Originally from Zimbabwe, Wayne Herschel now lives in Durban, South Africa, and gives the old “luminaries” like Erich von Däniken, Graham Hancock, Zacharia Sitchin, Robert Bauval, etc. a very crisp run for their money in terms of purveyed twaddle volume. His book (The Hidden Records) is worth knowing about only insofar as it represents a nadir of critical thought. It’s a right royal pain to read not least because of its poor language. Some of the reader reviews seen at the above link are worth reading, and it will be seen how polarised the book’s readership is.
Hmm, yes his prose is quite readable, but he, more than anyone else, is to blame for the prevalently sorry understanding of archaeology that one commonly finds today. Herschel’s book lists all three von Däniken books in its bibliography. It is interesting to speculate what might have been if, à la Dan Brown and his Da Vinci Code, von Däniken had presented his ideas in works of fiction, rather than as established fact. Certainly, no one would dare cite him as a factual reference, and that in itself would be worth much.
Yes, I enjoyed his books tremendously when I was younger… but lost interest when I found out about the fraud charges against him… The I found out that he did not write himself, but actually had someone doing it for him… could be because of language or something… nevertheless his books was well presented, albeit misleading… - a pity…
In those days, I couldn’t wait for the next Charles Berlitz book!!! He had no language problem… ;D
Interesting. I didn’t know about that - I’ll try Googling for a report.
Indeed, he didn’t have a language problem. Just about any language. It helps when one’s father is the owner of by far the largest publishing house of foreign language phrase books and traveller’s companions.
After reading The Bermuda Triangle and being suitably intrigued, I delved into The Philadelphia Experiment. This being before the days of the Internet, I searched multiple physics texts and encyclopaedias for the Biefeld-Brown Effect Berlitz mentioned in the latter book. Not finding anything, I grew suspicious and, after further study and reading, concluded that Berlitz was merely a deluded sensationalist. In fact, writing skill aside, Herschel has much in common with Berlitz also.
Thanks for the links - I’ll look at them more closely soon (I fixed them in the above quote :P). Also, I’ve still got to search for the von Däniken story, but time is not on my side right now.
I’ve kept all my woo-woo books in a separate section of a bookshelf. They can be very instructive in cases where someone shows a genuine interest in learning how to distinguish science from nonsense.
Lately he’s also chucked Stonehenge, Leonardo da Vinci (Dan Brown at least could distinguish between fact and fantasy, a skill that still seems to elude Herschel) and Vatican City into the mix as further “evidence,” never mind that the Vatican is a few millennia younger than the 17,000-odd years he speaks of in his self-published book. What is certain is that he’ll have some way-out “explanation” for these additions to his curious mélange of claims that purports to show humans originated somewhere in the Pleiades from some ETs. Simplicity does not seem to have a place in Wayne’s cosmos, and Occam’s Razor is good only for cropping colourful illustrations.
The Cydonia, Mars, “face” retains a central place in Herschel’s array of extraordinary evidence, and NASA/ESA scientists are obviously still deluded some years after the “face” was scrutinised more closely a few times. But thanks to Wayne’s much clearer pictures, the truth is known, but he only says “image enhancement” about how he came by such clear photos.
The “vast collection of coincidences” Herschel talks about is overshadowed by a much more vast collection of known facts. No one is contending that “we are alone” as an absolute article of knowledge, and few, I think, would venture such a claim. However, to accept Herschel’s “evidence” and “coincidences” as compelling is to “mock human intelligence.”
Herschel will give a talk about his ideas at the MTN Science Centre, Canal Walk, Century City, on April 14 this year. The organisers are obviously a bit out of touch with the meaning of the term “science,” and vocal sceptics will, I expect, be unwelcome.
ETA: Why is it that black and gold always seem to feature so heavily with the astronomy/archaeology woo-woo brigands?
Wayne Herschel needs a cash injection to perpetuate his fool’s foray into the swampy lands of Selection Bias:
Our article last Sunday about Melkbos author Wayne Herschel and his theories about the origins of Stonehenge and the pyramids was preposterous, according to one distinctly underwhelmed reader.
Well, maybe not as preposterous as he thinks. For buried deep inside Herschel’s website at www.thehiddenrecords.com is the following.
"More books need to be printed urgently and new investors are invited to join the quest. Each new investor will be entitled to a royalty ad infinitum.
"An investment share of $25 000 in the project earns the investor a 17c per book reward. The investment is treated like a bank loan with interest. The return of the ‘loan’ amount to the lender is being targeted within a 12-month period.
“The offer may sound too good to be true, and because of the unique nature of this project, will only make sense to those who have taken the time to read the book! Dan Brown has sold over 40 million books. Even if The Hidden Records were to sell only a fraction of such a figure … imagine the reward!”
Maybe so, but there’s at least one crucial difference: Unlike Herschel, Brown doesn’t pretend to write factual accounts, a point he (Brown) is adamantly clear on. He writes lightweight fiction with lots of one-dimensional characters nonceing about against historical backdrops. In contrast, Herschel insists that his fairytale is true, lending weight to the idea that once you have a theory, all you find is evidence to confirm it.
