Below, this “discovery” is revealed to be an epochally magnificent farce, a kind of desecration of that precious and beautiful marble heritage from deep antiquity.
[See also D.Duke's thorough and (inevitably!) more sedate dismantling of BS' thesis. (Duke's paper was finally allowed to be re-posted in 2006 late Summer).

NOTE TO THOSE WHO FOUND THAT DUKE's VALID PAPER WAS UNAVAILABLE ON-LINE FOR MONTHS AFTER PUBLICATION [Feb-Aug], THANKS TO A 1/2-YEAR BLACK-OUT DEMANDED BY THE JHA's HOSKIN (a demand not made for the original INVALID BS paper), THUS PROTECTING THE WIDER PUBLIC FROM REALIZING THE JHA's HILARIOUS FARNESE-GLOBE SCREWUP IN SCIENCE & REFEREEING: IT'S INSPIRATIONAL TO KNOW THAT THE EVER-RELIABLE “SCIENCE PRESS” — ESPECIALLY THE NEW YORK TIMES' DEFENSIVE (2005/1/20 email) & EMBARRASSED KENNETH CHANG (who in 2005 Jan sky-rocketed BS' Farnese paper into the media) — IS CO-OPERATING IN THIS CENSORSHIP. NO SURPRISES.]
[Notice that Chang's 2005/1/20 email defense is heavily based upon the claim that Schaefer was, after all, the 1st to promote Hipparchos as Farnese-globe source. When DR soon after sent Chang the information that this was untrue and that Schaefer had submerged that important fact, Chang refused to face such discomfitting contradiction, diverting instead to complaining that he would not deal with anything throwing doubt upon the veracity of “Dr. Schaefer” — as an awed Chang invariably referred to bumbling BS. Question: is Chang protecting BS? Or his own earlier email's false position? Or both.]

What follows here contains much that desecrates the BS-desecration, hopefully an ultimately consecrational effort — not merely by the math of multiplied-negatives, but through contribution of original findings of value, arising out of DIO's fresh investigation of the Farnese globe.
[Uninitiated readers should take note of the extremely high quality and internationally recognized expertise of DIO's several boards, in order not be misled by the (quite deservedly) satirical nature of parts of the present posting.]

The following analyses will demonstrate in detail:
[A] The Hipparchos star-catalog (formal epoch 128BC Sept 24) wasn't lost in the 1st place (in BS' sense of lost, at any rate), since, e.g., Ptolemy's long-recognized plagiarism of it (tiny-cultishly denied until recently by the BS-JHA-Gingerich-&-clonies mob) has been continuously available since antiquity — and is about 10 times more accurate and 15 times more voluminous (over 1000 stars) than the 70 mostly-way-out-of-place “stars” which BS tries to elicit from the starless pictures upon the marble Farnese globe.
Moreover, except for Ptolemy's 5' fudge for stars which Hipparchos recorded with celestial longitudes ending in 1 or 3 quarters of a degree, a −2°2/3 longitude-shift (to remove Ptolemy's plagiarist-addition of 2°2/3 of precession) will recover Hipparchos' data with perfectly precise fidelity (i.e., zero rms deviation), which not even BS will claim is possible from a starless picture-book globe.
[B] The Farnese globe's constellations differ in so many ways from Hipparchos' constellation-descriptions, that BS is dizzyingly far out of line in deeming the globe a near-perfect-match to Hipparchos.
[C] If mathematical analysis can lead to a verifiable solution for the epoch of the ancient astronomer whose star-mapping inspired the Farnese globe (a point much more debatable in itself than suggested by recent p.r.), the best indications are for roughly 200BC or 200AD.
[The astronomy of both periods may well have influenced the Farnese globe's sculptor(s).]
[D] Krates, the ancient best-remembered for a globe (unmentioned by BS), flourished near the former date. (Carrying such admittedly speculative theorizing further: a still-controversial feature of the Farnese globe may hint at a possible circle-remnant in a coordinate-system known to have been of special fascination to Krates.)
[Dennis Duke has found indications consistent with yet another plausible candidate: Germanicus Caesar.]
[E] Tracing the globe to Hipparchos isn't a “Discovery”. Even BS (2005 p.170) ambiguously remarks in passing that Georg Thiele did so in 1898, but says that Thiele's analysis was “based on stylistic considerations” — nowhere mentioning that Thiele cites star-positional evidence, and that Thiele's key Hipparchos-argument “stars” are the very ones which BS adduces as his strongest convincers for Hipparchos, e.g., γAri, ηCMa, & τBoo.
[Thiele's learned if largely non-mathematical discussion (which bears many of the merits & demerits of BS') has been translated into English for the 1st time by DIO's Hugh Thurston and posted by Dennis Duke at www.csit.fsu.edu/~dduke/thiele.pdf.]
[F] Considering the BS paper's number of obvious and elementary (JHA-referee-undetected) problems, the mystery of how an article so frivolously executed has attained such wide uncritical acceptance ought now to be examined as thoroughly as the immortal marble globe that triggered the fuss. But we will here start with a compact summary of said difficulties (featuring a dense set of links for those seeking background details):

Brief Compendium of Fallacies in BS' Farnese Analysis:
After extensive intra-DIO discussions, we can summarize the main historical problems with BS' Farnese paper under several largely independent headings.
1. Arriving at Hipparchan epoch 125BC essentially by averaging two obviously incompatible samples, which signalled not-especially-Hipparchan epochs: 283BC and 21AD.
2. Once having concluded for Hipparchos as Farnese-source — not even an original theory (unlike DIO's two proposed possible source-astronomers): failure to carry out careful re-check comparisons of the Farnese globe to Hipparchos' constellation bounds, etc, tests which (we have found) reveal manifold inconsistencies.
3. Data-unreliability, intrinsic and extrinsic.
4. Exaggerated precision in epoch-estimation, due to:
[a] assuming random data-independence;
[b] falling into the classic delusional trap of supposing that massive data-gathering ensures an accurate solution;
[c] setting aside a huge non-random 400 year ambiguity.
5. Forgetting the plenitude of ancient star maps, thereby assuming that eliminating merely 3 candidates (as Farnese-source star-cataloger) is strong evidence that a 4th candidate must be the answer.
6. Fixating upon artificially unfuzzing a fuzzy solution for epoch, while equally-artificially fuzzing and setting aside a distinctly unfuzzy (and distinctly un-Hipparchan) latitude-clue.

The OverConfident Initial Announcement:
BS' fantasy-discovery of the non-lost catalog has spread abroad by the prime-snookeree New York Times 2005/1/18 (dateline 1/12, including Owen Gingerich's fateful promo-send-off: “quite astonishing”), also L.A.Times 2005/3/30, Discover April, even Physics Today (!) April. And the American Astronomical Society's own current AAS Newsletter (#124 [2005 March] p.18) endorses the “discovery” — with a totality of unqualifiedness that even most newspaper accounts have not quite attained — along with a photo of two showbiz-partners and fellow smear-bunglers: BS standing beside Owen Fair&Balanced Gingerich, longtime fundamentalist regarding ancient astronomy. And the rest of the universe.

[Note to readers who prefer drilling right down to bedrock essentials:
The BS-OG connexion will be reverted-to here and there throughout, since it is the real story behind BS' otherwise-inexplicable Farnese-sensation.
So it's appropriate to provide an upfront-intro right here to the pol primarily responsible for this and other recent fallacious pop-sci sensations.
An allegedly pious Mennonite and a paragon of evidence-immunity, Gingerich has been an incorrigible pump-prime denigrator, suppressor, and libeller of DR for decades — as well as the glorifier, ghostwriter, & promoter of any purported scholar willing to lend himself to the same degrading ends. (The AAS through its [hitherto] unsupervised HAD have permitted this boil to fester for years without the slightest action, aside from repeatedly honoring the degraders.) As early as 1968, Gingerich attempted to run now-overwhelmingly-vindicated Robert R. Newton (Supervisor of the Space Sciences Division at Johns Hopkins University APL) out of the field of ancient astronomy (DIO 4.3 [1994] ‡15 §B [pp.121f]) for the sin of doubting the legitimacy of the long-notorious 2nd century AD astrologer-mathematician-plagiarist C.Ptolemy. As ever more scholars — DR among the earliest — realized that Newton was right (by now, Ptolemy's fraudulence is no longer even particularly controversial), OG simply widened his shunnings! — all this in a crusade to defend astronomy's most notorious hoaxer.
Question: what kind of dedicated kook hound (DIO 11.3 [2002] ‡6 §G10 [p.85]) would spend a half-century intently working his way up into a position of academic-political power — and then squander such precious capital on a quixotic crusade against earnest scholars who happen to oppose academic fraud and intimidation?!
More important question (which perhaps eliminates the apparent contradiction): what kind of scientific institutions repeatedly go out of their way to unquestioningly exalt such an obsessive Van Helsing?
By 2000 (in a referee report!), Owen VH Gingerich was broad-brush slandering Ptolemy-skeptics (a class including many of the greatest astronomers of the ages) as just a tiny bunch of paranoids! (See DIO 11.3 [2002] ‡6 n.23 [p.75].) These attacks' obvious aim and consistent theme (typical of the religiously censorial mind-behind) has been to discourage anyone from reading heresy at all. The accelerating reality-departure one discerns in Gingerich's latest destructive anti-DIO wish-fantasies, presumably stems from sheer frustration at the success of the DIO enterprise in spite of his worst efforts to kill it off. (In the eyes of relevant specialists, we've been proved right in each of our controversies.) What does it say of OG's intelligence that it took 1/3 of a century of anticipating that he's just-about-finally-stamped-out that smoldering little Ptolemy-skeptic heresy, for him to begin seeing that principled scholars — truly dedicated to high scholarship, equity, and integrity — are not a trifling brush-fire but an unsubmergeable blaze of decency, and will not be jack-booted into silence by the ultimate Little Big Man, and indeed will oppose dictatorship all the harder when it plays dirty.
And what does it say of the state of the field, when both of BS' 2002 Feb Sky&Telescope demented national smears of DIO and DR are pathetically easy to trace textually to “Mr. History of Astronomy”, AAS-HAD co-founder, S&T-historical-gooroo, and AAS-awardee Owen Gingerich?]

