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[Boreades]

Your hypotheses are as good as theirs.

Hatty, I agree.

But are we bold enough to start editing those Wiki pages and introducing our own notes of dissent?

[hvered]

The difference between their hypotheses and yours is theirs have passed the peer review test. If you look something up on Wiki it will almost always have a reference; where one is absent, you see 'citation needed'. Even dissenting voices, which are quite often given Wiki-room, have to be referenced.

[Boreades]

Ah, the old "peer review" test. I know it well.

It's one of the benefits of all the day-job work I've done. Things like auditing medical data, or looking at the "provenance" of clinical trials. Uncomfortably often, the "peer review" is done by a small clique of like-minded people acting as the guardians and gate-keepers of the status quo.

For the authors of TME, this situation should feel familiar - see the reviews of TME in learned journals and on "proper" archaelogy/history sites.

And what is review? Somebody saying `The paper looks all right to me', which is sadly what peer review sometimes seems to be. Or somebody pouring all over the paper, asking for raw data, repeating analyses, checking all the references, and making detailed suggestions for improvement? Such a review is vanishingly rare.

What is clear is that the forms of peer review are protean. Probably the systems of every journal and every grant giving body are different in at least some detail; and some systems are very different. There may even be some journals using the following classic system. The editor looks at the title of the paper and sends it to two friends whom the editor thinks know something about the subject. If both advise publication the editor sends it to the printers. If both advise against publication the editor rejects the paper. If the reviewers disagree the editor sends it to a third reviewer and does whatever he or she advises. This pastiche—which is not far from systems I have seen used—is little better than tossing a coin, because the level of agreement between reviewers on whether a paper should be published is little better than you'd expect by chance.1

That is why Robbie Fox, the great 20th century editor of the Lancet, who was no admirer of peer review, wondered whether anybody would notice if he were to swap the piles marked `publish' and `reject'. He also joked that the Lancet had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom. When I was editor of the BMJ I was challenged by two of the cleverest researchers in Britain to publish an issue of the journal comprised only of papers that had failed peer review and see if anybody noticed. I wrote back `How do you know I haven't already done it?'

...

Sometimes the inconsistency can be laughable. Here is an example of two reviewers commenting on the same papers.

Reviewer A: `I found this paper an extremely muddled paper with a large number of deficits'
Reviewer B: `It is written in a clear style and would be understood by any reader'.

This—perhaps inevitable—inconsistency can make peer review something of a lottery.

Richard Smith was editor of the BMJ and chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group for 13 years.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/

[TisILeclerc]

Being peer reviewed can be a bit dangerous especially if you pick the wrong side of the argument.

Henry III closed Northampton University down just because they sided with the rebels. He does sound rather donnish though in his eviction notice.

In 1264, King Henry III fought and won a major battle against his rebellious barons at Northampton. During the siege, scholars there resisted the king's forces.

Less than a year later, the burgesses of Northampton received a message from the king.

It read: "We acceded to their request [to establish a university in 1261] because we believed then that this would benefit your town and that advantage would accrue to us; but now we have learned on the testimony of men worthy of belief that, if the university remains at Northampton, no small damage would be incurred by our borough of Oxford, which is of ancient creation, confirmed by our ancestors, and is generally approved as a convenience to students.

"We should on no grounds be willing that this should happen, especially as all the bishops agree that for the honour of God, the advantage of the Church of England and the well-being of the students, the university should be removed from Northampton."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-no ... e-37165019

The Sun of course would have said something like 'Cobblers to Northampton. Says King'

[Boreades]

Witney (of TME significance because of the wool industry) is showing a good current example of Peer Review:

An old Etonian and friend of David Cameron has urged Conservative Party members in Witney to back the local association chairman as their next parliamentary candidate. In an email ahead of a selection event tomorrow night, Lord de Mauley described David McFarlane as "hugely experienced person in all the aspects of life" who had "put his back into every aspect of our electoral success".

http://www.witneygazette.co.uk/news/147 ... _election/

Or is that pulling the wool over your eyes?

[Boreades]

L A Waddell was a fine scholar who took seriously the British Chronicles telling of the coming of the Trojans c1100 BC

This article comprises the preface of a biography of the scholar L A Waddell by Christine Preston published in 2009 and extracts from Waddell’s book of 1924, The Phoenician Origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons

http://www.thenationalcv.org.uk/More%2021%20Waddell.pdf

[Boreades]

Breaking news from the Lost Property Department.

