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What really drives me nuts about von Däniken (and Tsoukalos, Childress, et al. …) is that he contradicts himself. (Sorry, I don’t care about this stuff enough to have a recent example.) His position isn’t consistent.

Zecharia Sitchin’s arguments are also frequently not good but he at least seemed to be trying to construct a consistent whole whereas these other guys will just say anything.

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Sitchin's biggest defence is that very few people can read cuneiform. Even less than hieroglyphics seemingly. Certainly less than Hebrew, Sanskrit or Greek. That means there aren't a lot of people able to dismiss his translations properly.

This also happens with Mayan script. When the group led by Linda Schele made major leaps in the 70s, to the point where 90% of the glyphs have now been deciphered, scholars mostly considered their meaning settled. That obviously hasn't kept cranks from asserting all kinds of wild ideas, but there are still scholars who dispute the accuracy and meaning of the interpretations.

Yes. I stopped reading von Däniken, after there were multiple contradictions on the very first page of the first book I tried.

I like fantasy, but it should be at least a little bit consistent.

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