Not unlike “Bad Science”, lots of History is pretty bad too. This rant will be mainly about archaeology . Well, even more, mainly about tv archaeology, that being the closest that I get to really knowing anything about archaeology.

Why do archaeologists assume that every prehistoric tribe did everything for ritual purposes? Given a dozen possible explanations for anything, religious ritual always seems to be the favoured purpose.  People who see everything created in prehistory as proof of alien landings are hardly more obsessed than the average tv archaeologist is with finding evidence of religious ritual in any surviving artefacts. Even going on the chance that the average person in prehistory was about half as sceptical as the average medieval peasant, that still leaves a lot of room for secular creativity.

Even medieval peasants were always forming heretical movements and rebelling against the church. How many thousands got excommunicated or burned as witches for not believing exactly what they were told to believe? If anything - without written language or means of mass cultural communication and with a fairly even distribution of access to productive resources - prehistoric people would be less subject to pressures to believe whatever they were told. This suggests that they might have been less likely than most of the current world population to be convinced by religious authority to neglect the hunting, gathering, agriculture and socialising (that must have made up most of their lives) to create monuments to appease the gods.  In any case, might not some of the surviving constructions be relics of homes, markets, meeting halls or food stores? Giant figures carved on hillsides would be adverts or indicators of location today. Why are they always seen as having only ritual significance if they are a few thousand years old? 

Occam’s Razor somehow doesn’t apply to tv archaeologists. Their professional rule is “Never seek the simplest explanation.”

My next gripe is with the reconstructions. The rule is: Never show any archaeology or history without a reconstruction. Some of these reconstructions are really good, as in the Battlefield Britain series. Lots of people have problems with showing rebuilt Saxon villages or using actors to portray Roman legionnaries or Celtic warriors. I don’t find these necessarily  irritating. Only a complete idiot would think that this was real video footage. We all know that actors aren’t real. The use of real people and realistic surroundings can make the past seem more immediate and comprehensible. (Note that was “can”). The compulsion to illustrate with footage can get out of hand, but generally it’s not a bad idea.

Similarly with computer graphics, When they help those viewers with little visual imagination (like me) to picture a scene they can be illuminating.  It’s the graphics that purport to be true that I have problems with.  Have you found a 1 sq cm piece of tile? This must be the corner of a brightly painted 450 metre square temple, complete with pillars, colonnades and a fountain, which your computer graphics team will create using 3DS Max. Is there a bit of bent metal? This must have been the corner of a shield which had a Celtic motif in the centre and gold chasing around its bevelled edges.  So here it is. Found a skull? Our inhouse artists will model the face of its original owner, showing the actual eye and hair colour and hairstyle. This stuff is so manifestly ridiculous that it destroys any belief you might have had in anything else they tell you.

Apart from tv arcchaeology, I have big problems with a lot of Heritage archaeology.  This seems driven by the need to have cash cows. Does your historic monument lack vistor appeal? Maybe walls have been demolished or stones are inconveniently crumbling. Put them back. People always appreciate things looking in good shape. That’s why they restore old houses to live in. Noone can tell the difference anyway, if it’s sensitively done, can they?  Some of these ancient designers had no idea about what would attract the modern paying visitor so its just using our modern skills and knowledge to do what they woudl have done if they know how to.

The current Stonehenge controversy provides an example of millions spent on consultation (with any organisation that claims an interest) about plans which will cost many millions more. There is a major road (amjor, by Wiltshire standards)  quite close to Stonehenge and a minor road that cuts off part of one of the ditches on the site. The plans involve not just moving at least one road but also

• building a tunnel under the site to carry its traffic
• repairing the section of ditch that the road cuts off to “restore” it .

Most people who have been to Stonehenge would see the visitors’ car park and visitor centre – not to mention the demonic fences and paths that keep people from the actual stones  – as the main problems. A paying customer actually sees little more than you can see for free from the road (and quite a lot less than you can see from one part of the main road which presents a panoramic view of the stones in context.) My suspicion is that its the chance of a free view that drives the owners mad.  Stonehenge must be English Heritage’s biggest earner, with relatively little outlay except on clearing rubbish, staff, fencing and providing shopping facilities.

But the new plans involve digging up one of the World’s Heritage landscapes to TUNNEL under it.  Plus rebuilding bits of the site to match the archaeologists’s assumptions.  If part of the site is to rebuilt, why not just stop messing about with it and build a fullscale plaster mockup in a place without traffic? Stonehenge already shows the impact of Victorian archaeologists’ putting stones back where they thought they should be, so its already quite ersatz enough.   The damage was already done when the road was built. Why make it worse?  At least it’s legitimate and relatively innocent damage now. Real people needed a road for purposes that roads are normally used for, so they built one, more or less ignoring the stones. In a few hundred years it will be part of the history of the Stonehenge site – ugly but at least genuine.