Someone lost a whole city, but now it's been found by some Swedish tourists. Disguised as archeologists on their summer holidays in Greece.

The site at Vlochós is concentrated on and immediately below Strongilovoúni, an isolated hill towering 215 m. above the vast plains of Western Thessaly. The ancient remains have never been systematically examined, and – apart from some brief descriptions – has rarely figured in scholarly literature. Most striking of the visible remains at the site are the well-preserved fortifications, at points still 2.5 m. high, but the lower slopes below the hill show clear indications of being the location of an extensive urban settlement, now covered by silt and sediment from the nearby river Enipeas.

See http://vlap.se/blog/

[TisILeclerc]

Regarding Waddell and Brutus, perhaps if Britain was Troy or at least East Anglia was perhaps the Trojans had merely fled west and re-entered via Wales?

He mentions in the chronology further down the document that they moved pretty quickly eastwards and conquered the Humber region before nipping across to have a go at the Germans.

Another thing springs to mind, well, my mind at least. All over the world there are standing stones and pyramids. Our own pyramid is supposed to be Silbury Hill and the one at Marlborough and a few others.

What they all have in common is literacy. The Egyptians were literate, the Maya were literate, the Chinese were literate and so on. In fact the organisation required to plan and build such things would suggest very sophisticated societies.

With the exception of Britain. Our ancestors could build these things but couldn't write. They covered themselves in woad, didn't build roads and from all accounts were very brutish if not Brutus and uncivilised. Not the sort of people one would take to a literary luncheon in London.

Unless they could write and all records were destroyed by the Romans and their successors in the Roman church. As Waddell hints at in his book. Well I think it's more than a hint. And we know that the church was very good at destroying ancient records as we have seen all over south and central America.

To take over a country it's essential to subvert or destroy the ruling class. You'll need the plebs to work for you so they just get a jolly good thrashing and told to get back in the fields and work. You may despise them but you need them. Unless you can replace them with someone or something cheaper and more subservient.

[Boreades]

Unless they could write and all records were destroyed by the Romans and their successors in the Roman church. As Waddell hints at in his book. Well I think it's more than a hint. And we know that the church was very good at destroying ancient records as we have seen all over south and central America.

To take over a country it's essential to subvert or destroy the ruling class. You'll need the plebs to work for you so they just get a jolly good thrashing and told to get back in the fields and work. You may despise them but you need them. Unless you can replace them with someone or something cheaper and more subservient.

I heard similar accounts in Goa in India. The story there was Thomas, the first of the disciples sent abroad, was sent to Eastern India. Where he founded a branch of Christianity that was still there c.1400 years later when the Portuguese arrived with their own version of Christianity. So the Portuguese promptly burnt all the records of the Thomas Christianity they could find.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Thomas_Christians

Probably not good for Catholic business if the Thomas Christianity could claim "prior art" and copyright infringement? Worse if they had any documents to substantiate any claims. They would have to do like Mick and call them all forgeries?

The descendants of these include Syrian Christians or Nasrani, and some in Northern Iraq. Not that it will do them any good.

Three archbishops from war-torn Iraq and Syria have been refused permission to enter the UK despite being invited to London to meet Prince Charles. ... The Christians, including the Archbishop of Mosul, were told there was “no room at the inn” by the Home Office when they applied for visas to attend the consecration of the UK’s first Syriac Orthodox Cathedral. ... the welcome did not extend to Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf, the Archbishop of Mosul, nor to Timothius Mousa Shamani, the Archbishop of St Matthew’s, which covers the Nineveh valley in northern Iraq, who were refused UK visas to attend the event on November 24. The UK also refused to grant a visa to Archbishop Selwanos Boutros Alnemeh, the Archbishop of Homs and Hama in Syria.

It's clearly no good saying that they are wise men bearing gifts. Or that it's the season of goodwill to all mankind.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/739563 ... a-visas-UK

[TisILeclerc]

As the man said when they were burning Cathars and asked if they might be burning innocent Catholics 'God will know his own'.

Which is why that Coptic cathedral was bombed the other day in Egypt.

Yes, countdown time to Christmas, ticking away. And I imagine there will be certain people bearing gifts from the east.

At least the government is on top of the situation. They've banned an obscure right wing organisation no-one's ever heard of for being hateful.