Note: the promotion of BS' 2005 Farnese joke was by the American Astronomical Society's own organ, not that of the AAS' Historical Astronomy Division [HAD], which did not officially include the BS paper in its sessions. (Though, the AAS-p.r. for it was reportedly handled by an individual HAD official — not the Chairman, who [after an initial 2005/4/28 genuine out-loud belly-laugh at our title] resorted to cultishness in this connexion only subsequently [9/16].) The AAS-copy (photo-caption) reads exactly as follows (emph added):

[BS] identified the lost star catalog of Hipparchus on a statue called the Farnese Atlas (he holds [in the photo] a replica). Expert commentator Owen Gingerich, holding his The Book Nobody Read [DR: an admirably deft title], praised [BS]' work and [justly] was awarded the Education Prize at the AAS banquet.

JHA Attains Its Apt Perfection:
The academic paper allegedly justifying this unchecked and “almost insane orgy of hasty approval” (to quote Ann Arbor Prof.W.Hobbs' just comment on fake-explorer Frederick Cook's 1909 laurels: see DR's Peary … Fiction? Wash 1973 p.85) is extensively appearing (2005 May pp.167-196), wrapped up as sober science, in the ideal venue: the all-too-often effectively-unrefereed Journal for the History of Astronomy (JHA), which is (yet again) willingly being made a perfect fool of.

After decades of similar pure-formality JHA refereeing-episodes (see, e.g. DIO 1.2 [1991] n.8 [p.97]), no-one can complain that the JHA has not thoroughly earned serial-duncecap notoriety.

The paper's author, BS, is possessed of astronomy's most impish giggle. And he has scored big this time. He is presumably kidding at least himself — either about the Hipparchos catalog's perfect-fit recovery or about being an appropriately-expert investigator. [Readers must decide which.] Whether from playful Mencken-esque audacity, establishmentaryan arrogance, refined careerism, or an evidently-well-justified sense of political impunity, his research exhibits a charmingly if carelessly blithe unconcern with factual accuracy and truth (evidently caring more about the sheer number of published papers rather than their validity), both in research [details below] and in cultist-parroting of slanders against pet-hate-objects of emotionally-vulnerable ossified archons — archons who so appreciate the practice that they actually [rote-]DEFEND plagiarism.
StarKil:
As non-cultist astronomers have known for centuries (since Tycho's 1598/1/2 announcement): virtually the whole “lost” Hipparchos 1025-star catalog has been in-plain-sight right along: merely subtracting 2°2/3 from the longitudes in Ptolemy's catalog undoes Ptolemy's (now almost universally acknowledged) plagiarism of it, and recovers nearly all the 1000-plus Hipparchan star-positions of the great Catalog for which proper credit was killed for the kiloyear 'til Tycho's exposure of Ptolemy's kilotheft. All Hipparchos' stars' longitudes are exactly recovered except for those that had ended in 1/4 or 3/4 of a degree: see DIO 4.1 [1994] ‡3 §C1 [pp.37-38], discussing Ptolemy's deliberate killing of precious data, in an [ultimately] unsuccessful effort to hide a massive scientific crime.

But by far the most important implication of what follows here is what it reveals of the astonishingly backward — not to say corrupt — state of refereeing in the allegedly “Reputable” wing of the persistently-SICK history-of-astronomy community: the JHA's BS-paper palpably pulsates with so many elementary, often hilarious — even self-contradictory — screw-ups and inadequacies, that merely cataloging them below has proved such a dauntingly Augean task that one cannot pretend it has been done here with perfect efficiency.
So: reader's patience required, occasionally.
But: reader's funnybone rewarded, unoccasionally.
Also, at a nobler level of pleasure: a flock of new DIO additions to our serious scholarly knowledge are provided.
(And more highly expert Farnese-related researches by other scholars [primarily by Dennis Duke (his scholarly analysis is now posted at www.csit.fsu.edu/~dduke/farnese4.pdf) & V.Valerio] are proceeding simultaneously. A few of these valuable results are incorporated here, invariably identified as non-DR.)

Though specialists will certainly be intrigued by most of the findings below, one of course understands that not every reader will wish to swim through all details of the huge number of BS-JHA-foulups which are about to be examined & corrected. (This number's enormity is not DR's fault: one doesn't blame the doctor for the illness.) And there will be no interest in institutional pathology in some quarters (esp. institutional hinds), which DR discusses frequently within because it is THE main hopefully-short-term significance of what is otherwise a largely (though not entirely) forgettable paper. [Those who wonder at occasional bluntness within should be apprised: the present DR paper emerges out of a context of submerged decades of certain AAS-affiliated scholars' systematic attempts — by suppression, slander, pseudo-science, and claim-jumping — to stamp out certain mathematically superior but socially-leprous dissenting historians.] So: those who wish to skip past most of the April-Foolesque AAS-self-victimization and ghastly JHA-BS science (and even ghastlier DR “humor”) can right-now click on any of the several highlighted “New Findings” links just below, or — quicker-escape yet — can go right to a very brief concluding section (five-minutes-to-over&out) providing: [a] DR's own famous speculated candidate as Farnese-globe source (not Hipparchos, who is ruled out by numerous and varied hard criteria, including BS' own), and [b] DR's novel proposed solution for the globe's most contended physical feature.

To whisk there immediately, just click on the following:

GET ON WITH IT …

New Findings Arising from DIO's Farnese-Globe Independent Researches:
[1] Hitherto-unnoted extra evidence for thinness of ancient atmospheric extinction.
[2] Simple new possible solution to Hipparchos' long-perplexing mis-location of Athens at 37°N.
[3] Possible indication from the Farnese globe (gratefully building upon the potentially valuable and original part of BS' work on it) that non-Hipparchan astronomers knew Athens' real 38° latitude.
[4] Hopefully-future-researcher-enticing examples of the Hipparchos Commentary constellation-bounds' huge disagreements with Ptolemy (and with the Farnese globe).
[5] Inviting use of such analysis to gather a sample of Ptolemy-listed stars which were surely not in Hipparchos' Commentary, so as to learn if they were H's own post-Commentary addition or not.
[6] The Hipparchos Hour-Star list's indicated pollution by obsolete hour-stars, suggesting use of right ascension (RA) and integral-hour-star sidereal-time sky-markers by astronomers somewhat earlier than Hipparchos.
[7] Perhaps much earlier than Hipparchos.
[8] A more likely (if quite uncertain) potential Farnese-source than Hipparchos, namely the famous early-2nd-century-BC globist Krates of Mallos.
[9] Original & potentially-revealing (if admittedly speculative) solution to the mysterious and controversial Farnese-globe line-segment in Cygnus' wing, to which V.Valerio has drawn attention.
[10. Note added 2007/2/24:
It seems hitherto unrecognized that the Farnese globe's 38°N basis provides not only spatial but temporal information. Professional astronomers at that latitude seem to have become sparse by the time of Hipparchos, so that the FACG latitude alone argues against Hipparchan authorship.]

DR thanks BS for incidentally helping trigger such inductions, which represent DR's highest enjoyment.
(Further gratitude: in a 2004 Winter Solstice flyer accompanying DIO's latest mailout, DR announced his effective retirement from further research in ancient astronomy. So again our thanks go to BS, for so swiftly and irresistibly effecting DR's temporary un-retirement.)

[And DR wishes to emphasize by reiteration: what follows is much less importantly a critique of still-climbing BS than of the American Astronomical Society's degree of supervision of its long-out-of-control politician-historian-higher-ups.
The very number of this BS-paper's problems — none detected by any responsible AAS or JHA official, before publication, or even after (during months of slatheringly unqualified media-hype) — makes this affair a neatly stark upcoming experimental test of the AAS and of the inevitable institutional tendency to prefer proud damage-control to honest humility.
DIO asks that readers — especially historians and sociologists of scientific institutions — keep a sharp eye on the truth-facing or truth-ducking process, which is only now beginning — a process during which we will learn just how the AAS will react to the disgrace of launching a (weirdly disproportionate) national publicity-blitz based upon an effectively unreviewed paper concocted by the politically-leashed gofer of a few cemental leading academic archons. No historical paper in the AAS' history has ever been so lustily promoted.]

A rich nest of links should assist perusers who wish fully to appreciate the unprecedented astronomical-April-Firstness of JHA's BS-achievement.
(If the links are confusing, then: just ignore them. [Many are even-handedly bi-directional, which some will dislike. But the intent is that a busy reader be enabled to connect two related items, whichever he happens to encounter 1st.] Like our extra-scrupulous BS-page-citations here throughout [in stark contrast to BS' own (referee-inhibiting) slackness on that point], these links are intended as a helpful feature [for fast in&out sampling of the muff-muck section — to get on past, into DR's constructive finds], in knowledgeable anticipation of the familiar chapter-one-verse-one from the Institutional Damage-Control Handbook, which urges in-deep-bleep archons to buy breathing-room-time [while concocting a plausible cover] by pretending they can't read the indictment. Of course, in the present JHA&referees-didn't-even-read-the-JHA-BS-paper context, such protests would merely constitute pleading illiteracy to cover for innumeracy.)]

Comments to those who will object to the manner of the present posting:
[1] History-of-astronomy archons' several limitations have made such a joke of the field's quality-controls, that caricature and life have become ever harder to separate.
[2] Despite over 3 years of private & public urging, BS has failed to correct his JHA-echoing, gratuitous, deliberately-delivered national smear of DIO and DR, which turned out to be more-than-Dan-Ratherly unsupportable. (In gratitude, the ever-so-subtle JHA instantly appointed BS a JHA Advisory Editor! Just as the JHA had elevated James Evans to Advisory Editor, right after his JHA 64pp double-Pb-paper 1987 attack on DR.) So, though DIO's critical analyses do not fail to highlight the one or two contributing results of BS' otherwise desecratory Farnese farce, it can hardly be said that his behavior has merited dignified respect.
[3] To a scientist, correct numbers count more than correct style.
[4] DR's style is demonstrably irrelevant to the self-correction paralysis of BS & AAS, anyway, since Keith Pickering & Dennis Duke got the same unbudging BS to their elementary rock-solid, staid, polite demonstrations (DIO 12 [2002] — entirely uncited in BS 2005's discussions of atmospheric extinction) that BS' 2001 JHA Hipparchos-vs-Ptolemy paper had undeniably reached a fallacious conclusion. Recalling a DR pseudold-proverb:

HIPPARCHOS HYPE

The Lost Catalog of AAS-JHA Refereeing Standards

Astronomer-historian BS is a vibrant & engaging teacher of Astronomy 101 at a southern university. He loves a good laugh, and so has appropriately become one of the world's great experts in delicately negotiating his way upward (with the foresight of a dedicated chess-player) into automatic-credence in the perpetually-laughable political-animal world of the historians most durably connected to the American Astronomical Society (AAS). (Career-profitably catering to their foggy-brain prejudices as just too easy & tempting. Rolling drunks would be more challenging.) He is also a suddenly-elevated “Advisory Editor” of no less than the self-flattered “premier” Journal for the History of Astronomy (Editor-for-Life: Michael Hoskin; on Whom, see DIO 6.1 [1996] ‡3 §§H&I [pp.42-43]; DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡3 §F [pp.39-42] DIO 11.1 [2002] p.2.).

