CFZ-CANADA: peer review

Wednesday, 17 July 2019

Grover Krantz

This is who I think of when I see the name Grover, but our Grover Krantz wasn't blue. Grover the Muppet is described as lovable, cute and furry and provides educational context for simple, everyday things. Maybe they weren't so different overall.

Grover Sanders Krantz (November 5, 1931 – February 14, 2002) was an anthropologist and cryptozoologist. With over 10 books and 60 academic articles in his portfolio he is also remembered as a prolific writer. His cryptozoological research on Bigfoot was heavily criticized by colleagues, which in turn cost him funding for more research and even his tenure at the university where he taught. His work was considered "fringe science" and often that attitude carried over to his academic work.

Krantz is known for his unapologetic belief in the existence of Big Foot. His articles were rejected by scholarly journals, but he persisted. He has been described as having been the "only scientist" and "lone professional" to seriously consider Bigfoot in his time, as most bigfoot researchers were amateur naturalists. For the most part, we still are.

Born in Salt Lake City in 1931 hr tried to follow the basic Christian philosophy of behaviour and morality but never really embraced his parents Mormon Church.Krantz served in the Air National Guard as a desert survival instructor in 1951-52 before completing his Bachelor of Science and Master's at University of California, Berkeley in 1958. His dissertation, The Origins of Man, earned him his Doctorate from the University of Minnesota in 1971. He eventually became a popular professor at Washington State University even though he had a reputation for giving really difficult exams. He took a personal interest in his students, often having lunch with them and talking about anthropology, current events, and various sciences. Krantz retired in 1998 and after his death there was a scholarship named after him to "promote interest in the fields of physical/biological anthropology, linguistic archaeology, and/or human demography."

"I've been a teacher all my life, and I think I might as well be a teacher after I'm dead."

Krantz's studies of Bigfoot, which he called "Sasquatch," led him to theorize that sightings were due to small pockets of surviving gigantopithecines, having migrated across the Bering land bridge, which was later used by humans to enter North America. It is thought to have gone extinct 100,000 years ago in eastern Asia. In January 1985 Krantz tried to formally name Bigfoot at the meeting of the International Society of Cryptozoology held in Sussex, England, assigning it the name Gigantopithecus blacki. This was not permitted by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature because G. blacki was an existing name and the creature was lacking a holotype. Krantz argued that his plaster casts were suitable holotypes then later suggesting G. canadensis as a name. He got no support.Krantz was skeptical about the Patterson–Gimlin film. He believed it was a hoax. He then studied the gait of the Sasquatch and came to believe the film was authentic. After years of skepticism, Krantz finally became convinced of Bigfoot's existence after analyzing the "Cripplefoot" plaster casts gathered at Bossburg, Washington. Shortly before his death, Krantz also examined the Skookum cast but did not publicly endorse its authenticity. He said, "I don't know what it is. I'm baffled. Elk. Sasquatch. That's the choice."

Grover Krantz had one brother, Victor Krantz, who worked as a photographer at the Smithsonian Institution. His other brother, Eugene, headed the government affairs office of postage meter giant Pitney Bowes Inc. for 19 years until his retirement in 1982. Grover Krantz was married four times and divorced three times. He also had a stepson, Dural Horton. Krantz was a travel enthusiast. He frequently took road trips, traveling to all 48 continental US states. He did fieldwork in Europe, China, and Java as well as his home state of Washington and other North American locations.
“It has not yet been established that the Sasquatch exists,” To pass laws against harming sasquatches presently makes little more sense than protecting unicorns.”
The remains of Dr. Krantz, per his request, were taken to the University of Tennessee's Anthropology Research Facility. Scientists there conducted many kinds of skeletal research, including studies that are essential in forensic cases for accurately estimating time since death. In 2003, the remains and three of his dogs were brought to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where their skeletons could be used in teaching.

