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February 2006 by Steven Novella, MD An American couple present to the media the skull of a child they claim was obtained 60-70 years ago from a cave in Mexico. The cranial cavity of this skull is grotesquely enlarged, and the other features appear human, but in a distorted form. The media dub the skull

07.20The Starchild Project February 2006 by Steven Novella, MD An American couple present to the media the skull of a child they claim was obtained 60-70 years ago from a cave in Mexico. The cranial cavity of this skull is grotesquely enlarged, and the other features appear human, but in a distorted form. The media dub the skull the “starchild,” and speculate freely about the creature to whom it once belonged. Conservative scientists are convinced that the skull represents a severe congenital abnormality, but require more thorough examination before they can be more specific. Other investigators, however, reject this conclusion, and claim instead that the skull belongs either to an alien or an alien-human hybrid. They then begin an elaborate grass-roots campaign to convince the public of this startling conclusion, with some success. Skeptics are all too familiar with the above sequence of events. The details, of course, change from episode to episode, but the themes are always the same. At the heart of the conflict is the difference in method between conventional, conservative, mainstream science, and what Carl Sagan dubbed “the cheap imitation,” or what skeptics call “pseudoscience.” The Starchild Project About 60 or 70 years ago, an American girl living in Mexico allegedly discovered the skeletal remains of an adult and an apparently malformed child in a cave near her village. The girl collected both skulls and kept them for her entire life, until her recent death. Just prior to her death she passed the skulls to an unnamed American man, who kept them for five years. The skulls were then passed to an American couple, who possess them to this day. This is at least the story as it has come to be told about the so-called starchild. The skulls and the story they tell is certainly an interesting one. It is interesting to speculate about why the adult and child died in that cave. What was the cause of the child’s malformations? Were they congenital, acquired or something else? Were they the cause of the child’s death? Did the parent die of grief from their lost child, or were they both outcasts from their village? Certainly, a compelling human interest story must lie behind the remains of an adult and malformed child found lying side by side in a cave in Mexico. There is a tendency, however, to fill such speculation with the mythology of the local culture. Today, one of the prevailing mythologies of our time concerns the visitation of our planet by small gray aliens who are conducting a mysterious campaign of human abduction, perhaps involving a project of interbreeding. It is no surprise, therefore, that those who believe in and popularize this mythology have seized upon the story of these two skulls and interpreted the details in line with their beliefs. Two such believers, Lloyd Pye and Mark Bean, have put together what they call the Starchild Project, and have an extensive website dedicated to their investigation of these skulls (Pye and Bean, 1999). Here is an excerpt from their introduction: “As reported by its discoverer, the Starchild skull is ‘malformed’ in many key ways. In fact, little about it compares to a normal human. It does possess the same number and kind of cranial bones…However, none are shaped or positioned as in humans. There are also other similarities, including certain bone extrusions and contours, muscle attachments, and openings for veins and arteries that correspond to humans. Despite those and other recognizable conformities, an overwhelming majority of comparisons show deviations from the human norm. “Sometimes those deviations are slight, but most times they are extensive, to a degree that should have produced a fetal ‘monster’ incompatible with life as we know it. Instead, they seamlessly combined to form a cranial outline hauntingly similar to the ‘gray’ alien type exemplified on the cover of Whitley Streiber’s book ‘Communion.’… “Because the Starchild skull shows so much deviation from the human norm, we can confidently expect DNA testing to prove it is one of three things: (1) a pure alien Gray type; (2) a Gray-human hybrid; or (3) the most bizarre human deformity since The Elephant Man.” Some of the features of pseudoscience are recognizable in the above excerpt. The authors clearly show their bias in several ways: the use of scare quotes around the word “malformed,” the naming of the skull in question the “Starchild,” and the clear preference for an alien interpretation. The authors use strong language in emphasizing the skull’s deviations, while downplaying the similarities to human anatomy. They then go on to state that the skull’s deviations fit “seamlessly” with the image of a typical gray alien. Finally the authors “confidently” predict that the Starchild is either a gray alien, an alien-human hybrid, or “the most bizarre human deformity since The Elephant Man.” Here they are prematurely limiting the number of potential hypotheses to two desired hypotheses and one straw...

The Starchild Project - The NESS