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Looking for Academia's Conspiracy to Suppress the Truth

9/11/2015

38 Comments

 
Yesterday I posted my massive, 10,000-word review of Graham Hancock’s new book Magicians of the Gods. I wanted to pick up on something that I thought was a bit interesting in Hancock’s posturing because a blog post linked through the Daily Grail today about pseudoscience and pseudo-criticism echoed the same point. That point, namely, is Hancock’s anger at mainstream scholars for not agreeing with him, and abstracting from that a conspiracy to suppress the truth.
In Magicians, Hancock interviews a number of scientists, scholars, and archaeologists. These include the late Klaus Schmidt, the German archaeologist who excavated Göbekli Tepe from 1994 until his death in 2014; Daniel Lohmann of Aachen University, a historian of architecture who studies Baalbek; Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, an Indonesian geologist working on Gunung Padang; and Allen West, from the Younger Dryas impact research team, among others.

I should begin by noting—because Hancock does not—that “Allen West” used to be known as Allen Whitt, before he changed his name in 2006 following a 2002 conviction in California for posing as a state-licensed geologist in order to charge large fees for geological work, according to the Pacific Standard.

That is, however, only a sidelight on my point: Many different scientists, scholars, and archaeologists were happy to communicate with Hancock, patiently explain their evidence and reasoning to him, take him on tours of various sites, and discuss Hancock’s ideas with him. Of the group I listed above, Natawidjaja was 100% on board with a lost Pleistocene civilization, while West was 90% in agreement, Schmidt was open-minded but skeptical, and Lohmann disagreed with Hancock completely. But despite the fact that so many people were willing to work with Hancock and show him their research, even giving him special access to restricted parts of ancient sites, Hancock nevertheless concludes that there is a conspiracy to suppress the truth. And what truth would that be? Just those four scientists represented at least three radically different views of ancient history, which the broader scientific community are evaluating and debating, albeit with skepticism toward those views that contract the majority of previous evidence.

The two scientists who have the most radical ideas—Natawidjaja, who believes Atlantis was in Indonesia, and West, who believes in a Pleistocene comet—are the two who are most in agreement with Hancock that archaeologists and other scientists, as a whole, are close-minded and refuse to accept new ideas. Not coincidentally, they are also the two who have the most interest in discrediting opposing points of view. Oddly enough, Hancock doesn’t count them as part of his conspiracy, but sees them as freedom fighters. Lohmann, however, he views as a hidebound defender of orthodoxy, even though Lohmann’s arguments contain the same types of logic, evidence, and reasoning as West. In other words, Hancock isn’t making a meaningful claim when he declares a conspiracy; he is merely calling names the people who disagree with him because he cannot argue based on evidence. Many scholars, of varying views, went out of their way to engage with Hancock, but those that disagree with him are somehow qualitatively different from those that agree.

This brings me to the Sept. 9 blog post on the EstoterX blog. In it, the author defends fringe historians from the label of “pseudohistory” or “pseudo-archaeology.” 
Contrary to the argument made by disciplinary advocates when they deign to address a wider audience than the six or seven people that read arid journal articles about rarified minutia, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the use or abuse of scientific epistemology or sober historiography.  It is all about marking territory in its most excretory sense.  In short, a pissing contest.
Our author considers Graham Hancock and Erich von Däniken to be “brilliant and engaging writers,” and as a literary critic and journalist, I can say that von Däniken is a terrible writer, at least in English translation. Hancock can be engaging as a writer, but has been increasingly sloppy of late, as I noted in my review of his current book. Anyway, the author is very upset that the professoriate enforce a regime that denies tenure to anyone who dares stray beyond minutia to look at the big picture and speak directly to the public.
When accusations of “pseudo-” scholarship are shouted, it is often because someone has made honest intellectual inquiry at a broader scale, looking for larger patterns across broader spans of time.  Do their conclusions always make sense?  Of course not.  Then again, recent meta-analyses of the published results of psychological experiments have indicated that only 36% were actually reproducible when tested, casting doubt on any conclusions drawn from them as well.
Let’s leave aside the illogic that psychological experimental methodology has nothing whatsoever to do with historiography, or the difference between small and large scale examinations of the past. The author has confused a large number of different points and mashed them all together into a wide-ranging defense of fringe history as a tonic to too much specialization. This gives fringe historians entirely too much credit. They are decidedly not doing any real historiography; they piggy-back on the work of scholars and fail to follow through on their own ideas. As I pointed out in my review of Hancock’s book, he didn’t even bother to read the ancient sources he cited and therefore missed important connections that would have actually strengthened his claims, had he bothered to investigate as a historian would.

