In 2009, Greg Melleuish, Konstantin Sheiko, and Stephen Brown had their “Pseudo History⁄Weird History: Nationalism and the Internet” published in the peer-reviewed journal History Compass. My interest in this article is their discussion of Anatoly Fomenko and his New Chronology, a topic which I’ve been looking into for some 5 years now.
My notes here are about the sections of their publication that deal with Fomenko, which runs mainly from page 1486 to page 1489. The footnotes related to this section are 7-16, which can be found on pages 1493-1494. In total, it’s about 3.5 pages of the 12 page article.
Overall, I think the relevant portion of this article was mostly just plagiarized content from 2004.[2] The authors produced a number of factual errors and and included a number of faulty citations. As with the plagiarized article, this 2009 publication does not attempt to explain why FNC is pseudo-history. It makes the assertion and works from there. It does contain some accurate information but nothing new aside from the new mistakes.
Contents
1 – Overview
2 – Defining Pseudo-History
3 – Footnote #9
4 – Footnote #10
5 – Wikipedia
6 – Shock and Awe
7 – Diagrams & Equations
Overview
Here’s a link to the peer-reviewed online-only academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell, History Compass: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/14780542/homepage/productinformation.html
Here are some links to the authors of the 2009 article:
Greg Melleuish: https://www.uow.edu.au/media/find-an-expert/greg-melleuish/
Konstantin Sheiko: https://www.australia-explained.com.au/people/konstantin-sheiko/
I think this is the correct Stephen Brown: https://scholars.uow.edu.au/display/stephen_brown
I provide the above links to show that these authors and the publisher are very much familiar with the academic world and have many years invested in their studies. Their collective qualifications increase the seriousness of the errors in their article, given their experience as academicians.
One of the biggest issues with their publication is the blatant plagiarism found throughout the section dedicated to Fomenko. The work being repurposed belongs to one of the three authors; Konstantin Sheiko’s 2004 publication. I think the specific type of plagiarism would be considered self-plagiaristic patchwriting. Alternatively, I think they could be plagiarizing from Sheiko (2009) because that work is listed in their bibliography. Even if that is the case, then Sheiko (2009) plagiarized Sheiko (2004) which means they indirectly plagiarized that earlier publication. I haven’t reviewed Sheiko (2009), so I can only speculate on that.
Here is a quote from Sheiko (2004) that makes it clear his writing assumes FNC to be pseudo-scientific and that no effort was made to determine whether or not that assumption was warranted:
“This thesis lays no claim to testing definitively the the truth or falsehoods of the ideas put forward by Fomenko and his supporters. The claims range from the barely plausible to the ludicrous. The question I have set myself is not the accuracy of the claims made but why such seemingly fantastic histories have emerged with such vitality in post-communist Russia.”
Sheiko (2004)[2, p.13]
The second sentence is ambiguous. It could be read as referring to the thesis itself or to FNC. If it’s about FNC, it’s demonstrably false. I’ve scrutinized hundreds of their claims closely and the greater majority of them are backed up.[4] These warranted claims would not fit onto a scale mapping from barely plausible to ludicrous.
Defining Pseudo-History
Here is the definition of pseudo-history they provided:
“By ‘pseudo history’ we mean the interaction of two related things. The first is an appeal to evidence that is conjectural, impossible to verify and ⁄or based on documents that are dubious. The second is a speculative approach to this evidence that allows arguments and narratives to be constructed that would seem to defy what would best be described as a ‘reasonable’ interpretation of the evidence.”
Melleuish et al. (2009)[1, p.1484]
Part 1
The first qualifier of pseudo-history is either one or all of the following:
1a – An appeal to evidence that is conjectural
1b – An appeal to evidence that is impossible to verify
1c – An appeal to evidence that is based on documents that are dubious
Part 2
2 – A speculative approach to the evidence from part 1 that allows seemingly unreasonable interpretations of that evidence
I don’t have much of an issue with how they define pseudo-history. I think they laid out some good things to watch for and avoid.
