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iowa61 wrote:
First, participants on this forum have in fact outright dismissed Dr. Jantz's work and by inference his credentials and reputation and those of the peer review scholars and the scientific journal of publication.
Second, Jantz's paper--in its entirety-which would include methodologies, integrity of data, scientific validity etc., has been peer-reviewed by scholars who are infinitely more qualified than anyone on this forum. After critiques were addressed satisfactorily the paper was then published in a prestigious academic journal.
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iowa61 wrote:
Again. You are incorrect and your claims are extraordinary. To dismiss a rigorously peer reviewed paper, authored by a respected subject matter scientist, as "garbage" takes a special kind of, uh, "confidence." You seem to have not read the paper and, or, are not familiar with the statistical and probabilistic techniques employed by Jantz.
MOST REMARKABLY, you presume that the peer review process failed to reveal the most basic methodological failures and you presume the academic publishing house did not catch the failure of the peer review process.
I'm sorry but there are some fundamental faults to your constant lecture of the "Scientific Method" here in the name of Tighar or in this case Dr Janz's work on their behalf.
Dr Janz's Fordoc program is acknowledged as having limitations but lets leave that aside, and recognise that most of his new analysis relies on photogrammatic estimations of Earhart's height and also the lengths of her arm bones undertaken from analysis of old photographs by Jeff Glickman.
There are apparent fundamental faults in the measurement accuracies claimed in Mr Glickmans estimates.
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Many colleagues, friends, and family members have contributed
to this paper in various ways. Ric Gillespie and
TIGHAR’s resources enabled me to get information from
Amelia Earhart’s clothing and from photographs allowing
quantification of several aspects of her body size and limb
lengths and proportions.
Mr Glickmans earliest "claim to fame" was confirming super 8 footage of a 7' tall Bigfoot creature was real, which instead was later admitted by the creators to be of a 6' man in a fur suit. Not a great endorsement of credibility or accuracy.
In Glickman's work at the NASM where he superimposes a picture of Earhart in front of her Lockheed Vega over a recent picture of the same aircraft now in the museum, he calibrates that superposition by aligning the engine cowl.
https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Arc ... -FINAL.pdfYet it is well documented that the aircraft has a different engine cowl in its museum display - he makes no allowance to the likely error that creates to his scaling factor -
so much for the underlying "scientific method".Yet the cowling diameter is his scaling factor?
and not only is there a visible overlay problem, the historical cowl is not the current museum display cowl, and their internal diameters appear significantly different?
The differences in the internal diameters of those two cowls is more than sufficient to render Glickmans height estimates to be worthless, yet Janz relies on it to support his Fordic analysis? -
so much for the Scientific Method.Worse, then Glickman estimates the bone lengths within Earharts arm from beneath clothes and skin, and Janz relies heavily of that work to again support his fordic analysis.
This is done once, on a single photograph of Earhart, where her arm is partially hidden by her shirt, and the ends of bones determined by fold lines in skin.
https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Arc ... -FINAL.pdfA true "scientific method" would apply and repeat this technique to a number of different photos of Earhart to demonstrate consistency of results, or alternatively - subject Glickman to a blind test of analysing the bone lengths from recent photos of 3 or 4 people in the same manner, and to then separately determine the real bone dimensions and ratio's of those 3 or 4 people through X-Ray. And to then ascribe a level of repeatability and accuracy to Mr Glickmans estimations.
No such controls were applied -
so much for the scientific method.However the BIGGEST failure of Dr Janz is to base the probability of these bones being from Earhart, (
and not from one of the 8 missing crew members of the SS Norwich City ship wreck), is to ascribe confidence to his own work back on the "preponderance" of other evidence already showing Earhart had been on Gardner Island.
The reality is we are certain those 8 missing crew members arrived on Gardner/Niku aboard the ship and did not leave with the survivors, - hence its quite possible one (or more) was badly injured and survived in the ship or was badly injured and was washed ashore elsewhere on the island and in anycase, left to become the castaway - there is no such certainty that Earhart was EVER on Gardner Island despite Gillespies claims to the contrary and the swallowing of such claims, unquestioned by Dr Janz (and before him Prof. Eagar).
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The bones are consistent
with Earhart in all respects we know or can reasonably
infer. Her height is entirely consistent with the bones. The
skull measurements are at least suggestive of female. But
most convincing is the similarity of the bone lengths to the
reconstructed lengths of Earhart’s bones. Likelihood ratios
of 84–154 would not qualify as a positive identification by
the criteria of modern forensic practice, where likelihood
ratios are often millions or more. They do qualify as what is
often called the preponderance of the evidence, that is, it is
more likely than not the Nikumaroro bones were (or are, if
they still exist) those of Amelia Earhart. If the bones do not
belong to Amelia Earhart, then they are from someone very
similar to her. And, as we have seen, a random individual has
a very low probability of possessing that degree of similarity.
