Reply to Boslough: Prior studies validating research are ignored

In PNAS, M. Boslough (1) raises issues about carbon spherules and nanodiamonds unrelated to our magnetic spherule focused research (2). Boslough should instead address the questions he raises to the appropriate investigators. Boslough’s letter contains inaccurate and misleading statements, suggesting he misread our report. Boslough incorrectly states that A. West devised the spherule protocol, instead of archaeologist W. Topping, who was also responsible for some of the spherule results reported by Firestone et al. (3). Boslough then asserts, “Samples collected by others have failed to reproduce his findings” (1). Boslough continues to overlook our results and others'. We …