Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [31]
Is this information available to Berlitz? If I can find it, so can he. His consulting resources are greater, and his funds limitless. One conclusion to be drawn is that he knew the truth and ignored it, preferring the romantic legend and seeing another best-selling book on the horizon. Are there never any clouds on that horizon?
Then there is that giant "pyramid" under the ocean. Berlitz says he has scientific proof of it, with measurements and all. Well, we'll see. In March 1978, Larry Kusche challenged Berlitz to provide proof of the pyramid. Kusche offered to put up $10,000 against a similar amount to be wagered by Berlitz. The money would be deposited in a Massachusetts bank, the entire amount awardable to the winning party. Berlitz only had to prove that the claimed gigantic pyramid under the ocean was real to collect the money and Kusche's admission that Berlitz was right. Berlitz refused the challenge. To see why he would not attempt a proof, we must examine his "evidence."
When I consulted Bob Heinmiller, formerly of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I was told that Captain Don Henry, who provided Berlitz with the sonar tracing that purports to show the wonderful pyramid, could have produced the tracing without any trouble. In such a representation, the vertical component is highly exaggerated for greater clarity. After all, what is needed from the chart is an idea of the depth below the boat, and this is an ideal way to portray it. In the chart shown by Berlitz, the so-called pyramid may represent a bit of underwater terrain having a gentle slope of only 2 to 3 degrees! To get some idea of the actual incline represented, imagine a twelve-inch ruler on a tabletop with eight pennies stacked under one end. That, in miniature, is what Don Henry passed over in his boat to obtain the trace he sold to Berlitz!
The tracing submitted by Henry was not "side-scanning sonar,"as Berlitz claims. This detail was added to substantiate the profile obtained. The tracing is ordinary sonar, subject to the same interpretation as all other sonar traces. And the boat speed necessary to obtain such a tracing of a real 470-foot pyramid would have to be, at regular chart speeds, about ten inches per second! Try holding a boat at that speed to obtain such a trace. It's about half a mile per hour!
But we are assured by Dr. J. Manson Valentine of the Miami Museum of Science that "the sonar tracings clearly show a massive, symmetrical pyramid resting on a nearly flat ocean floor." I wonder when the mermaid exhibit opens at the Miami Museum of Science? Perhaps right after the exhibit of Tooth Fairy Footprints has a run.
Sonar tracing of the "giant pyramid" alleged by Charles Berlitz.
The National Enquirer and People magazine carefully censored out a section of the sonar chart of the "pyramid" that Berlitz unwittingly left in his book Without a Trace. This deleted portion is obvious proof that the alleged pyramid is not what they'd like it to be. Examine the illustration, and you'll see what I mean. At the upper left is a line that represents the part of the tracing that preceded the "pyramid" on the right. Berlitz wisely chose to ignore this, since it shows that the tracing representing the left side of the "pyramid" is actually a continuation of the other line. You see, a sonar tracing, on reaching the top of the chart, drops to the bottom again instead of running off the top of the paper. The "pyramid" seems to begin at the bottom; actually it began somewhere way off to the left. It's a case of the truth being evident once the entire record is seen. It's a song that is sung often throughout this book, and the tune is worth learning.
Heinmiller says that such artifacts are often found on sonar tracings. A pyramid shape can be obtained merely by encountering a small slope, then reversing the direction of the boat to get a reverse slope on the sonar. The effect is a pyramid—exactly