Talk:Richard Wrangham

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I've added in some points debunking some of rangham's ideas re cooking.Loki0115 (talk) 20:41, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I've added a quote from Wrangham that debunks Loki's criticism.Kburchbebop (talk) 19:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I corrected the previous entry as it was extremely pro-Wrangham and violating NPOV. Instead, I added in some necessary data on the level of controversy behind Wrangham's theory within the archaeological/anthroplogical community.Loki0115 (talk) 23:27, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Controversy?

This "controversy" section frankly doesn't seem all that notable, or controversial. Wrangham is a social scientist, and scientists disagree and critique each others' ideas all the time -- that's the whole point, and it doesn't make it controversy. An example of controversy would be the Kinsey report's methodology or motives, or a section in the Richard Herrnstein article about his authorship of The Bell Curve. The sources cited in this controversy section are about the debate itself -- they do not establish it as an actual controversy. Could someone please supply some references supporting this as a notable controversy? Otherwise I suggest deletion and keeping this to the raw foodism page.Yawar.fiesta (talk) 06:14, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, it's been more than a month so I went ahead and deleted the "controversy" section for the reasons cited above -- namely, no evidence of notability. Note also that the first sentence of the section as it existed was factually incorrect: "Richard Wrangham, a primate researcher and professor of anthropology has argued that cooking is obligatory for humans as a result of biological adaptations to cooked foods." While Wrangham has argued that cooking was necessary for human evolution, he acknowledges that it is possible in a modern setting to survive without cooked food, as in this interview.

Deleted text:

Richard Wrangham, a primate researcher and professor of anthropology has argued that cooking is obligatory for humans as a result of biological adaptations to cooked foods. Wrangham believes that cooking explains the increase in hominid brain sizes, smaller teeth and jaws and decrease in sexual dimorphism that occurred roughly 1.8 million years ago. Other anthropologists, however, oppose Wrangham, contending that archeological evidence suggests that cooking fires began in earnest only 250,000-500,000 years ago, when ancient hearths, earth ovens, burnt animal bones, and flint appear across Europe and the middle East. 2 million years ago, the only sign of fire is burnt earth with human remains, which most anthropologists consider coincidence rather than evidence of intentional fire. The mainstream view among anthropologists is that the increase in human brain-size was due to a shift away from the consumption of nuts and berries to the consumption of meat.

Yawar.fiesta (talk) 19:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Loki0115 recently re-added this text, which I think was the right move, but I have merged it into the 'Research' section and done some rewording because I agree it is not 'controversial' for an academic to propose a theory which is not completely accepted. However, the cooking debate is certainly a notable part of Wrangham's research, and one of the main reasons he is well known in evolutionary anthropology, so in my opinion it definitely should be mentioned. —Joseph Roe^Tk•Cb, 10:19, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Good job. It was not appropriate to refer to the matter as a controversy. I suspect the presentation of the hypothesis needs tweaking, but it is an essential part of this article. Johnuniq (talk) 02:43, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, at least the criticism of Wrangham was included. That's the main thing. I do still heavily disagree and consider that Wrangham's theories re cooking and the human brain etc. are highly controversial. After all, it is not simply a case that Wranghams's notions have not been completely accepted, as several online references, such as 1 or 2 in the article, make it very clear that Wrangham's theories are viewed with absolute contempt by the overwhelming majority of anthropologists, due to the lack of evidence to support Wrangham's claims and plenty of evidence which debunks his theories. Of course, you may think of controversy as, instead, implying a nasty dispute. Well, even in that case, I would say that the strongly worded responses of his opponents in the field of anthropology(such as comments about Wrangham being merely a chimp researcher and not a serious anthropologist etc.) make Wrangham's notions extremely controversial indeed.Loki0115

I have had to undo 2 previous attempts to re-portray Wrangham's notions as being supposedly mainstream. If one looks online, one finds, first of all, that there are astonishingly small numbers of articles on Richard Wrangham, thus emphasising that his beliefs are fringe, and not mainstream therefore. Even worse, the few main articles featuring Wrangham typically include a major caveat stating either that "most other anthropologists" or "many anthropologists" view Wrangham's ideas to be laughable and unscientific. In one such article, Wrangham is even derided by a serious anthropologist as being merely a "chimp researcher" and not a genuine palaeoanthropologist - if one looks at Richard Wrangham's online CV, one can see that there is ample justification for that remark.

