University of Minnesota Morris zooarchaeologist Rebecca Dean was surprised by a recent profile of Scott Wolter, host of the America Unearthed television program, that appeared in her local newspaper. The profile portrayed Wolter as a courageous and unconventional solver of mysteries. The title of the article was “A real-life Da Vinci Code.” A photograph on the paper’s website shows Wolter sitting at his desk on which there is a cast of the Newark Decalogue Stone and a human skull. The skull might be a cast replica, but it is identified in the caption simply as “a skull that keeps Scott Wolter company.” Dean took exception to the uncritical profile of Wolter in a letter to the editor, which may or may not appear in the paper. Fortunately she has posted excerpts in a recent post on her blog Old Bones. Good for Dean!

I think one responsibility of scientists and scholars is to speak out when they see nonsense masquerading as science in the popular media. It’s a mostly thankless job, but how else is the general public going to know the difference between actual science and snake oil imitation science? As Dean writes in her blog post: “The real past is fascinating. Don’t demean it by pretending that fantastic pseudo-science is equal to archaeology.” I hope the Star Tribune publishes her letter, so her message can reach an even wider audience. A couple of other terrific blogs to follow if you’re interested in this sort of thing are Jason Colavito’s Blog and Jennifer Raff’s Violent Metaphors. Brad Lepper