Rhosyfelin working paper reaches 600 reads

The times they are a'changin'.............  I've just had a notification from Researchgate that my working paper disputing the  "quarrying origins" of the features at Craig Rhosyfelin has reached 600 reads.   So a lot of people out there are taking it rather seriously. That's interesting because it is not a peer-reviewed paper published in an academic journal, but something much more informal, published in order to stimulate interest and to invite comments and discussion.

It's intriguing that so many people have decided to read it, and just as interesting that NOBODY has seen fit to dispute anything contained in the article or to challenge its conclusions. The members of MPP's quarry-hunting research team who should have put up or shut up have decided to shut up.  What does that tell us about the article, and what does it tell us about them?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307551709_Craig_Rhos-y-felin_is_NOT_shown_to_be_a_Welsh_bluestone_megalith_quarry_for_Stonehenge

As we have discussed before, the fact of something being published in a "respectable journal" does not instantly ensure that it is of high quality, given the increasing trend of  authors choosing their own referees or of editors choosing friendly referees if they want something published, and hostile referees if they want to turn something down.  Scientific corruption?  Of course it is.

I have argued many times that the two peer-reviewed papers detailing the research work of the MPP team on Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog, and published in "Antiquity" are so bad that they should never have been published in the first place.    Other academics agree with me.

So Researchgate gives an opportunity for a new kind of "open" publishing, in which an author can get freshly-completed or controversial work out there into an academic domain at high speed and allow it to be scrutinized as harshly or as gently as the academic community wishes. If the work is carefully assembled and presented (as I think mine is) it will be given respect.  And it will  be read.

By the way, the paper written with colleagues Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downed entitled
"OBSERVATIONS ON THE SUPPOSED “NEOLITHIC BLUESTONE QUARRY” AT CRAIG RHOSYFELIN, PEMBROKESHIRE" (December 2015) has now been read 1472 times on Researchgate.  The article entitled "QUATERNARY EVENTS AT CRAIG RHOSYFELIN, PEMBROKESHIRE" (also Dec 2015) has been read 644 times on Researchgate -- with no doubt many more readings on the QRA wen site.

And even more interesting -- shall we use the word "reprehensible"? -- is the fact that in all of the papers written by the MPP team and relating to the "quarrying hypothesis" there is not a single  mention of the fact that there is a dispute going on, and not a single citation of any of the three key articles mentioned above.   The conspiracy of silence continues........and would anybody like to give me a rational explanation for it?