The Altar Stone Fiasco -- much mud on faces

 I wonder where this is going to end?  Let's just remind ourselves of the facts.  Two papers have appeared in supposedly reputable and high-ranking scientific journals -- details as below:

(1) Scottish provenance for the Altar Stone of Stonehenge. 2024. Anthony J. I. Clarke, Christopher L. Kirkland, Richard E. Bevins, Nick J. G. Pearce, Stijn Glorie & Rob A. Ixer. Nature 632, 15 Aug 2024, pp 570-587. (Received 16 December 2023 and accepted 3 June 2024.)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07652-1

(2) Was the Stonehenge Altar Stone from Orkney? Investigating the mineralogy and geochemistry of Orcadian Old Red sandstones and Neolithic circle monuments. 2024. Bevins, R., Pearce, N., Hillier, S., Pirrie, D., Ixer, R. A., Andò, S., Barbarano, M., Power, M. R., & Turner, P. (2024). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 58, Article 104738. Advance online publication. Received 23 July 2024, Accepted 22 August 2024, Available online 30 August 2024

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104738

Note that Bevins, Ixer and Pearce are cited as co-authors in both publications.  That means that they share corporate responsibility for the contents and conclusions of both papers; they cannot escape from that academic convention.  The first paper argues that on the basis of scientific evidence the Altar Stone came from an Orcadian source -- either from inland Caithness or from the Mainland of Orkney, with a strong preference for the latter since the authors argue for sea transport rather than overland transport.  The second paper argues strongly -- largely on the basis of pXRF evidence -- that the Altar Stone cannot possibly have come from Orkney.  Since the Orkney sample (from Cruaday Quarry, near Vestrafiold) is taken by the researchers as a proxy for the whole ORS Orcadian Basin, that means that the attribution of the Altar Stone to somewhere in Orcadia is also likely to be incorrect.

How is it that the same authors can have been involved in two papers, published just two weeks apart, drawing dramatically opposed conclusions?   Ixer, Bevins and Pearce all shared in the limelight when paper (1) was published, popping up all over the place on the telly, in YouTube videos, newspapers and magazine articles, telling the world with glee about the astonishing and even shocking research findings based on cutting-edge zircon grain dating techniques.  And yet they must have known, when they did all these interviews, that paper (2) was due for imminent publication -- showing that the findings of their earlier paper were deeply problematical.............

The reputational damage here is immense.  People will have noticed that paper (2) casts serious doubts on the methods and conclusions of paper (1) -- and this implies that paper (1) should have been held back until its reliability had been further reviewed.  Of course, the Three Musketeers might argue that the first paper suggested the Orcadian Basin ORS (centred on the Moray Firth) as an Altar Stone source, with the second paper dealing just with Mainland Orkney -- leaving open the possibility that the Altar Stone could have come from one of the other Orcadian Basin sandstone outcrops.  But if you are going to take just one or two samples bought from a rock shop in Whitby and use them to draw earth-shattering conclusions,  you are asking for trouble.  And if you base more big conclusions on a badly designed research programme on Orkney, you are inviting trouble again, greatly multiplied. 

No, this is bad science and the whole shambles brings no credit to anybody.  Some of us have had severe reservations about the quality of this work from the very beginning -- and now a great number of people have mud on their faces.  That includes the geologists who wrote these papers, Mike Pitts (who was gushing in his published praise for paper number one), and the editors of "Nature" and "Archaeological Science" journals..............

Oh dear -- start all over again, chaps......... and dig a bit deeper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02i6w8c4tYM