Re: Elaine Morgan: 88 Years old and still head and shoulders above your typical anthropologist

On Dec 6, 3:25 pm, Algis <algiskuliu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 7, 2:32 am, Lee Olsen <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Dec 6, 1:38 am, Algis <algiskuliu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"There's much else to say, but I have a 650-word limit."

Should we presume there were any (valid) citations given in the talk
he attended?

Look, I didn't expect a full citation

"There's much else to say, but I have a 650-word limit."


but just a word to say where it
had been evaluated and reviewed. He's basically lying when he is
assuring people that they shouldn't take any notice of Elaine because
the ideas been considered by the authorities and rejected.

That is a negative argument. How do you know what's been considered by
the
"authorities"?


Elaine, in her talk, gave names when necesary.

Talk? You have that correct, that's all you people have done in the
last 48 years.


he's referring to Langdon (1997) the only 'review' in a peer-reviewed
anthropological journal?

Yes, I agree there isn't much in the scientific literature. That's
because
there is little there to critique in the first place.

But that contradicts Cameron Smith's claim

A little is all there is. You have that right also.

that it's been carefully
reviewed and rejected. I think you're wrong.

Little is little.


There's plenty to
critique. Putting Elaine's books to one side, there's at least 55
pieces in the literature open to the AAH but only three that attempt a
critique.

Where, an "OPINION" piece in an obscure journal? Diet and Health
Magazine?



Waterside hypotheses explain all the major ape-juman differences - and
yet mainstream anthropology continues to pretend it doesn't exist or,
worse, that it's already rejecte it. What a bunch of intellectual
cowards.

Explaining is not evidence of anything.

Endosement by Reynolds is not evidence of anything.

It's the considered opinion of a respected authority of the only
symposium published that considered the idea in a balanced way.

Cameron Smith probably does not even know what the so-called AAT is.
So who on earth is he to lecture people about what is a credible
alternative or not?

Who's fault would that be? He has better things to do, like completing
a PhD
(which he did), unlike yourself who is willing to waste time arguing
on
a forum which amounts to nothing more than writing on a bathroom
wall.

Well, it's the fault of AAH propoents, for sure. But anyone claiming
to know what "it" is or that "it" had been soundly rejected is
compounding the error if they pretend to know what "it" is. I agree
there should be more clarity in defining waterside hypotheses. That is
what I have tried to do anyway.

How do you know what he was referring to if he didn't say?


Anyone can complete a PhD on a topic that is the pet subject of their
supervisor and when they have the support of a whole field behind
them. I can tell you it's a little harder when your supervisor thinks
the idea is crazy and when your thesis is basically that the whole
field has been wrong for 50 years.

Wrong? Where has that been demonstrated?



I think this newsgroup sometimes is like a bog wall, yes. But that's
only because so many contributors slip into personal attacks too
easily. There are better forums, but it is the Google default and at
least here, I do not have to go through the Masonic world of peer
review to get ideas across. Anyone can read them and criticise them.

People are not stupid. If there were any merit to your cause, it would
be
hashed out in the journals. I gave your master's thesis URL and some
other
links for the AAT to a marine biologist, *** Kocan, who has
published and
peer reviewed hundreds of papers in his lifetime. He had never heard
of AAT.
I have no idea how much, if any, time he put into it, but I know he
wasn't impressed.



"a poor explanatory device"? What the *** does that mean? It explains
pretty much all the major ape-human differences - easily. I think
that's a pretty good explanatory device.

That's why you will remain forever out of the scientific loop, that's
my prediction...
prove me wrong. Get your PhD and publish original research. I WILL
listen at that
point. Until then, anyone who understands the scientific method will
surely avoid
the pop-books and worthless web pages appealing to the von daniken
types.

I have tried to publish original research but the authorities of
anthropology can't discriminate between the plausibility of moving
through water and alies coming down from outer space as factors in ape-
human divergence. See, that's a bit of a problem. I've wasted ten
years of my life trying to get them to see reason and I'm not going to
spend the next ten doing the same, life's too short.

Then you picked the wrong subject to start with.


I'm planning to change tactic and use the media to ridicule them
instead.


He wasn't so much of a fool as to not complete what you do not seem to
be able to do.

Anyone can get a PhD if they're dedicated enough. With good
supervision you don't even need to be particularly bright. If I can
get my motivation back, I'll finish mine too. It's only about six
months' work away. But right now I'm just so pissed off with the
anthropological authorities I've decided it's a waste of time trying
to appease them. I certainly have no desire to join their ranks as an
authority - not on those terms.

Why? People like Chris Stringer, McHenry, yes, Sir Hardy publish what
they
want because they earned the right. People listen to them, right or
wrong.

Have you ever heard of Grover S. Krantz?

http://www.bfro.net/news/krantz.asp

He was one of the the of many anthropologists who helped discredit the
original
ramapithicus jaw and a good enough instructor in his field to keep a
job at
a major university.

He also spent his summer evenings with a rifle out in the brush trying
to kill a bigfoot.

Radical ideas aren't that uncommon among the professional ranks.

I think you are a quitter.



So if  appeals to authority (as you did to Claudius in another post)
are valid, then whining
about no one will listen is no ones fault but you own.

I have nothing against the scientific method. It is perfect. I even
have nothing against the peer review process, generally, except that
it is closed and secretive. I am not against the principle and
importance of authority in academia either. What I am completely
against is the abuse of that authority by the 'elite' in athropology
to prevent what actually is a very helpful idea about human evolution
(it pretty much solves all the big outstatnding questioins of ape-
human divergence) from being published and taught in universities for
no better reason than that it would make those people look rather
foolish.

Another example of an unpopular idea, and still is, that has gotten a
lot of
publicity by a couple of PhDs is Stanford and Bradley's Solutrean
Hypothesis.

They started from a position of authority and have gotten miles of
discussion
out of a bad idea. Like it or lump it, politics is part of the game.
If you don't
like it, quit.




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