Have you ever met one of those people who contradict what you say just for the sake of it? To prove their own imagined intellectual superiority? Of course, we all have, we are surrounded by such people, they occupy every walk of life, and have an unpleasant habit of occupying positions of authority.
When the orthodoxies of the time are challenged, those who do so are referred to as cranks or anarchists. No attempt is made to engage or examine the evidence, instead the reaction is one of ridicule and contempt. A subject can be dismissed by the simple expedient of refusing to look.
Were such attitudes prevalent in the business sphere, instant dismissal would result, but in the world of academia, it is the norm. The people at the top have one goal, and that is to stay there, unchallenged. The rest of us must remain silent, compliant and unquestioning. For all their qualifications, these people can be remarkably dumb.
Once commited however, there is no turning back, for to do so would invite ridicule. Even when the evidence is staring them in the face, they persist in their ludicrous stance, Cnut like, no anagram intended.
So when a kid from a council estate near Dudley, who went from school into a factory aged 16 comes along, and points something out that has been under their noses for their entire careers, well, it makes them look stupid. Suddenly, all the degrees, phd's, the doctorates, become meaningless, and a deafening silence descends. It is the silence of ignorance, the sole purpose of which is to suppress that most valuable of gifts. Knowledge.
Unfortunately the academics have a regular habit of getting things wrong. One told me a few years ago on seeing this, and I quote "Dont push this any further...and don't expect archaeologists to come down here and help you. They never have and never will." It is one thing to disagree, but to actively suppress is another matter entirely.
So lads and lasses, thats the academics for you. Occupation of the ivory tower is the only thing that matters. Once on the greasy career pole they lose all sight of why they got onto it in the first place. As for the rest of us? What could we possibly know?
Remember this. Even if you are in a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.
What an excellent post. I entirely agree. In almost all areas, the ruling paradigm is sacrosanct. Careers, salaries, reputations, the status quo, all of this and more serves to stifle so many fesh approaches and ideas, and in many instances, actively supress them. Even cursory research in the archeological field reveals many cases of anomalies that question the prevailing framework being 'killed'. so to speak, and brave and ground breaking researches have had their careers ruined for their heresy. It's always the same, the pioneers have to work alone, facing ridicule and often outright hostility, and the greatest irony is that, in so many cases they are eventually proved right and their ideas are adopted. Science, in many, but not all cases, is no longer a brave and revolutionary force. If something does not fit it's received criteria, it is dismissed out of hand.
Thank you for reminding me that I am not always wrong just because I dont have a qualification...
What brought this on?
There are good and bad in all walks of life and examples are hardly confined to academics.
I know everyone's probably seen this wonderful old documentary Cracking The Stoneage Code but this thread prompted me to put it up anyway
http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/chronicle/8604.shtml
Stone circles are works of engineering but woe betide an actual engineer daring to study them.
Chap in dickybow: "You've got to be an archaeologist before you can start putting forward new ideas about archaeology"
If you think you have found something... keep going with it. Don't expect teams of academics to climb into their cars and drive down to see you and anoint you. They don't do that kinda thing academics. That is like expecting a liguistic scholar to come and check out a regional variation on pronunciation. Likewise dont expect vanloads of archaeo's to come charging down to see what you are looking at and pat you on the back. Most of them are only employed on rescue archaeology and have busy schedules.
I found some lovely figurative (ie. non-abstract) rock art stuff a few years back while on my holidays a hundred miles from home. The finds were close by an existing (cup and ring) rock art site. The local "specialist" in the field didn't want to know and was too unfit to walk up to the site (two hundred yards along a good path from the road). She did not want to look at photos either. She was 84.
I didn't give up. I showed the photos to my local archaeologist when I got back home. He was pleased I hadn't given up, but didn't know what to make of my discovery, he said he'd "never seen anything like it". He was surprised they hadn't been noticed before being so close to an existing cup and ring site (the "new" motifs had only emerged through peat erosion over the last few years) but agreed they looked very old. He also told me some wise words "When people visit an existing site they know what they are going to see - and that is (often) ALL they see. Nothing else." In other words... if you keep a pair of fresh eyes on you, you might notice something which maybe no-one else has noticed.
