I'm happy to announce that I have a new (albeit still preliminary at this point) structure for the portion of my upcoming Forbidden Archaeology course in which we will be discussing the Kensington Rune Stone (KRS). As I've written before, Fobidden Archaeology (ANTH 291 for prospective students at USC) is intended first and foremost to be an exercise in critical thinking, logic, and the evidence-based methods we can employ to discriminate credible from non-credible statements about the human past. Scott Wolter's departure from the schedule doesn't mean that we're not going to talk about the KRS: the origins and meaning of the stone continue to be the focus of a multi-leveled debate that can be used to illustrate the scientific process. I'm hoping that the guests I've now lined up will help my students work through the main points of that debate and experience how scientific methods can be used to frame critical questions and develop testable expectations material evidence related to the past.  

Because of South Carolina law (I was required to settle on texts for the course some time ago), I'm locked into using Wolter's Hooked X book. We'll use that book and other sources to understand arguments supporting the claim that the KRS is a genuine medieval artifact dating to 1362.  Each guest that I've invited will address a different aspect of that claim. 

The Geology and Age of the Kensington Rune Stone

Dr. Harold Edwards will be joining the class (via Skype) to discuss the geology of the KRS as it relates to interpretations of the age of the inscription. Edwards, a professional geologist who works in Minnesota, is currently preparing a paper on the geology of the KRS. He has written lengthy critiques of Wolter's conclusions about the weathering of the KRS on Jason Colavito's blog (e.g., here), and has made comments on my blog in the past. Edwards does not accept the KRS as a medieval artifact on the basis of its geology.

The Runes

Dr. Henrik Williams will be talking to the class (via Skype) about the linguistics of the KRS. Williams is an expert in Germanic runes who has made extensive study of the KRS inscription. You can see a brief interview with Williams in this podcast from the Minnesota Historical Society. Williams does not accept the KRS as a medieval artifact on the basis of its runology.

The Kensington Rune Stone as a Modern Masonic Creation

Finally, Paul Stewart will speak to the class about his ideas of who created the KRS and why. In his 2013 book The Enigmatist, Stewart argued that the KRS was neither a genuine medieval artifact nor an intentional hoax, concluding that it was probably created by Freemasons in the 1800's (perhaps by the Cryptic Rite in 1880). I'm hoping that Stewart will be able to visit the class in person.

While the fine details of scheduling these three guests remain to be worked out, I anticipate that the KRS discussion will happen sometime in early November. Ideally, these guests would be able to interact with my class in the order listed above: geology, runology, and the "third way" interpretation offered by Stewart. I'm planning on helping my students be as prepared as possible to ask Edwards, Williams, and Stewart the toughest questions that they can, probably designating some of them to take Wolter's positions on whatever issues are raised. I want my students to learn how to arm themselves with questions and facts and how to engage with those questions and facts in ways that are constructive, productive, and fun. While I don't yet know how successful I'll be in doing that, I think all signs point to this class being a good ride. Stay tuned.

I'm going to keep this short, because life is short and I don't see much utility in expending a lot of energy on this issue.

As I wrote yesterday, Scott Wolter communicated to me that he was no longer interested in participating in my upcoming class. He told me in the email that it was because Jason Colavito would also be involved in the class (here is Jason's take). Given that Colavito would be participating at a different time and discussing totally different topics, it seemed like a strange decision to me. For that reason, I chose to let Wolter be the one to explain it if he cared to. It didn't take long for "Hutton Pulitzer" to show up on my blog and demonstrate, again, his aversion to factual accuracy. "Hutton Pulitzer's" comment provided information about Wolter's decision that I did not. So now it's a topic for discussion.

Scott Wolter decided not to participate in the class because Jason Colavito was also participating.

The alert reader will have noticed my use of quotation marks around "Hutton Pulitzer." As several people commented on yesterday's post, the language used by "Hutton Pulitzer" is distinctly un-Pulitzer-like, being largely devoid of typos, lacking the USE OF ALL CAPS, and written in more-or-less readable English. I have no way of knowing for sure, but it is plausible that "Hutton Pulitzer" was actually Scott Wolter in disguise.

Whether or not "Hutton Pulitzer" was Pulitzer himself or Wolter in a Pulitzer mask, my feelings are the same: good riddance. Team XplRr has passed my tolerance threshold for absurdity.

