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This article was nominated for deletion on 7 May 2006. The result of the discussion was keep, nomination withdrawn. |
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Arbitration Ruling on the Treatment of Pseudoscience In December of 2006 the Arbitration Committee ruled on guidelines for the presentation of topics as pseudoscience in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience. The final decision was as follows:
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Seriously, the example given and the context that the whole article is written in is illogical. All the article states is historical things, ideas, whatever you want to call them, that don't adhere to mainstream history, archaeology etc. are considered a "pseudohistory" which mind, isn't even a real word.
Thetalkingheads (talk) 20:31, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Whats stopping me from writing a book and putting anything I want as the title?
Thetalkingheads (talk) 22:14, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Some one has a disagreement over the race of Egyptians, so what do they do? The people with the upper hand, the writers of history the publishers of books (despite not making their case - no more so than the other guys) go and classify the people they disagree with as pseudo history. Very very convenient. I disagree with your argument and your research so you are a pseudo historian-- I guess that is one way to settle an academic debate. TO NO surprise Eurocentrism is NOWHERE on this page because I guess that is just called history. --41.177.75.185 (talk) 22:53, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
There's a discussion at Talk:Giorgio A. Tsoukalos#Pseudohistorian is a pejorative? concerning whether Tsoukalos should be categorized as a Pseudohistorian, which (at least according to this article) is a pejorative term. Please participate in the discussion there. Thanks, Justin W Smith (talk) 16:00, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
Reading down through this talk page, it's pretty clear that "pseudohistory" is being defined according to the editors' personal biases. I personally don't give a flying fortune cookie about arguments over the "historical Jesus" or similar non-history (my own bias there), but I seriously have to question the inclusion of what's being called pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts. This is a valid historical field, the subject of some thousands of legitimate academic purblished works over the past two centuries, not to mention archaeological discoveries (e.g., the Norse settlement at L'Anse-aux-Meadows). Whoever included this as "pseudohistory" really should take a look at a few volumes of Terrae Incognitae, the peer-reviewed journal of the Society for the History of Discoveries. --Michael K SmithTalk 02:16, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
I came upon this article by accident, and have clarified some of the rather murky English, also placed the long section on Goodrich-Clarke (apparently written by a fan of his) in its correct place as an example of pseudohistory rather than a derfinition Chrismorey (talk) 23:25, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
On further reflection, I have some issues with the article, and judging by the Talk page I'm not alone. I've made quite a number of changes, mostly to amplify and to address some of the Talk issues. Specifically: +
... which notes that Ariosophism (an esoteric discipline in Germany and Austria, fl. 1890-1930) resemble Nazism in important points (e.g. racism, emphasis on supposed Aryan origins, use of the swastika). However, the only cases where Goodrick-Clarke found evidence of a direct Ariosophic influence on National Socialism were the cases of Rudolf von Sebottendorf (and the Thule Society) and Karl Maria Wiligut. He found that the importance of these cases is often greatly exaggerated by the modern mythology of Nazi occultism. Goodrick-Clarke defines this genre as crypto-history, since its "final point of explanatory reference is an agent which has remained hidden from previous historians."[1] He debunks several books as crypto-historic in Appendix E of his book, writing that they "were typically sensational and under-researched. A complete ignorance of the primary sources was common to most authors and inaccuracies and wild claims were repeated by each newcomer to the genre until an abundant literature existed, based on wholly spurious 'facts' concerning the powerful Thule Society, the Nazi links with the East, and Hitler's occult initiation."... [ENDS] I don't believe any specific theory should be discussed at this length in this article.
