A number of recent publications suggest a "new method for petroleum studies" based on circular dichroism (CD) spectra, which presumably feature a "characteristic CD band near 300 nm". The authors ascribe this band to "resonance absorption of pure asphaltene, measured by a number of authors". In fact, neither of supporting references deals with optical absorption of asphaltenes. Moreover, our experimental data as well as critical analysis of other publications on optical spectroscopy of asphaltenes show that the mythical "resonance absorption" is merely a solvent-related artifact. We conclude that the discussed "new method" is founded upon the same experimental artifacts and should be disregarded as basically erroneous.