posted
I had a debate recently, elsewhere on the biological makeup of Ancient Egypt.
When the opponent could not argue against the facts presented he resorted to attacking the scholar in question. Namely Dr. Keita.
His argument against Keita was that he had no credibility, to which I noted his education and that his work was published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
He then claimed that if he was a scholar of any repute there should be some information on him from a credible source and challenged me to link to a bio.
He also said that "anyone" could submit an article or study to a scientific journal but that it did not mean such theories were accepted by the scientific community at large and asked me to name a college book in which "Mr. Keita's" research had been cited.
I could not find a bio on any .edu link. There were other anthropologists that I could find bios for such as C. Loring Brace and Sarah Tishkoff.
The only bios I could find on Keita beyond Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias was something on "Zoominfo" and a short bio he wrote about himself in an article published in the Journal of Black Studies.
Now I know that this does not discredit his research but in debate it does not look good when you cannot provide information on your source.
It is also discouraging to see that some of the books that have been recommended on this site are out of print, low in stock or sold poorly as opposed to counter views.
I took a look at Amazon to see how certain books were doing as opposed to other books.
Egypt in Africa by Theodore Celenko for one is out of print with only two used and overpriced books available.
The People of Africa by Jean Hiernaux only has one used book available and has not been reviewed.
Needless to say many of the Eurocentric books published by academia are selling much better, getting more feedback and more widely available.
So my question to the board is what would you say is the most objective way to judge the credibility of research?
Also what do you think it will take to push the facts into the mainstream?
Posts: 1203 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Hi Mansa Musa long time you contribute here.
You wrote:
quote: He also said that "anyone" could submit an article or study to a scientific journal but that it did not mean such theories were accepted by the scientific community at large and asked me to name a college book in which "Mr. Keita's" research had been cited.
I never read any articles by Mr. Keita, but I do know for sure that not anyone can submit article to leading scientific journals, and even got harder after the stem cell scandal. My teacher is board member of Nature Journal to select which article is good enough to get publish. It takes a ground-breaking research to have your article on Nature and Science.
Last week, Nature came with another policy to submit articles:
quote: Editorial
Nature 445, 684 (15 February 2007)
Methods in full
From now on, Nature authors will be able to include more experimental details in their papers.
When in 1960 Theodor Maiman reported the creation of the laser, he did so in about 300 words. Most of these were about the principles. The experiment was described in two sentences (see Nature 187, 493494; 1960).
Until now, Nature's style of research papers although more generous in the space allowed than it once was has been grounded in this telegraphic tradition, allowing comparatively little space for experimental detail. Consequently, with the advent of the Internet, the supplementary material published online has grown voluminous, and nearly ubiquitous appended to every Article and Letter in this week's issue, for example. And some of it isn't supplementary at all it is essential for anyone trying to replicate the work.
We have now taken steps to do better justice to what authors have to say, by letting them present full experimental methods as an integral part of their paper. It is clear that more and more people read papers only in their online versions. So we are expanding the online versions of our Articles and Letters, while condensing some of the technical detail in the printed version.
To be specific: in those papers requiring a separate methods section, the online version of the paper will allow authors to include enough detail to satisfy their peers. This is not a 'supplementary' methods file, but a component of the paper, with all the virtues of full-text linking and functionality. It will appear in all online versions, including the authors' versions of papers that can be loaded into PubMed Central and other open-access repositories six months after publication.
But Nature also rejoices in being a print publication. We have no wish to leave print readers lacking sufficient understanding of what was done to appreciate the authors' achievements. Accordingly, the print version will include a 300-word summary of the methods. This will also appear in the online version.
Norman Lockyer, the founding editor of Nature, might well deplore the loss of brevity in today's scientific reports. But our authors should bear in mind that readers still value succinctness and that Nature's editors and copy-editors will continue to insist on it.
Distribution and sales determines largely how long a book will stay in print. But those things have nothing to do with the credibility of the author. Most books written about Egypt are not deep scholarly publications. They are mainstream publications that are desgined to appeal to the masses and are therefore more often collections of photos and sketches of Egyptian artwork, with references to actual scholarly publications as the basis of the text that goes in them. Many of these authors are not necessarily up to date on the latest research and publications in Egyptology.
Likewise, you must also understand that just because a scholar is credible (scientifically accurate), does not mean that their views, opinons or conclusions will be widely adopted. Contrary to common conception, there is no single common agreement about ancient Egypt and how the ancient Egyptians looked. Those that admit openly that the Egyptians were black Africans are in the minority. The majority of the scholars seem to stay in an ambiguous area, trying not to focus on the appearance of the Egyptians, but if they do touch on it, it is often pointed out that they were not black and somewhere between European and African. This is not accurate but it is not necessarily scientifically wrong either. This kind of research is then used by those making mainstream publications, which tend to use such ideas as a basis for portraying Egyptians as white. Now, beign that most of these books are sold in European countries, then it is obvious that sales would be based on what people there like to see. I would say that the art books of Egyptian artifacts are the most popular, followed by the story books and general history books and last the technical scholarly stuff. The first category is not as prone to distortion as you are dealing with authentic Egyptian artwork, but the text can be somewhat contradictory depening on who wrote it and when. It is the second category that is going to be where you may find more distortions as general histories of Africa and Egypt dont seem to be updated with every new discovery or all the latest research. These generalized types of histories are more likely to deal in more outdated points of view as they are dealing with a large timeframe and rely on older works written by more well known, albeit somewhat Eurocentric authors. This is due to the fact that most of the major works of Egyptian history have already been published and these works often have the old biases and distortions within them from the early 1900s. There have been no new up to date comprehensive volumes written since then. Mostly what you get are the results of various tests and findings in small technical journals that are most likely to only circulate in more technical and sholarly publications than general historical publications.
Within this body of scholarly technical publications, you will find some that publish results that agree with a black African origin for ancient Egypt and others that dont. As I said earlier, there is no one common point of view on this topic. Therefore, there is plenty of published research that can be used to reinforce old Eurocentric ideas. Egyptology does not act as a policing agency for Egyptian history and anthropology by throwing out research that does not comply to their "standards", even while they DO police who has access to artifacts and WHEN information can be published. In fact, anthropology and archaeology are some of the most contentious "sciences" out there, as you are not dealing with absolutes. Therefore, there are many possible interperetations of facts that lead to many different conclusions being published by many different scholars. Credibility is not so much an issue as what is most commonly accepted. Up until 10-20 years ago, the Eurasian basis for Egyptian civilization was a widely accepted point of view among many Egyptologists and in many ways it still is. But becoming widely accepted does not mean being technically accurate or correct. Cheik Anta Diop published his work 30 years ago and was shown to be far beyond most other researchers in the field of Egyptian antrhopology in many ways. However, his views on the Egyptians have yet to become commonly accepted in the field. The same goes for Kittles and Keita who are likewise not commonly accepted. Becoming commonly accepted has nothing to do with credibility, because the process has nothing to do with science and more to do with personal belief and worldview. If not, then the answer would have been settled long ago, as the evidence from Egypt itself is overwhelming in this regard. What is being fought here is not a purely scientific battle, it is also a cultural and historic battle over who controls the institutions of history, archaeology and anthropology. Scholars can choose to accept and support only the research that fits within their own belief system and world view, whether or not this scholarship is accurate or not. The only institutions that could publish or put forward a "commonly accepted" set of publications and research that forms the basis of any modern understanding of ancient Egypt would be the institution of Egyptology itself. However, this will not happen any time soon. Egyptology likes to remain ambiguous and therefore does not try to pick sides, but rather likes to watch others battle it out over their own findings and research. Each paper and study is treated as separate and distinct unto itself and hardly ever is there a comprehensive update of any sort of a central body of knowledge of Egypt based on the cumulative effect of the results of the various sholarly works put forward.
It does not work like that. Therefore, the issue is one of popularity as opposed to credibility. I would argue that whoever said anything about credibility was using the term as an alternative for popularity. Popularity is another way of saying commonly accepted. Just because something is more commonly accepted or popular does not make it more credible (meaning historically or scientifically accurate). Likewise, just because something is not as popular or commonly accepted does not mean it is less credible. Once again this is a perfect example of how information gets distorted in the field.
Remember, the basis of any attempt to establish that the Egyptians were black Africans has more to do with control of the INSTITUTIONS of Egyptology than science or facts. Egyptology was founded BY Europeans FOR Europeans and is largely based on the FUNDS from European endowments for research done LARGELY by European institutions. The question therefore, is not whether a particular author is credible, but whether the European dominated institutions of Egyptology are credible or are prone to bias as opposed to scientific fact. Of course, the idea of credibility is a strawman argument in this respect, as MANY European authors lack credibility in EVERY respect, but this is never brought up. The issue is one of a historically biased European dominated institution defending itself against continued claims of bias and distortion and lack of credibility. If anyone can be said to be lacking credibility it is those European authors who have been pusing the nonsense about Egyptians being ancient Europeans or Eurasians for the last 200 years. The IDEA of Egypt being white or "dark white" hamitic and mediterranean originated in the past during the age of European colonialism in Africa. What was happening in Africa at large in terms of European conquest and the racist attitudes towards black Africans cannot be ignored in this respect. If modern Egyptology, anthropology and archaeology are beyond this, then WHY havent they changed their opinion on the population of ancient Egypt? Saying that they were somehow between European and African is just another way of saying Mediterranean or Hamitic, therefore they are saying THE SAME THING as said by their historic counterparts. Therefore, WHY is published, scientifically accurate information being ignored in favor of long standing biased views published in the past? THAT is the question or at least should be.
Posts: 8898 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
There is a brief comment on Shomarka Keita in Wikipedia but I don't know what the problem is. The way scientific researchers are judged is by their output in peer-reviewed journals.
What the skeptic who commented on Keita's work did was to change the subject to focus on something as irrelevant as his bio. The way to judge Keita's work is to note what responses have been made to his claims--by other researchers in his field.
Consider the issue of the OOA thesis: most researchers in evolutionary anthropology are forced to support that thesis because of the overwhelming evidence; yet there are researchers who continue to subscribe to the Multiregional Hypothesis.
The same with the origins and ethnic classification of the AEs. The evidence is impressive in support of the thesis that they were an indigenous Africa-origined people whose physiognomies and body plans showed their evolutionary adaptability to a dry tropical/subtropical envronment.
Let us note too that in matters involving cultural prestige, distribution of economic resources, the morality of peoples in history ideology always enters the picture and those groups that control the dissemination of ideas will tend to favour theories that support the prestige--cultural and moral of those groups themselves.
Even in the case of the empirical sciences facts can be distorted or misinterpreted to fit some prevailing theory. The unfortunate thing in all this is that the vast majority of the members of the dominant groups just naively and simple-mindedly soak up and believe whatever has been inculcated into them.
What is even more unfortunate is that when presented with countervailing evidence the already inculcated just resort to cognitive dissonance, silence(ignore the messenger) or ad hominems against the provider of the falsifying evidence.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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long time you contribute here. 
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