I am somewhat saddened by David Killick's remarks regarding the ancient tin
mining fiasco. For example, his second paragraph begins ..."For some reason sc
ientists, ( the underlining is mine) even quite eminent ones, have an
unfortunate tendency to lose their powers of reason when confronted with
questions of race, culture and history".....I site as one example of an
eminent scientist, the late Cyril Stanley Smith, who would not be considered
by anyone I know to have lost his reason when considering questions of race,
culture and history. Should David not have said some scientists! Can any one
out there not recall some of the thunderous fallacies published by
archaeologists? Remember also that Davidovits shared his (published) ideas
with an archaeologist (for example, their early ideas on the Cusco walls
given at the Brookhaven Archaeometry Symposium)!
Not to polarize the discussion, but I am afraid that the silly ideas are not
only in the realm of the scientist. Ridiculous and silly ideas are
continually disseminated by some of our colleagues be they scientists or
archaeologists or historians, et al; read any proceedings of any Archaeometry
Symposium.
R. Maddin
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