But the role of the fringe historian isn’t that of a meta-scholar. Our author, in complaining about specialization and academics who write scholarly literature no one reads, is arguing against a system that has been in place for more than a century. Our author, in arguing that popularization is important, is really lamenting the decline and fall of the middlebrow as it applied to history and archaeology. In the middle twentieth century, middlebrow writers—mostly journalists, popular historians, and some celebrity professors—sought to engage the general public in big-picture views of history, and to popularize academic work in the field in an engaging but serious way. Kenneth Clarks’ Civilisation (1969) for BBC2 was perhaps the high water mark for this approach, and it inspired a decade’s worth of similar attempts to bring scholarly perspectives to a popular audience. The very existence of fringe documentaries like In Search of Ancient Astronauts (1973) was a funhouse mirror version of this mainstream phenomenon.

But that was only possible under a particular set of cultural, social, and economic conditions. The middlebrow interest in history and archaeology was a phenomenon of an aspirational working class and middle class. For reasons too complex to describe here, the bottom fell out of the middlebrow in the 1980s, and with it the market for popular but still serious reflections on history and archaeology went with it. For a while, that left a polarized marketplace in which complex, specialized, and difficult academic tomes sat alongside vulgar appeals to aliens and Atlantis, and very little occupied a middle ground between the two poles. Today, however, there are more history books published than ever before—and many of them would fill this niche should anyone read them. (The Book of the Month Club, that middlebrow paragon, has a History Book Club devoted entirely to such texts.) But the explosion of media choices has cut the market for history books of any kind down to nearly nothing, and the wildest, the wackiest, and the ones that appear on cable TV stand the best shot of making a profit.

Our blog author has created a false dichotomy by contrasting the fringe with academia and berating the latter for what they never intended to do. The fact is, there are lots of good histories aimed at a popular audience. Tom Holland’s volumes on Roman history are a good example. What our author should complain about is that the mainstream media, in pursuing sensation over all else in order to attract readers and viewers, promotes extreme fringe claims, which, by being extreme, gain attention and thus sales. These sales then create an economic incentive to promote even more fringe claims. The lack of engagement our author sees between academia and the “real world” isn’t just a product of the tenure system but a product of the economics of television and publishing, where profit and responsibility are often mutually exclusive.

38 Comments
The troll Krampus
9/11/2015 12:08:22 pm

This article makes the promotion of fringe material seem like a conspiracy. It fits in with the quacks of David Icke and Alex Jones with their claims that the "Bloodline Elite" want to deliberately distort history and reality with such tactics as promoting false history and science as well as harbor (in the minds of the common people) a distrust and anger towards authority/govt. This allows the breakdown of the current standard of society so as to bring in a new one, the "New World Order". That of course is where there is a one world government regulating all of human society and ruled by"the illuminati".
I want to be clear that I do not promote that belief. Because it doesn't matter if that is true or not, being that if it is true, it is a conspiracy to such a degree that it is impossible to stop and correct. And whether it is true or not, it makes for great media sales because mystery and conspiracy capture the imagination.

Reply
The troll Krampus
9/11/2015 12:10:51 pm

I don't mean to say that you promote that idea with your article, Jason, just that it fits with that narrative. Whether you intended it to or not.

Reply
Igor
9/11/2015 01:51:40 pm

Speaking of Icke and Jones, I would like to read some serious debunking of their ideas. That would be quite interesting, especially Icke's materials to be debunked.
Jones is for the most part paranoid, but he has some claims that should be debunked finally and put him in place.

Reply
Tony
9/11/2015 04:37:39 pm

Though it would make for some fun reads, both Ickes are such outlandishly and obviously insane hucksters, as well as such easy targets, I don't think they deserve Jason wasting his time on debunking them. I prefer that Jason continue do what he does best, by which I mean critiquing cranks and hacks who put on airs of being serious researchers.

