Bogus Scientific Research

A Review of The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine article on
'Lifelines and Longevity', August 1990

You may have heard of the research conducted by scientists at Bristol Royal Infirmary, England in recent years where an investigation was conducted into the length of the 'lifeline' in the hands of a hundred corpses. This was variously reported in the newspapers at the time (eg Sunday Times 18/6/89 and The Guardian 24/7/90), for the astounding conclusion was that these scientists had found a statistical correlation between the length of this line and the age at death of the corpse! However, you can't always trust what you read in the papers.

A full report on this research was carried in the August 1990 issue of The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and a detailed consideration of what is written shows, quite clearly, that the 'research' was done as a bit of a joke. The summer is the height of the 'silly season' after all. The flippant and tongue in cheek style of the report clearly indicates that the authors had no real intention of making a serious investigation into the features of the hand as a source of medical diagnosis. Talk of 'ozone friendly measuring equipment' (a ruler and a piece of string, carefully illustrated), the reference to it as 'a manual study' and the use of the 'Program for Analysis of Log-linear Multi-dimensional contingencies (PALM)' for analysing the data all show that the 'research' was done as a bit of a joke. Their further comments on the results of their study as to its possible usefulness for 'our cash-limited health service to see whether an illness is the patients last' and for 'plastic surgeons who may wish to extend their private practice and their patients lifelines' all indicate that this research is not to be taken seriously. However, even if the researchers have not taken their study seriously, many uninformed people no doubt will. You can't always trust what scientists say.

First of all, they do not sufficiently delineate what they mean by the 'lifeline'. They have not distinguished between variant formations of this line which can often give the appearance of what is deemed to be a 'short' lifeline even when it isn't. My experience, even with cheirological students, indicates that it is not always obvious to the untrained eye which of the lineal patterns in any given hand is in fact the Major Earth line or lifeline! As it is clear that none of the authors of this report have undergone any cheirological training whatsoever, we cannot be sure which line in the hand it is that they have measured. They say they identified the 'lifeline' with reference to the works of Cheiro, Francis King and Peter West. Quite clearly they have made a thorough investigation of all the available literature and have studied the most eminent of handreaders of all time......

However, though they cite these authors in their report, it is quite clear that they have not even read these three very carefully at all! Both King and West state quite categorically that the length of life cannot be determined from the length of this line; in fact, with the exception of Cheiro, nearly all authors of works on hands dispute that there is any connection between the length of this line and the length of life. We cannot prefer the findings of a group of untrained pathologists looking for a laugh over and above the collective discoveries of hundreds of experienced handreaders, even if we could be sure that the pathologists were indeed actually measuring the right line and measuring it correctly.

Of course, these 'scientists' have made the same simplistic mistake as most untrained people. Once you've called this line the 'lifeline', then it seems quite logical that the length of this line should give some indication of the length of one's life. It is a very simple error caused by a very elementary mistake. But this is the very reason why it is not called that within cheirological circles! The proper cheirological term for this line is the Major Earth line, whereas in scientific circles this line is usually referred to as the thenar crease. With either of these names, the spuriously 'logical' inference that this line formation has anything to do with the length of one's life is rendered impossible!

Instead of clarifying the issue, these so-called 'scientists' have created further muddle and misunderstanding. For now people have been led to believe that there is scientific, empirical authority to support what is nothing more than a logical fallacy. This is most uscientific behaviour! Moreover, it is totally irresponsible as all this 'research' has achieved is to reinforce an ancient misunderstanding and, no doubt, scared great numbers of people who, for whatever reasons, place an undue authority in the pronouncements of scientists.

However, from a scientific point of view, we canot take the results of this 'research' seriously either. A cursory glance at the 'lifelines' of only one hundred corpses hardly constitutes a comprehensive investigation, whether to validate or invalidate any claim. The sample is simply far too small for them to even suggest some of the far-reaching conclusions they have drawn. Any conclusions drawn from such small sample with either be too general and uncertain or too simplistic.

But there is one major oversight that still remains. Even if they have indeed found a statistical correlation between the length of the Major Earth line and age at death, even then this cannot possibly have the prognostic or prophylactic benefits that they conclude such a discovery might have. For all they have discovered is that there is a correlation between the lengths of lines and the ages at death of dead people. Therefore, even if we accept the premis on which this study is based, that the lifeline has some correlation with the length of one's life, such a study cannot be applied to the analysis of the hands of living people. All they have shown, if they have shown anything at all, is that the approximate age of death can be discovered from examining the length of the lifeline, proportionate to the hand, once the person is already dead! This study may therefore have some value for pathologists and forensic scientists but can have no prognostic signification for living people whatsoever! This really is a point of logic, but one that means that their research cannot ever provide the conclusions they claim for it, even if the assumption they begin with is true.

Finally, it also seems to have escaped the attention of these 'researchers' that the lines are subject to a great deal of change and variation throughout the course of one's life, an issue which they don't even begin to address at all, but one which is, of course crucial to any such study. The tragedy of work like this is that it smokescreens the very real utility of cheirological analysis as a diagnostic tool. It not only ignores the medical discoveries in fields such as dermatoglyphics, it aso by-passes completely the discoveries made by many hand analysts over the decades about the manifestations of disease and ill-health within the patterns of the hand. It patronises hand analysis whilst at the same time perpetuates nothing more than a persistant superstition. 'Research' such has been done here should be thrown in the bin.