DA VINCI CODE KNOCK-ON EFFECT:

'Da Vinci Code' breathes new life into old theories

By Douglas Belkin, [Boston] Globe Staff | May 21, 2006

SALEM, N.H. -- Dennis Stone looks at the 9-foot-long, 4 1/2-ton slab of granite on a hilltop here in southern New Hampshire, and sees a 4,000-year-old sacrificial altar built by the ancient Phoenicians to honor their gods. He sees an ancient locus of magic and mystery, birth and death.

Ken Feder, a professor of anthropology at Central Connecticut State University who has studied the 20-acre site, looks at the slab and sees a place to make soap.

''It's a lye stone," Feder said. ''About 300 years old."

After the bestseller ''The Da Vinci Code," Stone's version of history is finding a receptive audience. About 75 percent of people who come to ''America's Stonehenge" walk away believing that the rocks and caves are an ancient religious site.

''People were more skeptical in the '70s," Stone said. ''They're more open-minded now."

[...]

There's a certain Orwellian element to the language in this story. Silly, unfounded notions about history are "theories." Gullible is "open minded." These "theories" are worth covering because academics "say the ideas are fanciful -- but impossible to disprove." (Someone make this reporter write an essay on the concept of "burden of proof.") They are also "convincing to many" (of the gullible people mentioned above.)

I'm a little under the weather today and am at home, marking final exams (or trying to). So I'm probably grumpier than usual. But the tone of the article is irritating. It's reasonable to cover such things, but it isn't reasonable to try to set up an equivalence between academics who reject the ideas and some other "open-minded" "many" who find them "convincing" because they are "impossible to disprove." Sigh.