weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (01/19/86)
In P Klass' fine book, _UFOs Explained_, he has a chapter about tracking down a really weird case that included spontaneous combustion. He tracked the event down, located police records, and it turned out to be an awful accident, but nothing extraordinary. The Bermuda triangle is a similar kook phenomenon: someone decided to actually look up the events in question, and every last one of them turned out to be phony. (Some of the ships did not exist in any records, some were falsely claimed to have disappeared, and some were known acci- dents.) I mention the triangle because its one such kook theory that has been thoroughly debunked. Others such include astrology, faith healing, UFOs, Kirkian photography, mental spoon bending, etc. I have not seen a real investigation of spontaneous combustion (that is, some one takes on all the major cases and finds first hand references to the events), but I have no doubts about what the results would be: it's all wet. :-) (But then again, some years ago, I laughed at a friend who freake "National Enquirer" article about a highly imbred and isolated African tribe that had only two toes per foot. I told her it was bunk and the photos were fake. But the same tribe is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, so maybe it is real. (Any references?) ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener UCB Math Dept Berkeley CA 94720