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Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Bad History: A Review

It’s quite disappointing to see how much flack this excellent little book has received. I was under no illusion that the book I was about to read was going to be a light read. The book’s title does imply that it is to be considered to be in the same category as Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Science” and Phil Plait’s “Bad Astronomy”. Despite both of these books being written for a lay audience they were not shot in details or text. Emma Marriot’s slim collection of short essays might be with Goldacre and Plait in sentiment, but the work isn’t intended to educate the reader in good historical research. However, it does provide examples of what good research achieves and how good historians view the past. Unfortunately I think many history buffs were looking forward to a heavily cited and in depth analysis of historical myths and a debunking of pseudohistory; not a book strictly for academics, but nevertheless one with a scholarly appeal. Recent years have seen some good academics, like Richard J Evans take on the postmodern anti-historical wave and others like David Aronovitch, Kathryn S. Olmsted and even sceptical scientist Michael Shermer produce sterling investigations that both debunk and seek to understand the nature of conspiracy theory.