Tony
9/11/2015 04:38:23 pm

But Ickes and Jones, I meant.

spookyparadigm
9/11/2015 05:35:31 pm

To start, Icke's material is almost directly lifted, with only slight paraphrasing, from the pulp fiction of Lovecraft and Howard.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-emerald-tablets-of-thoth-a-lovecraftian-plagiarism

The parts that weren't from there were taken in no small measure from the hoaxed Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Given that the core mythology is demonstrably descended from known fantasy literature and hoaxes, there isn't much else to say.

As for Jones, anyone who believes that the same man can simultaneously be unveiling the secrets of a conspiracy that intends to murder most of us AND be free to not only reveal those secrets but to make a small cottage industry selling weight loss supplements and survival seeds ... what could one possibly say to reach someone who fully believes in the likes of Jones? Edward Snowden steals some of the secrets of the NSA and has to flee (while Chelsea Manning faces life in prison). But Alex Jones tells what he knows to all the world, constantly telling us about impending doom just around the corner ... but keeps hawking products. An enthusiastic audience for that kind of material is going to be debunking proof..

The troll Krampus
9/12/2015 10:42:08 am

But what if Icke and Jones are agents?

EsoterX
9/11/2015 12:42:16 pm

Author of the blog being dismissed here.
I'm not a staunch defender of the theories of Hancock or von Däniken (differences in opinion in the way of literary criticism aside), or frankly "pseudosciences", nor do I imagine there is an academic conspiracy to suppress "the truth". There is certainly enough arrogance and intellectual laziness among recognized scholars and fringe scholars to go around. Egos abound everywhere. Similarly, you are absolutely correct that the willingness to entertain alternative explanations occurs on a continuum. Nor do I believe that the popularization of bizarre theories and strange phenomena in the media is some sort of existential validation. Specialization in academia is not what I argue is at the root of the problem with the relations between academia and the "fringe" - it is the presumption that expertise in one small area translates into intellectual superiority. I also do not deny that there are plenty of crazy people out there saying crazy things. What I ask you to consider, and I'm not casting any aspersions as I don't pretend to know the answer, is that even your own use of language in assessing the relative merits of "fringe history" and the objects of inquiry of psuedosciences is distinctly couched in the difference between credentialed disciplinary professionals and the unwashed masses. You suggested I am "lamenting the decline and fall of the middlebrow" which is an "a phenomenon of an aspirational working class and middle class" and bemoaned the fact that "difficult academic tomes sat alongside vulgar appeals to aliens and Atlantis". This is the same presumption that suggest only people in trailer parks see UFOs, thus they can be written off as an uninteresting avenue of inquiry due to the presumed intellectual and cultural poverty of those who report them. Now, you can argue that somebody like Hancock is crazy or just plain wrong, but the use of the specific prefix "pseudo" when discussing the fringier inquires is more often than not, code for, "You're using our terminology, but you're not in the guild, and we disagree with you". Are all fringe historians or archaeologists broad-minded meta-analysts? Obviously not. Are all academics champions of logic and truth? Obviously not.

Reply
vcs3
9/11/2015 01:25:06 pm

"Are all academics champions of logic and truth? Obviously not." That's not obvious to me. Care to explain?

Reply
Esoterx
9/11/2015 01:33:17 pm

I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you suggesting the act of pursuing an academic career automatically implies that "logic and truth" are of paramount philosophical importance? That would be awfully hard to defend...

Shane Sullivan
9/11/2015 03:07:55 pm

I think Robert Schoch proves that the author both is correct that being an academic doesn't automatically make one intellectually responsible (or infallible), and wrong that the term "pseudo" is reserved for uneducated non-academics.

