Talk:Graham Hancock

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Q1: Why does the article say that Hancock's ideas are pseudoscientific?

A1: Hancock has written numerous books and has made television documentaries, but does not submit his work for peer review in mainstream academic journals. Wikipedia articles are based on reliable secondary sources and do not present theories as valid if they are not supported by experts in the relevant field. When Hancock's work was examined by mainstream archaeologists for the BBC's Horizon documentary series in 1999, academics were critical of aspects of his work, and after a complaint by Hancock and Robert Bauval, the Broadcasting Standards Commission found only one point of unfairness in the documentary.[1] Hancock has ample opportunities to promote his work through his own channels, but it is not the job of Wikipedia to right great wrongs. Unless his work undergoes peer review and is accepted in the academic community, it cannot be presented as having equal validity to work that has undergone peer review.

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Semi-protected edit request on 18 December 2024 (2)

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My request is simple.....this page is not objective.. Graham Hancock is a journalist..the description of him as a pseudoscientist begins the article with an overt bias....whatever he believes or advocates should be described before critiques are ordered below in a criticisms section...to begin by discrediting him renders the article 'pseudoencyclopedic' The page is more polemic than description or evaluation there is a dangerous misuse of narratives attempting to connect Mr Hancock with racism while there is absolutely no evidence to support such a conclusion. Whoever wrote this page did not do so in the spirit of the philosophy of science. I do not want to edit this page personally I want someone to ammend it accordingly. 81.132.255.64 (talk) 23:50, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. The "pseudoscientific" adjective on the opening sentence references two sources (the inline citations "^[2]^[3]") and reflects the Pseudoarchaeology section, which has even more sources. ObserveOwl 🎄 (talk) 00:42, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is clear what is needed. A true description of Graham Hancock would first state that he is a journalist with an interest in history. This article is clearly not objective. 82.3.116.244 (talk) 09:50, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A shame then that he ignores actual history. Slatersteven (talk) 10:43, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 19 December 2024

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I don't believe that Graham Handcock is correct. However, neither do I see archaeology as omniscient. The tone of this article is still too severe. It is not balanced, being structured much as its author alleges and rightly identifies, much of Mr Hancock's work to be. I mean citation sixteen? What kind of actual research has been done to establish changes in the perspectives of the Joe Rogan audience after the Hanncock Dibble interview? Just because and academic said that this occurred in their opinion does not mean it did. Even if Mr Hancock is perhaps misguided, it is doubtful that his motives are anything but honest and true. Are there any academics who support his work to any degree? In the interest of balance, even if they are a minority and even perhaps obscure? Mr Hancock never actually claims to have found anything! Rather he seems interested in pushing back the archaeological clock, ever deepening the void in which his mysterious lost civilisation is purported to lie; the material he presents is interesting and our realisation of the antiquity of the human species is growing. Agriculture does begin 12000 years ago even if its got nothing to do with seafaring shamen.

Mr Hancock's impact is likely to have introduced many people to discoveries in archaeology, which would have remained at the margins of popular interest.

Most viewers or readers will recognise the often self confessed limitations of Mr Hanncocks work. A rare bigot may see the work as a means of establishing rhetoric such as those prevalent in Nazi or imperial archaeology but those individuals will find their justifications wherever they can.

This article is not to me a proper encyclopedia entry; it has bitter overtones and seems almost to villianise Mr Hancock.

What's there to be scared of? It must be a fear or perhaps a sense of anger that drives the writing of a page like this!

Lastly, Mr Hancock and Mr Dibble seemed to get on quite well after some personal tensions, which needed working out. I can away endeared to both men and grateful for all the information that they shared.

And I think that would be the response of most people...while you cite their long discussion as powerful evidence of Mr Hancock's inaccuracy your page lacks its nuance entirely and has none of the humanity... Please... will you sort this out for everyone?