Footnote #9
“Gary Kasparov, one of Russia’s most celebrated chess grand masters and presently Russia’s most celebrated dissident politician, along with Alexander Zinoviev, one of Russia’s best-known writers, have written glowing introductions to Fomenko’s seven-volume magnum opus.9“
Melleuish et al. (2009)[1, p.1484]
Their footnote #9 was: “See ‘Introduction’ to A. Fomenko, Anatoly, T. History: Fiction or Science (Paris: Delamere Publishing, 2003).”
What is “‘Introduction’ to A.”? Is that the title? To my knowledge, it does not exist. Fomenko’s History: Fiction or Science contains 7 volumes, of which only 5 have been published in English. Which volume is being referred to here? Volumes 1, 2, and 3 mention Kasparov, but nothing about him authoring an introduction to the series. The only two volumes containing introductions are 3 and 4, but neither of them were authored by Zinoviev or Kasparov.
Possibly they meant to cite Kasparov’s Foreword in Введение в Новую Хронологию. Какой сейчас век? (2001)(Introduction to the New Chronology. What century is it now?). For Zinoviev, maybe they meant to refer to his Foreword in Volume 1. Given that there are differences between introductions, forewords, and prefaces, as seen in the History: Fiction or Science series and in Sheiko (2004), I think their footnote needs to be improved.
Footnote #10
Footnote 10 comes after the conspiratorial claims. It’s a chunk of 6 references that I lay out below for clarity.
I searched these titles in quotations on Google and the only results for 1, 2, 3, and 6 were works belonging to one or more of the authors of Melleuish et al. (2009). Numbers 4 and 5 do exist. The others might too, I figure the lack of hits is due to the spelling they used.
Number 1 doesn’t have a publication date. The same goes for Number 6.
1 – A. Fomenko and G. Nosovskii, Bibleyskaia Rus, vol. I, 21–4
2 – for mathematical-statistical critique of Skaliger ⁄ Petvius, see also A. Fomenko, Metody statisticheskogo analiza narrativnaykh tekstov i prilozhenie k khronologii (Moscow: MGU, 1990); second reprint 1996
3 – A. Fomenko, Globalnaia khronologia (Moscow: MGU, 1993)
4 – A. Fomenko, V. Kalashnikov, G. Nosovskii, Geometrical and Statistical Methods of Analysis of Star Configurations. Dating of Ptolemy’s Almagest (USA: CRC Press, 1993)
5 – A. Fomenko, Empirical-Statistical Analysis of Narrative Material and its Application to Historical Dating,
II vols. (The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publications, 1994)
6 – A. Fomenko and G. Nosovskii, Kakoi seitchas vek?, 16–33.
Wikipedia
“His publisher boasted in 2003 that 300,000 copies of Fomenko’s books had been sold; Wikipedia in 2009 claimed that sales were in the millions in Russia.”[1, p.1487]
No footnote was given for more information on this. Where exactly did his publisher boast this? Which Wikipedia page said that? What was Wikipedia’s source? I attempt to answer these questions below.
Sheiko (2004) gives a citation for the first question. Why didn’t Melleuish et al. (2009)?
As of 13 Oct. 2021, Wiki’s page for Fomenko’s New Chronology claims Fomenko’s books have sold over a million copies. It only claims this in one spot with no direct citation. Citation [74] is after the next sentence. Maybe it’s meant for both, maybe not. If it is, it might be odd due to citation [74] being Melleuish et al. (2009). The very publication I’m writing about in this article.
I made use of the “View history” section and checked past versions of the FNC Wiki page to see when and how this all came to be.
2003 – The earliest version of the page dates to 20 Dec. 2003.
2005 – The earliest version mentioning millions of sales dates to 3 Feb. 2005. No citation included.
