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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 10, No. 1
Publication Date: January 25, 2023
DOI:10.14738/assrj.101.13948.
Herndon, J. M. (2023). Open Letter to the Pontiff and Vatican Cardinals on Pervasively Corrupt Earth, Planetary, and Astrophysical
Science. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, Vol - 10(1). 440-479.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Open Letter to the Pontiff and Vatican Cardinals on Pervasively
Corrupt Earth, Planetary, and Astrophysical Science
J. Marvin Herndon
Transdyne Corporation San Diego, California 92131 USA
ABSTRACT
Five hundred years ago the Roman Catholic Church wrongly opposed science. In my
fifty years as a scientist, I have observed the Catholic Church reaching out to science,
wholly unaware of widespread corruption and cartel-like behavior under guise of
science, which leads, I allege, to the Vatican aiding and abetting activities that are
not only anti-Christian, but which pose grave risks to human and environmental
health.
INTRODUCTION
Much has been written about the ideological confrontation that arose 500 years ago between
the Roman Catholic Church’s belief in a Ptolemaic Earth-centered cosmology and the
proponents of the Copernican concept [1, 2] that the planets, including Earth, revolve around
the sun [3-5]. The Catholic Church’s prohibition of a scientific concept that later was established
as truth became emblematic, later tainting perceptions of the Church’s authority.
To “counteract the longstanding accusations of a hostility of the Church towards science”, Pope
Leo XIII in 1891 formally re-founded the Specola Vaticana (Vatican Observatory) [6]. Now, in
addition to observatories, the Specola Vaticana’s library “contains more than 22,000 volumes
and possesses a valuable collection of rare antique books including works of Copernicus,
Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Brahe, Clavius, and Secchi.” In addition there is a “meteorite collection
from which a knowledge of the early history of the solar system is being derived” [6].
Throughout my 50 years as a scientist, the Roman Catholic Church has embraced science
without realizing or recognizing that science has become corrupted and is to a great extent no
longer an endeavor to establish truth. That is certainly the case in astrophysics and geophysics,
the main studies of interest to the Vatican. Corruption, as evidenced below, involves: (1) failure
to read the scientific literature and/or (2) failure to adhere to sound scientific principles and/or
(3) willful efforts to suppress scientific contradictions and/or (4) ignoring and failing to cite
relevant scientific literature. In short, lying, deceiving, and cheating.
As explained below, the Church’s (presumably unknowing) embrace of corrupt science leads, I
allege, to the Vatican aiding and abetting activities that are not only anti-Christian, but which
pose grave risks to human and environmental health [7-10].
CORRUPTION OF SCIENCE
The purpose of science is to determine the true nature of the universe and all it contains. Science
is all about truth and integrity. Scientists should tell the truth and describe completely the
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Herndon, J. M. (2023). Open Letter to the Pontiff and Vatican Cardinals on Pervasively Corrupt Earth, Planetary, and Astrophysical Science. Advances
in Social Sciences Research Journal, Vol - 10(1). 440-479.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.101.13948
extant state-of-the-art. That is what genuine scientists do. But how does one know whether a
new idea represents an advance or not?
When an important new scientific contradiction arises, members of the relevant scientific
community should try to refute the contradiction on a sound scientific basis. If unable to do so,
they should cite the concept in subsequent relevant publications. That way others may learn
and possibly advance the science. This is the way science functioned during the first half of the
20th century when important fundamental scientific advances were being made almost without
government funding. But following World War II, circumstances changed.
There were relatively few scientists during the first half of the 20th century. Government
support for science was virtually nonexistent. Scientists maintained ethical and scientific
standards of behavior. In order to earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree (Ph.D.), a student was
required to make an important new discovery. If someone else first published the solution of
the problem the student was working on, the student had to start over on a different new
problem. Rarely today are students required to make an important discovery to earn that
degree. Back then, integrity was important and, while there were occasional personal lapses of
integrity, institutional corruption was generally absent, unlike today.
