The authors of the text I am disputing1 used the anthropological material from my excavations at Masłomęcz, Hrubieszów County (SE Poland), for their research. They did so without my knowledge and without recognising the significance of this material for the studies on the history of the Goths. Moreover, as they lacked access to the excavation documentation, they made fundamental errors in the identification of particular graves. Some of the anthropological material that they supposedly examined is dubious for another reason—it was (and still is) part of the collections of the Institute of Archaeology at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, to which they had no access. Therefore, I have posed two questions: how did they come to possess this material, or what material did they actually examine?

The authors’ historical interpretation of the results demonstrates a complete lack of familiarity with the scientific literature on the Masłomęcz research, including anthropological analyses, and on the Goths in general. They proposed chronological conclusions at an unprecedented level of generalisation, despite having conducted a series of 14C studies, which they failed to properly utilise.

In the same text, they accused me of, among other things, obstructing access to the excavated material, which is untrue. They wrote that they had used a repository in which I had falsified data; in reality, they used a depository of bone material with no documentation, which is not a repository. They attributed to me opinions that I never expressed, claiming I questioned the results of radiocarbon tests, which has never happened. They ascribed to me theses that I never formulated, including the idea of a strict correlation between the extent of an archaeological culture and ethnos (Gustaf Kossinna’s thesis), from which I strongly disassociate myself. They took credit for my thesis about the return of Gothic groups to the Hrubieszów Basin in late antiquity, claiming I disagreed with it. They wrote that I had questioned the expert knowledge of anthropologists, natural scientists and linguists, whereas my criticism was of their ‘extracurricular’ conclusions regarding the historical interpretation of their research results. They claimed I had failed to see the biological problems they were trying to solve, whereas I did not dispute the biological problems but rather their historical interpretation. Finally, they wrote that, from the very beginning, they sought cooperation, which was not the case. Meanwhile, my own proposal of full openness to correcting the errors they made received no reply.

This is just a selection of the most glaring distortions, not to say lies, contained in the criticised text, culminating in rather impassioned remarks on the scientist’s ethos and the ethics of scientific research.