Academic "Blitz"? Hardly

In his reply to the comments of Heritageaction, antiquitist activist Wayne Sayles remarks:

I must admit that the respect I once had for archaeology as a discipline has faded in the aftermath of the blitz against private ownership and independent scholarship that emminates (sic) these days from supposed intellectuals. 

Tendentious phrasing misspelt. Probably it is no real interest whatsoever whether Wayne Sayles has "respect" for meteorologists, pedologists, genealogists, archaeologists or entomologists. As a matter of fact though, as far as archaeology and conservation goes, there is no victimising of property owners by any "blitz" against "private ownership" by any intellectuals. (What the bit of the portable antiquities debate concerning buyers of dugup antiquities is about is the self-centred unwillingness of a group of people bent on buying certain objects to ensure that they are all of licit origins. Nothing more.)

Neither is there any kind of a "blitz" on "independent scholarship". Whether or not and when such a thing depends rather on what is meant by "scholarship", and how (and in what ways) it is "independent".

Was Erich von Daniken an independent scholar? But even in the case of somebody so obviously wrong, impervious to critical thought, and so obviously misleading a lot of highly gullible and uncritical people, can anyone demonstrate anything that could be termed an academic "blitz" against his ideas? In fact what happened was that most of the world has more or less forgotten the Swiss hotel owner's brand of "independent scholarship". Is that is the fate that awaits the "this looks like/doesn't look like that one in a book/online" brand of "scholarship" of the US coineys? At what cost though to the archaeological record would it have existed?