Andrew's rebuttal to John Gee

[Guest]

Andrew's reply is troubling. Doesn't he know that by providing his calculations and measurements that people will be able to check his work?

Oh I don't think there's much danger of that. Given the regurgitations of those who mindlessly swallow whatever Gee feeds them, I think our work will remain safely unread by the Gee/Schryver fan club.

[Guest]

there is great clarity( following the math process was easy) in andrew/your response to prof gee's methodology and calculations.

You can thank Chris for that. He beat me with his ruler until I made it readable.

i cannot believe he did not have a math expert check his stuff before presenting it.

Indeed, his editor provided him with a real disservice by rubber stamping his nonsense, rather than requiring even rudimentary substantiation of his claims. Gee speaks to the ignorance of his partisan audience. Like an ostrich, he appears to assume that if he can't see how the math works then neither can anyone else. He tries to take advantage of this perceived blindness by (A) appealing to his own "quarter of a century" of authority, (B) proclaiming "five different errors that Cook made in his formula", (C) producing some graphs with various colored lines and (D) mercifully declining to identify our "five different errors", to presumably spare us further embarrassment.

is it true then the missing part of the scroll is on/about 51cm or 1.67 feet?

Yes, the winding progression indicates 51 cm of missing papyrus. And that is a bit generous because it assumes no loosening near the center, which the Toronto scroll exhibits.

and what does prof gee claim it to be?

It appears he's sticking by his 1250.5 cm claim for the missing section.

also how and when do you expect dr gee to respond to your rebuttal?

I don't expect another formal public response. Rather I suspect that, when asked about this topic, he'll continue to use phrases such as: "never worked with papyri", "do not trust dissenters and anti-Mormons", "it does not matter what some Egyptologist says about the papyri" etc.

[Guest]

He would have been better off by just including a couple of vague charts, maybe showing the different ends of several different papyri but not to scale, throwing out a random unsubstantiated number of mistakes Gee made, and then musing about how Egyptologist should not be allowed to comment on mathematical matters. That would allow all of us to quote him as refuting Gee with out having to worry about anyone being able to critically analyze his paper.

The irony here is that Gee accuses us of doing what William did; i.e., using the thickness of the papyri "as an indication of the change in diameter to calculate the difference between the lengths of successive windings in the scroll." We spent this whole thread pointing out the flaws in William's thickness method and explaining why it doesn't lead to missing length. Hamblin et al. (having no clue what was in our paper) chastised and derided us for not using Will's thickness method, declaring "with a high degree of confidence that Andrew and Chris are wrong, and Will is right." Then Gee comes out and mocks us for using Will's thickness method when we should have used Hoffmann's method (which we actually did). The misrepresentation of our work could not be more egregious or more comical.

[_Kishkumen]

The extreme irony here is that Gee accuses us of doing what William did; i.e., using the thickness of the papyri "as an indication of the change in diameter to calculate the difference between the lengths of successive windings in the scroll." We spent this whole thread pointing out the flaws in William's thickness method and explaining why it doesn't lead to missing length. Hamblin et al. (having no clue what was in our paper) chastised and derided us for not using Will's thickness method, declaring "with a high degree of confidence that Andrew and Chris are wrong, and Will is right." Then Gee comes out and mocks us for using Will's thickness method when we should have used Hoffmann's method (which we actually did). The misrepresentation of our work could not be more egregious or more comical.

The ol' apologetic two-step. If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with BS.

[_MsJack]

Very well-written rebuttal, Andrew.

Kudos to you.

[_mledbetter]

The extreme irony here is that Gee accuses us of doing what William did; i.e., using the thickness of the papyri "as an indication of the change in diameter to calculate the difference between the lengths of successive windings in the scroll." We spent this whole thread pointing out the flaws in William's thickness method and explaining why it doesn't lead to missing length. Hamblin et al. (having no clue what was in our paper) chastised and derided us for not using Will's thickness method, declaring "with a high degree of confidence that Andrew and Chris are wrong, and Will is right." Then Gee comes out and mocks us for using Will's thickness method when we should have used Hoffmann's method (which we actually did). The misrepresentation of our work could not be more egregious or more comical.

The ol' apologetic two-step. If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with BS.

In IT we call this, "Security through obscurity".

[_mledbetter]

Now available as premium content on the Dialogue website. Worth purchasing for the clever subtitles alone. This would be a great time to request your free issue. Or you could always go for the 3-year subscription with DVD and online access for $140. Go big or go home, right?

I'm hoping (and expecting) this to soon be made freely available, like the first paper. In the mean time, if anyone wants a copy, just shoot me a PM.

This might be a stupid question, so forgive me, but do you have the Hoffman and Cook/Smith formulas worked out in a Mathcad worksheet? I have been playing around with Mathcad, and I might be little dull when it comes to this, but I'm having a difficult time working the formulas to demonstrate that they give the same output.

Thanks for your patience with this question. Just trying to learn here. :)

Also, I just think it would be a great demonstration to anyone who has the software to see how Gee could have fudged the inputs to get his inflated results.

[_Ludd]

He would have been better off by just including a couple of vague charts, maybe showing the different ends of several different papyri but not to scale, throwing out a random unsubstantiated number of mistakes Gee made, and then musing about how Egyptologist should not be allowed to comment on mathematical matters. That would allow all of us to quote him as refuting Gee with out having to worry about anyone being able to critically analyze his paper.

The irony here is that Gee accuses us of doing what William did; i.e., using the thickness of the papyri "as an indication of the change in diameter to calculate the difference between the lengths of successive windings in the scroll." We spent this whole thread pointing out the flaws in William's thickness method and explaining why it doesn't lead to missing length. Hamblin et al. (having no clue what was in our paper) chastised and derided us for not using Will's thickness method, declaring "with a high degree of confidence that Andrew and Chris are wrong, and Will is right." Then Gee comes out and mocks us for using Will's thickness method when we should have used Hoffmann's method (which we actually did). The misrepresentation of our work could not be more egregious or more comical.

I haven't read your Dialogue article (not being willing to pay for a subscription) so I guess I'll wait until it is available free. I have read Gee's original article where he claimed the scroll was like 40 ft. long. That article was, in my opinion, intentionally obtuse--like he was just trying to boggle the minds of the average TBM reading it so that they just accepted his results without really understanding how he gets them. I also thought Gee's recent FAIR talk was a total joke. "Cook and Smith are wrong and made all these mistakes. But I'm not going to tell you what those mistakes were. Just trust me, they're wrong."

What I haven't been able to do is find where Schryver's "thickness method" is described. Where can I find that?

[_Mortal Man]

This might be a stupid question, so forgive me, but do you have the Hoffman and Cook/Smith formulas worked out in a Mathcad worksheet? I have been playing around with Mathcad, and I might be little dull when it comes to this, but I'm having a difficult time working the formulas to demonstrate that they give the same output.

I don't have Mathcad. What specifically are you having difficulty with?

[_Mortal Man]

What I haven't been able to do is find where Schryver's "thickness method" is described. Where can I find that?

He's been talking about it in various threads on the other board for a few years. His paper on the subject was killed by Jerry Bradford.