BS recently created a mysteriously out-sized press-stir, at the 2005/1/11 San Diego meeting of the American Astronomical Society, by there bellowing his purported recovery of the “lost” star catalog of 2nd century BC astronomer Hipparchos.

This grand joke of a paper is now billed as a Big-Discovery in the April (aptly enough) issues of Discover (p.16) and Physics Today (p.27), and has evidently fooled a wide spectrum of press-folk who share the same naïve delusion: they assume, from the BS-thesis' kick-off promotion by the p.r. wing of the Amer Astr Soc, plus its upcoming publication in the extremely-handsome if pseudo-scientific Journal for the History of Astronomy, that relevant experts have actually read the paper and checked its procedures.
Does Discover also believe in the tooth fairy?
[Journal for the History of Astronomy's Number Two Gingerich, whose touching&touched faith in BS' work triggered the whole Farnese farce, has now owned that he had checked no numbers at all in BS 2005, before rewarding. his current-fave heresy-defamer by hyper-promoting the paper to the whole world as the production of extraordinary expertise.
(Question: even if [hypothetical] expert JHA referees weren't checking numbers, how could every one fail to have noticed that the BS paper mis-spells the constellation “Ophiuchus” five times out of five? — a preciously preserved idiosyncratic BS-tradition of transforming Ophiuchus' Greek-letter “χ” into “c” instead of “ch” — a tradition which BS maintains and even manages to exceed in his 2005/9/18 email — eight times out of eight.)]

Genuine non-historian scientists, who run the largely admirable Amer Astr Soc, have for years at least winked-at the scholarly & emotional shortcomings of the clique that dominates ancient-science studies associated with the AAS: astonishing source-unfamiliarity (almost incredible example to come), mathematical-naïveté (below), cemental tenet-obsessions, shunnings, amusingly inappropriate arrogance and unappreciativeness in treatment of able (often superior) scholars not in one's cult (mathematician Vladimiro Valerio, among others in this case), etc. Thus, a classic inmates-running-asylum pathology has gripped AAS discussion of ancient astronomy for decades — and such trifles as truth, accuracy, & ability have become of little account.
In such a milieu, intellectually limited, don't-bother-me-with-inconvenient-facts, brook-no-contradiction archons publicize their like; and, if ever there were an archonal going-showbiz work-in-progress, it's BS.
[It reflects less credit on DIO's IQ than discredit on the those promoting the JHA-BS-paper to point out (a fact which cult-swell-headedness forces us occasionally to remind observers of): pretty much any scientist on DIO's refereeing or judging boards (e.g., Duke [FSU], immortal Chiron-discoverer Kowal [Johns Hopkins Univ APL], Pickering [Editor, DIO], Standish [CalTech JPL], etc) has more math talent than — with one or two happy exceptions — virtually the whole long-dominant old-guard AAS-historian-clique. And adding in the Journal for the History of Astronomy's everyday rulership [Premier Hoskin, F&B Gingerich, Evans, Swerdlow, et ilk] wouldn't alter that inequality half a whit.
[This is not meant to imply that DIO's results should be accepted without scrutiny. (To the contrary: investigation of both parties' math is encouraged.) Nor is it meant to imply that the DIO side is always right. See our tolerant and (sorta) humble attitude in “Black Affidavit” towards our shooting-fish-stories-in-a-barrel-of-monkeys hashing of the Muffia's self-important fantasies: DIO 1.3 [1991] ‡10 [p.177]: the Neugebauer-JHA [“Muffia”] gang's “essential attitude is that [hate-objects R.Newton] and DR are not ever right…. By contrast [DIO] will merely show that [Muffiosi] are not always right. I recommend careful attention to this distinction. (Though, admittedly, [DIO is] not denying the tenuous possibility that the inverse of these propositions is nearer the truth.)”
The point is: world-acceptance of the JHA-BS-paper's “discovery” has been entirely due to the supposed Authority-glow of the AAS having been conferred upon it — without anyone checking a digit. Thus, the present examination is forced to confront and expose the worthlessness of that tacitly presumed Authority. (Obvious lesson: if theories were promoted on their scientific merits rather than the theorists' purported Expertise & Authority, academic debates of issues would be much less ugly than has become all too common under rulership-cults whose petrification has led to defensive preference for opponent-smearing-exiling and pal-favor-trading, vs simple weighing of evidence & logic.)]
The sheer incongruity of the AMERICAN ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY's attachment to such prejudice, carelessness, & scientific mediocrity — which has persisted for years and appears likely to continue indefinitely — is as puzzling to us as it (and what follows here) presumably is to the reader. (The foregoing information-that-unfortunately-needs-to-be-kept-in-mind appraisal does not mean that DIO fails to realize that there is a wide spectrum of abilities other than math, which go into doing high-level history of science — and that many scholars are our superiors in at least some of these areas. We try to point this out wherever appropriate. See, e.g., DIO 9.1 [1999] p.2 and ‡1 n.11 [p.6].] Unfortunately, very little similar generosity has occurred in the reverse direction.)]

BS possesses an impressive verve (which merited better refereeing than he got). But BS&co are blithely innocent of the numerous booby-traps lying in wait for an enthusiastic but partially-limited author who plunges (without knowledgeable guidance and refereeing) into the practice of scientific history in the refined field of ancient astronomy.

BS claims in his paper, BS 2005
[http://www.phys.lsu.edu/farnese/JHAFarneseProofs.pdf], that he has discerned the legendary “lost” Hippachos catalog's stars — barely-hidden in the antique marble Farnese Atlas' starless celestial globe (henceforth “FACG”). The initial 2005/1/11 announcement acted as if this were the 1st serious scientific analysis of the globe (a slip since somewhat remedied). The claim is that the “lost” Hipparchos catalog had been in-plain-sight on the Farnese globe all along. (See any of numerous news articles based upon the press-releases of the Amer Astr Soc, etc.) Well, we will see what has been in-plain-sight all-along in this paper, since the 2005 Jan AAS announcement of it.

The Farnese globe is borne upon the shoulders of the statue of Atlas at the Naples Archaeological Museum. (See illustration [Piranesi?] at right.) The globe is covered with constellation-pictures (again: not their stars) such as equine Pegasus, Queen Cassiopeia, hunter Orion, feline Leo, etc. A fundamental point to keep in mind — the consequences of which have evidently eluded BS&co — is that: the bodies of all the mythological persons depicted on the globe are facing away from the observer (see illustration), since the Earth (from which we normally view the heavens) is taken as being within the globe, at its center. (Which obviously should have given BS pause — regarding precision if nothing else — when he began trying to pin “chest” stars and even a “breast” upon constellation-legends' backs.) This has always been the overwhelmingly normal convention for celestial-globes: the constellations are shown backwards, and the implicit star-arrangements are seen as mirror-images of those familiar to sky-gazers on Earth.
[The other two surviving ancient celestial globes (Kugel & Mainz) both follow the same convention. However, one notes that the precession-film shown to BS' 2005/1/11 press-conference provides the rare experience of an inside-out (cartoon) celestial globe, i.e., with the constellations not mirror-images.]

The Farnese globe is also adorned by traditional circles: Zodiac, Equinoctial Colure (eqnColure), Solstitial Colure (solColure), Equator. And the tropics: Tropic of Cancer (TropCnc) & Tropic of Capricorn (TropCap). Also the polar circles: Arctic Circle (ArcCirc) of stars that never set & Antarctic Circle (AntCirc) of stars that never rise. [Note: for terrestrial globes, the polar circles' radii both equal the Earth's obliquity [which in reality was about 23°.7 during the classical period]. But, for ancient celestial globes, the polar circles' radii both equal the geographical latitude of a specific locale, presumably (though not certainly) relating to the globist's latitude. As we will see below, the Farnese globe's originating locale is indicated to have been at a latitude of 38° which is close to that of Athens and Pergamon. Though this is far from sure, it is a firmer result for the Farnese globe than BS' induced epoch of 125BC.]

Muffia-Reborn:
BS' analysis is said to be set for publication in the 2005 May Journal for the History of Astronomy. It is alleged (2005/1/14) by BS
[http://cartography.geog.uu.nl/maphist/2005/2005_01_(932kb).txt] that six referees saw it before publication: “When my paper was in draft form, I had it reviewed by six of the leading scholars in the field in America, Italy, and England” — predominantly selected by JHA “Advisory Editor” BS himself. (DR knows who the Italy reviewer is — and can only assume that he never really read through the paper.) It is typical that the BS-JHA combine pre-publication-showed-it-around to politically-trustworthy people, rather than to specialists one could trust on the relevant science and history. Whether they specifically passed on it is almost irrelevant. JHA Editor-for-Life Michael Hoskin would nix nixers anyway.
[As has happened before: in the JHA's 1982 Oct disaster (retraction and fundamental re-computation credited to DR by the admirably honest and generally able author in the 1984 June JHA), both of two referee reports were superficial (DIO 1.2 [1991] nn.7&8 [p.97]) but nonetheless told MH the paper was incredible — yet MH published it anyway!]
No matter what general doubts referees might have, MH would publish BS' paper regardless, in carte-blanche gratitude for BS' brainkissingly hitmanning-the-barricades with false abuse & slander, to punish those offenders charged from-on-high with commission of impious contra-JHA heresy in the sight of the Hoskin Godhead.

The Servile Problem:
Loyally, unquestioningly attacking archons' obsessive hate-objects is becoming a standard stepping-stone to the top, in certain academic-mobster arenas. Capone began his rise to lordship this way: to be a “made man” required destroying an uppity Troublemaker. Likewise what Sydney Falco had to stoop to, in the 1957 classic film Sweet Smell of Success. But certain archons have a legit gripe: target-DR keeps rubber-duck-surviving&thriving — and each of J.J.Gingerich's potential-hero made-men turns out to be just a bumbling maid-boy.
Like they say, you just can't find good help anymore….

