Comet Research Group’s Questionable Claims Get Called

On September 20, 2021, a handful of authors wrote a paper published in Nature Scientific Reports titled, “a Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea.”

This paper ultimately suggested that a “cosmic airburst” destroyed this ancient city and that it may be the origin of the “Sodom and Gomorrah” stories of the bible. These two apparently mythical cities were destroyed by the Christian God because of the “wickedness” of some of their residents. And not just the men. But the women and children, too. And you thought Anakin Skywalker was wrong for not sparing the kids?

Problems With the Te-H Paper

Radiocarbon Dating.
One of the earliest concerns raised about the paper involved the methodology used to date the alleged destruction layer. Specifically problematic was the use of the OxCal “combine” command [1]. The authors of Te-H stated that “The age of the destruction layer at TeH was modeled using the OxCal radiocarbon calibration program […] with the ‘Combine’ computer routine.”

The problem is that this command in the OxCal application is used when it is known that all dates are from a single event. This is something the authors would not have been able to assume without an evidenced reason. Evidence they don’t show, which seems to imply they are beginning with a conclusion. It’s also not the sort of command you would want to use site-wide, but you might for a single feature.

A good place for them to use it would have been the human remains they allegedly found. If they took multiple dates from the same skeletal remains, using the ‘Combine’ command in the software will give the user a consensus date range for that feature. As M. T. Boulanger pointed out in a Twitter thread, “the output [of the ‘Combine’ command] is not a VALIDATION that all of the dates represents a single event; rather, the output reflects the assumption—made by the user—that it MUST BE a single event,” and that it is, “NOT a “Bayesian-modeled age” as the authors claim.”

In short, the authors of this Biblically-motivated pseudo-archaeological paper began with an assumption that all the dates represented a single event rather than seeking to test that as an hypothesis.

Image Manipulation.
Clear evidence of image manipulation was found in the images submitted for publication with the Te-H paper. There were duplications obvious to those used to looking for such impropriety that were made obvious to everyone else once circled and pointed out. The authors initially denied any sort of manipulation, which seems to be the go-to move in this new age of misinformation where you can just say, “nope, your wrong” in spite of any evidence to the contrary and expect to be believed.

When it was obvious these not-insignificant doubts were being taken seriously, the authors would later admit to removing what they referred to as “non-essential or distracting elements” from the images. Something no genuine archaeologist would do in a site report unless very clearly stipulated and with a good, accompanied explanation. This also wasn’t limited to just one or two images. It was done to many.

It was eventually discovered that the original images included directional indicators (i.e. north arrows) or scaling tools (i.e. scale rods or measuring tapes). These intentional omissions and edits gave the appearance of hiding or obscuring the ability for readers to see the true directionality being claimed in the paper.

Problems with Directionality and Debris “Blow-Over” as an Hypothesis
Not insignificant problems, these arose from the missing image data. Once the north arrows were added back to images, it was quickly noted that they might not be consistent with the SW-to-NE direction of alleged debris (as a result of the putative comet airburst). In one image, the the directionality was 180 degrees opposite of the north arrow. The authors commented on Pubpeer that this is because human bodies can fall in any position when “tossed about catastrophically.”

The authors never cited a reference supporting this assumption that human bodies behave differently than other objects like pottery or bricks during an alleged shock wave from a comet airburst. They also didn’t describe a mechanism that might explain what they mean by “blow over layers” in the stratigraphy of the site.

The authors of Te-H write:

Over a brief span of seconds, a high-velocity, debris-entrained shock wave arrived from the SW, demolished the mudbrick walls of the city, blew over the fallen walls, severely abrading (sand-blasted) the top surfaces, and deposited thin laminations of pulverized mudbrick, fragments of crushed building plaster, limestone spherules, ash, and charcoal, typically 20–30 cm thick (Fig. 16e).

Indeed, the “blow-over” concept could be considered central to the conclusions of Te-H paper. And yet it is a novel hypothesis with no modeled support and no real cited references to support it as a valid mechanism to explain the stratigraphy of the site. The authors mention no other sites with similar “blow-over” stratigraphy nor do they outline any model to test it as an hypothesis. Moreover, the images used to support claims of directionality were inconsistent in their descriptions [2].

The Problems Associated with Human Remains
The authors did not, apparently, make use of a qualified expert in skeletal trauma and taphonomy, or even an expert in human osteology. Instead, they used the opinion of a mostly anonymous “medical doctor” whose previous work is unknown. There’s no good reason to think this person has any experience working with human remains in archaeological contexts.

In fact, if this medical doctor contributed the section subtitled “human bones in the destruction layer, he was demonstrably inexperienced for the job of documenting human remains in an archaeological context. This is evident in some of the language the person writing the human remains section section of the Te-H paper (ostensibly the medical doctor) chose. Dr. Megan Perry noted that the use of “forensic evidence” was at least somewhat contrived in this paper since it’s normally reserved for “medicolegal significance,” which was not the current context.

