How do you get taken seriously?

Debi raises an interesting problem. Her father has found footprints and archaeologists are dismissive. Why are archaeologists dismissive and, if you have found something mind-bogglingly weird, how would you get someone to take you seriously?

One of my supervisors is, as far as I know, the world’s only professor of Archaeoastronomy, and one of the very few archaeoastronomers in an archaeology department. As a result he’s very busy. So busy that when he’s away occasionally I’ll be asked to answer the phone for him. Usually what happens is that someone will phone up with something urgent to discuss, and the department won’t be able to contact my supervisor because he’s in Armenia or Peru or Hawaii. He also organises and participates in a few conferences, there are TV crews asking his advice, he’s a busy man, and so urgent phone calls are a frequent occurrence. What then happens is I answer the phone to talk to someone who hasn’t found Atlantis, they’re always very clear on that, but have found evidence of ancient astronomy in somewhere that recently featured on the Discovery Channel.

Some of these people might have found something genuine. An awful lot haven’t and very few people have any idea of how to present their thoughts. The result is a long rambling phone call with no clear purpose and it’s not till an hour in when they may start taking about an ice-free Antarctica that you know whether they’re mad or just enthusiastic. I have a limited number of heartbeats in my life and usually answering the phone for Clive is a good way to spend scores of them on conversations that go nowhere. So if now if I’m asked to take a call for Clive, I ask the secretaries to tell them I’m busy (though I’m rarely in the department to answer the phone anyway) and I’ll phone them back. It’s the simplest way to ignore someone.

How do you get around this? The easiest would be to give a paper at a conference, but that’s easier said than done when you’re not an academic. So what can you do? I’ll take an extreme example. I’ll pretend I’ve discovered Atlantis. For the sake of argument we’ll assume that I am right – it genuinely is Atlantis I’ve found. If I go along to the nearest archaeology department and tell them I’ve found Atlantis I’ll be shown to the door. There are dozens of Atlantis theories announced each year. They’re all different, so logically at least dozens minus 1 of them must be wrong each year. Clearly, announcing the discovery of Atlantis is not going to get you taken seriously, so what is?

First I’d try think of all the ways I could be wrong. Then I’d write up quick and clear rebuttals of why these problems aren’t really problems at all, or aren’t relevant.

Next I’d tone down the claims. Suppose I found Atlantis where no-one else had looked. I wouldn’t announce it was Atlantis, even if I knew it was. I’d start off by announcing I’d found a new archaeological site. That’s a big enough claim by itself, but it’s not going to upset anyone simply by existing. Then I’d make claims it was quite early. It wouldn’t pull a date from the earliest layers, I’d pull a date from the latest layers. Once that late date is accepted then I’d pull a slightly earlier day from an earlier phase of the site. Once I had a site from the right era, then I might be able to persuade people it could be Atlantis.

I’d also think hard about who I sent the claims to.

Academics are not short of work. They invent enough of it for themselves and each other without having to send out for more. So if I were to send in a claim I’d effectively be adding more work. I think I’d stand a much better chance of being taken seriously if I made it seem as little extra work as possible. Again this is where small claims beat big claims. If I send everything on my find to someone then I’ll just scare them. Experience will have taught them there’s a good chance that after ploughing their way through my work there’s a good chance I’ll have ignored some basic archaeological concepts.

With a small claim I can propose something that is a manageable size to read but not skimp too much on detail. So in my case. I’d produce a map of the site, some photographs of the architecture and pictures of some pottery if I knew of any. I’d say I couldn’t find any mention of it in the surveys of the area, and give some examples of the book I’ve read. Then I’d ask ‘Is this a new discovery?’ It’s a lot of work, but if you don’t do it then it’s a lot of work to the archaeologist you give your claims to. They’ll probably be much keener to spend their time on their own research than do a lot of work on someone else’s.

Debi’s case is different, her father’s footsteps sound much more plausible than Atlantis, so how could her father be taken seriously? In this case I’d photograph the footsteps and say where they were found and how they were found. I’d also look for dating evidence. Then when I found that evidence I wouldn’t tell someone they must be thousands of years old. I’d say that I think they’re thousands of years old, but in my letter to the archaeologist I’d ask if there were any obvious ways I could be wrong.

Ultimately if there was no progress then I might write a paper for a journal, but I’d be careful about which journal I chose. There are many, many scientists who go their whole career without getting a paper in Nature, so even good papers can expect to be rejected. I’d choose a small, but relevant journal. It might have a readership measured in double-figures, but they would be people who would be interested in what I was writing, and if I was right, they’d help me get my discovery more widely known.

I realise this is a slow process, and might be frustrating but I’ll try and show you the other side. A lecturer in a university will have spent at least three years on a first degree, at least one more on a Master’s degree, then at least three on a PhD. After seven years of work they might publish papers in minor journals and start working their way up to bigger things. If it takes seven years of work full-time to make a small difference, then taking a couple of years part-time to get a major controversial find taken seriously seems a bit of a short-cut. This is why amateurs can sometimes find one or two ‘professional’ archaeologists resentful of their ideas. However, archaeology and history aren’t impossible areas for the lone amateur. There are probably still plenty of big discoveries that can and will be made by interested amateurs, so I wouldn’t discourage anyone with something genuinely exciting from trying to get published. —–