In this episode, I am joined by long-time friend and collaborator Dr. Greg Berg to chat with Dr. Richard Jantz about his paper "Amelia Earhart and the Nikumaroro Bones: A 1941 Analysis versus Modern Quantitative Techniques" from Vol 1. No. 2. We take a deep dive into the Amelia Earhart story covering the span between her disappearance in 1937 through Dr. Jantz's initial presentation of the Nikumaroro Bones hypothesis in 1998, a published rebuttal of the hypothesis in 2015, formal development and presentation of the hypothesis in 2018, and moving toward the determination of a positive identification. A warning, though, this one will be a little bit statistics heavy; however, I feel that it is necessary to have a good foundational understanding of the procedures that Dr. Jantz used and how he used them to be able to critically examine his findings. As you’ll soon find, it is important to provide some, or any, measure of certainty to support your claims.
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Dr. Richard Jantz is Director Emeritus of Forensic Anthropology Center, Professor Emeritus Dr. Jantz conducts research in the areas of human variation, skeletal biology and forensic anthropology. He is primarily concerned with developing computerized data bases in these areas which can be used to address a variety of research questions.
