People
A recent section of American Antiquity devoted to professional reviews of "fringe" books was titled "Talking to the Guy on the Airplane." While each of those reviews addressed, in some way, the substance (or lack thereof) of the claims in a book, none of them chose to discuss the author of the book. Does the person behind the idea matter? I would argue that it does: when there is no mechanism for testing an idea (one of the main things that separates archaeology from pseudo-archaeology), the source, motivation, and history of the idea matters. If science is a human endeavor (as one of my mentors at Michigan drilled into me), then pseud0-science is even more-so.
Sure, ideas can be evaluated based on their own merit. But if you want to understand the context of why someone is hawking a "fringe" idea, you often have to look beyond the claim itself. If I a guy on the plane asked me what I thought about one of these ideas, I would mention if the proponent was an ex-Nazi, an advocate for the use of hallucinogenic drugs, a biblical fundamentalist, a New Age spiritualist, a felon, an occultist, a follower of psychics, or someone trying to sell me gold to fend off the apocalypse. These people have made themselves public figures and are generally selling a product. Their motivations for doing so are fair game and may be an important piece of the puzzle.
Sure, ideas can be evaluated based on their own merit. But if you want to understand the context of why someone is hawking a "fringe" idea, you often have to look beyond the claim itself. If I a guy on the plane asked me what I thought about one of these ideas, I would mention if the proponent was an ex-Nazi, an advocate for the use of hallucinogenic drugs, a biblical fundamentalist, a New Age spiritualist, a felon, an occultist, a follower of psychics, or someone trying to sell me gold to fend off the apocalypse. These people have made themselves public figures and are generally selling a product. Their motivations for doing so are fair game and may be an important piece of the puzzle.
