Disputed Statements

Star of David, Origin PeriodThe hexagram is a simple ornamental figure occurring in many cultures, including some late antique synagogues, without carrying a specifically Jewish meaning. It has no datable origin as a Jewish sign, because as a Jewish sign it does not begin here.

Star of David, Religious Symbols

Standing

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States The hexagram is a simple ornamental figure occurring in many cultures, including some late antique synagogues, without carrying a specifically Jewish meaning. It has no datable origin as a Jewish sign, because as a Jewish sign it does not begin here.

The hexagram is a simple figure that turns up independently in many places, in Indian, Islamic and Christian ornament, and on the floor of the late antique synagogue at Capernaum, and in none of them does it carry a specifically Jewish meaning. The popular claim that it is an ancient Jewish sign, the shield or seal of King David, has nothing behind it. There is no datable origin to give, because as a Jewish sign it does not begin here: its documented career as a Jewish emblem begins in medieval Prague.

Source The Star of David: History of a Symbol, in The Messianic Idea in Judaism, Gershom Scholem

Stone of Scone, Legendary OriginJacob's pillow at Bethel; carried via Ireland

Stone of Scone, Artifacts & Relics

Standing

Concerns Legendary Origin

Currently States Jacob's pillow at Bethel; carried via Ireland

The British Geological Survey's Scone Sandstone entry in its Building Stone Database Scotland examined the Stone of Scone's mineral composition against known Scottish quarry sources. The Survey's method is geological, petrographic analysis of the stone's sandstone type and comparison against the specific quarries near Scone in Perthshire, and it finds the stone's geology matches sandstone quarried locally near Scone, which refutes the legendary claims of a Near Eastern origin, as the pillow of the biblical Jacob, or an Irish origin, as the Lia Fail brought from Tara.

Source Scone Sandstone, Building Stone Database Scotland, British Geological Survey

Table Tipping, Notable ExposureFaraday demonstrated that table movement stopped when sitters were prevented from anticipating its direction, proving the cause was unconscious muscular pressure from participants, the ideomotor effect, not an external force.

Table Tipping, Psi Phenomena

Standing

Concerns Notable Exposure

Currently States Faraday demonstrated that table movement stopped when sitters were prevented from anticipating its direction, proving the cause was unconscious muscular pressure from participants, the ideomotor effect, not an external force.

Michael Faraday devised an apparatus in 1853, light card indicators stacked with a friction-reducing layer between a sitter's hands and the tabletop, designed to make visible any sideways pressure the sitter applied without noticing. Faraday published his findings, Experimental Investigation of Table-Moving, in the Journal of the Franklin Institute and in a letter to The Times the same year, showing the indicators consistently displaced in the direction the table subsequently moved, meaning the sitters' own unconscious muscular pressure, not an external force, was pushing the table. The method was a physical instrumented test conducted with sitters who believed in the phenomenon and were not accused of deliberate fraud, isolating unconscious ideomotor pressure as the mechanism rather than proving any individual sitter dishonest. Because the apparatus directly measured the causal pressure rather than merely failing to detect a paranormal force, the exposure is widely regarded as a definitive and durable scientific explanation, unchallenged since 1853.

Source Experimental Investigation of Table-Moving, Michael Faraday

Table Tipping, Replication StatusMichael Faraday settled table tipping experimentally in 1853, building an apparatus that detected and measured the small, unconscious sideways pressure participants were applying with their fingertips, and published the result, that sitters were unknowingly pushing the table rather than any outside force moving it, as Experimental Investigation of Table-Moving in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Volume 56 (1853). That explanation, now known as the ideomotor effect, held once sitters were prevented from anticipating the table's direction, and it has held without serious challenge in the century and a half since.

Table Tipping, Psi Phenomena

Standing

Concerns Replication Status

Currently States Michael Faraday settled table tipping experimentally in 1853, building an apparatus that detected and measured the small, unconscious sideways pressure participants were applying with their fingertips, and published the result, that sitters were unknowingly pushing the table rather than any outside force moving it, as Experimental Investigation of Table-Moving in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Volume 56 (1853). That explanation, now known as the ideomotor effect, held once sitters were prevented from anticipating the table's direction, and it has held without serious challenge in the century and a half since.

