IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I think, as an outsider, that an essential part of having a successful career in academia is at least a little bit of good showmanship, or maybe even more than a little bit. It certainly helps to add some virality to have your ideas recognized on a large scale. So, I'm not at all surprised by this approach, and I also think the academia is not the only place where this works to one's advantage, so I will be taking notes 

"Academia" is a quite large space, and there are all sorts of people in there.  From high-level criminals to saints, from geniuses to frauds, from aspergers who are happier with computers and retorts than with people to stars who care only for popular fame. 

Media exposure can help one's career, as t will go in one's resume, and promotion committees cannot avoid taking note of it.  Schools also benefit from it: I bet that 90% of the people who have heard of Yale University know it only as "that university where the VMS is now".

Unfortunately the scientific "finds" that get the most media attention tend to be the bogus ones; because, unlike real finds, they can be as exciting as one wants.  There are examples in all areas.  But I have been watching many archaeology videos lately, and here are some "notable finds from last year that got significant media attention:

• A British Archaeologist claimed to have found the quarry of the bluestones of Stonehenge, implying that the stones were carried by the Neolithic builders for more than 100 km.  He claimed to have identified their "workshop" and even an improvised "work bench" at the quarry.  But geologists noted that glaciers and icebergs millions of years ago carried thousands of rocks like those for much larger distances and deposited them all over southern England. And the "workshop" was just a random pile of rocks.  Guess which of the two guys got interviewed by the BBC and newspapers.
  
• A large team of archaeologists and other scientists explored a cave that had been used in Neolithic times, and, in a large room at lower level where sunlight did not reach, found a single boulder with half a dozen crisscrossed lines scratched onto it.  After much microscopic analysis and computer modeling, they concluded that the boulder was a crude depiction of a turtle shell, and that the room had been a primitive temple where a hundred people would meet, in the light of torches, for some Turtle Cult rituals. Never mind that the room had probably been full of water at that time, and there were no other signs of human presence in it. 
  
• A pair of French archaeologists examined a tiny sandstone cave, which apparently served as temporary shelter for Neolithic hunters. It was barely big enough for 2-3 people sitting.  But they identified some grooves on the floor of the cave as a map of the rivers in the region. Never mind that the grooves looked just like those made by natural erosion.  Oh, and they also identified a crack on the wall as a representation of female genitalia, obviously related to a cult.
  
• An Israeli archaeologist found a small lump of baked clay, 10'000 years old or more, with traces of ocher. It does not look like anything, but he expertly identified it as the statuette of a woman carrying a swan on her back, which obviously meant that she was a shaman of a swan cult.
  
• Even more recently, a Greek archaeologist cracked the mystery of the Phaistos disk, by identifying it as a board game -- like our Monopoly, or a spiral board game that was actually played in ancient Egypt.  (He did not elaborate on the rules of the Phaistos game; but I suppose that, when one of the players reached the central square with his tiny tiny pebble, the disk was turned over to continue the play on the other side.)
  

All these "discoveries" got substantial coverage in the media.  Debunkers, if there were any, were ignored, obviously.  And so were any serious finds that those same scientists had made previously...

All the best, --stolfi