Here are 3 links re the above comments:-

• http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cooking-up-bigger-brains
• http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Pennisi_99.html
• http://www.discoverlife.org/who/CV/Wrangham,_Richard.html

Regardless of whether some people view Wrangham's notions as being supposedly "right", one should take into account the fact that he is not taken seriously by the majority of palaeoanthropologists. So claiming that his views are merely "alternative" is wholly inaccurate, to put it mildly.Loki0115 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Loki0115 (talk • contribs) 18:52, 10 July 2011

I don't want to take the time to check the edits that took place last November, but my recollection is that there was an overstatement of a "controversy" that made it hard to actually see what Wrangham proposed. This article merely needs to explain the concept presented by Wrangham, with a brief overview of scientific response. This is not the "Why Wrangham is wrong" article, and I think the current state is about right (assuming the refs are ok)—I am just commenting to suggest that no more refutations should be added (if suitable, further text should be in some other article). Johnuniq (talk) 01:49, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The current state is actually in accordance with your wishes, and covers also my concerns. There is now one short sentence stating, more or less, how Wrangham's theories are actually viewed within the field of palaeoanthropology, plus another shortish sentence pointing out that the mainstream/standard view on the issue of human evolution/cooking is quite different from Wrangham's notions. These points need to be made. On previous occasions, pro-wrangham people have tried to alter the wording, changing words quite wrongly, such as exchanging the words "most other anthropologists" to just "some anthropologists", despite the fact that the former words were used in the references instead of the latter phrase. While there are several other websites, not mentioned here as yet, which debunk Wrangham's views quite well, I agree that they have no real place on a biography page. Hmm, they could go in the cooking wikipedia page, though.Loki0115 (talk) 12:58, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I have un-done the recent attempt to alter the mainstream view of wrangham's ideas. The claim made by the other poster was that pennisi "meant" to say that "many anthropologists "opposed Wrangham. In actual fact, Pennisi mentioned that "most anthropologists" opposed Wrangham( see text:-

"Yet he, Michigan's Brace, and most other anthropologists contend that cooking fires began in earnest barely 250,000 years ago, when ancient hearths, earth ovens, burnt animal bones, and flint appear across Europe and the middle East. Back 2 million years ago, the only sign of fire is burnt earth with human remains, which most anthropologists consider coincidence rather than evidence of intentional fire." taken from: http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Pennisi_99.html

Also, given that the few articles on Wrangham usually mention, again and again, that Wrangham has no solid evidence to support his claim that cooking got started 1.8 million years ago, it is essential to note that Wrangham's view is not merely "alternative" but solely a fringe belief.Plus, it is necessary to mention the mainstream viewpoint that eating meat led to bigger brains, so altering the wording to "scavenging" is pointless.Loki0115 (talk) 08:19, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

It bothers me that the source on "most anthropologists" and the one on the "mainstream explanation" are 12 years old. What do most anthropologists today say? Reference #7 from 2007 does make a similar claim about "most researchers," but it is not used as a reference for the relevant sentence (I'll fix that). There should be references to newer research such as

• http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/08/17/1107806108
• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44232526/ns/technology_and_science-science/
• http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/333558/title/The_worlds_oldest_profession_chef

These update Wrangham's research; but they also indicate that the controversy continues, with Wrangham's colleague Organ admitting, "There isn't a lot of good evidence for fire. That's kind of controversial. That's one of the holes in this cooking hypothesis. If those species right then were cooking you should find evidence for hearths and fire pits."--RichardMathews (talk) 17:18, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

References

==

It is irrelevant that those sources are 12 years old as they are among the first links to appear when one googles "richard wrangham". The fact is that Richard Wrangham is so fringe, that there are few articles about his ideas, since he is viewed with disdain by the rest of the anthroplogical community, being labelled a mere "chimp researcher". So the general susbstance of that deleted paragraph is valid. I will look for more modern refs to add to it, but I don't really think that's necessary, as no recent article has come up to suggest that there is any decent evidence to support Wrangham's claims re fire being invented c. 1.9 million years ago. Loki0115 (talk) 02:21, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I've done some research. It seems that the above poster was dead wrong. One of the refs was from 2007, so is only 4 years old. Case closed. I will now undo that deletion.Loki0115 (talk) 03:13, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

The real problem is that Wrangham is practically the only scientist who is behind the pro-cooking theory. One occasionally reads of other names, but 99 percent of the time, Richard Wrangham's name is mentioned instead, or, occasionally, along with 1 or 2 others. That one study mentioned above, for example, is one which was carried out by Wrangham, so is hardly credible as a support to his theories. Then there's the fact that the language used by other anthropologists to describe Wrangham is particularly strong, with statements about Wrangham stating that he is "merely a chimp researcher", not a genuine anthropologist(verifiable if one checks his online CV), that Wrangham is "just plain wrong" etc. Such strong language is generally only used to describe fringe ideas which have no backing in the scientific community. Plus, even Wrangham has himself admitted in interviews that he has no solid evidence to back up his claims. So, it is necessary to highlight the fact that his theories are fringe.Loki0115 (talk) 08:53, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

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