Source Experimental Investigation of Table-Moving, Michael Faraday

Taijitu, Origin PeriodThe idea is far older than the picture

Taijitu, Religious Symbols

Standing

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States The idea is far older than the picture

The Encyclopedia of Taoism, edited by Fabrizio Pregadio, Routledge, 2008, traces the familiar divided black-and-white swirl diagram to its first documented appearance in Zhao Huiqian's Liushu benyi, dated to the 1370s, and distinguishes it carefully from two older things it is often confused with: yin and yang as complementary, alternating principles, argued in Warring States period texts centuries earlier, and Zhou Dunyi's eleventh century Taijitu, an entirely different diagram of layered circles rather than a divided one. The encyclopedia's method is art historical and textual, tracing the specific diagram's appearances in dated primary sources rather than the philosophical concept's own separate history, and it finds no appearance of this diagram before the 1370s. The idea of yin and yang is genuinely ancient; the now-familiar picture of it is late medieval, and treating the picture as equally ancient projects the concept's age onto an image that does not share it.

Source The Encyclopedia of Taoism, Fabrizio Pregadio (ed.)

Taijitu, Origin PeriodYin and yang as complementary and alternating principles are argued in Warring States texts

Taijitu, Religious Symbols

Standing

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Yin and yang as complementary and alternating principles are argued in Warring States texts

The Encyclopedia of Taoism, edited by Fabrizio Pregadio, Routledge, 2008, traces the familiar divided black-and-white swirl diagram to its first documented appearance in Zhao Huiqian's Liushu benyi, dated to the 1370s, and distinguishes it carefully from two older things it is often confused with: yin and yang as complementary, alternating principles, argued in Warring States period texts centuries earlier, and Zhou Dunyi's eleventh century Taijitu, an entirely different diagram of layered circles rather than a divided one. The encyclopedia's method is art historical and textual, tracing the specific diagram's appearances in dated primary sources rather than the philosophical concept's own separate history, and it finds no appearance of this diagram before the 1370s. The idea of yin and yang is genuinely ancient; the now-familiar picture of it is late medieval, and treating the picture as equally ancient projects the concept's age onto an image that does not share it.

Source The Encyclopedia of Taoism, Fabrizio Pregadio (ed.)

Taijitu, Origin PeriodZhou Dunyi's eleventh-century Taijitu is a different, layered figure

Taijitu, Religious Symbols

Standing

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Zhou Dunyi's eleventh-century Taijitu is a different, layered figure

The Encyclopedia of Taoism, edited by Fabrizio Pregadio, Routledge, 2008, traces the familiar divided black-and-white swirl diagram to its first documented appearance in Zhao Huiqian's Liushu benyi, dated to the 1370s, and distinguishes it carefully from two older things it is often confused with: yin and yang as complementary, alternating principles, argued in Warring States period texts centuries earlier, and Zhou Dunyi's eleventh century Taijitu, an entirely different diagram of layered circles rather than a divided one. The encyclopedia's method is art historical and textual, tracing the specific diagram's appearances in dated primary sources rather than the philosophical concept's own separate history, and it finds no appearance of this diagram before the 1370s. The idea of yin and yang is genuinely ancient; the now-familiar picture of it is late medieval, and treating the picture as equally ancient projects the concept's age onto an image that does not share it.

Source The Encyclopedia of Taoism, Fabrizio Pregadio (ed.)

Taijitu, Origin PeriodAnd the familiar swirling diagram first appears in Zhao Huiqian's Liushu benyi in the 1370s

Taijitu, Religious Symbols

Standing

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States And the familiar swirling diagram first appears in Zhao Huiqian's Liushu benyi in the 1370s

The Encyclopedia of Taoism, edited by Fabrizio Pregadio, Routledge, 2008, traces the familiar divided black-and-white swirl diagram to its first documented appearance in Zhao Huiqian's Liushu benyi, dated to the 1370s, and distinguishes it carefully from two older things it is often confused with: yin and yang as complementary, alternating principles, argued in Warring States period texts centuries earlier, and Zhou Dunyi's eleventh century Taijitu, an entirely different diagram of layered circles rather than a divided one. The encyclopedia's method is art historical and textual, tracing the specific diagram's appearances in dated primary sources rather than the philosophical concept's own separate history, and it finds no appearance of this diagram before the 1370s. The idea of yin and yang is genuinely ancient; the now-familiar picture of it is late medieval, and treating the picture as equally ancient projects the concept's age onto an image that does not share it.