There was also some mislabeling of the remains: “lower torso” and a “crushed” eye socket at the time of death, for instance. The “lower torso” bones were actually the feet, fibulae, tibiae, and parts of the femurs of what appeared to be a single individual. The skull’s eye-socket may or may not have been crushed (difficult to see in Fig. 44, the image provided) but there was nothing to clearly show it was crushed perimortem.

Dr. Perry, an experienced and recognized bioarchaeologist, went on to say the orange tint of the bone is “not necessarily indicative of” temperatures exceeding 200 degrees Celsius. This is a conclusion the Te-H authors appeared willing start with and then then cherry-pick those data supportive of their alleged comet airburst [3].

Problems with the Geology
It was argued by critics that the images alleged to be “shocked quartz” from the Te-H site were inconsistent with well-established characteristics of planer deformation features (PDFs). In other words, the features shown by the Te-H authors were non-planer, pinching, and swelling in thickness. Moreover, they had irregular spacing. All of which are contrary to the uniform, planer morphology found in nature, nuclear explosions, and laboratory experiments [4].

Note the clear planer morphology in the genuine shocked quartz grains above. Compare with the two photos from the Te-H paper below.

The Te-H authors also argued that soil enrichments of Platinum Group Elements (PGEs) were evidence of a cosmic airburst. Critics, however, pointed out that the data provided were limited to platinum and iridium and ignored the other siderophile elements considered to be PGEs. Jarett and Harris write:

[T]he presence of an anomaly in just one PGE alone is not enough to uniquely identify an impact origin. […] To convincingly show evidence of meteoritic components, the full suite of PGEs should match known meteorite groups.

The Te-H authors also describe the salinity of the Te-H site as additional evidence for the cosmic airburst hypothesis. They allege that the blast wave of the putative airburst resulted in “blow over” of brine from the near-by Dead Sea. This is an interpretation that originates from the dissertation of one of the authors (Silvia) which, in turn, draws on the work of David Montgomery, the conclusions of whom Silvia ignores. Rather than the man-made, agricultural cause for the region’s high salinity, Silvia invents his own conclusion of a “meteoritic airburst” that he claims “provides a probable mechanism for highly salinated water transport from the Dead Sea to the Jordan plain of the Middle Ghor…” [5].

There was also confusion surrounding the use of the word “diamonoid” in the Te-H paper. Clearly a misspelling, critics noted that it was difficult to understand from the context if the authors meant diamondoid or diamanoid. The former refers to a material of carbon with the smallest diamond crystal lattice, also known as nanodiamonds, and occur naturally in petroleum deposits [6][7]. The latter refers to a composition of diamane and graphene. A diamane is 2-dimensional form of diamond formed at very high pressures or even chemically.

The Te-H authors cite a short 1999 Nature article by Schoell and Carlson [8] which is about “diamondoids” and their petroleum contexts. It mentions nothing of cosmic airburst or meteoritic origins. They also cite their own work, which is refuted by Holliday et al (2023).

Conclusion

These and other criticisms led to an Editor’s Note stating concerns existed about the data and conclusions by Bunch et al were being considered (February 2023). on April 24, 2025, A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea was retracted.

This was, quite frankly, the best work the Comet Research Group had to offer. They talked it up wildly on social media, podcasts, and slew of press releases that grabbed media headlines with the “Sodom and Gomorrah” connection.

Fortunately for the rest of the rational world, science isn’t advanced via press conference. One of the CRG members regularly bragged of his “high citation” count, often comparing his like a measured penis to those critical of works like the Te-H paper. He and other members of this pseudoscientific group regularly expressed anti-vax and anti-science positions when it came to topics like Covid and climate change, often bullying critics, skeptics, or those with questions.

They do have other papers out there, many accepted by peer-reviewed sources. Almost none of these are without comment at PubPeer. Some, however, have been rejected by journals for their shoddy science. And this prompted the CRG to start their own journal, which they claim is “peer-reviewed.” Though one need only compare submission dates with acceptance and publication dates to see through this facade.

References and Further Reading

[1] M. T. Boulanger https://x.com/MTB_Archaeology/status/1440473344734756869

[2] M. Boslough https://pubpeer.com/publications/37B87CAC48DE4BC98AD40E00330143#144

[3] M. A. Perry (September 2021) https://x.com/petrabonegirl/status/1440837035871260676

[4] Jarett & Harris (2022) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-08216-x

[5] Actinopolyspora biskrensis (August 2022) https://pubpeer.com/publications/95004FB6D9B01505DC1F10D8290CDD

[6] M. Boslough (February 2025) https://pubpeer.com/publications/37B87CAC48DE4BC98AD40E00330143#172

[7] Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamondoid

Pubpeer Comments: https://pubpeer.com/publications/37B87CAC48DE4BC98AD40E00330143

Vance T. Holliday, Tyrone L. Daulton, Patrick J. Bartlein, Mark B. Boslough, Ryan P. Breslawski, Abigail E. Fisher, Ian A. Jorgeson, Andrew C. Scott, Christian Koeberl, Jennifer R. Marlon, Jeffrey Severinghaus, Michail I. Petaev, Philippe Claeys (2023). Comprehensive refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH). Earth-Science Reviews, (247) 104502