Scared Hitless:
[In reaction to the present posting and to DIO's previous exposure of the falsity of slanderous attacks, the JHA clique's selectively-bold hitmen-wannabees have continued (as always) to hide from encountering DR in face-to-face debate. Note: if Hoskin (not to mention Gingerich & BS) cared about the validity, scrupulousness, and competence of what He disseminates, He would have already expressed ready eagerness to publish not just all the counter-Hipparchan indications BS missed (D.Duke's forthcoming JHA contra-BS paper restricts itself just to these), but DR's findings on the JHA Farnese disaster's various problems of math, accuracy, source-familiarity, etc. (And to set the record straight on Sky&Telescope's 2002 JHA-based slanderous fantasies.) When in the same position, DIO hasn't hesitated for a moment. (DIO 11.2 [2003] ‡4 §G1 [p.41].) But, then, it is unrealistic to expect concern for integrity from a journal that has so long and persistently promoted plagiarists. And so even-handedly: from any era.]

Immediately upon launch, #2 JHA Editor Owen Gingerich gave the press unqualified public raviews for the BS Farnese paper — though neither Number Two nor anyone else at JHA realized that it positively bristles with astonishingly goofy and obvious problems.
Highlighted links connect to details. (A very few links may not yet work, since various DIO materials are still being edited.) These include: flat-out errors (see long [though merely partial] list of Muffs below), fantasies (including strange), trying to use an obviously invisible 7th magnitude star (35Cnc) to help place FACG's Equator, inconsistent and-or selective criteria, contradictions of Hipparchos and (remarkably often) of self, amnesia (e.g., BS [pp.170, 174, 175, & 176] keeps mis-dating Ptolemy's Almajest  to 128AD) or unfamiliarlity with central sources (e.g., Hipparchos' highly relevant Hour-Star list), innocence of well-known and utterly BS-contradicting key numbers (e.g., Hipparchos' crucial rising&setting data), embarrassingly primitive math techniques, etc.

Apparently, press-folk are not aware that such difficulties are nothing new, for theories recommended by the pseudo-authoritative, publicly ubiquitous pop-sci historians who have become politically embedded at (and socially swirl about) the AAS-JHA-Sky&Telescope circle.

BullyFlop:
Indeed, AAS-mascot Gingerich's promotional discrimination is so spectacularly inverted that an alternate brand of kooks — the parapsychologist cult — might begin to beam-dream that there's evidence for “psi-missing” at the (political) heights of the science establishment it hates:
[a] When J.Evans' 1987 dumb 64pp attack on R.Newton & DR arrived at JHA, OG was struck dumber by delusions of vindication. (With suicidal evidence-impenetrability and Hegelian timing, the paper's reasoning started its 1987-1998 academic swim a year AFTER G.Graßhoff's 1986 thesis [which Evans was pre-warned of: JHA 18.3:155f [1987] n.9] had independently confirmed the Ptolemy-skeptics and thus utterly ended any legitimate case for Ptolemy as star-cataloger.) Thus, truecome-dream-OG's Journal for the History of Astronomy ran it not just as a lead-paper but two Pb-papers — and its follies were even repeated in a peculiarly long section of Evans' 1998 Oxford Univ Press book (published with Gingerich's blessing). As even the JHA now knows, the paper's conclusion was false.
[What kind of field is increasingly dominated by the type of scholar who is willing to plunge ahead with a scientifically semi-competent paper which he knows is invalid, so long as he very-competently senses that the paper's conclusion will trigger political advancement?]
[b] Gingerich wrote a special boost-preface for telegenic K.Spence's 2000 pyramids-paper, thus ensuring it would become Nature's 2000/11/16 cover story. DIO quickly informed Nature that the paper's astronomy was miscomputed (as finally acknowledged: Nature at 2001/8/16 p.699).
[c] When BS' Ancient-Star-Catalog paper debuted on 2000/1/15, Gingerich instantly (from the floor) deemed it “truly stunning”, ran it as a lead-paper in the JHA (2001) and almost got it into Discover (as DR learned from Aaron Spender, 2000/1/13). Since the polite but crushing revelations by Pickering & Duke in DIO 12 [2002], it's gone the-way-of-all-flush.
[Excerpt from DR's 1st warning (2000/1/27 HASTRO) to HAD: “Are no other historians besides Keith Pickering and DR seeing anything (internally and externally) obviously amiss in [BS]'s test? (I.e., if this paper turns out to be baseless, what does it say about the HAD that no one else noticed?)”
BS' resulting bizarre 2001 Journal for the History of Astronomy paper (which momentarily gave Gingerich his last delusion of Ptolemist victory and thus forged the BS-OG science-historical-genius-alliance) was from the outset a jaw-dropper larf among the top scholars of the field, since it was wilfully oblivious to a huge array of solid counter-evidences (Tycho, Delambre, R.Newton, DR, Graßhoff, Thurston, Pickering) — AND [seemingly incredibly] ignored the sole extant (STAR-data-stuffed) opus of the party (Hipparchos) he was attacking — ON A STAR CATALOG CONTROVERSY, mind you…. Its ill-timed 42pp mega-defense of Ptolemy reminds one of Sen.Yarborough's remark on John Connally's defection to the Nixonites [for current update: see Joe Lieberman] (even as the Watergate scandal was growing): he'd never before seen a rat swim towards a sinking ship. (But, then, as the Ptolemy-as-star-cataloger ship now slips beneath history's waves, we find that 2005's version of the Vicar of Bray has jumped it — and doesn't even remember his former naval post! Not even Connally had that kind of brass.) No citation of the most recent and temperate findings: Pickering-Duke. I.e., you will search in vain throughout JHA-BS 2005 for any kind of retraction of JHA-BS 2001 — or the slightest word of credit to the many leading contemporary scholars who established the very pro-Hipparchos Ancient-Star-Catalog position he and OG are now finally flirting with. This because the BS-OG twosome is boldly trying to take this credit for their own gang. Can daylight robbery really succeed this easily? Well, in certain particularly degenerate academic fields, yes. Especially those whose denizens are so (oft-justly) insecure that, even when a fresh open forum beckons, they opt instead for the standard archon-kissing careerist-climb: spurning freedom for life-time slavery.
[Don't miss the forest for the trees, when reading here. Throughout, keep noticing: Which party is obviously a free spirit? Which is obviously a chained one?]
Irony: with misunderstood good intent, DR repeatedly and vainly warned deaf-as-cement BS&co that his 2000 JHA paper was certain to fall. Back on 2000/1/27, soon after The-Brad publicly Verdicted (2000/1/15) for Ptolemy at HAD (ecstasizing O.Gingerich&clo), DR faxed the following prediction of disaster to K.Pickering (who immediately posted it on HASTRO, slightly edited):

As soon as this latest white-hope implodes, everybody who's now acting so excited will just quietly crawl back into their rabbit holes, and re-adopt the previous mantra of calling the whole issue “inconclusive” for another decade or so — until comes the next Hero's hallucination that HE can at last slay the [black-hat] DIO dragon, in loyal service to archons. (And this orthodoxy will hold sway for another decade or so — until comes the next Hero's [draconicidal] hallucination ….. Is this the way falsifiability is supposed to work in academe?)

Also (2000/2/2 [caps in orig]) on HASTRO: “Brad's complex result is CERTAINLY wrong.” (DR's judgement here is now completely vindicated. But this fact will never be permitted to appear in His Lordship's captive JHA.)
Note: both OG & BS have made private acknowledgements of the value of R.Newton and DR researches. But they act as if saying so publicly would constitute a kind of treason. Happily, such transparent behavior is not a total waste, for: it is by such obvious (except to “science reporters”) indicia that we are most easily able to distinguish politician-glitterati from genuine scholars.]
[d] In 2000-2002, in concern at DIO's growing influence and readership, Gingerich spread two defamatory deceptions regarding DIO (neither ever retracted by him to this day), using BS as vehicle, in initially-bold-bully (later evading & finally just hiding) Sky&Telescope: 2002 Feb p.40. The charges:
[1] That DIO publisher DR had started abusive correspondence with the JHA's Editor-for-Life. (See OG→BS ghostwriting.)
[2] That DIO was just a tiny vanity publication (omitting, with typical Gingerich integrity, the fact that DIO's boards are more eminent and FAR more independent and scientifically capable than his own semi-competent circle of sycophantic parrots, bumblers, and DR-debate-dodgers) — a deliberate deception which BS (loc cit) agreeably spread nationally for OG. (Countered in a 2002 June S&T letter by the US' greatest living celestial mechanics figure [CalTech-JPL], a letter which BS privately approved of; but BS has never publicly withdrawn any of the article's falsehoods.) Given false-content-similarity, Harvard-reference, and neat-chronology, the source of this particular BS 2002 slander is clear from some peculiarly out-of-place (and weirdly inaccurate) remarks in the 2001/7/28 Amazon review by John Rummel (Madison, WI) of T.Standage's mis-titled book (The Neptune File):
“My own [Rummel's] brief research revealed that an historian of science named Dennis Rawlins has written several articles about” the Neptune affair.
Rummel then (badly) summarized these articles (which he obviously never bothered to read), charging DR with being anti-Cambridge, though the University of Cambridge is (as also Oxford University) a DIO subscriber, and DIO 10 (which Univ Wisconsin & OG had just received a few weeks earlier) stated right on its cover “Copublished with the University of Cambridge”. Rummel continues [DR will add comments in brackets]:

I contacted two historians of science [but of course didn't contact DR], one [unnamed but obviously Mike Shank, who denies it] at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and one [no need to name] at Harvard. Neither knows of any evidence as to the truth of [DR's] allegations, and both attest that Rawlins tends to gravitate toward farfetched notions that mainstream science regards with suspicion. [An outright lie. An especially odd one, coming from a religious nut — who is here, yet again, bravely spreading his slander anonymously, while for decades ducking face-to-face debate with the slanderee! (Such transparent cowardice seeks new depths for hiders' familiar lodge&dodge tactic: DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡1 n.82 [p.21].) It seems that Conscientious-Objecting to combat can get to be a habit.]
In fact, Rawlins doesn't publish his papers in mainstream journals [false (recent non-DIO publications by DR: Isis, University of Cambridge, Nature) — and irrelevant to research-validity, anyway], but in his own self-published journal ‘Dio.’

