of crime

Dr Mike Sutton 2012Used only with express written permission

My Neighbour's Garage

In January 2012 my neighbour’s garage was broken into and two top-of-the-range bicycles were stolen with a total value of £6,000. The thieves gained entry through an up-and-over steel door that had a lock at the top and two deadlocks at the bottom. They drove a motor vehicle through the door so that it buckled the door sufficiently to gain entry. The break-in followed an episode where a team of convicted offenders had been on ‘community pay-back’ sweeping up leaves on our road, which is in a desirable leafy Nottingham suburb, and conservation area that is characterized by large Victorian and Edwardian houses. My neighbour said that at least two of the young men sweeping up leaves had made cat calls to her and shouted comments about her having a nice bike, while she was putting it into her garage. The break-in happened a week later. It may have been a coincidence, of course. But for the purposes of the forthcoming thought experiment, below, let us assume that it was one or more of these convicted offenders who stole the bikes.

The January break-in was the first time that any of our garages had been broken into in the 11 years that I have lived in my current home. That said, I did have a petrol hedge cutter stolen from my own garage one night when I forget to lock the door because I had returned home late from visiting my son's home many miles away and was rather tired.

Folowing the break-in, my neighbours had their garage door replaced within a brand new, stronger one set in a steel (rather than wooden frame). Last night it was broken into again using the same method as before, whereby a car was driven into the door to buckle it off the runners set in to the steel frame to gain entry. Only this time the garage had been completely empty.

A thought experiment

It intrigues me to imagine the two most prominent proponents of the ratortunity notion of crime causality, Professor Marcus Felson and Professor Ronald Clarke, walking past our garages every day for the past decade and remaking each day on passing that the reason they have not been broken into in an entire decade is because the level of guardianship (locks and steel doors) protecting the suitable targets inside has provided a level of guardianship that is greater than the abilities of offenders. Professor Clarke remarks to Felson: "Of course the fact that on the one occasion Sutton forgot to lock his own garage door resulted in him being victimized proves that opportunity makes the thief."

I imagine them then on the morning after that night in January. The two professors stop by the buckled steel door and remark now that the reason for the break-in is that the capabilities of offenders was greater than the level of guardianship, and that that was the most important cause of the theft. Felson and Clarke have no need to inquire about why offenders were so motivated that they resorted to using a car to ram-raid a domestic garage, because their infinitely variable explanation for crime is, being post-hoc and a truism, always right.

Then, between February and May the two eminent professors walk past my neighbour's new steel framed garage door each day and both are satisfied that the level of capable guardianship, increased as it is, proves their Crime Opportunity Theory, because the garage has not been broken into since the last time.

Continuing the thought experiment, I imagine now Clarke and Felson standing and looking at the newly buckled new garage door in this morning in June armed with the knowledge that this time nothing was stolen. This time there was not even a suitable target inside the garage to complete their RAT crime triangle. But in my thought experiment this presents no problem for our eminent professors: “You see,” says Professor Felson, “the door itself is the suitable target for the crimes of attempted theft and criminal damage. Our theory is irrefutable. Because the weaker door provides incapable guardianship when in the presence of the more capable offender who is armed with a motor vehicle. On this occasion also, as always, our own RAT notion of opportunity is the cause of the crime. It matters not that nothing was actually stolen. because our explanation still works perfectly well.”

But the sensible, rational and useful lesson to be had from the saga of my neighbour’s garage is that Felson and Clarke's explanation for crime is next to useless because the offenders – even in the first break in - could not absolutely know in advance (a) that the door was incapable of resisting their ram-raiding or (b) that the garage actually contained the valuable bicycles they had spotted the week before, or anything else of value. In the second break-in (assuming they are indeed the same offenders as before) the offenders would have “hoped” that new bicycles (perhaps bought following a successful nsurance claim) were in the garage - or else some other thing worth stealing would be found inside – but they could not have known that for sure – as is perfectly demonstrated by the fact that their hopes of finding new loot were as dashed-in as the door they ruined for no return.

Repeat victimization: Proposing The PEC-TAP-PEC Hypothesis

The story, to date, of the repeat victimization of my neighbour’s garage proves that ratortunities do not exist in advance of the successful completion of a crime.

In terms of understanding something useful for repeat victimisation, now that we can demonstrate that ratortunity cannot be a cause of crime we can think clearly enough to hypothesise that the same offenders would not break into the garage a third time unless they once again actually saw that it contained something expensive. And we can hypothesise that those who broke into the garage on the second occasion perceived a reasonable likelihood that the garage would contain expensive bikes once again.

If, when my neighbour’s garage door is replaced for a second time, the garage remains empty (as I suspect it will because their bikes were in fact not insured when stolen and my neighbour's drive a company car, which they park on the road) and is then ram-raided a third time, that would provide disconfirming evidence for what we might here name the Perception, Expectation, Contingency, Target Actually Present, Perception, Expectation Chain Hypothesis (PEC-TAP-PEC) for repeat victimisation that: If potential thieves see (perceive) P that a premises contains a suitable target, they will break into it immediately, or else later when the target may not be actually visible from outside the premises but they have a reasonable expectation E that it is still there - whether actually it is or not is contingent C on the behavior of the property owners and their agents (and in some cases other thieves who may have got there first) - and that if the target T is actually A present Pthen a repeat break-in is then likely to follow due to the offender’s perceiving P another reasonable expectation E that the stolen items have been replaced. Only when the suitable target items are not replaced and offenders break-in for no other reward, are caught while trying, are imprisoned, go straight, are incapacitated, or unable to gain entry, will the particular repeat victimisation chain C cease – or be less likely to continue.


Considering this hypothesis, even if it is indeed supported by evidence, it may appear futile because one might conclude that the only policy recommendation that could possibly flow from it being confirmed would be that people should be advised to not replace stolen items - or else to secure their premises with exceptionally expensive, tough and cumbersome target hardening measures and other forms of guardianship that would thwart the most motivated and otherwise capable offenders. However, from the property owners perspective, it shows that the chances of them being re-victimized - in terms of suffering both theft and property damage - would be less if they waited longer to replace items stolen earlier; and, moreover, if they were, anyway, by-chance re- burgled before previously stolen items, which they intended to replace promptly, were replaced. The telling question is this: So long as active offenders never again saw my neighbours storing any more expensive bicycles in their garage, would those bicycles be safer in the future than they would have been (had they been in the garage) the day before yesterday? And if the answer is yes, then that provides a clear research-informed policy recommendation to crack down on active offenders who are surfing areas for crime ‘opportunities’. And here by ‘opportunity’ I mean typical dictionary definitions of the word – not the irrational ratortunity notion. Moreover, there may be further findings from future research into how offenders perceive opportunities that would question the current practice of assigning convicted offenders on 'community pay-back' orders to residential areas, where they can legally loiter in order to better spy suitable targets. And finally, if research does not disconfirm the Pec-Tap-Pec hypotheses, there might be a need to reconsider the effectiveness of beat policing and other police work – not in terms of the numbers of offenders caught in the act of stealing but in terms of what serves best as an effective deterrent for those who are currently out walking and driving around our streets with criminal intent by purposively scouting for opportunities to steal.

References

Sutton, M. (2012a) Opportunity Does Not Make the Thief: Busting the Myth that Opportunity is a Cause of Crime. Best Thinking.com

Sutton, M. (2012b) Contingency Makes or Breaks the Thief: Introducing the Perception Contingency Process Hypothesis. Best Thinking.com