In responding to this post, I would like very much to point out again that there is a difference between belief and knowledge. Belief is not a blind act of faith (although it can be; acts of faith have been known to possess a high intrinsic worth) but is based, rather, on where the evidence appears to point. Very often I find here a tendency to ascribe to the researcher a knowledge that is actually a belief based on facts. If some certain knowledge cannot be ascribed to the researcher, the reverse claim is made that the researcher then has "proven" nothing. It may well be that the researcher in question has not in fact sought to prove anything, only to indicate remarkable coincidences that weave themselves into a larger cloth of evidence, but that is often said to be beside the point. I would submit that the extent of most researchers' knowledge lies somewhere on a spectrum between knowledge and lack of it. We would do well, I believe, if we would keep these things in mind.
Joe thank you for the database and your articles, and excellent time consuming research.
My own opinion is that neither the "freckle cream" jar or the "campagna bottom" is worthy of an association with Earhart.
Glad we cleared that up. You of course know that I think these things are shouting Earhart almost as loudly as she appears to have done in the post-loss radio signals TIGHAR has deemed "credible."
1. No clear jar of the freckle cream type has been located. We dont have one.
News flash: The jar isn't clear and never was. I have the lab report showing it and will explain, as I've said, as soon as I can get a chance to say what the lab learned and how we interpreted it. I cite this not as "evidence" that the jar was freckle cream indeed, but as evidence that there may be additional facts that you might not have observed while otherwise occupied disverifying.
Alan Harris looks like he and others tried hard to find one.
We live in a very blase' age regarding history and historical inquiry. We think that the past is transparent to us, that an internet search or a museum inquiry can clear up our questions. Sometimes it can, but the past, even yesterday, is quite a foreign country. Prior to the 1930s, especially with regard to bottles, glassware was used to destruction. During the Great Depression, according to Bill Lockhart, "less was made; less was sold; less was used." It should be little wonder that certain items are unobtainable or very difficult to obtain.
The evidence from the manuals he produced saying this jar was only available in Opal is good evidence.
Our bottle expert Bill Lockhart states this is not true. A manual for any given year saying what style of glass was used was valid for that year, and maybe not even that long. We can argue this if we wish, but when an expert says something this definitively, it usually means there are other experts who are also willing to take the same position. It doesn't mean by definition they are right and you are wrong, but you would need first, I think it is only fair, to state how many glass catalogs in cold dim library stacks have you strained your eyes to read?
So even if it was Dr.Berrys it looks like Alan Harris and Dave Burrell posted it was older than the 1930's. So if she was carrying it then it was very old.
The concept, I will grant, sounds strange today, but back then people held on to things for much longer than today. Again, remember the Lockhart Principle: Used to destruction, or unsold.
I have a hard time picking up items from the pre 1930's and assigning them weight as evidence.
Assigning weight as evidence is an individual endeavor. Your freedom to think and assign these weights is what makes this discussion interesting and enjoyable. I would defend your right to do this.
First it has to be the right decade, then proceed from there, the freckle cream for me just is not evidence at this point.
I can see this is a sticking point for you. Bear in mind we still don't have the decade in hand. We think it's the 1930s and I will reveal why later, but that's unlikely to settle it.
2.The campana balm at least appears to not have the same dating issues.
You're kind to say so, but you'll see from my paper that we have some ambiguities here, which I freely admit.
I can see from the research that this is "possibly" a womans lotion bottle. Mark Pierce found numerous advertisements in this thread showing Campana was NOT gender specific at all.
Quite possibly, we need a new terminology. Gender-indicated? Gender-prevalent? Something to indicate that at most places and times a bottle with a woman on the label would have been used most often by a woman. Canada, I know, at times had a different marketing plan. And maybe the U.S. at odd times did as well. But I've seen a lot of distortion of the evidence here. And no one has taken me up on the need to listen to the radio broadcasts of First Nighter, heard by millions. Radio was the PRIMARY vehicle of advertising for this product. (I have an attachment from a period radio trade journal to back this claim, but it's too large to post.)
Plus, after looking at 3 different laboratory reports over a five year period, I still see no confirmation it is even campana balm. For years this looks like it was called the "lanolin" bottle. It may have been best to stick with that.
Here is how the scientist from the first lab, which initially did not find a close match to Campana, viewed the report from Dr. Mass and my Lotion bulletin, once he'd seen it:
"I took a more thorough look at your article, and I think in general I like the way you described the match. You made it clear it was not a perfect match and so in that context, I might have said a “pretty good match”. You said a “very good match” and that is probably ok though perhaps (from an old nitpicker’s point-of-view) “pretty good match” would have made the point too."
He agreed with me that it was not a perfect match, but I also asked him:
Since the bottles were, as I say in my report, separated by 75 years and thousands of miles, having distinct histories of wear and use, might the expectations for the quality of a spectral match need to be adjusted downward, in light of those circumstances?
His answer: "Agreed."
