Category talk:Pseudohistorians

What is a "pseudohistorian"?
What is a "pseudohistorian"? Do you have a source for this term's definition? Do you have sources for labelling the authors on this list as such? TuckerResearch (talk) 00:56, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! This category is disgusting! 207.255.28.44 (talk) 21:08, 15 January 2012 (UTC)ToniStarx

Asking for a reliable and verifiable source that this word is appropriate for encyclopedic definition
I also question the use of this word. I looked the word up on Dictionary.com and the return I got was "pseudohistorian - no dictionary results".

What is a pseudo-historian - someone who studies the history of pseudo-topics or someone who pretends to do that? It is so ambiguous and I don't believe WP should be using words that are not in conventional encyclopedic practice.

If verifiable references to authoritive sources exist to show that this is a legitimate term, can someone provide them? (Bearing in mind that we are not here to create world standards, but report on them) --  Zac   Δ talk! 00:41, 4 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Dictionaries are terrible sources for many things. But I don't know what the point is here. Categories for discussion/Log/2011 May 5 resulted in a clear keep. You seem to be trying to revive the debate here, but that isn't appropriate. The fact is that it is a real word and if you looked outside of dictionaries you'd find it. Here is one example from the Britannica: " An example of this is the Historia regum Britanniae (1135–38) of Geoffrey of Monmouth (died 1155), a pseudo-historian who compounded stories from Celtic mythology and classical and biblical sources into a fictitious history of ancient Britain." That's just to show you that it's used by reliable sources, I'm not going to debate it here as if you want to get the category deleted you need to do it by process, and that failed last year. Dougweller (talk) 18:05, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Criteria for this page?
Can you let us know the criteria for this page? One person's pseudohistorian may be another person's Gallileo.Jasonnewyork (talk) 00:58, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I just read the discussion you linked. The consensus seems to be that if someone is labeled as a "pseudohistorian" by a reliable source, then they can be placed on this page. Why are there no references?Jasonnewyork (talk) 01:01, 19 July 2012 (UTC)


 * No one can be 'placed' on this page. Their articles are placed in the category and thus show up on this page. Dougweller (talk) 05:29, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Pseudohistory is a pejorative?
There's a discussion at Talk:Giorgio A. Tsoukalos is a pejorative? concerning whether Tsoukalos should be categorized as a Pseudohistorian, which (at least according to the article pseudohistory) is a pejorative term. (IMO, the question is whether this category can be used in a BLP w/o a citation from a WP:RS. If not, this category might need to be removed from a few articles.) Please participate in the discussion there. Thanks, Justin W Smith (talk) 12:00 pm, Today (UTC−4)

In my opinion he deserves to be in this category. Whether he and others like him find it insulting should not be our concern. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.190.23.86 (talk) 23:31, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Cheikh Anta Diop?
Diop is also a Pseudohistorian.--95.114.34.188 (talk) 10:37, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

New subcategories?
I have combed through the articles in the category to find out which brands of pseudohistory are propagated by the subjects, and I would like to make a few new subcategories:
 * Category:Afrocentrists (8 entries - this one already exists, but I am not sure if it should be a subcategory of Category:Pseudohistorians)
 * Category:Proponents of pre-Columbian contact (14 entries)
 * Category:Atlantis proponents (27 entries)
 * Category:Catastrophists (11 entries)
 * Category:Ancient astronauts proponents (23 entries)
 * Category:Proponents of alternative chronologies (7 entries)

All the other subjects would have four or less entries, for example
 * Category:Aryan race theorists (4 entries here, but definitely more elsewhere)
 * Category:Mu proponents (4 entries)
 * Category:Lemuria proponents (3 entries)
 * Category:Hollow-earthers Category:Hollow Earth proponents‎ (3 entries - not really pseudohistory)

Then there is the somewhat awkwardly named Category:People who believe that their own nation had much more important role in history than people think (11 entries: one Armenian, one Balt, one Serb, two Russians, two Indians, one Irishman, one Romanian, one Bulgarian, one Egyptian).

I guess there could be a Category:Euhemerists, with lots of entries, but that smells of original research.

Also, cannot tell why these are in the category: They sure believe weird things, but the relation to history seems to be missing.
 * James Herbert Brennan
 * Stanton T. Friedman
 * Vincent Gaddis
 * John Hetherington
 * Thomas Inman
 * Edward Kenealy
 * Cyrus Teed (only hollow earth, no pseudohistory)

Any thoughts? --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:02, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Another thing: Most of those people believe more than one of those things. Atlantis and Pre-Columbian are correlated, and Ancient astonauts and Atlantis too. For instance, David Hatcher Childress has Atlantis, Mu, Ancient astronauts, and some Megalithic stuff. --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:51, 29 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Made some of the categories and filled them. Since this type of people tends to doubt not only one aspect of history, they are all still in Category:Pseudohistorians. --Hob Gadling (talk) 21:22, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Category:People who believe that their own nation had much more important role in history than people think Based on this description, aren't they adherents of ethnocentrism? "Sumner stated that "ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it" Dimadick (talk) 09:43, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Sounds good! Do we need sources to add Yordan Tabov, Napoleon Săvescu, Roger O'Connor, V. T. Rajshekar, P. N. Oak, Yuri Dmitrievich Petukhov, Anatole Klyosov, Jovan I. Deretić, Jurate Rosales and Suren Ayvazyan to Category:Ethnocentrism? --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:25, 7 January 2019 (UTC)