In the 1970s, Krantz studied the fossil remains of Ramapithecus. Many anthropologists thought it to be ancestral to humans, but Kranta helped prove this notion false. He showed differences in phonemic speech, theoretical hunting patterns and anatomical differences between homo erectus and modern humans then wrote an influential paper on humans in prehistoric Europe. He was the first researcher to explain the mastoid process.

Krantz was drawn into the Kennewick Man controversy in 1996. He argued in academia and in court that there was no good evidence of direct lineage to extant human populations.
He stated his view that "this skeleton cannot be racially or culturally associated with any existing American Indian group" and "the Native Repatriation Act [sic] has no more applicability to this skeleton than it would if an early Chinese expedition had left one of its members there."

He attempted to submit the last paper he wrote before his death, titled "Neanderthal Continuity in View of Some Overlooked Data," but it was rejected by the peer-reviewed journal Current Anthropology. The editor stated it did not make enough reference to the most current research. Whether consciously or not, his anger over the years of academic abuse was apparent in this article. He was told that the tone was "jarring and unacademic" and was refused a second time after a rewrite. He decided his career was indeed over. Just before his death from pancreatic cancer, his friend and colleague Jon Bodly visited him and attempted to find the "foolproof method of determining a fake track from a real one just by looking at them." Krantz just smiled and refused to answer, dying the next day with his secret intact.

Krantz’s plan to kill a Bigfoot “was a political hot potato,” Jeffrey Meldrum. “It divided the Bigfoot community right down the middle with strong feelings on both sides.” If Krantz were to shoot one, he might be helping to kill off the species for the sake of his own research but Krantz’s point was that no one would bother to preserve the species until it was recognized by science. He felt the only way to get that recognition was to bring in a corpse.

Though Krantz never found a Bigfoot dead or alive, he had what he thought were close calls. Krantz was also seen as a maverick in his research methods. Many found him funny and entertaining. One year, Krantz molded a set of heavy brow ridges and strapped them to his head. He let his hair grow out all summer, trying to ascertain the advantage of a hominid’s having such ridges. According to Meldrum, “He came to the conclusion that it kept the hair out of your eyes."

Although eccentric, he was also a respected scholar who made legitimate contributions to science. He was a member of both MENSA and INTERTEL, but fell prey to hoaxes. After graduating, Donald Tyler and another professor made a fake Sasquatch cast and took it to Krantz for analysis. They used their fingers and foreheads to create lines in the bottom of the cast. Krantz determined, based on specific dermal ridges and lines in the foot, that the cast was without a doubt from the Blue Mountains. Krantz was undeterred. Because footprints have been found for so many decades in so many different places in the world, it seemed completely implausible to Krantz that every one of them could have been faked. I tend to agree.

You Take the Low Road, I'll Take the High Road...

Since “ghost hunting” and “cryptozoology” have become more mainstream, those who take their research seriously are feeling increasingly frustrated by a plethora of false information and glory seeking not only on TV and online, but also in face to face situations. One of the biggest reasons there is this unease is that there is absolutely no regulation, peer or otherwise, over the credentials or publication of “findings” in this genre of research.

Few groups are funded, especially in North America, and literally all expenses—from travel to equipment and more---is out of the pocket of the investigator or, if he is lucky, from some group fund that others have either donated to or sold “swag” to maintain. Ironically, those groups who sell swag, t-shirts and coffee mugs and the like, are even more criticized for commercializing the study. It is somehow perceived that if you sell a bumper sticker with your group logo you are somehow less serious about the research. Realistically, funding your study does not automatically mean you are in it for the money. Nobody is going to get rich from the 2-10% payback on CafePress or Zazzle. Profit from the pennies on the dollar a website gets for a Google ad or an amazon.com affiliation will not even pay for a tank of gas and a night in a hotel for an onsite study. Until philanthropists, academics and governments recognize the importance of researching things that are outside of regular science, researchers will continue to keep their day jobs to pay for their research.