Regards Andrew 81.132.255.64 (talk) 11:44, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We go by what RS say. Slatersteven (talk) 11:52, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"it is doubtful that his motives are anything but honest and true" I suspect that Hancock has similarities with Erich von Däniken. Popularizing both fringe ideas and actual archaeological findings while in pursuit of fame and fortune for himself. What sets him ahead of the pack of pseudoarcheologists is that Hancock has some actual skill in storytelling. Dimadick (talk) 04:53, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

More tone (and NPOV?) complaints

This has been discussed a bunch before, but insofar as the page still has issues and the old threads are archived, I'm going to make a fresh tone complaint thread.

Briefly, as I said in my original complaint, my problem with the article is that it's written in a way that sounds like it's intended to be persuasive, and to let you know what a disreputable idiot Hancock is. Now as far as I can tell, he really is a disreputable idiot, but The Encyclopedia is not supposed to say that. It can tell you all the disreputable and idiotic things he's done (except where doing so involves undue weight, but that's not an issue here), and it can clarify that these things are considered disreputable and idiotic by reputable experts and the prevailing standards of their fields of study. And in my opinion the article should do all of these things to Hancock. But it may not make conclusions, and shouldn't even appear to do so.

In my original complaint @Hypnôs replied that tone was not a NPOV issue. This seems like an odd opinion to me. For example, the NPOV page has a section on impartial tone. The NPOV tutorial has a section on neutral language. And so on. If the editors who codified these policies intended us to regard partiality of tone as unrelated to NPOV, they went about communicating this in a rather funny way.

So tone IS an NPOV issue. However, for the benefit of others with the same mistaken impression: I am NOT suggesting that we need to give additional weight to the works of the idiot fringe circles Hancock moves with in order to qualify as NPOV. It might be entertaining to mention some of them, because the reader might want to know just how dumb these people can get, but it's not a hard requirement.

I am specifically opposed to the description by Wikipedia (but not by his critics) of Hancock as a pseudoscientist or a psuedo-archaeologist. I just don't think these are particularly well-defined terms, so they end up just being terms of abuse in practice (not that some of the targets don't deserve abuse, but Wikipedia isn't allowed to join in). To say that someone is outside the mainstream of archaeological opinion is a clear, factual statement. To say that someone asserts specific claims (which an intelligent reader would regard as stupid) is also a clear, factual statement. To say that some recognized authority identified the specific claims as stupid is again a clear, factual statement. But to say, ex cathedra, the claims or the person are psuedoscientific is substantially less clear. I don't immediately know what it's supposed to tell me about that person other than they are Bad At Science In Some Way. It's perfectly cromulent to cite somebody like the SAA saying that Hancock is a pseudoscientist, but not for Wikipedia to say so. And indeed, we do cite people calling him that in the 3rd paragraph of the lede, which is fine. Calling his work pseudoscientific in the first sentence of the lede feels like gilding the lily.

I also agree with the criticism of the IP editor in this post. I disagree with the other IP editor who wrote "It should be sufficient to present him as the author of some imaginative and entertaining conjectures that the scientific community...regard as being outside the scope of evidence-based research." To an extent this is the right idea, but we're under no obligation to spin Hancock positively. We should say that he is the author of conjectures (no need for any positive adjectives; they're as problematic as "pseudoscience"), and that these are regarded as stupid by people who know better, since these are the true facts of the case. And we should try to sound as neutral as possible while saying this. My own view is that the actual facts of the matter are far more damning to Hancock than any shade a POV-pushing editor might care to throw in, so I'd prefer people not get in the way of those facts.

I think it's extremely bad form to have the main in-article section on his work and claims titled "Pseudoarchaeology". It would be much better to have a section called something like "Claims" which neutrally described all the dumb shit he thinks, and then possibly another section called "Accusations of Pseudoarchaeology" which would go into more depth on why the various expects regard his work as pseudoscientific.

I could go on, but I'm just going to say there are still enough problems with the article (which I don't feel up to fixing myself at the moment) to justify putting the NPOV template back in for now. Dingsuntil (talk) 04:44, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Calling a spade a spade is the NPOV. The terminology is what the reliable sources use, hence we use it as well. The terms are explained in detail, specifically in the context of Hancock's work.

In my original complaint @Hypnôs replied that tone was not a NPOV issue.

I said that the thoroughness of the article is not a NPOV issue. Hypnôs (talk) 06:11, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]