@RogerBW And I don’t want to be mean to people doing it in their spare time! I’m a spare-timer; I’m not a historian anymore, at least not one working in a university. And having been on both sides of the fence, I feel like I can say how different it is to try and even study something in-depth completely outside of a university.
@Zeb_Larson I think the trick for the amateur is to keep in mind that the amazing thing I've just learned is probably (a) generally accepted by academic historians who all know about it already, or (b) the work of a crank who's faking their data and drawing unwarranted conclusions. Sure, there's a middle area, but the chance that I've just found something that fits there is quite small.
Add comment