Jason Colavito link
9/11/2015 02:02:23 pm

Thank you for reading my post. If I were trying to dismiss your blog, I wouldn't have bothered to pay attention to it at all. There is value in your perspective, but I think you overstate the value of fringe history (or alternative archaeology, or whatever you'd like to call it). Occasionally these writers pick up on a good point or observe an interesting fact, but they do so in service of castles built on air, and that is the difference between those who do history (and these need not be credentialed; Barbara Tuchman was a beloved historian despite having only a bachelor's degree) and those who do pseudo-history. Pseudo-history or pseudo-archaeology pretend to explain but ultimately do not because they don't make use of anything like a reliable methodology. Your examples would be like arguing that snake oil is equivalent to scientifically tested treatments just because someone has a lab coat and swears that he saw it work once. Now, as you said, there is the chance that a snake oil concoction might actually work, but if you can't explain why and can't duplicate it, and can't show anyone else how it works, then you didn't do the science of medicine. You just stumbled by chance upon the right answer for the wrong reasons. It's still pseudoscience, even if it's right. By contrast, one can do science and still get the wrong answer. Ancient astronaut theorists and lost civilization speculators are wrong in both ways, methodologically and factually, but it is the former that makes them "pseudo" and the latter that makes them useless.

Reply
Esoterx
9/11/2015 02:24:05 pm

I enjoy reading your stuff, and believe it or not I don't conclusively disagree with you on any particular point. My concern (and the theme underlying most of my scribblings) is that the identification of science vs. pseudoscience often misses a far more interesting point -- that what we choose to identify as folklore vs. history, or science vs. snake oil , is so deeply embedded in the philosophical perspectives of a given time and a given culture that we fail to ask the question, not of what happened where and when, but why we believe and disbelieve, and what that debate would look like if we were to actually have it. Plus, I simply enjoy the apparent absurdity of the universe. It's less practically useful, but more amusing!

Pacal
9/11/2015 04:50:20 pm

"that what we choose to identify as folklore vs. history, or science vs. snake oil , is so deeply embedded in the philosophical perspectives of a given time and a given culture that we fail to ask the question, not of what happened where and when, but why we believe and disbelieve, and what that debate would look like if we were to actually have it."

Where have you been the last 30+ years. The Universities have been full of such a debate in the Philosophy of Science and in the approach usually labeled Post-Modernism.

Esoterx
9/11/2015 06:11:48 pm

Dear Pascal,
The adults were having a conversation. The gracious Mr. Covalito and I have a difference of opinion. Your broad brush declaration that I'm simply spouting post-modernist philosophy (of which you assume I am unaware or have been blissfully ignorant of in the past 30+ years) serves no purpose except to make you feel superior. Attack the arguments, not the person. Otherwise you are just a troll.

Mark L
9/12/2015 03:35:09 am

You're using a lot of words to obscure a fairly simple fact - that scientific truth isn't tied to our cultural history or beliefs or anything like that, much as certain groups (okay, it's just the pseudo-folk) would like us to believe otherwise.

This attack on language - you can't call us pseudo! - is just obfuscation too, and you certainly seem smart enough to understand that. Despite the people Jason talks about not using the scientific method, lying about historical evidence, and simply inventing things from whole cloth, they expect to have their ideas put on the same level as those who've bothered to do the learning, who've put the time in researching and working, is just wrong.

This blog post is a perfect example of how intellectually dishonest Von Daniken, Hancock and their ilk are - they accuse the scientific community of suppression, or refusing to debate; but when scientists bother to debate with them it's just the ones who disagree with them that are evil suppressors. The scientific mainstream has a huge range of views in it - views that have evidence put forward, are debated and criticised, using the scientific method. It's not that the pseudo-brigade's ideas are way beyond the pale, it's that it's not science. Or archaeology. Or whatever. Hence, the term "pseudo" applies.

Joe Scales
9/12/2015 01:51:56 pm

"Are all academics champions of logic and truth? Obviously not."
Champions? The competent ones certainly value both logic and truth; the former as necessary for methodology and the later being their goal. For an excellent on point discussion of the distinguishing pseudo-science from actual science, see Dr. Rory Coker's article here:

http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pseudo.html

What I found very compelling about the article is how intelligent, educated can people brush off pseudo-science as pure entertainment; and I have often come across this perspective when ranting against it. Dr. Coker lists some of the more dangerous consequences however, which should be noted before passing off such entertainment as somehow worthy of inspiring true inquiry for the masses. It poisons the well of true knowledge and is done purely for profit.

Reply
Dave
9/11/2015 01:59:56 pm

I enjoy the paragraph from the blog post bemoaning "...arid journal articles about rarified minutia..." in an effort to illustrate how out of touch scientists are with the general public. Yet he writes in a manner that it's doubtful more than 5% of the viewers of Ancient Aliens and followers of the fringe theories would even be able to understand what is his point.