I'm a professor at an R1 university. I have a PhD. I do real archaeology and I teach students how to do real archaeology. The Forbidden Archaeology course is designed as an exercise in evidence-based critical thinking and communication. It exists to demonstrate to students that we have mechanisms for discerning credible from non-credible explanations of the human past. Not all ideas we have and stories we tell about the past can be correct, so how do we figure out which ones we can throw out? As I've written several times, the lack of a falsification mechanism is one of the hallmarks of pseudo-science. Holding ideas up to evidence-based scrutiny is what archaeologists do. If you're not doing that, you're not doing science. Forbidden Archaeology is designed to help students learn how to critically evaluate competing narratives about the past. 

For a class like this to work, there has to be a free flow of ideas and information. Period. The title of the course is tongue-in-cheek:  in my book there really is nothing that is "forbidden." As long as we have some mechanism for measuring the credibility of ideas and evidence, there's no reason to be afraid of examining any claim about the past. When some ideas or pieces of evidence are put "off limits," science begins to break down. It's okay to have vigorous disagreements, but at some level you have to agree on what constitute "facts" and "evidence."  Even in a dojo, where combat arts are learned and exercised, there are rules to be followed. 

When I talked to Wolter earlier this summer, I thought we had a meeting of the minds about the goals of the class and what we'd be doing. My intent was to have Wolter help us have a good, aggressive discussion of the Kensington Rune Stone, an object that remains enigmatic to this day. The students would have prepared themselves for Wolter's visit, and my hope was that they could experience some really interesting firsthand interactions with someone who has spent a lot of time and effort developing and defending his ideas about the stone.

I made it clear to Wolter in our phone call that I had no interest in having Pulitzer involved in any way. In my judgement, Pulitzer's history of misrepresentations and legal threats makes him unsuitable for interactions with my students. Based on my own history of interactions with Pulitzer, that's a pretty easy call to make.  

But it appears now that when you're talking to Wolter you're also talking to Pulitzer (perhaps literally). So there's really no way around it: whether Pulitzer speaks for Wolter or Wolter is pretending to be Pulitzer, it's monkey business that has no place in my classroom.  What's next? Demands to remove all the brown M&M's? No matter how I look at it, I cannot now imagine a good interaction with the Pulitzer-Wolter show. It's pretty weak sauce, and I'm no longer interested. The Wolter visit is off the table. What they decide to do with their partnership is none of my business, and that's the way it's going to stay.

I'm looking at other options for discussing different facets of the KRS. I've heard from several interested people already, and I'm considering several approaches that will let me meet the educational goals of the class. I wish the Wolter scenario would have played out differently, but it's just absurd to me that an invited guest (and/or his uninvited business partner) would attempt to exercise control over my syllabus. I have never misled anyone about the goals and content of this class. Forbidden Archaeology is going to be fun and educational for all involved.  I will work as hard as I can to make that happen. Wolter and Pulitzer won't be a part of that. Moving on.

That's about all I have to say about this situation at the moment. I'll keep you posted as I move forward.

On a different note, I spent my morning working on this sculpture of a crow. I'm posting an "in progress" picture because I think it's looking pretty good so far. I may enter it in the state fair.

Oh wait . . . maybe the crow is related: "Nevermore" . . . (thanks, Hartman Krug).

I'm sorry to announce that Scott Wolter will not be participating in my Forbidden Archaeology (ANT 291) class this fall. In an email exchange, Wolter told me that he has "lost his enthusiasm" for the idea. I don't fully understand his rationale for the decision, so I think the simplest and fairest thing to do is to leave it up to him to discuss his decision if he chooses.

The class will stilll be evaluating evidence and ideas about the Kensington Rune Stone (KRS), and we still be using Wolter's Hooked X book as a jumping off point for discussion (I was required by South Carolina law to choose the books for the course some time ago). My sense is that the KRS remains, over a hundred years since it's discovery, one of the more genuinely enigmatic objects used to support claims of pre-Columbian transoceanic contact. It's worth discussing no matter how we do it, so we're going to discuss it. I'll be thinking about options for bringing in someone else (probably via a remote lecture) to lay out an argument for/against the authenticity of the KRS. If I can get a prominent KRS skeptic to participate, maybe I'll set it up so the students take the position that the KRS is authentic . . . I'll think about it.

