Dennis Rawlins
| Dennis Rawlins | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1937 (age 86–87) Baltimore, Maryland, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Astronomer, historian |
Dennis Rawlins (born 1937) is an American astronomer and historian who has acquired the reputation of skeptic primarily with respect to historical claims connected to astronomical considerations. He is known to the public mostly from prominent media coverage of his investigations of the two most,[1] successful science hoaxes of the twentieth century. In his first book, Peary at the North Pole: fact or fiction? (1973), Rawlins argued that Robert Peary never made it to the North Pole in 1909. His second book (1993) is the standard critical edition of Tycho Brahe's 1598 catalogue of 1004 stars[2] which detected ten star places faked partially or entirely. In 1976, as the only astronomer on the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, he looked into the so-called Mars effect. He later accused them of covering up evidence favoring the hypothesis after the Committee had fired him.[3][4] In 1996 he made headlines[5] when page one of the New York Times covered his report to Ohio State University which concluded that in 1926 Richard E. Byrd's airplane flight towards the North Pole turned back 150 miles from the pole.[6] Rawlins's third book, his detailed report on Byrd's trip and on the competence of lingering defenses of it, was co-published[7] simultaneously in 2000 by DIO volume 10, 2000 and by the world's leading polar research center at the University of Cambridge.[8] Because explorer[9] Frederick Cook's story of reaching the North Pole in 1908 is generally rejected, the elimination of Peary[10][11] and Byrd leaves fourth North Pole claimant Roald Amundsen as first there in 1926 in the airship Norge (Norwegian for Norway). Having attained the South Pole in 1911, Amundsen thus became the first to reach both geographical poles of the earth,[12] as proposed in Rawlins's 1973 book.
Selected works
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References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. The September 7, 2009 online version of the New York Times article created a link to DIO.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. "extensive [least squares] error analysis ... demonstrates [Brahe's] accuracy ... much better than is generally assumed .... excellent investigation". Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.; May 9, 1996 Evening News, CBS, ABC, NBC.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ The Cambridge version ends with "Editor's note: As is common among scholarly journals, it is a policy of Polar Record to publish only papers not submitted nor being considered for publication elsewhere. However, the preceding paper is considered to be of such significance to the polar community that it has been published here despite an expanded version being published this same month in DIO".
- ↑ Scott Polar Research Institute, Polar Record volume 36 pages 25–50, January, 2000.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Article explicitly based upon DIO volume 7's first publication of the long secreted uncropped version of Cook's alleged Mt. McKinley summit photograph.
- ↑ Peter Matthiessen, End of the Earth, National Geographic Society, 2003, page 197.
- ↑ Richard Sale and Madeleine Lewis, Explorers, Smithsonian, 2005, page 34.
- ↑ History Channel December 8, 2000 and May 7, 2001.
External links
- http://www.dioi.org/cot.htm DIO online, a compendium of several hundred of Rawlins's contributions.
- Starbaby by Dennis Rawlins, originally published in Fate Magazine, October 1981
