Not for the first time, I have received a foul and abusive message from somebody who should know better, cursing me for daring to criticise -- in my post of the other day -- a scientific paper that has not yet been published.....
I kid you not.
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/
So the paper that has been garnering headlines all over the world has not actually seen the light of day. That confirms what I suspected, having spent some hours looking for it all over the place. The link given in some of the press reports does not work.
The UCL press release, subject to a strict press embargo until 20 December, went out to a huge mailing list, with an expectation of vast media coverage, without anybody being able to check on the quality of the paper that was being so heavily promoted. Some of the key media people were sent pre-publication copies of the paper, and I obtained one of these. My post was based on my reading of that draft. I acted quite responsibly and in good faith, read the article carefully, and did not break the embargo.
This is quite extraordinary. A group of quite senior academics has manipulated a huge marketing and media campaign, designed to grab the attention of gullible science and archaeology reporters all over the world -- but in circumstances where nobody could actually get a sight of the actual published article. That is unbelievably arrogant.
The article of course contains nothing new. It is essentially an opinion piece, packed from beginning to end with speculations and assumptions. In the absence of any other evidence about what has gone on here, we can only assume that the authors (Parker Pearson, Bevins, Ixer, Bradley, Pearce and Richards) simply wanted to get maximum media coverage while the going was good, before anybody had a chance to subject their article to proper scientific scrutiny.
No comments:
Post a Comment