2007 – The earliest version with [citation needed] after the following sentence dates to 4 Oct. 2007. The sentence was, “The list of his supporters includes such famous figures as former Chess World champion Garry Kasparov”. This is well over a year after Kasparov went on record saying he was not a supporter of the Fomenko-Nosovsky theory.[6]
2007 – The earliest version with a citation after the following sentence dates to 28 Nov. 2007. The citation is Kasparov’s Mathematics of the Past (2002?), which does not mention the sales. It also does not make a statement saying Kasparov supports Fomenko’s New Chronology. Kasparov just mentions FNC and that the results were fascinating. Even if this could be taken as him claiming to support it, the 2006 statement supersedes it, as people can change their minds over time.
2008 – The new citation appeared on 1 Jan. 2008. It was Sheiko (2004). This publication does not make the million+ sale claim. Kasparov’s Mathematics sentence was still included. The Sheiko (2004) sentence just got wedged in between it and the “sales” sentence.
2010 – The next new citation appeared on 31 Mar. 2010. It was/is the current one, Melleuish et al. (2009). I’m somewhat inclined to think this is a joke of sorts. Shieko, one of the authors included in the “et al” of Melleuish et al. (2009), was already on the Wiki page for over 2 years before this new citation. It piques my interest in knowing whether the authors were aware of this, or if they had any part in orchestrating this. The 2009 publication got added in with only 4 hours left on the clock until April 1st. Was this a nod at an April Fool’s joke?
All that aside, they were correct in that 2009 Wikipedia made the million+ sale claim. I do wonder where that claim came from though.
Shock and Awe
They asserted “Fomenko uses the mathematical and linguistic evidence to awe his opponents”.[p.1488] I’ve seen Fomenko note that the linguistic stuff is not at the core of the theory, rather it’s only a result of trying to make sense of the mathematics, although I can’t place the spot I read that as it was quite some time ago. The assertion made paints Fomenko as using this solely for awing the enemy. I think an examination of the evidence shows this to be false. “Enemies” being awed by mathematics doesn’t mean that awing them was the intent.
Diagrams & Equations
Even when I first began reading FNC, the diagrams were easy enough to understand. The equations are more complicated but far from impenetrable.[1, p.1488] What makes someone an expert? Are these equations more difficult to understand than any other equations of their kind? If so, why?
References:
[1] – Melleuish, G., Sheiko, K., & Brown, S. (2009). Pseudo History/Weird History: Nationalism and the Internet. History Compass, 7(6), 1484–1495. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00649.x. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021.
[2] – Konstantin Sheiko. “Lomonosov’s Bastards” (2004). https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1222&context=theses&fbclid=IwAR2c4mmV4KABouHFPHFcrnZx5eTdedPFxKXNqvZeNwRTXRbVoFrZi6ALieo. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021.
[3] – Steve J. Stern, “Between Tragedy and Promise”, in Gilbert Michael Joseph, Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). https://books.google.com/books?id=U35PbM-x9WsC&pg=PA33&dq=%22the+marshaling+and+twisting+of+apparent+research+to+suit+a+particular+political+line+or+agenda%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q=%22the%20marshaling%20and%20twisting%20of%20apparent%20research%20to%20suit%20a%20particular%20political%20line%20or%20agenda%22&f=false. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021.
[4] – Stephen Sorensen. “Examining Fomenko’s New Chronology” (1 Oct. 2020, with updates). https://ctruth.today/2020/10/01/examining-fomenkos-new-chronology/. Accessed 13 Oct. 2021.
[5] – Wikipedia. “New chronology (Fomenko)”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko). Accessed 13 Oct. 2021.
[6] – Stephen Sorensen. “Garry Kasparov and Fomenko’s New Chronology” (11 Oct. 2021, with updates). https://ctruth.today/2021/10/11/garry-kasparov-and-fomenkos-new-chronology/. Accessed 13 Oct. 2021.
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