As far as the GoFundMe campaign to fund the costs of Wolter's travel, I can either find a way to return that money to the (n=3) donors or I can look into rolling it into the Jim Vieira travel fund. Vieira has agreed to pay for his own travel, but it would still be nice to offset some of the costs associated with getting him down here.

Please let me know if you have suggestions about KRS advocates/skeptics. I'll adjust the syllabus to accommodate whatever position the speaker wants to take. The class is first and foremost an exercise in critical thinking, logic, and the evidence-based methods we can employ to discriminate credible from non-credible statements about the human past.

My plans for the Forbidden Archaeology course I'll be teaching in the fall continue to take shape. I wanted to take a few minutes today to write a quick update.

Course Organization

The course will be organized into four sections. We'll spend the first couple of weeks on background, discussing the characteristics of science and pseudo-science, the status of archaeology as a science, and why "getting it right" matters. Because this is a 200-level course with no prerequisites, it's going to be important to make sure the students have some general understanding of the tools we use to learn about the past and to discriminate credible from non-credible explanations. We'll explore the various motivations for creating narratives about the past and discuss the ways that pseudo-science attempts to masquerade as science while simultaneously trying to shelter it's ideas and "evidence" from the scrutiny that is fundamental to the scientific endeavor. Finally, we'll talk about how ideas and arguments are effectively communicated on the internet.

In Section 2 of the course, we'll be talking Giants. Readers of this blog know that this is one of my favorite topics. We'll start with some deep background, tracing the origins of western giant mythology through the Bible, Greek and Roman writings, and early European sources. We'll examine the origin and development of the fascination with giants in 19th century America and try to understand how the re-emergence of belief in the existence of "giants" fits into our world today. 

The topic of Section 3 will be Ice Age Civilization.  We'll trace the origin of ideas about an ancient, lost "mother culture" from Plato's description of Atlantis up to today, critically examining the idea that some high-tech civilization that was destroyed in a global cataclysm. We'll be looking at various pieces of "evidence" that are put forward to support this claim, and we'll be reading and reviewing portions of the book Species with Amnesia.  

The final section of the course will look at claims for Transoceanic Pre-Columbian Contact, focusing heavily on proposed interactions between peoples in Europe and North America. We'll review the main claims for the presence of Europeans in the New World before Columbus and tie the origin and history of those claims to their current manifestations. How do we separate real pieces of evidence from hoaxes and misinterpretations? Why do some ideas persist despite a complete lack of objectively credible evidence? Why does it matter that we get this right?

Guest Participants

My plans to bring in some guest participants are moving forward. Jim Vieira will be visiting in September to talk about his experience investigating "giants." Scott Wolter will (hopefully) be coming in November to participate in the pre-Columbian contact section. I'm trying to raise money to offset the costs of flying both of these people down to Columbia: they are coming at my invitation to participate in a class that I'm setting up, so it is the courteous thing to do. Neither Wolter's nor Vieira's appearance constitutes an endorsement of their ideas on my part, and they both know that. Neither will be getting paid for his appearance. They are participating in, literally, an academic exercise: it's about showing students how to weigh the credibility of ideas by putting them into an arena where they can be challenged on the basis of logic and evidence. How do you phrase an idea in terms of a falsifiable hypothesis? What kind of information is required to prove something wrong? That's what we'll be asking all through the semester, and that's what we'll be asking of Wolter and Vieira.

I just started a Go Fund Me Campaign for Vieira's travel expenses this morning. The fund I set up to cover Wolter's travel expenses has been active for over a week now, but seems to have stalled out after a few donations. Thanks to those who donated! If you're excited about this class and what may come out of it, please consider contributing something (if you're able) to make this happen. 

Finally, I'm happy to announce that Jason Colavito has agreed to participate in the course. I've asked him to talk to the class about his long history of online engagement with "fringe" ideas and explain how he gathers evidence and crafts an argument. I'm also going to ask him to discuss the history of ideas about Atlantis, as he has far more expertise there than I do.  Thanks for agreeing to participate, Jason!

No, You Can't Visit -- Sorry!