Maybe I’ve misunderstood the tunnelling plan.  I suspect that, given a toss-up between digging up ground brimming with 6,000 year-old construction work (the significance of which we really don’t currently have the understanding to grasp) and attracting the tourist pound/euro/dollar or Yen, the need for cash won. The so-called “cursus” was not considered to be anything significant at all, until about 30 years ago. Hence it was left alone, under the relatively benign  protection of a working farmer rather than the apparently unscrupulous hands of the heritage industry.

In this month’s English Heritage newsletter, a tv archaeologist wrote about how atmospheric Stonehenge would have appeared to the pilgrim of 6,000 years ago and how reconstructing the site would allow us to have this experience. This exemplifies the most woolly-minded heritage pesh: –

There were no “pilgrims” before the Christian era, surely. There is no evidence that Stonehenge was the endpoint of prehistoric devotional journeys. Even after thousands of years of casual destruction, there are stunning megalithic monuments throughout the whole of the British Isles. Why would Stonehenge have been any more significant than any other henge at the time it was actually used? Its significance to us is a Victorian legacy. 

The “atmospheric” idea is fine if you think only in terms of the vistor’s enjoyment but it is completely unrelated to any historical or archaeological value of Stonehenge. Prehistoric monuments are not just for holidays. They aren’t just ours. We have no way of knowing what future technologies will uncover if we can just stop ragging all prehistoric sites to death for our own short term goals. Do we have the right to contribute to damaging the heritage of future generations? If the “atmosphere” and the “experience”  are so important, why not build a prehistory theme park – preferably on a site already ravaged by industrial development – with no visible reminders of the twentyfirst century (or any of the other centuries in between the building of Stonehenge and now)? Avebury is inconveniently distant, so that could be added close by. Silbury Hill would provide a convenient backdrop. In fact, why not build replica pyramids nearby so you could compare Silbury with a stone pyramid of about the same era?  I believe the pyramids also have disturbing surroundings that stop you forgetting you are not in the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. Angkor Watt is supposed to be really amazing as well, but is so awkwardly inaccessible. That could be there too.

Oh, silly me. I forgot that there is already a Disneyland Europe.

Just when I was getting the warm fluffy feeling that people were actually aware enough about the ins and outs the Bad Science’s actual target (based on the chats on the other blogs) I came across this site – Primary Teacher UK – and my heart sank.

The issue was never about the exercises, or even the advantages of doingt the exercises vs not doing them. It was about the pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo and ritual that the theory was wrapped up in. From what I have seen on the web so far, almost all the teachers who have readlily accepted the science behind brain gym have no formal scientific background. This is what really annoys me. If they have no scientific knowledge why are they so readily defending the science of Brain Gym? Would history teachers be happy if the new teaching theory (which kids just love and gets loads of positive feedback) included telling the children that Elizabeth the Eight was queen of England when the third world war was fought during 1930-1933?

No. They would go mental about it.

Yet teaching this mumbo jumbo seems perfectly rational to them.

Argh! 🙂

The conspiracy theorist in my thinks this is all part of the great social experiment the UK is undergoing. We are indoctrinating our children to think nonsensical things are science (open the doors for ID), to think being tracked and monitored is normal and then get them involved in group rituals to help remove the individual and create the collective thought process.

Maybe its just me…

I am slightly reassured that I am not the only person to think the postings made by supposed teachers on Ben Goldacre’s article were worrying. This blog entry sums it up nicely.

In addition, there is a thread titled “Brain Gym exercises do pupils no favours” which seems to be developing a good line of comments.

If I find any more I will post them here.

Following on from yesterdays diatribe about the insanely poor level of science knowledge amongst teachers (apparently) I revisited the site today to see what new comments had arrived. Fortunately most were sensible then I stumbled upon this one: (as always, emphasis mine)

I enjoy reading your column and I agree with this one when you criticise the puesdoscience.

Is it just me, or do start phrases like this ring alarm bells for everyone… you just know there is a “but…” coming.

But Brain Gym is a ‘technology’ not a science: it does not ‘prove’ it ‘enables’.

Wow. First off, the criticisms were never leveled at the process of “brain gym” but entirely at the science supporting it. Sadly this fact appears to have escaped this commenter.

What on Earth, in this context, does enables mean? Why is it used? Has double-speak become so embedded in our society?

Of course you are right to be sceptical about the simplistic explanations and the single source endorsement … but you have a fully formed frontal lobe and are expert in making complex decisions, concentration etc. When you have lost these things through an accident or they have not fully formed because of age, then these sorts of exercises are useful…. and I know you are not against the exercises …

But since your radar is focussed on Brain Gym permit me a few words in it’s defence outside of ’school’:

No, Ben Goldacre’s radar was fixed on the bad science behind Brain Gym. The commenter even acknowledges that in the previous sentence.

