By Andrea Widburg
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” —Spoken by Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of The Cardboard Box.”
It is impossible to think of any quotation that more neatly sums up the leftist approach to science in recent years. Rather than following where the evidence leads, leftists come up with theories supporting their political worldview, and then fold, spindle, and mutilate facts until they can be forced to follow those theories.
We see this in leftist “science” around alleged anthropogenic climate change, so-called transgenderism, and the appropriate response to COVID (e.g., six feet of distancing, cloth masks, etc.). This is the antithesis, of course, of true science, where a hypothesis exists only so that it can be rigorously proven or, importantly, disproven through honest tests and observations.
These flaws in this leftist approach revealed themselves once again when DNA definitively quashed the claim in a BBC program that a Roman-era woman’s skeleton, found at Beachy Head (near Britain’s famous “white cliffs of Dover”), was the “first black Briton.” That claim appeared in the BBC’s 2016 television series, “Black and British: A Forgotten History.” The show is based on a book of the same name by David Olusoga.
Most of the show appears to focus on blacks in 20th-century Britain, when they began entering the country in large numbers from Britain’s former colonies. However, the show also addresses the occasional presence of blacks in Britain’s more distant past, including one of Henry VIII’s trumpeters, a Moorish legionnaire on Hadrian’s Wall…and the “Beachy Head woman.”
Secure in the knowledge that they finally had evidence that Britain had long been home to African Americans, making the white population merely one of many interlopers, the British government even erected a plaque in her honor on the site:
The remains of “BEACHY HEAD WOMAN” were found near this site.
Of African origin, she lived in East Sussex 2nd-3rd century AD.
However, by 2022, the plaque vanished when new evidence suggested that the woman may have come from Cyprus and that, rather than being black, she had a Mediterranean complexion.
As the BBC was just forced to admit, however, even that theory was finally put to rest by a DNA analysis that showed that the woman was, in fact, a white Briton:
But scientists have now said they cannot find DNA evidence that indicates she had recent ancestry from Africa.
They detailed in a paper published online on Wednesday that she actually had a strong genetic similarity to individuals from rural Britain.
She likely had blue eyes, between pale and dark skin and light hair, scientists added.
If you’re scientifically inclined, you can read the paper about the DNA analysis here.
Ultimately, Africa contributed little to Britain’s social and political development. That didn’t mean, though, that they were unknown in Britain 2,000 odd years ago, or even long before then. The ancient world was interconnected (after all, humans have been sailing the world’s seas and oceans for millennia). Thus, Cornish tin was found 3,000 years ago as far away as the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant.
Later, the Roman Empire, which conquered Britain in 43 A.D., extended across the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic. The empire touched upon most of Western Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Trade and warfare would ensure that slaves and citizens from one part of the empire reached all the others.
There’s a reason that, in this most modern of modern ages, “science” has fallen into disrepute. Leftist scientists have abandoned the scientific method and, in Sherlock Holmes’s immortal words, now “theorize before” having data, and deliberately or not, begun “to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” In the case of the Beachy Head woman, it’s merely embarrassing, but their other unsupported theories (i.e., climate change, transgenderism, etc.) have very real and devastating consequences.