My friend recently discovered Fomenko's alterative history. Can I save him, or is it a lost cause?

by alriclofgar

The title says it all. My friend, who knows just enough about history to hurt himself, has fallen down a rabbit hole of [https://books.google.com/books?id=2_0BPgAACAAJ&dq=editions:YKgddcL6hJEC&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAWoVChMI75LKlZLrxgIVyJANCh0rHQbn](fringe Russian history) that, among other things, denies the existence of the Roman Empire and highlights a number of unsolved 'mysteries' that historians 'haven't been able to answer.'

It's the kind of thing that's too big and too crazy to easily deflate.

Has anyone else encountered this and figured out a response better than puzzled confusion?

Zither13

Until an expert comes in, let me suggest that you go to /r/badhistory and Search for Fomenko. That subreddit is devoted to debunking things like this (and to sarcasm and drinking).

TehRuru34

Russian:

Best things:

  1. Fomenko is terribly, terribly bad with math usage in NH. (Possibly, intentionally - there's suspicion that he's a great troll.) See http://fatus.chat.ru/nav_swe.html (russian, of course), about 'dinasty parallelism': Fomenko's 'distant measure' between dinasties is non-transitive, non-communicative and even could prevail limit with one dinasty (ie M(dinasty1, dinasty1) is geater than 1E-08.)
  2. Fomenko massively uses selective citation.
  3. Fomenko just ignores facts that don't support his 'theory'. In astronomy, linguistics, etc.
  4. Despite what Fomenko said, his methods aren't mathematical or natural scientific, but humanitarian. (See http://hbar.phys.msu.ru/gorm/fomenko/zaliznk.htm - he introduces hypothesis and points out facts that support those hypothesis.)
  5. His answers to critics are mostly selective and ignoring.
Vidiontum

Would never even believe these things are getting published outside of Russia. I mean, apart from the fact it's bullshit, it's so Russo-centric, I can't have any idea on how this would be marketed to non-Ruusian audience. I mean, you should say it were Americans, not Russians, who built pyramids in pseudo-history you're selling in America.