No 1. The Rhosyfelin hoax -- dead and buried
No 2. The Carn Goedog hoax -- a public inconvenience
No 3. The Waun Mawn hoax -- storytelling in the rain
There are five rather interesting short (15 mins) programmes on BBC Sounds on the subject of scientific hoaxes. We assume that these are the "top five" chosen by the producer and the presenter, from different fields of research. There is room for just one archaeological hoax, and of course they have gone for "Piltdown Man" and Charles Dawson. One other was of particular interest to me -- and that was on the subject of "Ice Age refugia" and the planting of exotic plants on the island of Rhum by a strange fellow (John Heslop Harrison) who had a pet theory to prove............ Sounds familiar?
As they say in the Church Times: Dr Tori Herridge is an entertaining guide to the misdemeanours; and, while she is keen to draw deeper inferences, the most profound lesson here is about the lengths to which otherwise sensible people will go to protect an academic reputation, and how very silly they look when they fail.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001psq9/episodes/player
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/1-september/books-arts/radio/radio-review-hoax-the-huberman-lab-and-the-early-music-show
An interesting point made by Dr Tori Herridge at the end of one of the programmes is that if you want to be a successful hoaxer, you must control the public access to your evidence. That of course is a condition amply met on the sites of the three "bluestone excavations" undertaken by Prof MPP and his team. As in all archaeological digs, the evidence promptly disappears as soon as the dig is filled in. Scrutiny by outsiders is rendered impossible, and there is no option other than to accept and believe whatever the researchers choose to place in front of you. There is also the matter of professional etiquette. In archaeological circles it is apparently accepted that you do not examine and write about other people's digs; you are supposed to give due respect to what the diggers tell you about what they have found, and if you don't like it very much, you are supposed to go back and do a dig of your own and provide a different interpretation of what lies beneath the surface. All very well in an ideal world, maybe -- but how many of us have the cash resources, the time, and the accessible manpower to go back to Rhosyfelin and do it all again?
This sort of thinking became very evident when Dyfed Elis-Gruyffydd, John Downes and I submitted a paper about one of the three sites to a "reputable" archaeological journal. It was turned down by the Editor (we knew it would be) on the basis of just one peer review, which we were shown. It was essentially a rant by somebody who was clearly outraged by the very idea of three scientists questioning the research methods and the findings of a group of senior academic archaeologists, and accusing us of professional misconduct by examining an excavation site that was effectively the private property of somebody else. Bloody cheek. He, or she, was apparently unaware (1) that the site was on common land and was thus open for any passing hillwalker to take a look at, and (2) that the dig was funded with public money, which brings with it a requirement for openness and public access. Further, to confirm blatant bias, the reviewer failed to address or challenge any of the key points in our submitted paper.
Needless to say, we three found that all very entertaining and illuminating, since, as earth scientists, we are used to all of our observed and recorded field sites being accessible, all the time, to our peers and to anybody else who cares to look at them. Abermawr, Whitesands, Ogof Golchfa, Flimston, Black Mixen, West Angle, Parrog, Ceibwr..... the list goes on and on. If anybody wants to check what I have to say on any of these, go and take a look, and use the grid references I have provided. And tell me what you see, so that we can have a discussion.
There is another broadcast on hoaxes in "Witness" -- another BBC radio series on the World Service. This programme (9 minutes) was introduced by Simon Watts. It's still available on BBC Sounds. Simon makes the interesting points that people see what they want to see, and that some academics will do whatever it takes to demonstrate that their pet theories are correct. For the hoaxer, you have to have the means and the opportunities to perpetrate your hoax. You also have to have a "favourable context" -- a peer group broadly supportive of what you claim to have discovered, and an element of "national pride" in a discovery that enhances a core belief or makes your country's academics look smarter than those from other countries. That rings a bell, does it not? I have previously reported on the "favourable context" within which Herbert Thomas's narrative or myth of bluestone transport was accepted with acclamation by a gullible academic community and a gullible media, back in 1923.
For a scientific hoax to be successful, it requires four preconditions:
1. A gullible public predisposed to believe in “new discoveries”. (The mere use of the word "Stonehenge" in a press release guarantees wide media coverage.)
2. A colourful and swashbuckling lead character who has a respectable past and a strong media presence.
3. A body of “evidence” cited in support of the hoax which cannot be checked or replicated by anybody else.
4. The ability to suppress or "drown out" anything inconvenient that might show up the hoax for what it is. You can also vilify your opponents behind the scenes and use your establishment contacts to ensure that anything they write has little chance of being published.
So, in summary, there are three hoaxes here:
1. The Craig Rhosyfelin Neolithic Quarry hoax
2. The Carn Goedog Neolithic Quarry hoax.
3. The Waun Mawn Lost Circle hoax.
Why have these hoaxes been perpetrated and accepted without proper scrutiny? Herd mentality? The suspension of disbelief? Selective sediment removal? Selective citation? Self-delusion or self-deception? The accidental failure to cite "inconvenient evidence"? Confirmation bias? Maybe all of these. I hesitate to accuse MPP and his team of malign intent -- but I do think that they have so thoroughly convinced themselves of the importance of their "discoveries" and the truth of their interpretations that they have failed to see the shortcomings of their own research, and that they have wallowed rather too easily in the glories of peer-group approval and media attention.
As it happens, two of the three hoaxes are already exposed and disposed of.
In 2015 Dyfed, John and I published two peer-reviewed papers about Rhosyfelin, one (in Quaternary Newsletter) describing and interpreting the observed features at the site, and the other (in Archaeology in Wales) scrutinising and re-interpreting the evidence published by MPP and his team in their own 2015 paper. Eight years have passed, and MPP and his team have not challenged a single component of either paper. It can therefore be assumed that, as ever in academia, if to do not challenge something you are deemed to have accepted it. The idea that Rhosyfelin is "the Pompeii of Neolithic stone quarries" is dead, and has been for eight years, and it is sad that those who perpetrated the myth cannot bring themselves to admit it.
The Waun Mawn "Lost Circle" hoax has now also been exposed, as I knew it would be more than 5 years ago. The myth was so clearly preposterous that it could not survive, as I have pointed out in my Waun Mawn article on Researchgate which has now been read 6,854 times:
I wasn't the only sceptic about the Waun Mawn research done by the MPP team -- even Tim Darvill and Mike Pitts expressed reservations. Massive scepticism was expressed on social media, especially after the infamous Alice Roberts documentary was broadcast (many times). Anyway, bit by bit the components of the Waun Mawn myth have been shown up as fantasies or fabrications by the very people who invented them in the first place -- and in the process trying to restore some self-esteem by telling us that this is what academia is all about -- self-examination and the self-correction of working hypotheses. Tosh. For years these people have just refused to listen to what other people have been saying to them -- and now they have been shown up as both incompetent and misguided. In the words of Dr Teri Herridge, they look "very silly" indeed.
That leaves the Carn Goedog hoax. Watch this space..........
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Wikipedia:
A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into putting up the highest possible social currency in support of the hoax.
Whereas the promoters of frauds, fakes, and scams devise them so that they will withstand the highest degree of scrutiny customary in the affair, hoaxers are confident, justifiably or not, that their representations will receive no scrutiny at all. They have such confidence because their representations belong to a world of notions fundamental to the victims' views of reality, but whose truth and importance they accept without argument or evidence, and so never question.
Some hoaxers intend eventually to unmask their representations as in fact a hoax so as to expose their victims as fools; seeking some form of profit, other hoaxers hope to maintain the hoax indefinitely, so that it is only when sceptical persons willing to investigate their claims publish their findings that at last they stand revealed as hoaxers.