Also, the columnist does not explain how an ostensibly lucrative deal offer resulting from an apparent upsurge in popularity can in any way diminish the preposterousness of Herschel’s contentions. It’s a non sequitur, unless the implication is that it is okay to bilk people with dodgy facts and dodgier reasoning as long as someone - anyone - makes a buck thereby.
A few days ago, I found an article on Wayne Herschel in the Wikipedia and inspected the entry’s history, which I saved for quick retrieval. It turns out that doing so was fortuitous for reasons that will become clear shortly. The original entry read thus:
A link to Herschel’s web site was given.
The entry was amended once to present a milder, and perhaps truer, expanded account:
The article was subsequently deleted in its entirety two days ago. The reason?
Reason code “a7” is the Wikipedia equivalent of a summary execution. It is obvious, then, that a small measure of sanity prevails.
Wayne the Brain is giving talks in Cape Town tonight, 6th June, and tomorrow night:
[b]Cape Town - Peninsula Hotel - 4 course dinner - Star map Angkor night
Thursday 7th June 7pm.
Call Melissa for details and booking at 021 430 7777.
Cape Town - St George’s Grammar School (Jenny Mallett Hall)
Richmond Rd, Little Mowbray
Wednesday 6th June 7:30pm
Tickets R40 at door or call 082 329 5277[/b]</blockquote>In effect, this means that he's still soliciting support for his iffy fable from lay people instead of taking seriously others' criticisms and the fact that experts are [i]still[/i] almost completely ignoring him after several years. Also, it is telling that Wayne has dropped ticket prices by a third. One suspects that this may have been done in response to attendance figures being somewhat less than crushing.
Perhaps ordinary people are also increasingly starting to wonder about your ideas, Wayne?
Bauval’s finding – i.e. the “correspondence” between the three stars of Orion’s Belt on one hand, and the three Giza pyramids on the other – is not respected by any scientific orthodoxy and is hardly “breakthrough,” being long on speculation and short on evidence.
Despite stern disavowals of same voiced elsewhere on Wayne’s page, this smacks of an aspiration to some sort of hybrid New Age/traditionalist guruhood. The jargon and “sciency” sounding prose coupled with touchy-feely smarminess add up to pure New Age drivel. It seems that the less actual substance there is to an area of study, the more its proponents feel compelled to dolly it up with obscurantist claptrap.
With the stuff Herschel dishes up and expects you to swallow, I quite doubt it. On the other hand, I wonder whether the inherent comedy could perhaps be worth the price of admission…
Interesting, though, is the reference to the work of Dan Brown. Maybe there’s some merit in requiring that, à la some US creationist school boards and evolution textbooks, Dan Brown’s books be issued with a prominent disclaimer on the cover that reads, “This is a work of fiction. That means it is a made up story for entertainment only. It is not historical fact. It is not a reference work. It is not an exposé of any ancient far-reaching conspiracy involving a cast of shadowy figures. In short, it is imagination draped over a historical backdrop.”
But it probably wouldn’t do any good anyway, considering how Wayne is still basically accusing both NASA and ESA of deceiving the public with their photos of the Cydonia “face” on Mars.
Although a bit off-topic, I think that such a disclaimer is futile when the infamous “FACT” page is found in this book immediately before the prologue which reads:
But he seems to refine this on his website where he claims:
I wonder how many people who read the book and “interpreted” his FACT page incorrectly actually went to his website to find-out what he really meant by writing that.
Wayne “I believe conventional archaeologists are dimwits” Herschel is planning his next book, eagerly awaited by a wide spectrum of New Age and other woo-woo adherents. In it, he plans to reveal the source of his “knowledge” concerning human origins.
And that is just as it should be. After all, remarkable claims require remarkable amounts of remarkable evidence. Herschel’s first book, The Hidden Records, offered a tedious litany of overly contrived and even invented coincidences instead of actual or direct evidence. Its only value, apart from introducing Herschel’s odd notions about humanity’s origins to the world, was as an instructive study in how to avoid applying Occam’s Razor at all costs.
This seems to intimate that relevant scholars are afraid to confront the material possibly because it destroys extant theories. However, the truth is probably much closer to scholars not wanting to embarrass Herschel publicly and/or because his hypotheses are so farfetched as to defy a measured response.
Would it be cynical of me to say that there’s little reason to be hopeful of a compelling defence?
That should clear it all up, then, assuming that one has already accepted Herschel’s basic thesis that we are the descendants of Pleiadean space travellers who came to Earth almost 20,000 years ago.
Funny how that plays directly and conveniently into the author/publisher’s hands. Still, one might wonder why such copyright should be required if the information is of such allegedly cardinal importance to all of humanity. Copyright doesn’t guarantee accuracy. Nor does it guarantee that copy errors won’t occur or that the information will be widely dispersed.
Giving it a new name and/or making it freely available doesn’t add to its plausibility.
All in all, Hershel’s new book is unlikely to make my birthday wish list once it is released.