I also asked him, When I say in my report, "A perfect match would not be expected," am I justified in supposing that? His answer: "Yes."
One needs to understand that the chances of getting just the right bottle, with contents not perfectly preserved, but worn and degraded in nearly exactly the same way as the Niku bottle, are very small. It's pretty remarkable that the FTIR graph showing a match to the Tragacanth, a rare but shared ingredient between the artifact and Campana, was obtained.
Starting with the first lab report in 2007 there was lanolin and seed oil identified.
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Expeditions/NikuV/Analysis_and_Reports/Bottle/NikuVanalysisbottle.html
Then it was sent to another lab, EAG labs, in 2011 for more research based on some smudges that Dr.Mass the first scientist did not deem important the first time around. Clearly from Dr.Mass' report the first time she found the lanolin and worm residue as being most likely the only residue.
Dr. Mass was making no judgment of the brown remnant's value by not testing it. The purpose of the original testing was materials characterization, NOT materials identification. Identification at that point was still a very distant prospect. TIGHAR wanted a general description of the characteristics of the remnants. An exhaustive one probably did not seem necessary or financially prudent at the time.
This overall five year process is best summarized in your original Notion of a lotion article.
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/62_LotionBottle/62_LotionBottle.htm
Picking apart the length of time the process took is like going back to the 1950s and criticizing the cars people drove for not having anti-lock brakes. It took some time to develop these refinements. So it is with all scientific research, so far as I am aware.
Lab two, Evans lab, tested actual campagna balm samples against the artifact. On pages 36-39 of the EAG report those graphs of the artifact don't match for Camapana. Despite the pronoucements of a consulting scientist, Greg George, the graphs don't lie.
You put far greater stock in your interpretation than in the scientists'. The EAG scientists (Lab two) never received the artifact to compare. They only received Dr. Mass' spectral measurements. It was only when Dr. Mass had both bottles to compare that the full extent of the similarities revealed themselves.
We can speculate till the cows come home about contamination and degradation to try to make this artifact fit a campagna bottle.
The plain fact is the white residue found on the artifact does not match Campagna balm.
Again, one must understand, this isn't like pouring some hand lotion into a vending machine and 20 graphs come out all perfectly proclaiming the match. It's taken a large amount of detective work to figure this out.
However while Campana had Tragacanth gum by 1957 at least, FTIR cannot differentiate between gums. Dr. Mass said that in her third and final round of testing to try to confirm what the second lab produced.
Quote-
"Figure 7, shown below, reveals a favorable comparison between gum Arabic and the
reddish residue in the Kiribati bottle. However, FTIR is insufficient to distinguish
between different types of plant gums, and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry is
necessary to definitively distinguish between gum tragacanth and gum Arabic." end quote
Let's look at the coincidences:
1.) We have a bottle characterized in 2007 by a trained materials scientist as consistent with hand lotion.
2.) A bottle emerges in 2011, Campana Italian Balm. This was the most popular hand lotion of the 1930s. Its quite unique base stamping matches the artifact.
3.) Chemical analysis shows three of the known Campana ingredients, Glycerine, Sorbitol and Tragacanth Gum can be detected on a known bottle of Campana Italian Balm. The other known ingredients, Essential oils, Alcohol, Phenol, and Benzoic Acid were not detected, even though they were known to have once been in the actual bottle of Campana. This should speak volumes about the likelihood of obtaining "matches" even when we know ahead of time what is going to match.
4.) The Niku bottle, having sat in the Niku sun, wind and rain for 70+ years underwent the same testing. Tragacanth Gum was matched, or perhaps it was Gum Arabic that was matched. Either way, the ingredients here were matched between the artifact bottle, and the known Campana bottle. You may argue, then, that the match was on the gum of a label (Gum Arabic), but I find this unlikely as my report of last week explains. The label would need to have migrated to the inside of
both bottles, and adhered to both insides as black and brown spots in exactly the same way. It's particularly telling that Tragacanth, as the attachment shows, was an ingredient
listed on the label of Italian Balm in a bottle stamped Copyright 1939.
Ester, as a by-product of the manufacturing process, was also matched on both bottles, as were other functional groups, such as oxalates, and OH (hydroxyl).
Understand, as well, that in order to obtain any kind of chemical match, visually similar components usually need to be compared. In many of the comparisons you are seeing in the reports, white remnants were compared to brown, brown to blue, and so on. These comparisons, again, were an unavoidable result of the fact that the initial lab (EAG) did not have both bottles in hand to test.
Or just give up on both these bottles completely. That would probably be wise in the big picture.
Now I know you must be pulling my leg! It may not be possible to persuade you of other notions than what you have determined. Of that, it may be "wise" to agree to disagree, but I at least think the questions implied in your statements are legitimate ones to be asked. I'm taking a lot of time in answering them, but you also took a lot of time in composing your list of reservations. Thanks for the opportunity to try to address the concerns.
Joe Cerniglia
TIGHAR #3078 ECR