Source The Encyclopedia of Taoism, Fabrizio Pregadio (ed.)

Telepathy, Key ExperimentW. S. Cox, Princeton University, over 25,000 card-guessing trials with 132 subjects, found no evidence of extrasensory perception, one of several failed replications of Rhine's results.

Telepathy, Psi Phenomena

Standing

Concerns Key Experiment

Currently States W. S. Cox, Princeton University, over 25,000 card-guessing trials with 132 subjects, found no evidence of extrasensory perception, one of several failed replications of Rhine's results.

Frederic Myers coined the term telepathy in 1882, replacing the earlier thought transference, in the founding year of the Society for Psychical Research. J. B. Rhine's card-guessing trials at Duke University in the 1930s and 1940s were the first large-scale laboratory program to test the claim, and Rhine's 1934 book popularised the term extrasensory perception for it. Terence Hines's Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (2003) documents that Hines and other critics identified sensory leakage, recording errors and inadequate shielding across Rhine's series, and cites the pattern as a landmark case of a widely reported laboratory result failing to survive independent methodological scrutiny using the same card-guessing method. The method is documentary and procedural, checking Rhine's own recorded conditions against what a controlled replication would require, and because no subsequent laboratory has reproduced Rhine's reported effect under conditions closing those specific gaps, the key experiment is recorded as a failed replication rather than as established evidence for telepathy.

Source Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, Terence Hines

The 1995 Ganesha Milk Miracle, Skeptical ExplanationThe capillary action explanation was reproduced openly on ordinary porous objects unconnected to any deity and is accepted, including by many Hindu commentators, as a full and rapid explanation rather than a live dispute.

The 1995 Ganesha Milk Miracle, Miracles

Standing

Concerns Skeptical Explanation

Currently States The capillary action explanation was reproduced openly on ordinary porous objects unconnected to any deity and is accepted, including by many Hindu commentators, as a full and rapid explanation rather than a live dispute.

Unlike the Guadalupe tilma or San Gennaro's blood, where the material has never been tested directly, the Ganesha milk effect was reproduced on camera within days and is not seriously defended as inexplicable today.

Source Obscurantism vs Science: Behind the Milk-Drinking Miracle, T. Jayaraman

The 2012 Phenomenon, Claimed FulfillmentGlobal cataclysm or mass spiritual transformation predicted for 21 December 2012.

The 2012 Phenomenon, Prophecies

Standing

Concerns Claimed Fulfillment

Currently States Global cataclysm or mass spiritual transformation predicted for 21 December 2012.

The date passed without the predicted event. Scholarship traces the prediction itself to twentieth century non-Maya writers rather than to ancient Maya sources, and the sole securely dated ancient inscription naming the date is non-apocalyptic and largely illegible.

Source 2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse, Matthew Restall and Amara Solari

The Achiever, Attributed Author / CompilerPopular writing traces the system to a Sarmoung Brotherhood in central Asia, to Sufi masters, to the desert fathers, to Pythagoras. No independent evidence for the Sarmoung Brotherhood exists; Gurdjieff's account of visiting it is read even by sympathetic scholars as teaching narrative, not reportage; no Sufi order used the figure this way; and the figure is not attested before Gurdjieff.

The Achiever, Enneagram Types

Standing

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Popular writing traces the system to a Sarmoung Brotherhood in central Asia, to Sufi masters, to the desert fathers, to Pythagoras. No independent evidence for the Sarmoung Brotherhood exists; Gurdjieff's account of visiting it is read even by sympathetic scholars as teaching narrative, not reportage; no Sufi order used the figure this way; and the figure is not attested before Gurdjieff.