Several people have asked (online and in person) about sitting in on the class during the guest appearances and/or me streaming them live somehow. Sorry, but my answer to that question has to be "no:" the course has to be geared to serving the students who are enrolled in it.  Letting in spectators would be a slippery slope.  I do hope, however, that the wider public will benefit significantly from the material that comes out of the class. The students will be writing blog posts that we'll put on a new website, and I anticipate that we'll be able to post some video content related to the guest appearances (those details will have to be worked out and agreed to by all parties).  

I set up a Go Fund Me campaign to raise money to fund Scott Wolter's travel to Columbia to participate in my Forbidden Archaeology class this fall. To recap, Wolter agreed to participate in my class in response to an open invitation I posted as I began constructing and organizing the course last year. While we've still got some details to work out, it looks to me like it will cost about $1000 to fly him down here and put him in a hotel for a few nights. I'm hoping he can do two class periods and have time to do some other things as well.

Forbidden Archaeology (ANT 291) will be organized around the premise that credible ideas about the human past can withstand scrutiny and challenges, while incorrect ideas can be shown to be incorrect. My goal is to give the students the confidence, tools, and information they need to critically evaluate ideas about the past. 

As Wolter has written, the Kensington Rune Stone is either a hoax or it's not -- can new interpretations of the stone be falsified? Let's find out!

I think that bringing Wolter to Columbia will greatly enhance the experience for all involved, facilitating a much broader range of interactions with my students than would be possible via remote participation (i.e., though something like Skype).  

​If you want to help make this happen, please consider contributing to the Scott Wolter Travel Fund.

It's been two weeks since my last blog post.

I've spent much of that two weeks away from my computer, which has been a nice change. Since the semester ended, I've been working in the field, doing stuff around the house and with my family, and prepping my office for a move. Today I'm relocating from the main SCIAA building to a larger, nicer office suite right in the heart of campus. I'll have plenty of room to ramp up my research, process and analyze artifacts, store collections I'm working on, and (hopefully) start getting some student work going. It's really an amazing thing to have the space -- it's larger and nicer than many fully functional archaeology labs where I've worked in the past.

A 6000-Year-Old Moment Frozen in Time?

Archaeological sites are places that contain material traces of human behavior.  While the human behaviors that create archaeological sites are ultimately those of individuals, we usually can't resolve what we're looking at to that level.  Traces of individual behaviors overprint one another and blend into a collective pattern. The granularity of individual behavior is usually lost.

Usually, but not always.

I spent portions of the last couple of works doing some preliminary excavation work at a site I first wrote about last October. Skipping over the details for now, documentation of an exposed profile measuring about 2.2 meters deep and 10 meters long showed the presence of cultural materials and intact features at several different depths.  The portion of the deposits I am most interested in is what appears to be a buried zone of dark sediment, fire-cracked rock, and quartz knapping debris about 1.9 meters below the present ground surface. Based on the general pattern here in the Carolina Piedmont and a couple of projectile points recovered from the slump at the base of the profile, I'm guessing that buried cultural zone dates to the Middle Archaic period (i.e., about 8000-5000 years ago).​

The Anthropology of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers in the Eastern Woodlands?

Earlier in the month, I had the privilege of visiting the archaeological field schools being conducted at Topper. I wrote a little bit about the claim for a very early human presence at Topper here. The excavations associated with that claim aren't currently active. Field schools focused on Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene (Mississippi State University and the University of West Georgia) and Woodland/Mississippian (University of Tennessee) components at Topper and nearby sites have been running since early May. Seeing three concurrent field schools being run with the cooperation of personnel from four universities (and many volunteers) is remarkable.

On the day of my visit, I gave a talk titled "The Anthropology of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers in the Eastern Woodlands?" I argued that not only is it possible to do the anthropology of prehistoric peoples, but it should be a fundamental goal. Skipping over the details for now, I argued (as I have elsewhere) that complex systems science provides a set of tools for systematically trying to understand how history, process, and environment combine to produce the long-term, large-scale trajectories of prehistoric change that we can observe and analyze using archaeological data. I talked about each of the components of my three-headed monster research agenda.  And I got to eat various venison products prepared under the direction of my SCIAA colleague Al Goodyear. And I got to see alligators swimming in the Savannah River.  As a native Midwesterner . . . I anticipate that working near alligators will remain outside my comfort zone for some time to come.