After World War II was nearing resolution, U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, cognizant of
the wartime technological advances that resulted from government funding, requested a plan
for funding civilian science after the war. The resulting report, Science the Endless Frontier,
authored by Vannevar Bush [11], became the basis for establishing in 1950 the National Science
Foundation (NSF), which wrote the rules for administrating government funding of civilian
scientific research, rules subsequently adopted by other agencies, e.g the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA).
The problem with the grant/contract funding rules employed by NSF, NASA, and other agencies
is that they fail to take into account the human-nature response to new ideas.
In 1623, Galileo, one of the greatest scientists of the millennium, precisely characterized human
response to new ideas in a letter written to Don Virginio Cesarini (translated by Stillman Drake)
[12]:
"I have never understood, Your Excellency, why it is that every one of the studies I have
published in order to please or to serve other people has aroused in some men a certain
perverse urge to detract, steal, or depreciate that modicum of merit which I thought I had
earned, if not for my work, at least for its intention. In my Starry Messenger there were revealed
many new and marvelous discoveries in the heavens that should have gratified all lovers of true
science; yet scarcely had it been printed when men sprang up everywhere who envied the
praises belonging to the discoveries there revealed. Some, merely to contradict what I had said,
did not scruple to cast doubt upon things they had seen with their own eyes again and again....
How many men attacked my Letters on Sunspots, and under what disguises! The material
contained therein ought to have opened the mind's eye much room for admirable speculation;
instead, it met with scorn and derision. Many people disbelieved it or failed to appreciate it.
Others, not wanting to agree with my ideas, advanced ridiculous and impossible opinions
against me; and some, overwhelmed and convinced by my arguments, attempted to rob me of
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 10, Issue 1, January-2023
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that glory which was mine, pretending not to have seen my writings and trying to represent
themselves as the original discoverers of these impressive marvels....I have said nothing of
certain unpublished private discussions, demonstrations, and propositions of mine which have
been impugned or called worthless....Long experience has taught me this about the status of
mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about
them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to
know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon
anything new."
At one level, government grant/contract funding rules, such as secret funding-proposal reviews
by competitors, facilitate corruption by providing a safe and easy means for bad actors to
discredit competitors. But there is a far more egregious consequence. Individual scientists
quickly realize that criticism of another scientist’s work might lead to retribution via secret
review or might incur the ire of the funding administrators for “biting the hand that feeds you.”
Consequently, scientists fail to cite competing ideas or contradictions and often engage in
science suppression.
Whereas science corruption perhaps began as individual behaviors, over the past seventy years
science corruption, particularly in geophysics and astrophysics, has become institutionalized at
least in the United States, the European Union, and the British Commonwealth. Moreover, as
described below, corrupt science has become a tool to deceive, harm, and subjugate humanity.
Ten years ago it would have been especially difficult for people to believe that in just over half
a century science would devolve into a well-disciplined machine that dumbs-down scientists,
promulgates false narratives, and silences those who seek to tell the truth. It may be less
difficult now, however, as many people are becoming aware that much of officialdom lies,
deceives, and cheats, including members of Congress, government agencies, the mainstream
media, and more.
In the following I describe several non-exhaustive examples that are evidence of widespread
science corruption.
EVIDENCE OF INSTITUTIONAL CORRUPTION IN EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCES
Many researchers ca. 1940 thought the Earth resembles an ordinary chondrite meteorite [13].
The discovery by Inge Lehmann of Earth’s inner core elicited the question of its chemical
composition. In an ordinary chondrite, iron and nickel are always alloyed, and elements heavier
than nickel even taken together could not comprise a mass as great as the inner core. Birch’s
1940 rationale of the inner core being partially crystalized iron [14], however, might have been
no longer valid as subsequent discoveries in the 1960s admitted a different possibility.
In the 1970s, while investigating enstatite chondrite meteorites, I realized that if the Earth’s
core originally contained silicon, an inner core of precipitated nickel silicide would be expected.
The entire abstract of my 1979 publication on that possibility states [15]: From observations of
nature the suggestion is made that the inner core of the Earth consists not of nickel-iron metal but
of nickel silicide (Figure 1).