This note refers to my article at http://barrypittard.wordpress.com, acknowledging a scholar's groundbreaking work in examination of Sathya Sai Baba's claims to be the greatest of all Avatars to manifest in this world. See Sai Baba Researchers' Huge Debt To Scholar Brian Steel

All who are in search of detailed evidence will find Brian Steel’s meticulous, painstakingly researched work (from 2001 on) indispensable. It is vast. Before leaving Sathya Sai Baba after 12 years, he was esteemed by Sai Towers publishing company in Puttaparthi and respectfully read by many devotees around the world.

He closely and critically examines Sai Baba’s own words and works, as well as the publicly recorded statements and actions of his world wide Sathya Sai Organization. He shows - and, the historical perspective, third party, independent scholars and other serious investigators will be in a far better position to judge than Sai Baba's proxy defenders on the Internet and elsewhere - the anomalies, contradictions, historically and scientifically incorrect statements that have misled a great many otherwise intelligent and decent human beings into a profoundly unsupportable and intellectually compromised belief in him.

Brian Steel has long insisted on the importance of not looking with undue overemphasis at the more sensational elements, such as the many accounts worldwide attesting to Sathya Sai Baba's serial sexual abuse of young males over decades and the killings in Sai Baba’s bedroom and the monumental cover up in which both State and Central Indian governments have been party to. Steel’s principle hope is that serious media and academic attention (especially in India) will finally be paid to the neglected masses of evidence available in Sathya Sai Baba’s ‘Discourses’ and the Organisation archives as well as the useful nuggets of data scattered among the hundreds of hagiographical works about Sai Baba. I have written further on Brian steel:   

William Aitken’s Book Fails to Answer Sai Baba Critics

William Aitken’s Sai Baba Book. Major Flaws Says Scholar

Brian Steel. Website: Recent Research On The Claims Of Sathya Sai Baba . Blogsite: (often in the area of his academic expertise as a Spanish linguist but also some Sai Baba related issues): http://briansteel.wordpress.com.