When Did Humans First Move Out of Africa?

Archaeologists love finding the earliest of anything and people love reading about it. While we often want to know how/when new things appear, identifying the "earliest of X" often gets play in the popular press that is disproportionate to its relevance to a substantive archaeological/anthropological question. And you can never really be sure, of course, that you've nailed down the earliest of anything: someone else could always find something earlier, falsifying whatever model was constructed to account for the existing information and moving the goal posts.

Exactly a year ago, I wrote about the reported discovery of 3.3 million-year-old stone tools from a site in Kenya. Those tools are significantly earlier than the previous "earliest" Oldowan tools.  I think they're really interesting but not particularly surprising:  several other lines of evidence (cut marks on bone, tool-use among chimpanzees, and hominin hand anatomy) already suggested that our ancestors were using tools well before the earliest Oldowan technologies appeared.

I anticipate that we still haven't seen the "earliest" stone tool use. 

A recent report from India argues that our ideas about the "earliest" humans outside of Africa also miss the mark. (Note: when I say "human" I'm referring not to "modern human" but to a member of the genus Homo.) This story from March discusses a report of stone tools and cutmarked bone from India purportedly dating to 2.6 million-years-ago (MYA), blowing away the current earliest accepted evidence of humans outside of Africa (Dmanisi at 1.8 MYA) by about 800,000 years. With an increasing number of Oldowan assemblages dating to about 1.8-1.6 MYA are being reported outside of Africa (e.g., in China and Pakistan), would it be that surprising to find evidence a migration pre-dating 1.8 MYA?  Probably not.  Do the finds reported from India cement the case for human populations in South Asia at 2.6 MYA?  Not yet: the fossils and tools reported from India so far (as far as I know anyway) don't have a context that allows them to be convincingly dated.

I had a pleasant conversation with Scott Wolter yesterday. I emailed him to touch base about his participation in my class in the fall, and we ended up talking for about 45 minutes. It was the first time we've spoken and we had more to talk about than we had time to talk. We talked about the Wolter-Pulitzer partnership, of course, but I'm not going ​to go into the details of our discussion (I just invite you to read for yourself Pulitzer's bizarre word salad blog post from Wednesday containing his reference to me as "some back woods rural South Carolina Pseudo-Archaeologist who never worked in the field, but only learned from books").  My sense is that Wolter is someone with whom I can have a frank and vigorous discussion about the merits and interpretation of archaeological evidence and how it is used to evaluate ideas about the past. I'm looking forward to his participation in my class. My plan is to start a Go Fund Me campaign to raise money to fly him down here so he can interact with the students on a face-to-face basis.  

And now the movers are coming for my filing cabinets.  And now my chair is gone.  And now you are up-to-date.

My presentation ("Anthropology and Pseudoscience") at Mercer University on Friday went well, I think. Never having been there before, I'm not sure how the crowd I drew rated in terms of size, but given that the talk was at 4:30 on a Friday I was happy with the attendance and the response that I got. The flying watermelons went over well. It's the little things that make the difference. 

One of the things I emphasized in my talk was the need to create what I called "persistent resources" to provide counter-points to the nonsense. When the genuinely curious search for information about a specific claim or idea, ideally they will be able to find something that provides a reasoned, evidence-based analysis.  Making critical materials easier to discover by assembling them in a single place was the rationale behind creating The Argumentative Archaeologist website. Traffic on that site seems to be steadily increasing, and I'm hoping it continues to grow and be useful. 

I'll be facilitating the construction of more critical infrastructure in conjunction with the Forbidden Archaeology (ANTH 291) class that I'll be teaching this fall.  The students will be tasked with writing and editing a series of blog posts on various topics, and my plan is to make those available on a "Forbidden Archaeology 2016" website that we'll create and fill with content.  I'm hoping we can branch out from blogs and also do some things with video. YouTube is an important battleground that I have yet to try to really understand or enter.  This is a new class, though, so we'll have to see how things work out.  The students will be doing final projects, so maybe I can provide an option for production of a video.

I'm really looking forward to this class -- it should be a lot of fun and, I hope, a very useful exercise in critical thinking and communication. 

