This isn’t an entry I particularly wanted to write, but another sci/tech magazine has bit the dust. I had bought every copy of Focus up till a couple of months ago. It started as an intelligent science magazine, but after the onslaught of the Loaded era it dumbed down somewhat. Sadly it has now skipped out of sensible science altogether.

I can’t comment on last month’s issue (cover story the Secrets of UFOs), because I’d decided to skip buying it after they printed a piece that claimed the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull was an unsolved mystery for Mayan archaeologists. Certainly one unsolved mystery is why did Mitchell-Hedges claim to have found the 19th century German crystal skull in a Mayan city, when he had in fact bought it from Sotheby’s. That took 30 seconds to find on the internet. In the same issue the Op-Ed column sagely berated those who spouted junk rather than spend a brief time checking the facts first which, they noted, was even easier these days thanks to the internet.

So what persuaded me to buy it this month? The cover. Amazing New Discovery: The Lost Ark of the Covenant: It vanished over 2000 years ago but now experts think they’ve found it.

I didn’t expect anything stellar, but I have an interest in pseudo-archaeology. If I knew the answer to the question “Why do people find this even vaguely convincing?” then I’d understand a lot more about communication.

Amazing New Discovery. Those were the words.

It’s based on Graham Hancock’s book “The Sign and the Seal” in paperback in the early nineties. There’s another book referred to “The Ark of the Covenant” published a mere five years ago. The ‘argument’ goes like this:

The Hebrews had an ark. We know this to be true because it’s mentioned over 200 times in the bible. And the Dead Sea Scrolls. And a tablet in Beirut. And some ancient Jewish texts.

The Ethiopians have a story that they took the Ark from Jerusalem

Therefore: If the Hebrews had it, and the Ethiopians have it now, then we can draw a line between the two facts and fill in the gaps. e.g. an Ethiopian ruler must have taken it from there to here, so all we need to do is find out which one.

This month among all the discoveries in the many and varied fields of science and technology, the best thing Focus could find is this.

It’s not something that isn’t worth discussing. Fortean Times is great for this sort of thing, but Fortean Times thinks critically about ideas, whether mainstream or alternative, rather than blindly deferring to experts. Frankly could you get a more credulous and limp argument? The Ark’s mentioned over 200 times in the Bible so it must be true? I haven’t counted references to James Bond in Ian Fleming’s works, but I’m certain that there’s a lot more literary evidence for evidence 007 than there is for the Ark of the Covenant. Call me Mister Cynical, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to live in fear of SPECTRE.

Next month they re-launch as BBC Focus and I’d like to be optimistic, I really would. They’ve got Francis Pryor as archaeological advisor, and I assume he didn’t see this month’s issue because he’s no fool. So I’d love to say things are going to get better. But after reading the ‘next month’ section I really can’t be bothered to find out because next month’s big story is:

Killer Dinosaurs
Scientists use the latest technology and archaeological evidence to recreate battles between the fiercest animals that ever lived.

Presumably these are dinosaurs from 1,000,000 BC.