[Curious that founding one of the two leading journals in the field can be so perversely described by the seething other journal's Number Two. (Might we say that JHA Number-One-Hoskin's papers in His JHA are Himself-published? Does it matter?)]
Of those (Gingerich and BS) who spread such scurrilously deceptive and diversionary slander, one need only say that no honest scholar could do so, since even if he were too scientifically dim to discern DIO's academic quality directly, he could get some idea merely from the stature of the DIO boards and the leading institutional libraries worldwide that subscribe. (Detailed information on both points is provided on the inside & outside back-cover pages of each DIO.)
[e] Gingerich has now launched yet another publicity-blitz for a baseless paper, the Farnese analysis of BS 2005. In this case, the key snookeree was the New York Times, whose coverage triggered the others.
Each of the above-cited OG-hyped botches were primarily designed to convince well-meaning public forums that those involved were producing genuine discoveries, expert-certified as such — yet all were instead (at best) sloppily rendered, because the prime criteria (in selection for OG-hype) involved cult-political or pop-media considerations, not genuine scientific expertise; and the prime aim was not accuracy but enemy-denigration and-or the creation of a pop-science-world splash.
Well, there's no bigger splash than a belly-flop.

The AAS has been requested to at least supervise the politicians who dominate ancient astronomy discussions at the AAS; but the incident here under review indicates that at the Amer Astr Soc, when it comes to astronomical historians: deft publicity and-or publication-package generators utterly out-rank solid-scholarship creators — meriting AAS-HAD cash-award honors and-or national publicity-promotion, regardless of conversancy with the math & science essential to establishing their sacred positions. (See, e.g., DIO 11.1 [2002] p.2; DIO 11.2 [2003] p.30 n.3 & p.33 n.7.)
Naturally, the backward upshot has been: devolution of the impact of scientific skills and (much more crucially) scientific attitudes [a] upon the practice of astronomical history associated with the AAS — and [b] upon the reliability of widely-promulgated astronomical history.
[Of the incestuous popular-publishing wing of the science community, it could be said that most of the writers may not know much math — but they do know how to group-cover for each other.]

[How will future historians of the history of astronomy community explain how it happened that DIO, the most technically-competent journal in the field and the only history of astronomy journal in the Americas, was effectively shunned for years by the American Astr Soc's Historical Astronomy Division? (See, e.g., the latest [2005 Feb p.5] HAD NEWS' naturally-DIO-frei coverage of present hist-astr journaldom. [Coverage attributed to Owen Gingerich, a religious fundamentalist whose well-earned reputation for generosity towards scholars evaporates when it comes to heretics R.Newton&DR.
Question: Is it the rôle of a central forum to take sides in a controversy?]
Nor does HAD acknowledge even the bare existence of DIO's several new prizes, all governed by extremely eminent judging boards.) This, while the HAD fawns upon and glorifies the semi-numerate Publisher of the incurably-fake-refereeing Journal for the History of Astronomy — Who has (without the slightest AAS comment, other than awarding Him the HAD Doggett Prize) unilaterally severed communication for twenty-four years with the publisher (DR) of the other major journal in His own field.

Note: heresy-banishments [stains upon what could yet become a noble field] long predated DR's entrance into ancient astronomy — far earlier such shunning was applied to gentle Robert Newton: see, e.g., JHA 21:364-365. And, when Keith Pickering & Dennis Duke (in DIO 12) utterly atomized the 2001 JHA's 42 Pb pages of pure-BS atmospheric-extinction alibis for Ptolemy, it was all done sedately — nonetheless, BS has admitted nothing on the record (and has never cited the DIO 12 articles — nor did any JHA referee or official ask him to, for the extinction-related portions of the Farnese paper). I.e., DR's style is not the problem. (Read carefully DIO 1.1 [1991] ‡1 n.19 & n.20 [p.8] on the same point.) The community's dictatorial, fear-ridden state is the problem. A community that is not deeply disturbed by such a situation, a community that would let large fractions of scholars' lives go by (and in the case of pioneering R.Newton: come to an end), without effecting remedial action, can hardly wonder why DIO occasionally disrespects its pretensions.]

It is doubtful whether what follows will enlighten anyone, since genuine scientists (and classicists) are already eye-rollingly aware of JHA refereeing's limitations in competence, ethics, and reality, while most press-folk really won't want to learn anything sad about their fave archonal-contacts, society-dinner inviter-companions, opinion-cynosure-gooroos, and coffeetable-book-author pals.
[Few outside high academe seem to have noticed that DIO's boards are composed of the very opposite types: genuine scholars (not pop writers), including several world leaders in their respective fields: e.g., Standish (CalTech-JPL), Kowal (Johns Hopkins University APL), Walker (British Museum).]
Nonetheless, details of the JHA-S&T kwasi-scholarship cult's distortions of truth ought to be recorded somewhere — as should their klannishness, careerism, political priorities, & long history of opting for private or safe-forum smear-techniques instead of uncontrollable face-to-face debate with DR. (See, e.g., at foregoing links and-or DIO 1.1 [1991] ‡1 §§C5-C10 [pp.7-9], especially n.20; ‡3 §§D2-D3 [p.20]; DIO 4.3 [1994] ‡15 [pp.120-138].)

Goooood Doggie.   Oldest-Professionals and Unprofessionals:
A potential research-project for sociologists of media & science.
In Sky&Telescope (2002 Feb p.40), BS openly admits that the Ptolemy Controversy has been the hottest in the field for the last thirty years, and even provided the common knowledge that it has been rife with “unprofessional” acts on all sides, including shunning. (Of course, the shunners aren't identified, while the shunned are named and falsely slandered and [well, pop-sci-lit likes a Happy Ending] ultimately blamed for all ills via the biggest whopper of all: the charge that the Ptolemy-skeptic side started the ugliness. Classic problem-of-evil sleight, hitherto found primarily in religious-apologetics tracts.) Given the fact that the scholars composing DIO's boards are far more able (several are THE world-#1 in their respective areas) than the field's more-politician-than-scientist Farces of Dorkness, whose bungles & slanders have persistently for 30 years screwed-up both science and generous cooperativeness in history-of-astronomy, one asks (in awe at the dedicated, ever-alert political manipulation): HOW have the coldly-careerist pol-perpetrators of a scandal as durably dumb&dirty as this remained TOTALLY vacuum-seal-protected (like the modern Ptolemist-smear-machine scandal — and case after similar case) from investigation by the marvelously-domesticated police-dog “science press” for decades on end — akin to a baseball league where every game is a Perfect-Game, throughout an entire generation — while one Defender-of-the-Faith after another is nakedly blessed with advancement after volunteer Sweet-Smell heresy-hound duty and-or emission of lawyeresque pseudo-science in defense of Ossified-Oldboyperson-OrthoDoxy?
But, then, it's common knowledge that the Oldest-Profession's legendary durability has always been based upon police protection.
(See detailed discussion of one example at DIO 2.2 [1992] n.110.)

Even more revealing than the above-cited 30 year PerfectGameness (a durability which applies to numerous other popsci-coverup cases):
How did the perpetrators know ahead of time that they could depend on such perfection? After all, given the stakes involved (in risking the pop-science mestablishment's integrity-credibility against documentary proof to the contrary), there seems to be no rationality at all in adhering to a cover-up unless there is general awareness of absolute certainty that the lapdog “science press” will — with perfect-reliability-roboticity — cooperate in protecting the public from knowing of it.
I.e., a philosophically fascinating (perhaps even trail-blazing) perversion of Pascal's Wager (DIO 8.2 [1998] ‡5 §L [pp.58f]), in which the gamble's seeming surethinghood derives from the supposed awesomeness of the probability P rather than of the value V of what is (purely technically) at-risk.

HippHype:
BS' baseless Hipparchos-hypothesis will probably be as unstopperable as Mencken's equally fantastic 1917/12/28 Bathtub Hoax. Mencken prominently owned up on 1926/5/23 that his purported history-of-the-bathtub was “of spoofing all compact” — but his wholly-invented canard that Millard Fillmore took the 1st White House bath in the 1850s yet lives.
[See the entire pathological Newspaperworld-Truth extravaganza — and its serious yet delightfully expressed lessons — in Mencken's “Hymn to the Truth” (H.L.Mencken: Prejudices, a Selection ed. J.Farrell, Vintage 1958 pp.242-247; e.g. [p.244]): “something in the human mind … turns instinctively to fiction … even the most gifted journalists succumb to it …. That this truth about the so-called truth is true needs no argument.”]

Before getting swiftly to simple and obvious contra-Hipparchan evidence regarding the Farnese globe, we will start by concisely itemizing the BS paper's manifold problems. In the précis below, one need only click on the linked word to go to the gruesome back-up details farther down.

Cornucopic Confusion: A Flood of Flagrant Fluffs:
The star-positions provided by BS' JHA paper are riddled with screamingly patent screwups of direction, of orientation, of sign, and of the very constellation-features which are being matched with star-positions — none of these problems detected by SIX referees for the Journal for the History of Astronomy, before the paper's 2005/1/11 release to the world under (what the press [somewhat rightly] took to be) the august auspices of the American Astronomical Society. (Comments: [a] The JHA-Six have evidently also slept well in the months since: compare the BS 2005 paper's Jan pdf-posting to its present only-superficially-revised pdf-posting. [b] This paper probably couldn't have gotten by a SINGLE referee at DIO or any other journal run by scientists, mathematicians, or classicists.
A noteworthy oddity: BS 2005's numerous references to Hipparchos' Commentary only very rarely provide citations to a page or section of that central work — a serial-omission which doubtless impeded referees' ability to check his uses of it. However, this service would have been immediately requested by any serious referee (who had the time to plow through 30pp of prolixity).
[Upon reading this DR remark, Leroy Ellenberger rightly chuckled at the irony that the present frolixity is longer than the BS-paper it so characterizes! — though, at least scholars have read, checked, and materially improved the present rather less dry-pedantic posting.]