I am happy to announce that Jim Vieira, perhaps best known for his role in the History Channel program "Search for the Lost Giants," has agreed to participate in the Forbidden Archaeology class that I will be teaching at South Carolina in the fall of 2016. I've been writing about "giants" for over a year now and I've gone at Vieira's ideas several times. We had an enjoyable phone conversation a week or two ago about "double rows of teeth" and other things connected to giants, science, and fringe research in general.  Without pretending to speak for him, I'll just say that I got the sense that his ideas about giants have changed/developed somewhat over the past few years. I look forward to hearing his current thoughts and seeing how he interacts with the students in the class.  

Vieria joins Scott Wolter in taking me up on my open offer to "fringe" researchers to participate in my class.

I'm still working on refining the syllabus.  Things seem to be settling in nicely for covering three main topics this time around: giants, Ice Age civilization (i.e., the existence of a progenitor civilization or "mother culture"), and pre-Columbian transoceanic contact between the New World and the Old World. I've got Vieira penciled in for September (the month of giants) and Wolter for November.  My draft syllabus has Fingerprints of the Gods as the book we'll be reading and critiquing (and blogging about) for the section of the class dealing with Ice Age civilization, but I think I'd like to change that up and go with a book that hasn't yet been thoroughly examined with a critical eye.  A switch will be even more likely if I can find a book that fits the bill written by an author willing to participate in the class.  Ideas?  Let me know.

To undergraduates at South Carolina: this is going to be a good one! Although this is listed as an archaeology course (because it deals with evidence about what happened in the past), it is weighted heavily as an exercise in critical thinking and communication.  We're going to use historic, anthropological, and scientific frameworks to assess and evaluate a variety of claims about the past that are not part of mainstream thinking. Where did these ideas and claims come from? What kind of evidence could prove a given claim to be false?  How are the claims connected to social, political, and financial agendas? Is there is a worldwide conspiracy among academics to suppress knowledge about what really happened in the past? What can independently be shown to be wrong and what cannot?  We will engage with and evaluate “fringe” claims about the past through readings, discussions, online research and writing, and guest appearances. Forbidden Archaeology (ANTH 291) will meet MWF at 9:40-10:30. I'll post the syllabus when I get it completed.

A few days ago, I made an open offer to "fringe" prehistorians to participate in a class I am planning on teaching next fall.  I'm happy to report that Scott Wolter contacted me to take me up on the opportunity:

Hi Andy,  

I’m one of those “Fringe” people you are talking about and would be happy to address your students if the offer still stands.  I’m serious if you’d like to set something up; I’m sure all would learn a great deal from the exchange.  

Regards,  
Scott F. Wolter P.G. 

That's a win.  Wolter was the host of the program American Unearthed (which ran for three seasons on H2) and has written multiple books about pre-Columbian connections between the Old World and the New World.  He is perhaps best known for his defense of the Kensington Rune Stone as an authentic ancient artifact and his ideas about the journeys and activities of the Knights Templar. He has recently written on his blog about a purported "Hooked X" symbol that he argues may link the biblical Jesus to the Freemasons and various North American rune stones. According to Jason Colavito, Wolter will appear in an upcoming program titled Pirate Treasure of the Knights Templar.

I've seen most episodes of America Unearthed but I haven't yet read any of Wolter's books. I will have his commitment to speak to my class in mind when I prepare my syllabus, however, and I'll be sure to have the students read up on his ideas before his presentation.  I don't yet know exactly what he'll talk about - that will be up to him but known ahead of time.

I'm glad that Wolter accepted my offer and contacted me, and I hope some others do the same. I'm just beginning the process of getting things organized (it will be a new course, so there are hoops to navigate to get it approved and on the books), so now would be a great time to step up to the plate.  I would love to have someone come in and make a case for pre-Ice Age civilization, ancient astronauts, giants, etc.  Send me an email: aawhite@mailbox.sc.edu.

There are a lot of people teaching these kinds of courses now, but I plan on doing it a little differently.  We're going to do it my way: we're going to engage, we're going to ask tough questions, and we're going to listen to the answers.  We're going to examine logic, evidence, and the histories and implications of ideas. We're going to kick the doors down, and we're going to have a lot of fun doing it. Stay tuned.

I've got an idea.