Ideally in forensic practice a posterior probability that
remains belong to a victim can be obtained. Likelihood ratios
can be converted to posterior odds by multiplying by the prior
odds. For example, if we think the prior odds of Amelia Earhart
having been on Nikumaroro Island are 10:1, then the
likelihood ratios given above become 840–1,540, and the
posterior probability is 0.999 in both cases.
So Dr Janz identifies and admits his own statistical probability results to be quite poor, but then applies a 10 fold increase based on the fact Tighar is certain she was on the island due to "all the other evidence" (but there isnt any!!)
So Dr Janz (like Proffessor Over Eager before him on authenticating the 22V1 as definitely being the "Miami Patch") swallows assurances from Tighar that the rest of their "evidence" is beyond doubt, where is it is all VERY DOUBTFUL.
Janz' paper is hence built on a house of cards provided by Jeff Glickman.(I am sure Prof "Over" Eager regrets not waiting for the chemical analysis which later showed 22V1 did not match the aluminum chemical compositions of 1937 but instead matched those of WW2, or even more recently that the rivet pattern on 22V1 matched the wingskins of a C49 Gooney Bird (a prewar impressed DC-3) that crashed on a nearby island and was the likely source of both the skin but also P&W 1830 engine parts! found on the island (ie not one piece of Electra has been found on the island although many parts of other aircraft have been.- I suspect poor Dr Janz was told NOTHING of those faulty aspects of the preponderance of evidence)
(Interestingly back in 2014 Jeff Glickman was going to provide a peer reviewed paper explaining how he was able to confidently detect and match those rivet lines in 22v1 to "those he could see" in the blurry Miami photograph of the then shiny window patch, strangely that report is yet to be published?, in the mean time chemical analysis and matching of rivet lines to a DC-3 Wing has effectively again seriously questioned Glickmans credibility.)
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In the present instance, readers can supply their own
interpretation of the prior evidence, summarized by King
(2012). Given the multiple lines of non-osteological evidence,
it seems difficult to conclude that Earhart had zero probability
of being on Nikumaroro Island. From a forensic perspective
the most parsimonious scenario is that the bones are
those of Amelia Earhart. She was known to have been in the
area of Nikumaroro Island, she went missing, and human
remains were discovered which are entirely consistent with
her and inconsistent with most other people. Furthermore, it
is impossible to test any other hypothesis, because except for
the victims of the Norwich City wreck, about whom we have
no data, no other specific missing persons have been reported.
It is not enough merely to say that the remains are most likely
those of a stocky male without specifying who this stocky
male might have been. This presents us with an untestable
hypothesis, not to mention uncritically setting aside the prior
information of Earhart’s presence. The fact remains that if
the bones are those of a stocky male, he would have had bone
lengths very similar to Amelia Earhart’s, which is a low-probability
event. Until definitive evidence is presented that the
remains are not those of Amelia Earhart, the most convincing
argument is that they are hers.
Where as ALL of that other Tighar evidence from Gardner / Nikumaroro Island has proven to be PREPOSTEROUS!!! and the bone ratio and height analysis by Jeff Glickman underpinning Dr Janz paper has similar serious flaws.
So much for the Scientific MethodPeer review doesnt mean someone has repeated the tests and endorses the conclusions, it merely simply means someone with experience in the field can follow the the scientific argument, not neccessarily endoses it.
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Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers). It constitutes a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards of quality, improve performance, and provide credibility. In academia, scholarly peer review is often used to determine an academic paper's suitability for publication. Peer review can be categorized by the type of activity and by the field or profession in which the activity occurs
So yes, Dr Janz paper is peer reviewed by another forensic Anthropologist or similar qualification, but I suspect there is no qualified or peer review investigation of the issues I raise with Mr Glickmans work which forms such important foundational elements of Dr Janz paper?
The reports produced by Mr Glickman to Tighar which are the source of Dr Janz information are not peer reviewed at all, and if they were, the issues and errors I have identified above would surely need to be addressed.
By the way Ric, good health to you and Pat, its a pity your unwilling to permit such critical or skeptical debates over on the Tighar forum, and are unwilling to post under your own name here, or over on Aviation Mysteries.
Regards
Mark Pilkington