Comments | snobss: I call ... BULLSHIT

unixronin in snobss

I call ... BULLSHIT

Feb 22, 2006 19:05

I was very disappointed to see in New Scientist, of all places, a full-page ad for a book by Anatoly T. Fomenko (an ad across which is "stamped", in large red letters, "SOLD 3.8 MILLION COPIES IN RUSSIA") titled "History: Fiction or Science?" The gist of the ad is that Fomenko, self-proclaimed "leading mathematician of our time", "proves" that ( Read more... )

bad science

Comments 9

dr_nebula February 23 2006, 01:00:38 UTC

Geez - what an unbelievable bunch of festering bullshit. This reminds of me of that other famous crackpot Russian's book (Worlds in Collision - Immanuel Velikovsky) and the bunch of moronic followers he had.

Why in HELL does the New Scientist even carry this add? Have they no shame?

(this reminds me - I need a BULLSHIT icon)

unixronin February 23 2006, 11:54:13 UTC

Why in HELL does the New Scientist even carry this add? Have they no shame?

I was going to ask them that question.

And having now gotten to doing so: unixronin February 23 2006, 12:00:56 UTC

Dear Editors,

I was ... surprised? Nay, shocked and confused to find a full-page ad in New Scientist for Anatoly Fomenko's pseudoscience book debunking all known history and all known dating methods, and asserting that all history actually started about a thousand years ago. Not shocked at the sheer blathering idiocy of such a book, but surprised at finding an ad for it in New Scientist. I'm startled that New Scientist would accept an ad for such obvious complete and utter tommyrot. It both lends Fomenko a veil of undeserved credibility, and does so at the expense of New Scientist's own credibility. I EXPECT to see that kind of fakery and quackery advertised in the back of Popular Science, but in New Scientist...?

I hope this was just a one-time aberration that slipped through somehow.

Re: And having now gotten to doing so: dr_nebula February 23 2006, 14:00:03 UTC

Hmm..I did you send this off?

I'm guessing the got a decent shit-storm of hate mail from others who also use the site.

Thread 5

nishar February 23 2006, 06:28:27 UTC

That sounds like the old communist crappot attempts to try and get stupid people not to believe in any religions. Christianity of course was their main target.

alienor77310 February 23 2006, 08:28:51 UTC

There are also those who claim that the Early Middle Ages never happened.

ANGRY vredina_sos April 8 2006, 18:33:59 UTC

As russian I can only say SHAME ON those who bought it!!! Fomenko is a real sharlatan! But please believe me that clever people in my country don´´t treat his pennydreadfulls yellow papered booklets seriously.... I can only confirm as traveller that unfortunately bookshops from Hong-Kong to London full of this kind of shit, and nationality has nothing to do with it. Fomenko is good clown and can present history in easy for thinking manner. But his free way of doing it looks stupid for people who polite their own brain. I prefer reading history tales of another russian sharlatan - Valentine Pikul ))))

Re: ANGRY unixronin April 8 2006, 20:22:29 UTC

Oh, I don't doubt the people who bought it are in the minority. (Well, clearly the numbers say so. 3.8 million copes out of, what, almost 143 million? That's slightly over 2%. Far more people than that in the US buy crap like the Weekly World News or National Enquirer with badly-photoshopped cover images of the face of Jesus in a slice of fried bologna sausage.) I've run into quite a few Russian and Ukrainian emigrés here in the US, and not one of them would have been taken in by this kind of garbage.

I have among my list of favorite quotations one the exact source of which is uncertain, but I've several times seen it attributed to Aristotle:

"If you make people think that they are thinking, they will love you. But if you make them really think, they will hate you."