Today's soundtrack is Celtic Frost: Monotheist.
Today, I'm reading the first chapter of Kenneth L. Feder's Frauds, Myths and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, "Science and Pseudoscience."
Feder begins by listing some of the kinds of pseudoscience that he has seen published: Tarot cards, alien abductions, psychic cats, magic crystals, levitation, spontaneous combustion. When researching the claims of the purveyers of pseudoscience and occultism, he found that their claims of archaeological evidence were based on either twisted information or pure ignorance. Some believe that our modern machines represent modern man's attempts to reclaim the powers that he had in the past; whether it was attained by a prior atomic age, alien transmission, or pure psychic power, they are unsure. Feder found glaring errors in such claimants' documentations of history and archaeology. He began to wonder why people so well-versed in biology, physics, and chemistry were so ignorant of history and archaeology (areas where Feder was knowledgeable); through further research, he found that biologists and physicists easily refuted the other portions of their claims. So it seems that anyone familiar with a family of science was able to easily refute what these pseudoscientists say.
Feder claims that the general population learns most of their information about archaeology from paperbacks from biased authors trying to make some kind of claim (the existence of Bigfoot, or Atlantis, or King Tut's curse, etc.), which dilutes the truth; he says that archaeology has suffered because of its popularity. Feder says that there are six reasons that these kinds of pseudoscience are published: money, fame, nationalism or racism, religion, a sense of romantic adventure, or even mental instability.
