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A widely broadcast story on Islamic sites claims that a Jewish genetics expert from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine converted to Islam as a result of scientific evidence supporting the Quran. His name is listed variously as Robert Guilham, Robert Gelham or Robert Gilham.

Yet, when I tried to find his name, I couldn't find it. He doesn't seem to be listed in faculty and staff.

Does/did this person exist?

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  • The question of what an individual believes is considered off-topic, because no-one can really prove it. So, I changed the focus of the question as to whether this person actually exists at all. (I couldn't find "Robert Guilham" on Google Scholar, suggesting he's never published, but given the quoted name has morphed, I may have misspelt it.)
    – Oddthinking
    Sep 3, 2012 at 0:34
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    I couldn't find it at all. Great edit Oddthinking. Thanks a lot.
    – user4951
    Sep 3, 2012 at 1:22
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    Jim, that's a tricky issue. This one is tricky enough to answer, because if he doesn't exist, that is hard to prove. If you put a lot of people in as one claim, it will be almost impossible to answer (just because you find some people do exist/have converted to another religion that isn't a complete answer.) While having lots of these questions may cause some pollution of the site, I think it is better than the alternative of impossible questions. Maybe throttle the questioning so they don't dominate? A question for Meta I guess.
    – Oddthinking
    Sep 3, 2012 at 2:41
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    There is no strong evidence of quran or other holy book being able to outdone science. When they do 1. It's so vague. 2. It's obvious to some people. 3. Moderate (like jewish calculation of pi)
    – user4951
    Sep 6, 2012 at 2:09
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    @Parto What "internet database" are you talking about?
    – Golden Cuy
    Sep 6, 2012 at 2:56

1 Answer 1

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Well, I did read an analysis of this story on a the Indonesian collaborative news site Grevada, written by Anindya Yumika Dewi . The story can be believed to be the same because it refers to the same link (through an obsolete Google cache link) on socyberty. The story was then taken to the online website of Indonesian newspaper Republika (cf Wikipedia), where it can still be found under the title "Gara-Gara Iddah, Pemimpin Yahudi Masuk Islam". The website redactors seem to give it full credential (Maybe someone could ask them?).

Beside reporting on the different sites that published the story, accordingly leading to Egypt, and stating that there is no Robert Guilhem at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the article written by Anindya Yumika Dewi questions the scientific content of the story.

An unreferenced assertion in the article tells about the current state of scientific knowledge on the inner mould of the human vagina, which, according to the author of the article, would make the results of the study supposedly carried out by Mr. Guilhem very unlikely to be produced.

The author also indirectly points out the strangeness of a geneticist studying the mucous membrane of a vagina, which is (cf wikipedia) a difficult object of study when looking for "fingerprints" because of its changing form during the usual female life (i.e. sexual arousal, and giving birth).

The author is able to demonstrate (provided his arguments are not false) that there is no geneticist called Robert Guilhem having worked on penis fingerprints on human vaginas at the AECM. However, the question of who the individual could be remains largely unexamined, and I couldn't find out at which place this study on the Quran-conformed penis fingerprints was carried out.

There is a photo declared to be a portrait of Robert Guilhem on the Republika website.

Furthermore, the Indonesian website spiritislam.net (see alexa site ranking for more info) has removed the story because of hoax charges.

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