I contacted the West of Scotland team which takes on local authority archaeology duties in the area of my discovery. The co-ordinator emailed me back pronto and told me they were definitely man-made and ancient, pretty much unique and definitely not natural cracks or marks. He was excited.
I contacted Historic Scotland whose regional "specialist" said they were natural in origin ("the result of water course erosion") and not man-made ("I can see no peck marks"). The motifs are at the top of a hill, have never had a water course near them and are covered in peck marks.
However the Royal Commission (RCAHMS) were happy to put the photos on their website and include them in their Discovery and Excavation publication.
I seriously doubt if any "academic" or state-employed archaeologist has visited the site in the last couple of years since my discovery. But that doesn't matter. I've photographed it, participated in two wee films about it and the discovery is "out there". I've done my bit. I don't give a hoot what "academics" think (or more likely don't think). I didn't want anything except other people to see them. And maybe someone "official" to strip the peat back a bit (to see what else is there) and clean the carvings up (they are covered in lichen and stuff).
Indeed learned academics at (to pick just one example) the University of Reading confidently claim that "rock carvings in Britain are entirely abstract.". They are NOT "entirely abstract" as my own and other people's discoveries have shown... but it is hard to wake up some academics...
Just keep photographing, videoing and measuring Rockhopper! Don't get stuck with academics, keep doing your thing...
(Post us some pictures please... or stick one of your videos up on Youtube and post a link on this thread)
But the best you can hope for if your theory becomes widely accepted is to become the new orthodoxy. A new orthodoxy to be railed against by all the others with their own interpretation of the data. If we were to substitute the word "academics" for the word "people" in your post we may be closer to the truth. People have an unfortunate habit of sticking to their own ideas rather than adopting mine. Archaeology (certainly pre historic archaelogy that is entirely dependent on the field evidence) is just about interpretation. Nothing is proven ever, there is only the prevailing orthodoxy. And there is the fun in my opinion...
Archaeology is not a science. It has used science in illuminating ways but it is not a science in itself - because: No two archaeological sites are the same, not possible to verify one's conclusions in a repeatable fashion. Archaeological data is always corrupt and incomplete. But most of all archaeology is not a science because it is an offshoot of anthropology...
Have you considered that there are plenty of 'academics' (I guess you mean people paid to be archaeologists?) who have theories that no-one else is really into. or are interested only in very specific eras / locations etc. Perhaps it's not surprising they're not going to drop work on their own theories / years of research to take up your subject, because it might have very little in common with things they're knowledgeable about / interested in.
Do you see what I mean? Perhaps you're taking it too personally. They're probably worrying about whether they're going to be made redundant or whether they can get funding for their latest dig or when they're going to have time to write their next paper. They might not be slagging your ideas off behind your back. They might just be busy with other things. "Don't expect archaeologists to come down here and help you" doesn't necessarily mean they think your theory is nonsense, not at all, surely? (like Howburn Digger has said I think).
You say you've had things published - well that's pretty impressive and lends a lot of kudos and weight to your theories surely.
And what's more, we live in an era when you can put things ont he internet and disseminate them more easily and cheaply than any other time in history. So you're in a good position to get heard.
I'm quite sure people with new ways of looking at things (Tilley springs to mind) always come up against resistance, but it might not necessarily be agressive resistance, it might just be apathy.
You can tell me to mind my own business but I think you'd be much better putting your energies into getting your ideas out there (which incidentally I think it's a fascinating idea - certainly a type of thing that would be previously overlooked, archaeologists traditionally dig things out of the ground, don't they, not observe the landscape?) - I don't think it'd help your cause if one of these Academics stumbles across you getting cross on this forum. I mean I'm trying to be encouraging. It'd be dead easy to start a free blog somewhere and put all your thoughts on it, load up photos etc.
There is a lot of truth in what you say, I would imagine. The great irony is that given...