I had a major Road Traffic Accident caused by a drunk driver and I had suffered with brain injury problems for 12 years before Brain Gym helped me eradicate some really ingrained inconvenient behaviours. I had been an in-patient on a Pain Management course for 4 weeks at St Thomas’s Hospital London which included a cognitive component which helped with the effects of trauma but Brain Gym has helped ( and helps) in every day living.

Anecdotal evidence is not data to support a scientific theory. Without appearing unduly harsh over this persons suffering, there is nothing to support the fact Brain Gym helped them get better. More importantly, there is even LESS to support the fact that the science behind Brain Gym helped.

Suggesting people do exercises and drink more water is fine. Saying it should be done because of pseudo-science presented by highly paid charlatans is not. Nothing can justify that. The money spent getting the con-men into to give the Brain Gym lessons to the hospital therapists would be better spent actually getting drugs and treatments that work.

If you need the fake science to bother with the advice from health care professionals that is a bad day for all.

Every year approximately two-hundred thousand people sustain a brain injury of some sort in the UK alone. The effects of the injuries are usually for life, therefore the number of people living with brain injury will rise year on year.

This is sad, but none will be cured by Brain Gym.

Headway – the UK’s leading brain injury charity – provides support, services and information to brain injury survivors, their families and carers as well as professionals (health, legal etc).

Good for them. Spend the money actually helping not waving snake oil in their faces.

The problem is that Brain Gym has not been fully researched and is not on the syllabus for Physiotherapists so these 200,000 brain injured people get no ‘day to day’ benefit from these simple exercise!!

It is not fully researched because it is as scientific as flying spaghetti monsters creating the universe. The claims it makes have been researched independently of “Brain Gym” ideas and do not add up to the brain gym. You can not massage your carotic artery through your rib cage. No matter how much people try to research it…

At last Digg.com has found our site 🙂 This was submitted yesterday after the (ahem) discussion about the bad science that is brain gym.

A review of a badscience peice on Brain Gym crap. Interesting deconstruction of the comments people have made and how this is just increasing the badscience content.

Thanks to anyone who visits from Digg.com.

read more | digg story

There is a bird-flu style epidemic of bad science. The  clearly ludicrous bad science examples  in the Guardian columns may be just pale moons of the dark star of bad hard science.

For example, a South Korean scientist, Hwang Woo-suk, has just been sacked from Seoul National University and 6 of his colleagues have been suspended or fined(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4824486.stm).  They were found to have faked stem cell research from cloned embryos.

A scientist who claims to have created bubble fusion in the lab is also facing an investigation this week by an American  university, which is looking at his colleagues’ claims that he won’t let them look at his data or challenge his claims. 

In many of the currently fashionable research fields (stem cell research, cloning, nanotechnology) there are examples of  exaggerated claims or results that can’t be replicated. These are all the big money topics and must be very tempting to the greedy and those who want to make a global reputation quickly. Should we care if duff scientists want to rip off the big corporations who fund this stuff? It suggests the old saying that you can never con an honest person.  Classic cons play on the victim’s greed. Clearly, the funding for most of these fakeries comes from organisations that expect to get even richer than they are already.

However, quite apart from the arguments that government and big business only get their resources from the rest of us and only have finite amounts to invest so aren’t putting money into other projects and so on, most of these phoney projects play on sick people’s desperation, just like predatory mediums and faith healers.

They make huge promises for what their research will achieve – cures for cancer, heart disease, arthritis, Alzheimers or an end to dependence on fossil fuels and global warming.

A shady alternative mystical crystal aromatherapy hoeopathic flower remedy diet guru can usually only raise false hopes in a limited number of not very bright people. Most of us have enough basic sense of cause and effect to suspect the logic behind their claims. What does this say about the people who commission research?  More charitably, very few people have the knowledge to challenge claims for genetic and nano-technologies. (That’s supposed to be the point of peer evaluation.)

MY particular rant here is that we do have ethical standards. We are so used to assuming we can’t understand what scientists are doing that we also assume that they are just pursuing knowledge for its own sake. Research scientists are somehow nobler than everybody else and wouldn’t do experiments that might be socially disastrous or unspeakably cruel or even just pointless. We tend to assume the ethical goodness of pure research despite knowing intellectually that much research is funded by people we would saw off our left foot rather than buy a used car from and scientists are as greedy, manipulative and dishonest as non-scientists.

So this rant is basically saying that formal highbrow opera science can be as spurious as the soap opera science that Bad Science identifies.

How do we counteract this sort of thing? Not accepting a claim on the basis of the authority of the person who’s making it. Questioning and testing every “fact” that we are told. Questioning our own assumptions. Abandoning ideas when they prove to be mistaken. Accepting that no one learns except by making mistakes.

Science teaching is in a particular bind here. The nature of science is supposed to be experimentation but science education necessarily mainly consists of learning lots of “facts” and memorising them.  Even arts and social science courses currently reward students most for citing endless authorities like so many medieval monks.