Pseudohistory

Pseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions. Works which draw controversial conclusions from new, speculative or disputed historical evidence, particularly in the fields of national, political, military and religious affairs, are often rejected as pseudohistory by commentators holding contrasting views.

Description

As "pseudohistory" is a label rather than a self-defined intellectual movement, a clear definition is not possible. Some criteria which have been suggested are:

• That the work has a political or religious 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.

Problems with pseudohistory

Pseudohistory is a pejorative label which, of itself, has no content in the absence of specific criticisms of the underlying historographical method employed in a historical work and, ipso facto, will itself be a controversial claim: A work which has no popular or intellectual support is not likely to attract sufficient attention to be labelled pseudohistorical — it will be ignored completely. An argument, therefore, that a given work is pseudohistorical (without more particular specific criticisms of its conclusions or methods) is likely to be ad hominem in nature.

The definition of pseudohistory can be extended to suit an author's purpose. In one of several articles disputing professor Anton Lawson's use of history in science teaching, historian Douglas Allchin applied the term to what he viewed as factual errors on history in science teaching publications. Such errors are commonly termed misconceptions. Allchin himself used the term historical misconceptions. Most historical misconceptions in science teaching publications are simply unintentional errors and do not meet most of the criteria of pseudohistory, especially the criterion of furthering a political or religious agenda.

Pseudohistory assumes that there is a correct historiographical method, and ultimately a single objectively true account of a given set of facts. This analysis is not consistent with certain metaphysical theories, particularly relativist views of historical affairs, which would reject the notion of any truth outside language. (See, for example, Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.)

Examples of pseudohistory

The following are some commonly-cited examples of pseudohistory.

• Immanuel Velikovsky's book Worlds in Collision
• Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko's book New Chronology
• Heribert Illig's book Phantom time hypothesis
• Priory of Sion: works such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which conjecture that Jesus Christ may have married Mary Magdalene, who later moved to France and gave birth to the line of Merovingian Kings
• Holocaust denial: claims of writers such as David Irving that the Holocaust did not occur or was exaggerated.
• Apollo moon landing hoax accusations: claims that the United States Apollo moon landings were faked by NASA with the help of the CIA.
• 1421 hypothesis
• Jesus as myth

See also

• Pseudoarchaeology
• Pseudoscience
• Pseudoscientific metrology

External links

• Carroll, Robert Todd, "Pseudohistory". Skeptic's Dictionary
• Allchin, Douglas, "Pseudohistory and Pseudoscience". Program in the History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN, USA.
• "The Restoration of History". Skeptic Magazine.
• "The Hall of Ma'at". The Hall of Ma'at.