Several depictions of the FACG will be cited in the following analyses — in addition to those noted already. We refer to BS' widely-circulated pictures (good images by Gerry Picus, Griffith Observatory) as photo 1 [p.168] and photo 2 [p.169] (Figs.1&2 on BS 2005 pp.168&169, resp). Photo 3 will be that at Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica vol.7 [1966] p.1277 (not quite clear enough to merit reproduction here). We will also consult five photos from Encyclopedia of World Art vol.2 [1960] plate 23 (cited in BS 2005 n.1), which are usefully sharp. On this plate, we will designate the upper left photo as photo A, that below it as photo B; the three photos on the right, we will reference in top-to-bottom order as: photo C, photo D, photo E.)
[More helpful photos (from Thiele's paper) are now on-line, thanks to Duke. And the 1739 M.Folkes projection of FACG, though occasionally slightly imperfect, is surprisingly useful — as confirmed by the recent cooperative investigations of V.Valerio (a highly competent specialist in the math of spherical projection) and D.Duke. The Folkes projection (plus a helpful imposed grid) can now easily be viewed by consulting Duke's 2005 paper — along with the appropriate associated equations, as well as a tabular comparison of some FACG points: Folkes-Duke vs BS' photogrammetry.]

In-Plain-Sight Confusions, Un-noted by JHA Referees:

Self-contradiction Type 1. Using the same star for two quite different positions in a constellation. And then doing it again.

Self-contradiction Type 2. Using two different stars for the same place. Orion's mid-waist: in Table 3 (p.187), star#15 is δOri, called “Middle of Orion's waist”; but in Table 5 (p.192), star#51, εOri, is called “Middle of Orion's belt”. Now εOri is the actual center of Orion's Belt, so: why did BS' Table 3 choose — seemingly-arbitrarily — δOri as mid-waist?! (Well, δOri is helpfully closer than εOri to the Hipparchos-era Equator….) The (at-best) ambiguity here raises another obvious question in passing: rather than vainly & contradictorily trying to estimate the position of something as vague as a person's middle (especially a person partly hidden! — see photo 2 [p.169], or photo B at right, Orion being the figure whose head is next to Atlas' huge thumb — much of his right side being under said thumb) — why not instead use famous Rigel (βOri), the nearby, far brighter & much-more-definable and wholly unobscured Orion left foot?

The Latitude-Switcheroo Two-Step:
We next present two key synergistic confusions, which together constitute the main basis for BS' fumbling (and thus dropping) the sole potentially-firm mathematical clue (if such can be said to exist at all) to the Farnese-globe's origin:

Self-contradiction Type 3. Citing a sentence that explicitly contradicts the very information claimed from it!
Hipparchos' value for Athens' latitude is confused with his value for his own Rhodes latitude (BS p.173 item [K]): 37°N latitude substituted for 36° latitude. This amazing trick is accomplished by the simple expedient of chopping off the Rhodes=36° half of the very Hipparchos sentence which said Athens=37° — and then chopping off the “Athens” part of what was left!
(A single degree is crucial to the discussion. Keep in mind that the entire titular conclusion of the BS 2005 paper hinges upon a precession-based estimate [±55y] purported to be accurate to less than a half-degree.)

[A neat (if appalling) explanation of this truly dazzling gem: BS' failure (now replicated in a BS 2005/9/18 email!) to realize that HC1.11.3's reference to the ever-visible circle's 37° radius is not for Hipparchos' [Rhodes] sky but (as stated atop HC1.11.1) is for the [Athens] sky of the very Eudoxos whom both Hipparchos & BS are trying to put down! — and Hipparchos (presumably associating Eudoxos with his legendary career in Athens) then soon after explains (HC1.11.8) that 37° is NOT for Rhodes (36°N) but for Athens.
Some remarkable information & ironies in this connexion:
[a] HC1.11.5 says that εCas represents the feet of Cassiopeia (contradicting BS Table 3 star#44), 38° from the Pole. (NPD exactly 38° in c.150BC.) Since her feet are right on the Farnese globe's ArcCirc (see bottom photo C) this is visual support for our eventual tentative conclusion below that FACG was created for the non-Hipparchan latitude 38°.
[b] Had BS read HC1.11.3&8 carefully, he would have realized that the Commentary's Athenian equation (by Eudoxos and-or Hipparchos) of both the ArcCirc (ever-visible stars) and AntCirc (ever-invisible stars) as 37° in radius, utterly obliterates BS' shall-we-say “naïve” (language inspired by JHAAssocEd-Evans: L.A.Times 2005/3/30) and excruciatingly contorted attempt to impose 4° of near-horizon invisibility upon both northern & southern horizons — while switching signs in mid-stream! It would be hard to improve upon the Commentary's clarity in indicating that for bright stars, the “extinction angle” was effectively zero, though Ptolemy has said the same thing to equally deaf Muffiosi: DIO 3 [1993] §L8 [p.25].
[In the midst of a BS-vs-DR discussion of atmospheric extinction, it might be appropriate to note that DR is inventor of the 1st altered-argument compact expression that easily and simply provides accurate values for atmospheric extinction from zenith to horizon: Publ Astr Soc Pacific 94:359-373 [1982] p.363 eq.6.]
[c] Finally, this same Hipparchan discussion of Eudoxos' latitude generates a potential speculative answer to an old question, the source of ancients' persistent mis-rendering of Athens' 38°N latitude as 37°, in centuries of handed-down ancient astronomical tables: Hipparchos' Commentary 1.11.3&8 took Eudoxos' location to be Athens, since Eudoxos became famous there; however, Eudoxos' astronomical observations were made (Strabo 2.5.14) at a sea-level observatory at Knidos, 36°40'N latitude or about 37°. So this hitherto-mysterious error — as durable in ancient tables as that for Carthage (and from the same scientifically-isolated ultimate source, Hipparchos) — could have been caused by a simple Hipparchan confusion of Knidos with Athens.
[Another possible explanation might be Hipparchos' use of 37° as the klima for Athens: 14h5/8 (Vistas in Astronomy vol.28 pp.255-268 [1985] p.262 or [for latitude atn(3/4)] 14h3/5 (ibid p.263).
Further, Hipparchos' HC1.11.8 states that Canopus was north of the Antarctic (ever-invisible) circle for said klima (which he now calls Greece's klima) and thus was visible there. His inter-changeable references to Athens and Greece are a strong suggestion that 37° or arctan(3/4) was a klima. But this leads us to an alternate version of an earlier speculation was Hipparchos' belief that Canopus could be seen at Athens related to the ancient account that Eudoxos saw it?]
Note, too, the implication: if the Farnese globe was for Athens, then this suggests most scientists knew that the actual latitude of Athens was 38°N, not Hipparchos' erroneous 37°N. (Regarding whether Hipparchos was out of touch with most of the science world: some have commented that, after all, Rhodes is geographically isolated.) DR earlier traced much of a millennium of random latitude-misgeography (ordmag 1°) to Hipparchos. (And systematic longitude-misgeography, to equally-isolated Ptolemy — though he may not have been its originator. [Poseidonious?].)
[So: how did the works of two astrologers outside ancient science's mainstream survive so long and so exclusively? [a] The growth of astrology and the fame of a variously-instrumented Rhodes team's remarkable star catalog (Hipparchos). [b] The attachment of astrology to the growing Serapic cult (Ptolemy).]

Self-contradiction Type 4. Addition backwardly confused with subtraction (following the “premier” lead of the Journal for the History of Astronomy's Editor-for-Life Michael Hoskin), a botch that originated in confusion of a key astronomical angle with that angle's complement, which utterly sinks BS' manipulatively elastic mathematical discussion of the Farnese-globe-source's indicated latitude.

Self-contradiction Type 5.
Elaborate computation (Table 1→Table 2→Table 5) putting the head of Ari [Aries] at 5°.6 west (Table 5 p.192) of the equinoctial colure, while displaying a photo (p.169) showing it east of that colure. (This will require earnest exorcism later on here.)

Further Equally Remarkable Items:

Besides such above-cited confusions as Athens confused for Rhodes, there are a bunch of equally goofy foulups, which we'll just briefly list here. Since we just noted where east (αAri) is confused with west, fairness requires:

North confused with south: βCMa (Canis Major).

Top confused with bottom (φGem), an internal contradiction.

Positive confused with negative.

Second confused with 1st: θPer [Perseus] vs χPer.

Observed-minus-Calculated confused with Calculated-minus-Observed.

Left confused with right: νTau (Taurus).

Non-Hipparchan constellation-bounds (Tau, etc) confused with Hipparchan.

Confusion of criteria: wings of Peg (Pegasus), and all of CrA (Corona Australis).

Neck confused with chest: ξCep (Cepheus).

Neck confused with breast: αCas (Cassiopeia).

Neck confused with shoulder (Tau): an ordmag 10° discrepancy.

Shoulder confused with (invisible) chest: Cen (Centaurus).

Unavoidable but BS-unmentioned confusion among BS' only three Antarctic Circle (AntCirc) stars. Star α confused with star β.

Muzzle confused with pate: αAri.

High-Precision Photomammetry:
Summing up a general problem (brought on by BS' indiscriminate use of vague and virtually-unplaceable “stars”):
BS repeatedly confuses front with rear, culminating in Table 5's nonpareil feat of precisely locating (Table 5 star#66 [p.192]) Queen Cassiopeia's breast—

[Classic high-precision-low-accuracy. For whatever reason (globe-distortion or photogrammetric-implant), BS' longitude for Cassiopeia's “breast”-star αCas is so far in error that it would be right for about 1035BC. Didn't it occur to anyone around JHA to wonder whether “stars” this wackily non-Hipparchan might be sending a message about the value of the entire Table 5 trash-collection…?]

Likewise in same Table 3 her husband King Cepheus' “chest” is placed on his back (photo κ or photo 3): star#43 = ξCep. And the Centaur's spine (see photo E at right; or near globe's rt.edge in photo 1 [BS p.168]) is labelled “chest front”: same Table 3's star#7 = θCen, later becoming “shoulder” in same Table 3 star#34.

So What?
It is completely predictable that BS will claim that this mountain of muffs doesn't alter a single BS conclusion. In the slightest.
Nothing ever has. See, e.g., BS p.173. More indicative: despite the far superior scientist K.Pickering's scholarly devastation (DIO 12 [2002] ‡1) of BS' 2001 JHA megapaper on the Ancient Star Catalog (definitively overturning BS' conclusion through an avalanche of independent tests — including atmospheric data unknown to BS, gutting the very atm opacity BS' case rested upon), BS has retracted zero. (His whole mob behaves this way. Why should he be uncultishly different?)

