Pseudohistory

Pseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to sensational claims about history which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions. The term is used to discredit works or authors which make controversial conclusions based on new, speculative, unverified, or disputed historical claims.

Definition and etymology

Pseudohistory is closely related to pseudoscience in that pseudoscience is defined as "a methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be scientific, but which does not adhere to an appropriate scientific methodology, and lacks supporting evidence or plausibility", while pseudohistory is a methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be historic, but which does not adhere to an appropriate historic methodology, and lacks supporting evidence or plausibility.

The definition of pseudohistory can be extended to varying contexts. Historian Douglas Allchin contends that history in science education can not only be false or anecdotal, but misleading ideologically, and that this constitutes pseudohistory.

The term pseudohistory comes from the Greek word pseudo (meaning "false, feigned, erroneous"), which is used as a prefix to the following root word—in this case, history (the recording of past events).

Description

The following are some of the criteria for warranting the term pseudohistory:

• That the work has a political, religious, or other ideological agenda.
• That a work is not published in an academic journal or is otherwise not adequately peer reviewed.
• That the evidence for key facts supporting the work's thesis is:
  • speculative; or
  • controversial; or
  • not correctly or adequately sourced; or
  • interpreted in an unjustifiable way; or
  • given undue weight; or
  • taken out of context; or
  • distorted, either innocently, accidentally, or fraudulently.
• That competing (and simpler) explanations or interpretations for the same set of facts, which have been peer reviewed and have been adequately sourced, have not been addressed.
• That the work relies on one or more conspiracy theories or hidden-hand explanations, when the principle of Occam's razor would recommend a simpler, more prosaic and more plausible explanation of the same fact pattern.

Goodrick-Clarke's description of cryptohistory

One narrow description of 'cryptohistory', a term probably less pejorative than pseudohistory, can be found in The Occult Roots of Nazism (1985) by the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. This book examines the field of Ariosophy, an esoteric movement in Germany and Austria 1890-1930, that Goodrick-Clarke himself describes as occult. The doctrines of Ariosophy strongly resemble Nazism in important points (e.g. racism), however, the only cases of direct influences that Goodrick-Clarke could find were the ones of Rudolf von Sebottendorf (and the Thule society) and Karl Maria Wiligut. While these cases did exist, they are often exaggerated strongly 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 concealed to previous historians." When he debunks several crypto-historic books in Appendix E of The Occult Roots of Nazism, he states, that these "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." Here Goodrick-Clarke brings down the description of cryptohistory to two elements: "A complete ignorance of the primary sources" and the repetition of "inaccuracies and wild claims".

See also

• Historiography and nationalism
• Misery lit
• Pseudoarchaeology
• Pseudoscience
• Pseudoscientific metrology

External links

• Pseudohistory entry at Skeptic's Dictionary
• "Pseudohistory and Pseudoscience" Program in the History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN, USA.
• "The Restoration of History" from Skeptic (U.S. magazine).
• The Hall of Ma'at