Even if 90% of legitimate historians, archeologists, geologists, and scientists agreed with him, Hancock would still feel he was being persecuted and silenced by the mainstream. Which is ridiculous considering the amount of coverage the fringe gets on television and in print.

Reply
Tony
9/11/2015 02:54:42 pm

I totally agree that there are lots of good histories aimed at a popular audience. In fact, I'd say we live in a golden age of well-researched and well-written books about history (and science) for the general public, many of them bestsellers.

Reply
Not the Comte de Saint Germain
9/11/2015 03:07:21 pm

Yes. There are a lot of bestselling nonfiction books about history these days. The farther back in time you look, though, the fewer books there are covering those eras. The nonfiction bestsellers I can think of off the top of my head are all 20th century stories. Good treatments of ancient history are possible to find, but you have to look harder for them.

Reply
Tony
9/11/2015 03:20:36 pm

Good points. I recall being more than a bit surprised when Dava Sobel's "Longitude" became a bestseller.

Just to name one author, Michael Wood's books and tv documentaries are very popular. Among them, I very much enjoyed his "The Story of India."

Btw, the nonfiction bestsellers from back in the day that I can think of off the top of my head were almost all written by Isaac Asimov. ;-)

Not the Comte de Saint Germain
9/11/2015 03:47:27 pm

Good old Isaac Asimov. I learned the planets from his Library of the Universe when I was three and the basic outline of history from his Chronology of the World when I was middle-school age. A lot of the Chronology is outdated now, because he must have been writing based largely on what he'd learned in the mid-20th century, but he could certainly turn a phrase. On the Byzantine Empire in the late Middle Ages: "That it continued to exist at all is amazing. Partly it was a victory for tradition (like the car without an engine that ran on its reputation alone) and partly it was the walls of Constantinople."

Tony
9/11/2015 04:14:37 pm

I read all of those books as well. I reread his delightful book "Understanding Physics: Volume 2: Light, Magnetism and Electricity" every few years, partly because of the fascinating subject matter, but mostly because I enjoy his style of writing.

Btw, I know a couple of people who met Mr. Asimov and thought he was a self-involved blowhard. But what I find refreshing about him is that in the autobiographies and interviews I've read he never denied being full of himself. He was a popular full-time writer and was justly proud of his hard work and success. I raise my pint of Guinness to him!

Pacal
9/11/2015 04:56:57 pm

Since Jason mentioned Barbara Tuchman. I thought I would mention my two favorite books of hers. A Distant Mirror - A look at the 14th century in Europe. Today it would be startling if a book of Medieval history became a massive best seller like this book was. And her Stillwell and the American Experience in China.

Reply
Only Me
9/11/2015 05:03:53 pm

I think the middlebrow might, I stress might, be having a resurgence. While I haven't watched a majority of the shows, and some of them are, unfortunately, on the History Channel, I've noticed more of them are becoming available. I'm referring to such shows as:

Mysteries at the Museum
How the States Got Their Shapes
America: Fact vs. Fiction
What History Forgot

I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, and maybe they don't fit the definition of middlebrow, but I feel they fit in the area between the academic and the fringe. Of course, I could be wrong.

Reply
Shane Sullivan
9/11/2015 06:00:31 pm

I'm a fan of Mysteries at the Museum/Monument/Castle/Cheeseburger/Whatever. Every so often they'll throw in a sensationalist story about ghosts or alien abduction, or they'll bait the audience with those things until the big (mundane) reveal, but they often cover events I'm not familiar with.

I caught a segment last night about famous blues musician Robert Johnson, who was said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for boss guitar skills. They had his grandson on to explain how he really went from hack to professional: Not Faustian pacts, but practice.

Reply
Tony
9/12/2015 01:41:15 am

As a non-academic myself (an MFA from the seventies who can't stand academic jargon), I suppose I'm a middlebrow reader, but I draw the line at bad writing. I love original research, but if the researcher can't put their information across in a lucid and individual style, my interest very quickly wanes.