Records — Broken and Unbroken:
For concise, perceptive summaries of both science & free-speech in this affair, see Pickering's wholly-suppressed 2002/2/5 letter to S&T (items 1-17). And see Florida State Univ Physics Dep't statistician and super-computer specialist (and genuine BS friend & sometime helpful advisor) D.Duke's simple astonishing clincher. (DIO 12 [2002] ‡2 pp.32-33, summarized in Table 2. Equally simple: Pickering op cit Fig.1 p.5; see further at DIO 10 [2000] n.177 [p.79].)
[Competing cultists will just as dependably claim that tropical astrology still “works”, even though 2000yrs of precession has swept most of their precious constellations into adjacent signs. Hey, there are people who just are never wrong.]
It ought to be noted for contrast that DIO promptly corrects, severely criticizes, and hopefully learns from, ALL its very occasional errors.
[But let us not pretend that BS is not also learning from his mistakes. He is. From every encounter with his own tendency to spectacular error, he is learning the same lesson the grand hoaxer Frederick Cook learned: never confess. And, by its UNBROKEN RECORD OF FAILING TO REQUIRE HONEST OWNING-UP after each JHA-gang blunder — many inspired by decades of broken-record cult-parrot-alibis for formerly-sacred C.Ptolemy — the history-of-astronomy community (with the apparent blessing, of the American Astronomical Society) is educating BS&co (with that perfect consistency which is the hallmark of all great educators), teaching the same drumbeat lesson: retract nothing — take no responsibity for misleading readers, since the image of Authoritative Infallibility is more important than trivia such as truth, good science, and good character.
One can only wonder at the pressures (of politics and talent-limitations) that are constraining someone who has evidently calculated that his future is better served by winning the trust of academic pols and the admiration of the even-less-numerate masses, while losing the respect of the finest scholars of his field.]
By contrast, detection of errors in the present DIO analysis will be gratefully acknowledged and corrected as soon as received.
(Also, notices even of trivial typos in this posting have already been and will continue to be appreciated.) Further, see DR's own openly acknowledged past foul-ups and strong self-criticisms at, e.g., DIO 1.1 [1991] ‡1 §C3 [p.7]; DIO 2.1 [1992] ‡3 n.26 [p.29]; DIO 11.2 [2003] 30-point-type cover-headline; p.31 n.2. And ‡4 n.21 [p.42] removes a Gongggggggggggg from a less-deserving scholar and transfers it to DR.]
You will look in vain for any such list from Schaefer or his circle; because, again: they are never wrong.

Ducking the Clear & Hugging the Ambiguous:
BS 2005 makes pretzellian attempts (see p.177, p.179 item 3, & n.10 [p.195]) to evade the simple implications of the FACG's lethal symmetry in the size of its polar circles, an equality first metrically established (though accompanied by wise warnings regarding the circles' non-trivial random-wander) by Vladimiro Valerio years earlier (1987): equalling a mean value (56°.1) to within ±2°/3. According to BS Table 4, & p.190, both these marble circles coherently place the FACG source's at 38°N latitude, distinctly north of Hipparchos' Rhodes (36°N). But BS then perversely diverts attention instead to far fuzzier indicia which (despite the math errors cited above) get him pseudo-unerringly right into allowance of his Hipparchan conclusion after all.

The JHA's Mathematical Innocence:
Some of the paper's key math steps are attempted (not always successfully) by trial&error when well-known analytic methods would obviously be insisted-upon by a capable mathematical scientist — a creature as mythical as Pegasus among those who've consistently for decades dominated the JHA (whose Editor-for-Life is a self-confessed mathematical nin).
[Understand DIO's position: scholars with limited technical-grasp can make and have made important contributions to astronomical history. DIO has always delighted in pointing out such wonderful events, e.g., DIO 11.2 [2003] cover & p.30 n.1. The objection here is narrowly just to those journals & archons who project (to, e.g., gullible newsmen) expertise as judicious establishment-archonal-wisdom-arbiters-for-whom-all-others-must-stand-aside, while lacking essential tools appropriate to the pose.
(Again: this refers not just to the skills of the genuine scientist but to the scientific attitude that has produced the very knowledge that makes us glad to be part of the scientific tradition: receptivity to ideas on the basis of evidence [whatever the prejudice that may've inspired initial-investigation] — rather than on the basis of which side of a controversy is best-connected financially and [redundance-alert!] politically.)
Further, when a contributor obviously needs help, it is the rôle of the refereeing-process of a truly scientific journal — especially one which claims field-premiership — to advise & assist regarding accuracy, math, logic, citations, etc.]

BS says (p.189) that the on-circle data for the five parallels can't tell anything about epoch. (Which would be news to Hipparchos or Ptolemy: see Almajest 7.3.) This false statement itself hints yet again that BS is inwardly aware:
[a] The FACG “data” are too imprecise for the task at hand, for indeed epoch tests even upon all 35 of the parallel-circle “stars” find quite lax limits on epoch.
[b] Strangely, BS isn't doing 2-unknown simultaneous-stats (p.196 n.23). As in his JHA 2001 disaster, he finds unknowns 1-at-a-time.
[A specialist has made an observant comment in this connexion (2005/4/5): BS is claiming to use 70 stars to find the FACG epoch. But he is using stars#13-47 (the stars on the five parallels) by feeding (into his big 70-star chi-square finale) these 35 stars' Decl-deviations from the parallels — whose own Decls were derived by assuming (as 125BC: p.189) the very unknown he is searching for: the epoch. (Less of a problem in the present case, since sought variables are less inter-dependent than in BS 2001.)]

Full Analytic Solution:
DR has devised a program which performs the entire BS experiment in one simultaneous swoop. (The method is direct — not BS' trial&error-poking-about Testing for the effect of inclusion or exclusion [of individual data or sub-samples] is conveniently immediate.) It combines all seven of BS' variously disparate sub-samples (Tables 3&5 [pp.187&192]): [A] 12 on-colure stars (#1-#12), [B] 9 Equator stars (#13-21), [C] 9 TropCnc stars (#22-30), [D] 7 TropCap stars (#31-37), [E] 7 ArcCirc stars (#38-44), [F] 3 ArcCirc stars (#45-47), [G] 23 trash stars (#48-70). (Though these are indeed just sub-samples of the entire 70-data sample, we will feel free below to occasionally refer to each as a “sample” — depending upon context. Or whim.)
An unusual added feature of the program: the stars of the TropCap sample [D] and those of the AntCirc sample [F] are neatly merged with those of the TropCap sample [C] and ArcCirc sample [E], resp — such that the four samples ([C]-[F]) become just two, thus setting up a quick hunt for each joined-samples' common unknowns (obliquity & colatitude, resp). [We will be glad to receive reader's guesses as to the three elementary steps which effect such delicious alchemy. (Hint: the 3-step alchemic program-line is under 20 characters.)] On this data-basis, the DR program seeks all three Farnese-globe unknowns simultaneously: epoch, obliquity, and colatitude. (It is obvious that the globe's creator took it for granted that: the polar circles' Decls were [typically for antiquity] identical to each other [both = colatitude, i.e., latitude's complement]; the tropical circles' Decls, identical to each other [both = obliquity]; and the Equator's Decl equals zero by definition. (Note that BS understandably treats the five parallel circles' Decls as unknowns in Table 4 [p.188], but he correctly regards discrepancies as not significant and there shows them to be thus.) It should be noted first-off that our initial results below are not seriously discordant with BS' announced solutions. (And this shows that —whatever the theoretical crudeness of the procedure — BS was justified in thinking he would not go very far wrong in, e.g., solving for epoch with 1-variable-analysis-based obliquity & latitude. [This works out OK for the full sample; less well for the AntCirc stars, or for BS JHA 2001.]

The full simultaneous solution (on the basis of the data BS used):
epoch 132BC ± 58y   colatitude 51°.7 ± 1°.1   obliquity 23°.8 ± 0°.9    (χ² = 65.2).
The χ² does not agree with BS' value: 66.3 (pp.193&196).

But let's assume BS silently weighted the trash-“stars” precisely 1/2 as much as the on-circle “stars”. And of course BS could solve for just one unknown at a time, so we set obliquity and colatitude to the BS values (23°.95 & 51°.7, resp: BS pp.189-190) and the Equator's Decl to zero and solve analytically only for epoch:
epoch 130BC ± 57y      (χ² = 66.3).

Now, though we noted just above that this result is not very different from BS', there remains the obvious question: since the chi-square is identical, why does the solution differ at all? But both the mean and its σ (standard-deviation) do differ. (The effect of roundings?)

Further, it is slightly provocative that we can recover BS' exact χ² by assuming that he rounded the 0.49 weight-ratio (on-circles data vs trash) to precisely 0.5. BS states in detail (p.193) that he used one-datum σ = 3°.5 for “stars”#1-47, one-datum σ = 5° for trash-“stars”#48-70. But instead of 0.49 (i.e., the square of 3°.5/5°), he has evidently used 0.5. If the experiment were being done entirely by computer, it's easy to write a line demanding 0.49. But — if the final chi-square total was being added up by hand, just halving the total chi-squares for the trash would be reasonable.

Massaging the Titular Epoch:
If this addition was done by hand (at least at an intermediary point), then BS did not just do the whole experiment in one run with pre-determined weights. (BS' confusion of O−C with C−O for some samples is obviously consistent with this speculation.) Rather, he had instead developed seven stacks of chi-square totals (one for each of the sub-samples [A]-[G]), and only subsequently decided how (e.g., were all sub-sample sizes pre-determined?) to assign their relative weights. (Samples [A]&[G] being the main contributors to dating the globe, we elsewhere give reasons for the sample [G] trash's weight — vs on-colure sample [A] — being made no greater than the square of 3°/5° — which is more than 25% less than 0.49. In truth, the ratio should be virtually zero.) Picking & choosing weights allows opportunity for (consciously or no) massaging the epoch-solution, which is the prime desideratum & very title of the BS-paper.
N.B.: As we argue later, to have given any weight at all to the trash-data is THE essential massage — a central point which should not be lost sight of, amidst relatively minor and speculative questions here regarding choice of precise non-zero weight-ratio.