According To The enneagram symbol (G. I. Gurdjieff)

Carole M. Cusack's article "The Enneagram: G. I. Gurdjieff's Esoteric Symbol" (Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, vol. 20, no. 1, Brill, 2020, pp. 31-54) traces the nine-pointed figure to George Gurdjieff's own early twentieth-century teaching and examines the lineage claims later attached to it, that it descends from a Sarmoung Brotherhood, from Sufi masters, from the Christian desert fathers, or from Pythagoras. Checking each claim against the documentary record, Cusack finds no independent evidence a Sarmoung Brotherhood existed, no Sufi order that used the figure this way, and no attestation of the symbol earlier than Gurdjieff's own circle. The personality-typing use of the enneagram, distinct from Gurdjieff's own geometric teaching, was added later still, by Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo in the 1960s and 1970s. On that documentary record the ancient-lineage claim is not historical.

Source The Enneagram: G. I. Gurdjieff's Esoteric Symbol, Carole M. Cusack

The Affaire de Bizoton, Point in DisputeThat human sacrifice is a feature of Haitian Vodou.

The Affaire de Bizoton, Religious Events

Standing

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States That human sacrifice is a feature of Haitian Vodou.

According To Haitian Vodou

The ethnographic record of the religion does not support it. Alfred Metraux's fieldwork and the studies that followed describe a religion of service to the lwa in which animal offering has a place and human sacrifice does not. The claim descends from a single nineteenth-century trial with no surviving record, and from twentieth-century American popular writing and film, not from any observation of the religion.

Source Voodoo in Haiti, Alfred Metraux

The Book of Veles as Ancient Scripture, The ClaimThat the Book of Veles is a record of pre-Christian Slavic religion copied from wooden boards. It is treated as a forgery, and this is one of the few questions about Slavic paganism on which the scholarly position is settled rather than tentative.

The Book of Veles as Ancient Scripture, Doctrines

Standing

Concerns The Claim

Currently States That the Book of Veles is a record of pre-Christian Slavic religion copied from wooden boards. It is treated as a forgery, and this is one of the few questions about Slavic paganism on which the scholarly position is settled rather than tentative.

Source The Book of Vles: Saga of a Forgery, Maya Kaganskaya

The Byrd Coronary Care Prayer Study, Replication StatusThe far larger and pre-specified STEP trial in 2006 found no effect of intercessory prayer on complication rates

The Byrd Coronary Care Prayer Study, Studies

Standing

Concerns Replication Status

Currently States The far larger and pre-specified STEP trial in 2006 found no effect of intercessory prayer on complication rates

Randolph C. Byrd's 1988 study of intercessory prayer for coronary care patients reported a positive composite outcome across many measured endpoints, but that composite combined them without a statistical correction for testing that many comparisons at once, a design that inflates the chance of a significant-looking result even with no real effect present. William Harris reported a similarly constructed composite effect in a comparable 1999 study and drew the same objection from critics. Herbert Benson and colleagues' 2006 Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), a large, prospectively designed and pre-registered trial built specifically to avoid the earlier multiple-comparisons problem, found no benefit from intercessory prayer on any of its pre-specified endpoints. The method across all three studies is the randomized controlled clinical trial, and because the later, methodologically corrected trial failed to reproduce the earlier composite findings, the replication status of the original Byrd result is recorded as debunked.

Source Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients, Herbert Benson and colleagues

The Celtic Tree Calendar, The ClaimThat it is an ancient Celtic calendar of thirteen tree months, kept by the druids.

The Celtic Tree Calendar, Calendars

Standing

Concerns The Claim

Currently States That it is an ancient Celtic calendar of thirteen tree months, kept by the druids.

No ancient or medieval source presents the Ogham tree names as a calendar of months. The scheme appears first in Graves, who presents it as his own reconstruction rather than as a transcription of any source.

Source The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Robert Graves

The Challenger, Attributed Author / CompilerPopular writing traces the system to a Sarmoung Brotherhood in central Asia, to Sufi masters, to the desert fathers, to Pythagoras. No independent evidence for the Sarmoung Brotherhood exists; Gurdjieff's account of visiting it is read even by sympathetic scholars as teaching narrative, not reportage; no Sufi order used the figure this way; and the figure is not attested before Gurdjieff.