Reply
Igor
9/12/2015 05:26:50 am

I will leave this here just for fun, I am not sure if this guy is serious or is he trolling or what

http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2015/09/dinosaur-hoax-dinosaurs-never-existed.html

Reply
The troll Krampus
9/12/2015 10:33:40 am

If I were to be a Fringe Capitalist, that article from the link is exactly the kind of crap I would write. I would say the author is, as you put it, a troll, and he's building his naive followers by the way the comments section is.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
9/12/2015 10:48:22 am

I've seen his stuff before, but this one takes the cake. The sad thing, though, is how many dinosaur denialists he can cite.

Reply
Duke of URL
9/12/2015 12:25:37 pm

If he's trolling (and I personally think he is serious (seriously loony)), then he should start a career in writing books for pay - Imeantersay, my GAWDS, did you see the HUGE list of crap he's written/posted?

Reply
Igor
9/12/2015 12:52:09 pm

He already wrote some books, you can check them on the right side of the page. He is obviously very fruitful author, just like our Jason here, only on the other side of the fence.

I opened some categories to see what he writes about and interestingly enough, he is dismissing Icke and Jones as Cointelpro agents, i.e. faux opposition.

Other than that, everything else is in the fashion of dinosaur post.
Oh, and he seems to be vegan extremist too.

Dave
9/16/2015 08:43:35 am

I enjoyed the "Flat Earth" video.

Reply
Kal
9/12/2015 03:16:14 pm

Jim Davis once said, in the cartoon comic strip Garfield, 'If you can't convince them, confuse them.'.

Reply
El Cid
9/13/2015 05:55:04 pm

I find it very frustrating that the aim of looking for earlier civilizations than current known ones--i.e., at least somewhat large scale urban developments perhaps often submerged from end Ice Age sea level rises--has to be connected with a search for 'one true civilization,' or 'one world civilization,' especially one with magical characteristics, super-advanced technologies and such.

I first encountered Graham Hancock via a documentary I saw on YouTube (his 'Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age').

Having read about the various flood releases of the Laurentide ice sheet giant lakes, and by research for submerged archaeological artifacts in the area now called 'Doggerland' or in the Persian Gulf, I thought it seemed realistic.

Whether or not his conclusions about a flooded urban area off Gujarat (Gulf of Khambat) really reflected real archaeological evidence of a place as old as he alleged or was even a sunken city in the first place, I had no idea the project was connected to this stupid obsession to find some one lost ancient perfect worldwide civilization destroyed by one Biblical Great Flood. (Later reading suggested the entire effort was one of shabby archaeology if not worse.)

The idea that there are as-yet undiscovered civilizations is not absurd, nor is the idea that there may be discoveries to be made in now-submerged formerly above-sea-level areas.

What is absurd is the nut squad looking for the Atlantis-alien-geomystical fantasy land (particularly in its nasty iterations as some white precursor civilizations) and in the process making the basic topic sound like a nut squad obsession.

Aesthetically it's the offensive notion that ancient peoples just aren't interesting enough unless they're tens of thousands of years old, not just thousands; that their technologies aren't interesting unless it's super-advanced technologies unknown today; that their remains are boring unless it's part of some secret worldwide pattern of remains that if you draw lines collecting show how ancient space aliens / asteroids / etc will killusall.

Egyptian technology was fascinating even if they didn't come up with ways of levitating rocks. Mayan technology was fascinating even if it never included rockets.

All this junk is the most callous dismissal of our actual ancestors and predecessors as boring and uninteresting unless they can play whatever fantasy role is demanding of them.

Reply
Andrew M
9/15/2015 05:52:12 pm

I share your'e frustrations. I find the idea that we think we have found the first form of writing or first civilization absurd and statistical improbable. Even More absurd are the assertions fringe theorists make that people where not capable of doing the tings they clearly did.

Reply
grant royce
9/11/2016 05:04:09 pm

Some things, blatantly true, are debunked or ignored by academia, such as pre-Columbian crossings.

Reply
al royce link
3/16/2017 07:13:08 pm

This may be paranoia, but I often think there is an official Department with a list of things to debunk and suppress. UFOs, early Antarctic maps, early crossing of the Atlantic, and others. What or where is this Department, which apparently has immense control over publications and sites. Anyone have answers???

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