Hokum-Balderdash Assay

Rational and skeptical thinking aren't sleeping partners with supernaturalistic/superstitious thinking. Case in point: this year's celebration of the blood liquefaction of San Gennaro (St. Januarius) in Naples. Neapolitans were incensed after astrophysicist Margherita Hack claimed that the sacred 600-year old "blood" isn't blood at all but rust.

Professor Hack and fellow scientists at the Italian Association for the Study of the Paranormal said that the phial contained “an iron-based chemical compound dating from medieval times”.

The dark brown gel was solid until shaken , when it liquefied. Professor Hack said that the compound was hydrated iron oxide, or FeO (OH), which had the characteristics of blood.

(Naples blood boils at miracle's 'debunking')

Hack is hardly the first to hypothesize that the substance in the vial is nothing more than hydrated rust. Many years ago Garlaschelli et al. had looked into this matter and produced their own miraculous liquefying blood. The secret to this miracle is the chemical property known as thixotropy, a phenomenon that's been exploited by the paint industry for decades. The addition of a thixotropic agent (hydroxyethylcellulose, for instance) makes the paint rather liquid when stirred but less liquid when left unagitated, thus rendering the paint easier to mix while minimizing the paint's tendency to run after it's been applied.

Marchese Pierluigi Sanfelice, an aristocrat who is one of the official guardians of the phial and takes part in the liquefaction ceremony, said that the Church had conducted tests on the phial in the 1980s which showed that its contents included haemoglobin, the key pigment in blood corpuscles. (ibid.)

Note that Sanfelice says the contents "included" hemoglobin. How little hemoglobin was there? Can we please be privy to the rest of the "blood's" ingredients? Of course, I'd like to hear it straight from the horse's mouth and read for myself the Church's report ... if there is any.

The failure of the San Gennaro's blood to liquefy is said to bring bad luck. These Italians hardly lack anecdotal evidence to wow the noncritically minded. Now if they'll only stop remembering selectively and count all the instances the bloody whatever failed to liquefy and nothing bad happened, and all the instances the blood did liquefy and something bad happened. Likewise for the touted good luck liquefaction brings as well. Of course the believers are as subjective about "bad" and "good" as they wish.

Damn these superstitious beliefs.

 

 

The Marchese said: "The trouble with scientists is that when they cannot find an explanation they invent one. They simply cannot accept that some things are beyond human understanding." (ibid.)

Arrgh! Scientists don't just invent explanations. They generate plausible naturalistic explanations. That the mysterious substance in the vial is not blood but some other chemical substance that exhibits thixotropy is a more parsimonious explanation than saying it is centuries-old blood that does not behave like clotted blood because there is something supernatural going on.

What things are beyond human understanding? This "miracle"? Go liquefy your brain in the blender.