BS held obliquity & latitude fixed, finding by-trial where χ² is 67.3, 1 unit higher than best-fit χ² (66.3). BS p.193 states this occurs at 180BC & 70BC. By the same process, DR instead finds 188BC and 70BC, with a mean of 129BC, not 125BC. If one tests for those dates when S (sum of squares of great-circle angular deviations) exceeds minimum sum S0 (for 129BC) by the square of single-datum σ, DR instead finds 186BC and 72BC. Which is consistent with solution:
epoch 129BC ± 57y      (χ² = 66.3).

This result (from 1-variable trial&error-testing of deviations' rms) is virtually identical to the above analytically arrived-at solution. (The trivial 1y discrepancy occurs because the problem is not perfectly Gaussian.)

But, of course, all the solutions just cited are illegitimate, thanks to a glaring, undeniable sign-error for star#60 (αAri), which changes that datum's longitude by more than 10° (from BS Table 5's 2°.6 to a more accurate value of 12°.7). Correcting for this, we can provide for the 1st time the mathematically-legitimate solution for the “stars” BS has chosen & photogrammetrically placed (i.e., the correct solution for his own data-base):

This is clearly a non-trivially different result from 132BC or 129BC or BS' 125BC — though [a] it comes nowhere near ruling Hipparchos out, and [b] it is based on so much horribly-selected data that it can convincingly rule out (or in) almost no ancient astronomer.

Given BS' national self-aggrandizement by adducement of hilariously irrelevant “stars” as well as non-existent and-or mis-identified body-parts, we may pluck out (from the foregoing sample) THE most “ludicrously” illegitimate “star” of an already bad lot — Cassiopeia's by-now-notorious “breast” (αCas — actually her neck) which BS' Table 5 star#66 placed upon her back! — and see how its merciful elimination will alter the deduced epoch; result:

We're now 1/4 century away from BS' 125BC solution. So BS' two most “absurd” screw-ups (αAri & αCas) were so misleading that correcting them has moved the epoch-solution nearly half-way from his mean to his upper-bound.

We could go further. Since BS' Table 3 star#2 claims to put the westernmost Per star on the equColure, and since Table 3's star#38 is a far-further-west Per “star ”, χPer, one may justifiably substitute χPer into the on-colure sample [A] and re-do the whole BS computation. If we retain our other two corrections (above: correcting αAri & dumping αCas), we find:

This now puts us 40y later than the widely-disseminated false Farnese date 125BC.
But, to repeat: none of these solutions actually tell us anything. (Beyond illustrating how unreliable the BS paper's date really is.) They are all invalidated by a different unreliability: the incorporated trash-data of sample [G] (Table 5).

The DR program may easily be adjusted for checking among the seven sub-samples, which is where we will find several difficulties, regarding, e.g., data-reliability and sample-compatibility.

Arctic Circle:
Analysing the on-parallel-circle data via 2-unknown least-squares. Arctic Circle (ArcCirc) results:
For BS Table 3's seven ArcCirc stars:
Decl +51°.7 ± 1°.5 and epoch 208BC ± 330y.
Since outlier χPer is not a star but a diffuse cluster — and a double-cluster at that — and not surely on FACG's ArcCirc, it should be dropped. The 2-variable solution for the remaining six BS stars:
Decl +52°.6 ± 0°.8 and epoch 493BC ± 190y.
DR tried to clean up the ArcCirc sample further: replacing ιCas by εCas and dropping Cep entirely. (The ArcCirc goes through Cep's neck [see bottom of (inverted) photo C], but the only serious star there [νCep] isn't in any ancient catalog. [Note: its Decl (52°.2) would be no problem for our conclusions, anyway.]) This leaves five stars, from which DR finds:
Decl +51°.5 ± 0°.5 and epoch 195BC ± 121y.
Note: Both the epoch results are expressed much too precisely, given their σ. (BS' restraint in this regard sets a good example [better than DR's, rather too often]: he rounds to the nearest 5 years throughout.) For results with σ around 100 years or more, we will henceforth round to the nearest decade. Restating the foregoing solutions thusly, we have:
7 BS stars: Decl +51°.7 ± 1°.5 and epoch 210BC ± 330y.
6 BS stars: Decl +52°.6 ± 0°.8 and epoch 490BC ± 190y.
5 DR stars: Decl +51°.5 ± 0°.5 and epoch 200BC ± 120y.
[Comparable AntCirc results are provided below, where we now additionally find non-trivial impact of BS-ignored p.m..]
These tests tell us little about epoch (though not nothing), but confirm BS' new & potentially useful estimation of the (distortion-adjusted) sizes of the polar circles at about 38°.

Hipparchos as Source?:
The Farnese globe (FACG) is plainly not son-of-Hipparchos, as claimed. (The two allegedly-connected sources may perhaps be the equivalent of cousins. But that could be said of pretty much any two roughly contemporaneous constellation-depictions throughout the history of celestial cartography.)
Valerio makes (2005/3/28) the trenchant point that it is trivial to trace some Hipparchan influence if Ptolemy's catalog was used, since the at-last-esteemed R.Newton showed years ago that the Ptolemy catalog was stolen from Hipparchos and then updated for the 2nd century AD — and this agrees roughly with Valerio's estimated date, which he based in part upon the FACG Ecliptic-Equator intersections.

The BS study's publisher, the Journal for the History of Astronomy, regards Reliability as a political not a scientific word, a mentality which may perhaps be related to its long and consistent history of inadequate refereeing. As noted above, there were six JHA referees for the FACG paper, yet evidently none succeeded in repairing any of the wide range of problems just précised above.
[Mega-Irony: the hottest rage (1983/3/3) of JHA Editor-for-Life Michael Hoskin's esteamed papal career occurred when the JHA's refereeing inadequacies were helpfully pointed out by DR. (And BS was invited onto the JHA board in 2002 right after his national-popsci-mag attack upon the very same critic.) For partial catalogs of history-of-astronomy-journal refereeing lapses, see DIO 4.1 [1994] ‡4 §A [p.48]; DIO 10 [2000] n.177 [p.79]; and DIO 11.1 [2002] p.2 n.2.]

JHA-Evaded Proof of non-Hipparchan Origin
The Farnese globe bears two prominent polar circles: the Arctic (ArcCirc) & Antarctic (AntCirc). (Before going off into alibi-land, BS starts well by rightly realizing that the polar circles' size [p.176] “must be related in some sense to the latitude of the observer.”) Each circle represents the boundary of stars that are ever (ArcCirc) or never (AntCirc) visible at the FACG cataloger's latitude. (Thus, to put it simply: the polar circles' size [radius] is the latitude; and their Decl is the co-latitude [the complement: 90° − latitude].) Now, two undeniable key facets of these circles syllogistically kill the Hipparchan theory. (BS tries evading both by:
[1] using a hilariously out-of-context quote. [2] confusing plus with minus.) The remarkable details follow:

Latitude Investigations and the Elimination of Hipparchos:
The three famous bright stars on FACG's AntCirc (BS 2005 Table 3 stars#45-47) argue persuasively that this circle's Declination (Decl) is about 52° South. (BS acknowledges this at Table 4 and pp.191.)

North-horizon atmospheric extinction affects the size of the Arctic Circle in a sense opposite to the way in which south-horizon atm-extinction affects the Antarctic Circle: extinction obviously expands the AntCirc (as BS rightly realizes), but extinction just-as-obviously shrinks the ArcCirc. (Yet another BS sign-confusion.) BS' discussions appear inversely mixed-up regarding this elementary point, which is crucial to the issue of the Farnese-source observer's latitude because ancients realized that the size of one's Arctic and Antarctic circles (both) equalled one's latitude. The FACG has visibly-obvious symmetry for these circle's distances from their respective poles. (The experienced prior FACG-investigator, mathematician Vladimiro Valerio, had already shown this equality [and BS agrees to it], years ago: analysis published in the Der Globusfreund [Vienna 1987], pp.97-114 [English] with illustrations on p.124 plus Figs.18&19 [Report of the 6th International Symposium of the Coronelli Society, Amsterdam]), “Historiographic and Numerical Notes on the Atlante Farnese and Its Celestial Sphere” — which includes a generous introduction and a generously full bibliography: see Valerio 1987 p.105.) The circles' equality alone proves beyond question that whoever was responsible for the Farnese globe's creation ignored extinction and simply placed both polar circles the same distance from their respective poles in accord with a chosen geographical latitude. (This was just standard ancient practice [see, e.g., Geminos 5.2&9]: the ancients described the horizon in purely mathematical terms: DIO 12 [2002] ‡1 §§F3 & especially F11 [pp.17&19].
[Strabo 2.5.14 says Eudoxos could see αCar [Canopus] (less than 1° above the horizon) from Knidos, which presumably influenced Hipparchos' rendering of both his polar circles as identically large (HC1.11.3&8): i.e., null extinction-angle-correction.] Note, too, the following well-known items, all of which confirm the consistency of ancient practice in this connexion:

1. All of the hundreds of phenomena in Hipparchos' Commentary are computed vis-à-vis a simple, ideal great-circle horizon, precisely 90° from the zenith. (An example of the math is provided at DIO 7.1 [1997] ‡‡2&3 [pp.14-17].)

2. At GD 1.7.4, Marinos is quoted as equating the southern limit of the ever-visible circle for UMi with αUMi's NPD, an equation probably due to Hipparchos, who is there cited for the NPD's value (12°2/5, correct for H's not M's epoch).

3. In the extremely important and meticulous K.Pickering study just cited above (which should be known to all students of ancient astronomy), it has been thoroughly proven (DIO 12 [2002]) that the ancients' data for planets' arcus visionis and (inevitably! — see ibid §F11, Fig.4, & Table 3 [p.19]) acronychal risings are also figured — as anciently stated & diagrammed — for such ideal horizons.
   (For individual planets, there is, in fact, no meaningful way to define acronychal risings based upon extinction — a crucial point evidently 1st announced by DIO (idem). When Pickering informed BS of this inconvenient but inevadable truth, BS' response was that of one utterly trapped between the force of factual truth and the force of Authority-pretense: he fled.)

There will always be disagreement over the FACG-circles-Decl's value & meaning; but there is none whatever about the fact that the N&S circles (tropical or polar) were designed to have the same size: [a] on the marble; [b] in ancient tradition; [c] and (BS correctly contends) in the associated stellar Decls. BS realizes these two circles' symmetry (equal size) — indeed, he even laboriously proves and explicitly concludes for it (p.191). But then, inexplicably, BS chooses (p.177) to fast-shuffle-evade the fact that if extinction actually affected these circles (an assumption which in itself