Justifiably, however, funding is not going to happen until the charlatans and hoaxers are better dealt with. At some point, groups and individuals are going to have to swallow their egos and contrive a peer review system that can accredit or otherwise recognize honest, responsible researchers. A spirit of information sharing and cooperation that currently does not exist among these sorts of groups will have to develop. Each researcher or group will have to stop racing to be the “one” that “discovers” all the answers or provides the evidence and instead focus on working together and weeding out those folks who are faking evidence and sensationalizing trivia.

Serious researchers who want to be respected and influential should not wait for this to happen. Each of us in this field needs to first and foremost BE responsible researchers. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Responsible research means spending a lot of time learning about a variety of things. Cryptozoology alone encompasses biology, zoology, mythology, archaeology, history, botany, and dozens of other studies that a responsible researcher must at least understand if not master before being able to successfully research an unknown animal. One need not be a PhD in ANY of these disciplines, but should be able to reach out to further education or dialogue with actual academics for a better understanding or analysis. Instead of allowing ego to isolate, honest researchers need to channel this ego into becoming the best in the field. To get the respect, we have to do the work.

Additionally, researchers who publish need to allow their work to be open to criticism. Any researcher who supresses or removes dissenting or critical replies to their public work are to be suspected of dishonesty. If one’s work or opinion will not stand up to alternate opinion or criticism, it is not thoroughly vetted work. If one’s “feelings” get hurt by someone challenging their findings, then perhaps those feelings are more important to the researcher than the truth in the research. Persons who fit into that mold need to be discarded as serious researchers. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be offended by hurtful postings—certainly there are those out there who seek to attack the researcher rather than the results. We are human, and attacks hurt. In that case, only give as much respect to the dissenting opinion as it is worthy of. Those of us who do televisions appearances are especially vulnerable to those kinds of attacks. Because real researchers tend to be normal looking rather than model pretty, we are often criticized over our age, our fashion sense, our weight, our hair (or lack thereof) and many other external elements. Audiences who feel compelled to criticise those things are not interested in the research. Those audiences want to be entertained, not educated. Our visceral reaction may be to recoil in pain, but we need to remind ourselves that our goal in presenting is to educate, not impress.

Truly, the need to educate needs to always be the goal in publishing findings. Entertainment success is exceedingly fleeting. The tremendous success of Paranormal State, for instance, is over. In just a few years those researchers were discarded like the losers from “America’s Got Talent”. If that was their only goal in this field, their professional lives done. If their goal is/was to continue to study and to educate, then the end of the fame is meaningless. One’s success or failure in this field is only determined by their goal. Likewise, if your view of success only involves DNA evidence of BigFoot you may never be successful. If you put all of your self-esteem in how many electronics you own and they never produce quantitative results that meet the expectations of the debunkers, you set yourself up to fail.

Those of us who have trodden this path for several years and have had our moments of true understanding have a responsibility not only to our audiences but also to new investigators. First and foremost we need to be good examples. We need to limit our publicity and publication to those items that really matter. We need to avoid the temptation to only entertain; we can be entertaining while we educate, but posting on blogs and youtube and such only to elicit laughs or horror is counterproductive to the study and eventually taints the researcher’s ability to be trusted and respective. Additionally, we have a responsibility to call out the hoaxers and pseudoresearchers when they go public with dubious evidence and opinion. We need to ignore press releases that say nothing. We need to challenge evidence that has not been tested in a laboratory or at the very least peer reviewed. We need to respectfully, politely, and preferably privately, suggest that this behaviour is unacceptable. In the unfortunate instances where hoaxers are public, we need to publicly debunk them.

Lacking an accrediting organization, we must keep ourselves and each other in check. One need not earn a living doing paranormal research to be professional. One need not be a university graduate to be educated. One need not dance for a network camera to garner positive exposure and respect in this field. Owning thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment or looking good in a bikini doesn’t make anyone a good investigator. What makes someone successful is the realization of goals they have set for themselves. What makes someone respectable is setting those goals a little higher.

Recommended reading:

http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

http://academicearth.org/

Wednesday, 17 July 2019

Grover Krantz

Thursday, 30 June 2011

You Take the Low Road, I'll Take the High Road...