The Lost Circle Fog and the gullibility of the media

 

I have been doing an interesting exercise -- checking back on the gullibility of the media and the coverage of the "Lost Circle" story in February 2021.  You will recall that there was a very carefully orchestrated publicity campaign at the time, with the first transmission of the "Lost Circle" TV documentary timed to coincide with the publication of the original Antiquity article. The amount of work that went into this cannot be overstated -- the documentary maker, the broadcaster, the authors of the journal article, the publishers of "Antiquity", the UCL press office and many others must have been in the loop.   All were intent upon maximum publicity and maximum impact -- and who cares anyway about the reliability of what is being promoted as one of the stories of the century?

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-original-stonehenge-here-we-go-again.html 

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/02/antiquity-article-on-lost-circle-review.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-mythologisation-of-parker-pearson.html

No wonder, with all that high-powered pressure, that the media fell for it hook, line and sinker. At the head of this post are just a few of the headlines in just a few of the media outlets. There were scores of others in similar vein. The reports were filled with incredulity, certainty and admiration for the exploits and persistence of the research team. Hardly any of the journalists who covered the story expressed any reservations or used the words "possible" or "may".  Most of them simply regurgitated the contents of the UCL press release -- or similar press releases from the press offices of other institutions linked to the research team of about a dozen authors. 

As we knew at the time -- around 3 years ago -- a lot of the contents of the TV documentary and the Antiquity article were poorly researched and deeply misleading. The programme should never have been made and broadcast, and the article should never have been published. I said all that at the time, and I say it again now, following the recent retraction of many of the things that were claimed by the authors themselves. The "complete circle" has gone; the monolith imprint has gone; the geological link with the so-called "quarries" has gone; the monolith export to Stonehenge has gone; and it's now accepted that Waun Mawn had nothing whatsoever to do with Stonehenge.

It's all a bit of a fog, with some reliable information out there somewhere, but almost impossible to discern.......

There are many lessons to be learned -- but will they be learned? I have my doubts. For start, archaeologists (and geologists) should not be so obsessed with IMPACT that they rush into print and present half-baked ideas as realities and inadequate field observations as hard evidence. University press offices should be much more careful about the choice of papers given high-level PR treatment.  Journal editors should be much more careful about their choice of peer reviewers and about their publication decisions.  And the media should be much more circumspect when assessing the press releases coming from certain press offices and when deciding what coverage to give to "spectacular" stories.

Will any those involved in this fiasco regret their errors of judgement, or admit that they have been conned, or apologise to their customers or to those who have grant-aided them?  I doubt it very much.........

And will the media cover the publication of my new paper in The Holocene journal, published after very tight peer review and claiming that Waun Mawn had nothing whatsoever to do with Stonehenge?  I doubt that very much too -- because to cover the story would be to admit to their own gullibility and lack of scrutiny when they published all that tosh about the "Lost Circle" just three years ago.