The Challenger, Enneagram Types

Standing

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Popular writing traces the system to a Sarmoung Brotherhood in central Asia, to Sufi masters, to the desert fathers, to Pythagoras. No independent evidence for the Sarmoung Brotherhood exists; Gurdjieff's account of visiting it is read even by sympathetic scholars as teaching narrative, not reportage; no Sufi order used the figure this way; and the figure is not attested before Gurdjieff.

According To The enneagram symbol (G. I. Gurdjieff)

Carole M. Cusack's article "The Enneagram: G. I. Gurdjieff's Esoteric Symbol" (Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, vol. 20, no. 1, Brill, 2020, pp. 31-54) traces the nine-pointed figure to George Gurdjieff's own early twentieth-century teaching and examines the lineage claims later attached to it, that it descends from a Sarmoung Brotherhood, from Sufi masters, from the Christian desert fathers, or from Pythagoras. Checking each claim against the documentary record, Cusack finds no independent evidence a Sarmoung Brotherhood existed, no Sufi order that used the figure this way, and no attestation of the symbol earlier than Gurdjieff's own circle. The personality-typing use of the enneagram, distinct from Gurdjieff's own geometric teaching, was added later still, by Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo in the 1960s and 1970s. On that documentary record the ancient-lineage claim is not historical.

Source The Enneagram: G. I. Gurdjieff's Esoteric Symbol, Carole M. Cusack

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Relevant HoldingSalamander Letter, a forgery by Mark Hofmann purchased by the church in 1984 before the forgery was exposed

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Custodians & Museums

Standing

Concerns Relevant Holding

Currently States Salamander Letter, a forgery by Mark Hofmann purchased by the church in 1984 before the forgery was exposed

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints acquired several documents from Mark Hofmann in the 1980s purporting to reveal previously unknown material bearing on early Mormon history, including the so-called Salamander Letter. Linda Sillitoe and Allen Roberts's Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders (1988) documents that Hofmann's forgery techniques, chemical aging of ink and paper to simulate nineteenth-century documents, were established during the criminal investigation that followed his October 1985 bombings, which killed two people connected to the document trade and were themselves committed to prevent exposure of his frauds. Hofmann pleaded guilty to murder and to document fraud in 1987, and the forensic document examination conducted as part of that criminal case established his specific forgery methods conclusively. The method establishing the forgery is forensic document examination, chemical and physical analysis of the ink, paper and aging techniques, corroborated by Hofmann's own guilty plea. Because the forgery was established through criminal forensic investigation and confirmed by confession, the relevant holding is recorded as debunked.

Source Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders, Linda Sillitoe and Allen D. Roberts

The Cipher Manuscripts, Era of CompositionPresented as ancient Rosicrucian documents received from a German adept. The paper bears an 1809 watermark, the cipher is Trithemius's, printed in 1561, and the manuscripts are a nineteenth-century English compilation.

The Cipher Manuscripts, Esoteric Texts

Standing

Concerns Era of Composition

Currently States Presented as ancient Rosicrucian documents received from a German adept. The paper bears an 1809 watermark, the cipher is Trithemius's, printed in 1561, and the manuscripts are a nineteenth-century English compilation.

According To Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

The Cipher Manuscripts were presented as ancient Rosicrucian documents received from a German adept, but they are a nineteenth-century English compilation: the paper carries an 1809 watermark and the cipher is Trithemius's, printed in 1561. The claimed ancient provenance is not historical.

Source The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923, Ellic Howe

The Council of Jamnia, How Its Legacy Is ContestedThat a council at Yavneh around 90 CE closed the Hebrew canon and expelled Christians from the synagogue. Jack P. Lewis showed in 1964 that the account rests on inference rather than on any source describing such a council.

The Council of Jamnia, Councils and Synods

Standing

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States That a council at Yavneh around 90 CE closed the Hebrew canon and expelled Christians from the synagogue. Jack P. Lewis showed in 1964 that the account rests on inference rather than on any source describing such a council.

The academy at Yavneh is real and important. The canon-fixing council is a modern scholarly construction that continues to be cited in general literature.

Source What Do We Mean by Jabneh?, Journal of Bible and Religion 32, Jack P. Lewis

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