A common refrain among those claiming to be interested in discovering the "forbidden truths" about our prehistory is that mainstream archaeologists and academics are actively involved in a conspiracy to suppress information, hide evidence, censor ideas, and generally keep the world from knowing what really happened in the past.  The charge that mainstream archaeologists are hiding evidence to protect the status quo is not just incidental to theorists on the fringe: it is a central plank used over and over again to explain the absence of positive evidence for their claims.  The absence of positive material evidence for a claim, in fact, is sometimes used to support the contention that a conspiracy to hide the evidence exists, and that therefore the original claim must be true.  It's really bizarre.

The charge that ideas that conflict with "mainstream" interpretations of the past are actively censored is also central to the claims of fringe theorists.  Nevermind that Ancient Aliens is in its eighth season, Jim Vieria got an entire television series after TEDx took down a video of his talk, and fringe writers are selling books out the wazoo, the cry of "censorship" is common.  I think fringe theorists like to cry foul for several overlapping reasons: (1) it helps them promote the idea that the mainstream is involved in a conspiracy to keep us from knowing "the truth;" (2) it helps them explain the lack of positive evidence for the ideas they are promoting; and (3) it helps them promote themselves as mavericks who are bucking the system, fighting the power, crusading for justice, or whatever else.

The claims of censorship and suppression of evidence and ideas are as bogus as they are boring at this point.  I suggest we switch it up a little bit.

Here's my idea: why not bring the fringe into my classroom?

I'm hoping to teach a course next academic year at the University of South Carolina on pseudo-science in archaeology.  Nothing has been decided for sure yet, but it would probably be a 200-level course, hopefully taught in the Fall semester of 2016.  I'm only in the very early planning stages, but I've been thinking a little bit about how I will organize the course.  I can't think of a better way to help students understand the difference between science and pseudoscience than to have them actively engage "fringe" ideas (and the purveyors of those ideas) within a scientific framework.   

Is your specialty ancient aliens? Giants? Atlantis? Elongated skulls? OOPARTS? Mu? Phoenicians in the New World? Would you like to talk to a group of perhaps 40-50 college students and share your ideas and explain the logic and evidence behind them? Would you be willing to take questions from those same students, knowing that they will have previously made themselves familiar with your arguments and will be asking you questions? Would you be willing to have your engagement with my class videotaped and put online?

Science is built on the premise that good ideas can withstand scrutiny and challenges, while incorrect ideas can be shown to be incorrect.  Science is based on evidence.  Pseudoscience, conversely, is belief masquerading as science.  Scientists are not afraid of scrutiny: proving things wrong is what we do. Pseudoscientists hide from scrutiny, however, because being proven wrong is not good for business.

If I was an honest fringe theorist and I had an idea which I was confident I could present and defend to an audience in an open forum, I would jump at the chance to do so (just because an idea is not accepted by the mainstream doesn't mean it's wrong, of course).  Here, after all, would be a chance to leap over that wall and talk to people in the very settings from which I'm being excluded.  But if I was a huckster marketing ideas that I knew were baloney . . . perhaps in that case I would be somewhat reluctant to expose those ideas to a critique.  My impression is that many fringe theorists really like the protected spaces of radio shows, "interviews," television appearances, books, and "conferences" that insulate their ideas from the fundamental aspect of science (falsification) that makes scientific inquiry a cumulative, self-correcting endeavor.

So, while still tentative at this point, here's my offer:

• You'll get 15-20 minutes to talk to my class (either in person or via Skype) about whatever part of your work you choose;

• You'll let me know ahead of time (i.e., before the semester begins) what aspect of your work you'll be presenting;

• You'll take at least 15-20 minutes of questions from students in my class, who will have had time to become familiar with your ideas and evidence prior to your presentation;

• You'll agree that your presentation and the question/answer session will be recorded and made available to the public (via YouTube or something similar);

• There won't be any financial compensation involved.
  

I'm not yet sure how many of these kinds of interactions I will be able to fit in during the semester, but if any of you out there want to take me up on this I'd love to hear from you.  Leave a comment below, or email me at aawhite@mailbox.sc.edu.

Update (9/11/2015): Scott Wolter is in.

Update (2/15/2016): Jim Vieira is in.

Update (6/13/2016): I set up a Go Fund Me campaign to raise travel money to bring Wolter to Columbia.