If any editor has issues with what I've done, PLEASE don't blindly revert it, but make constructive edits, make constructive comment here, or write to me on my talk page. Chrismorey (talk) 03:05, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
References
Was Velikovsky's theory contrary to scientific knowledge at the time he promulgated it, or did the scientific refutation come afterwards? If the latter, it's a disproved theory but not pseudohistory and shouldn't be listed as an example Chrismorey (talk) 03:57, 6 November 2013 (UTC)3
The cited reference does not support the idea that most afrocentrist theories are pseudohistorical. The notion that all Ancient Egyptians were "black" (as the term is currently understood) is certainly ahistorical. But not all Afrocentrists make that claim. Some emphasize the (historically indisputable) role of Nubians in Egypt, including the Nubian pharaohs. And they argue that the role of sub-Saharan Africans in Egypt is systematically overstated, as part of an (imo, pseudohistorical) attempt to paint Ancient Egypt as white. This theory is plausible. More importantly, it is not contradicted by the cited source, which just speaks to the most extreme and untenable 'all Egyptians were black' form of Afrocentrism. Steeletrap (talk) 19:22, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
This article was written in January 2003 without the term "pejorative."[3] It was rewritten in May 2006[4] with that term - and no source citations.[5] There are no definitions outside Wikipedia - only here on Wikipedia, writings that cite Wikipedia, and Wikipedia "books" - that include the word "pejorative." Lightbreather (talk) 04:16, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
Further, none of these article use the word "pejorative":
Two pseudo-scholarship articles besides this one include the word:
--Lightbreather (talk) 04:29, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
I removed Category:Pseudohistorians as a subcategory of Category:Pseudoarchaeology, on the grounds that pseudohistory is not necessarily pseudoarchaeology, tho’ the subjects two overlap heavily. Okay?--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 00:32, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Good idea. By the nature of historical subjects, not everything is related to archaeology, nor do all subjects need archaeological findings to support them. Dimadick (talk) 17:17, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Who is usually the one to label someone a 'pseudohistorian'? Their enemies! Regardless of whether what a historian wrote is disputed or not they are still a historian, labelling them a 'pseudohistorian' is a pathetic excuse of not constructing an argument of your own. If you disagree with what someone has said, argue against it, don't resort to hysterics and name calling. The only sense in which the term is used is derogatory and the very basis of the term if flawed. Beyond the fact that the article's POV is completely biased this is grounds for it to be removed or perhaps significantly reduced and merged with the article on Historians. Manifest Truth (talk) 12:28, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
There is a very old thread discussing whether to remove David Barton from this article. The discussion was leaning to remove, but it's still here. There is no doubt that Barton's work has been called pseudohistory, but most are unreliable, politically-based sources. Of those in the article, we should discount the PFAW source. The Baltimore Chronicle article is clearly indicating that this is the opinion of one particular person (Chris Rodda). The Arlen Specter article looks better (published in Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy) but I am not able to access it. One the other hand, when CNN published an opinion piece criticising the work as pseudohistory, they followed it up with another one defending it against the charge. Moreover, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), which is a comprehensive book on the subject, does not mention "pseudohistory" at all. Hence, there is not enough for us to call Barton's work "pseudohistory" in WP voice. StAnselm (talk) 09:37, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
How can early historians be considered Historical revisionism? Surely Historical revisionism is "the re-interpretation of the historical record", which people like Geoffrey of Monmouth were not doing.Slatersteven (talk) 18:30, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
Regarding Geoffrey of Monmouth, I understand that his work is clearly multifaceted and complicated, but I am content with him in the current "Historical fabrication" section, because, even though there are other elements to his work, I think that it would be more productive to only mention each example once and to put those examples in the sections were they fit the most comfortably, even if there are aspects of them that would fit better in other sections. --Katolophyromai (talk) 00:09, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Please put a mention about Nordicist theories claiming that all civilizations such as those of the Mediterranean, Mesoamerica, China etc was founded by "Nordic Aryans". Arthur de Gobineau is one who created these pseudo-histories. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheBr0s (talk • contribs) 21:07, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
British television series The Crown claims to be a "largely factual" representation of the modern history of the British monarchy, but caveats that some of the plot is partially or entirely fictional. Would this not count as Historical Falsification in the modern era? Jellinator (talk) 18:58, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
Historical fiction in general tends to be a combination of genuine historical material, various fictional tropes, and the ideological agendas of the fiction writers. In several cases, the writers use the story's events in a supposedly remote era to express their views on their present-time conditions or on universal human experiences. Margaret Mitchell, for example, was less interested in the historical setting of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era, and more interested in depicting how and why people survive at the time of upheavals.:
If Gone with the Wind has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality 'gumption.' So I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn't.
— Margaret Mitchell, 1936
Dimadick (talk) 00:39, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion:
You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:52, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
It's a major problem. See for instance this.[6] Sorry, being called, more later. Doug Weller talk 11:00, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
I don't know anything about this myself, but the sentence "Many Muslims deny the Jewish history of Jerusalem and in particular deny the existence of the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount." is clearly controversial, and is currently poorly sourced. The New York Sun is not a reliable source. For inclusion in this article, we should find a (couple of) reliable source(s) that claim that 1.) temple denial is pseudohistory and 2.) many Muslims engage in this form of pseudohistory.
I have deleted the aforementioned sentence, but was reverted, so I hereby bring it to the talk page. 2A02:A210:2D00:3D80:4DC0:DD27:E60A:9D86 (talk) 15:02, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
I removed Anti-Secession Act of 1861 from "See also" because that section is a list of similar concepts, whereas the Anti-Secession Act is an example of pseudohistory, although I'm a bit at a loss to decide which section it belongs in. Adding examples to "See also" seems like a slippery slope that could rapidly lead to the section becoming needlessly long and controversial. Carguychris (talk) 21:00, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
[7] Doug Weller talk 07:57, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
This is a great and detailed page, props to all contributers. one thiing i would like to change is perhaps the beginning half could be about the different sub categories (revisionism, denialism ) etc, second half of page is the specific wrong claims (tartaria, matriarchy, etc) Philipbrochard (talk) 01:13, 27 March 2024 (UTC)