Canadian_watcher wrote:HA! Now who is moving the goalposts? You wrote:
Interesting though he may be, Graham Hancock is a journalist and best-selling author, not a serious scholar or a scientist. You can hardly say, though, that his ideas haven't been widely heard or examined. He's sold well over five-million copies of his books ... and has been featured in several major television series about his exploits and theories in both the US and the UK.
I am not saying training is elitist, but that one's propensity to only trust the conclusions of those who have undergone training is.
Again, you don't seem to be following the conversational strands. You asked me what differentiates a journalist from serious scholar/scientists, and I replied "training". I said nothing about whose conclusions you should trust. Obviously, trust whomever you feel you ought after examining their premises and methods and conclusions. But keep in mind that the training I reference exists at least partly in order that the researcher not repeat mistakes or errors which have been examined in depth by others before him. So there is indeed an element of understanding the breadth of previous inquiry that is understood as having come from training in a discipline.
That Hancock has been widely heard is somewhat true, as has [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Burzynski"]Dr. S. Burzinski[/url]... their work hasn't made positive headlines though. Why not? Because your vaunted 'scholars' dismiss them.
But Hancock's work has met with a great deal of positive press, as I noted before. (Burzinsky is a quack, imho. If you want to discuss him, find the appropriate thread.) And while it is true that you don't routinely see front-page screaming headlines announcing psuedoscientific theories on the activities of pre-iceage humans, I would say that it might be for the best. Mr. Hancock's ideas are presented in exactly the formats as they should be, I think.
Perhaps. I mean in times past it did take an extraordinary level of financial comfort in order to carry out that type of rigorous inquiry.. oh wait.. same thing goes for today. So.. we've got an automatic control group problem being that those who are more financially secure are more likely to be "trained" especially in areas of study that are not immediately financially rewarding. And, where you get the odd person who has hard-scrabbled his/her way into a PhD you also get the odd person who cannot risk losing their jobs and hence, they go along with the establishment.
Faraday came from exceedingly humble circumstances. Generally speaking, genius will out.
barracuda wrote:And I wouldn't disqualify a journalist like Hancock from the possiblity of being right, or of making interesting discoveries. But his main thrust of interest seems to be at the moment selling books.
Pardon my french, but Big Effing Deal! Man's gotta eat.
You seem to have yet another prejudice - those who profit are not to be taken seriously.
I think they probably paid Einstein so homey didn't have to sell books.
Einstein supported himself as a patent clerk and a university instructor. He never made anywhere near the fortune that Mr. Hancock has amassed writing best-sellers, unfortunately. But you are right, to an extent - I have some trepidation when it comes to information from amateurs whose main activity appears to be making money. Scientific research is, after all, a rather humble activity on the whole.
Laodicean wrote:Just like to add that I found the Hancock lecture I posted (page 21) fascinating.
I read his book on which the lecture was based,
Supernatural, last night in order that I might at least give him a decent chance.
The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe