Are archaeologists "scientists"?

[Nepenthe]

Oh it was a tough choice as a student... Indiana Jones, Roy Chapman Andrews or Richard Leaky?

wa:do

Indiana Jones, Roy Chapman Andrews, the entire Leaky clan, Don Johansen and Ernst Mayr were my weaknesses. There were more anthro' types on my list so that's why I only minored in biology.

I have a really embarassing story about meeting Don Johanson but I'll never tell it to strangers online. It's too embarassing but I had to acknowledge it happened.

 

[painted wolf]

I think if one were to look at the vast majority of media coverage of science in general it's equally vapid and misleading, though the Discovery Channels and their ilk tend to air really bad pseudo-science and feature pseudo-archaeology more often than not. But even legitimate scientific discoveries are distorted or exaggerated by media outlets normally trustworthy: National Geographic's unveiling of Archaeoraptor was irresponsible but the media's subsequent coverage of the fossil ignored the fact that plenty of paleontologists were skeptical of its validiy not to mention National Geographic isn't the place to submit scientific studies for peer review.

Another example was the misleading media coverage of Darwinius, aka Ida. As editor of the PLoS paper and anthropologist John Hawks observed of the media's stories on the fossil find:

"It's a hard case because they clearly are responding to the media and documentary treatment of Darwinius, which isn't the scientific research. I understand the frustration -- the documentary did not represent what the authors of the scientific paper published." ​

And I'll also point to what basically equates to media hysteria over the Human Genome Project. Venter may or may not be underestimating the impact of the project and he's a controversial guy (particularly over his profit oriented approach to scientific studies), but I certainly agree that the hype far outweighs the practical impact of the project:

SPIEGEL: So the Human Genome Project has had very little medical benefits so far?
VENTER: Close to zero to put it precisely.

It's a great interview. Venter is a no nonsense kinda guy who's not particularly impressed by the media's reporting of science and he's not too subtle about other scientists in the field... scientists like Francis Collins.

I absolutely agree... it seems that a good story =/= an accurate story.

I found my list was way more dominated by paleontologists and biologists... even my anthropologists were paleontologists. :faint:

wa:do