Following the publication of the two recent geological papers by Bevins et al and Pearce et al, the "Lost Circle of Waun Mawn" is now even more lost than it was before -- regardless of the attempts by those concerned to demonstrate that it is still has some sort of relevance in the debate about Stonehenge and the bluestones.
Anyway, in response to these developments I have up-dated my Waun Mawn article called "Waun Mawn and the search for Proto-Stonehenge" on Researchgate, and it can be read here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345177590_Waun_Mawn_and_the_search_for_Proto-_Stonehenge
3 comments:
"And go round and round and round
In the Circle Game....."
JONI MITCHELL 1966
Dr John,
I checked in to your blog again today and was very pleased to see that you have absolutely justified my point about working papers not being safe to cite by updating your Waun Mawn report to its eleventh version (removing – if there was one - a version 10), by adding a critique of the two recent papers by Bevins et al and Pearce et al.
I was pleased to read in earlier correspondence that, “with renewed vigour” you will get material ready to submit for publication. However, below I quote a series of phrases you use on page 27 of your revised Waun Mawn v.11 working paper
“the putative stone circle”, “nothing at Waun Mawn to get excited about”, “is fanciful”, “unsupported by hard evidence”, “the putative circle”, “speculative”, “no evidence to support it”, “had they done the most basic geological fieldwork”, “no more reliable”, “authors of this paper have not bothered”, “Needless to say, this analysis proved to be worthless”, “Unsurprisingly, they discover that there is no link”, “has been grossly inflated”, and “an unsustainable narrative”
I did not read the rest of the working paper, I was simply curious how you addressed the latest work on Waun Mawn, and what the additions were to v.9.
These are remarkably emotive phrases, where you question the ability of the authors, you presume to know what they did and what motivated them, using criticism which is not in any way objective, and which lacks support in your narrative, reading too much like a rant rather than a review. As an editor, I would return your paper to you without sending it out for peer review and request a more balanced, less emotive, less subjective, less libellous(?), rewrite. Perhaps this is why your work has not yet found a wider audience in the scientific literature, and not as you suggest that the story it tells “was too inconvenient” to the archaeological community. Clearly you believe this interpretation with a passion, but perhaps that is not the only issue?
To quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “Scientific objectivity is a property of various aspects of science. It expresses the idea that scientific claims, methods, results—and scientists themselves—are not, or should not be, influenced by particular perspectives, value judgments, community bias or personal interests, to name a few relevant factors.” You often times accuse MPP, Bevins and Ixer of having an agenda, lacking scientific rigour etc, but pot and kettle leaps to mind here.
I am not publishing anything more here from "unknown" or "anonymous" persons. If you have something to say, give your name with your comment, and I might then take you seriously.
Post a Comment