Alas, it suffered from all the usual faults of National Geographic documentaries, e.g., hyperbole; constant repetition of voice-over statements and questions; repetition ad nauseam of shots of the cave when an intelligent viewer already knew what it looked like; repetition of graphics which had already been shown and explained several times; inappropriate and irrelevant background music, with themes and chords repeated over and over again; repeated interpolation of rapid clips of unexplained people doing unexplained things; multiple views of the bottom of a boat; frogs, for goodness sake; etc.

I eventually muted the sound, to get rid of some of the overload, and simply read the closed captions (sub-titles).

The documentary was potentially interesting, but turned out to be lacking in decisive information. It did not do justice to the research and findings of the academics involved. Thus did I come to this website to find out what was missing. A few main conclusions come to mind:

— I am none the wiser and have grave doubts about a possible glitch in the usual evolutionary process. The documentary should not have been made and screened until more research had been done, and academics had found some sort of compromise in their argument about the findings.

— Since being taken in by the Tasaday hoax (1971/72), I cannot accept on face value the validity of National Geographic productions, even if the presentation were to be greatly improved and aimed at adult viewers.

— A half-hour documentary report, produced by the BBC when more information is available, will be vastly superior to a one-hour effort by National Geographic.

Yes, we humble but interested laypersons like to be entertained but some of us also like to be informed, factually and usefully.

It suffered from the usual production faults we see in National Geographic documentaries, e.g., hyperbole, constant repetition in both commentary and photography, excessive and unrelated background music. I eventually muted the sound and read the closed captions (sub-titles) cutting out the sound-treakc and putting up with the visual padding, without which we might have had an informative half-hour programme rather than a weary hour.

Two main points came to mind:

— The documentary should not have been made and screened until more research had been done, and more accurate or at least detailed findings could be reported.

— The circumstances of and methods behind the Tasady hoax (1971/1972), which took me in at the time, cause me to question the validity of any National Geographic documentary.

As a mere layman, I hope that when the academics have finished arguing, perhaps we could have the pleasure of seeing a more informative documentary with more solid conclusions . . . produced by the BBC.

I quoted the “right” places because he went to the Koror State Government and issued the required permits to explore the caves and conduct the findings. I quote the “right” places because he did do everything well and he notified the “right” people.

Koror State Goverment has control over most of the Rock Islands and the KSG has responsibility to notify the the public. So Dr. Lee Berger is not to blame here. Whatever is disclosed or not among the Palauan community has to do with the indigenous politics. In truth, the bones that are now sitting in the Belau National Museum are from a certain village in what is now Koror State. The chiefs of the village where the bones are located did not know of this dig because the KSG has more control.

If anything unethical was going on… well… you know what I mean.

But what Lee Berger failed to see… like any trained anthropologist should see, is the bigger picture. As an anthropologist/archaeologist, he should have done research on the indigenous culture and how does he go about in making the, if not appropriate, RIGHT moves in handling indigenous epistemology. Screw the government! It’s a total copy of the U.S. government! Palau, like many other cultures of the world, has a political system in which different states have different applications! If anybody should have been notified of this study, it should have been the people of where these sites are. The chiefs of Ngermid should have been notified. It’s no surprise that KSG did not mention that to Berger… but then again, Berger, after all his experience in South Africa (he must have dealt with the indigenous politics as well!), he should have at least done the respectful thing and let the ones who live in that part of Palau know, especially the chiefs.

Firstly, I would very much appreciate you not lumping your comments to me and Frodo Baggins together. We are two separate persons. I would suggest to you that I have not downplayed the socio-cultural aspects of this research. I was not involved in the earlier discussions on this blog. In my first post I clearly outlined the involvement of all of the Palauan’s I had worked with. Your comment that something went “awry” is correct, manifestly, but let me see if I can put my perspective on this clearly. Until the very moment that Rex Dalton set foot on Palau and begin his “witch hunt” – my colleagues and I were completely unaware of any negative issues that any Palauan’s might have – and that includes Mr. Adalbert Eledu. We were in communication with the Bureau and in good relations. Mr. Dalton quite literally “dropped out of the sky” – a form of ambush journalism. If you read his stories carefully, it seems that there is an underlying agenda concerning money. That’s the context he quotes Adalbert Eledu in. You must remember that I represent a research team. Yes, we want to continue research in Palau, and believe me when I tell you that we want to do it in a culturally sensitive manner. As you certainly must be aware, the internal and external politics in any situation like this – particularly when you are dealing with human remains – is like walking a tightrope. My team and I were in fact instructed by the Palauan authorities – including the traditional leaders we met with – to not speak to anyone on Palau about this matter. They would handle it. Sure it was a poorly kept secret – the island is small – but that was not our decision to make.

What happened were two very unfortunate things: firstly, National Geographic broke its own embargo through a television scheduling error. The show came out before the paper and this almost certainly led to the Palauan’s being embarrassed by not being able to break the news of this find coming out to all in a sensitive manner to all potentially concerned parties. Secondly, on the heels of this, Dalton drops in unannounced as a “reporter for Nature”. Now we compound the first mistake with a reporter from a prestigious journal snooping around for a story which I think, given everything that has happened, has more to do with an issue between Dalton and NGS than with us. He was simply fishing. But fishing in these sorts of circumstances can be extremely damaging. How long did it take him to find a disgruntled leader who had not been informed by the group in the know? Not long. How long did it take him to jump on a boat with this disgruntled leader and race off to the caves for a photo op? Not long. Should this obviously distressed leader have been informed – I don’t know – but it certainly wasn’t my decision to make. It belonged to the Palauan’s who were caught off-guard by the show and Mr. Dalton. It’s their history after all. Do I bear some responsibility for this? Of course, but its hard to learn lessons from reports like Dalton’s – he’s ignoring certain facts and publishing others – as he told me on the phone just the week before last “It doesn’t matter what I say anyway, he’ll have the last word…” . Now there is a lesson in anthropology and science journalism for you.

Concerning the quote of Mr. Adalbert Eledu, I am certain that this is a deliberate misinterpretation by Dalton of ongoing discussions I have been having with the Palauan representatives on the best way forward. From mid- 2007 we were in discussions about looking for ways to raise funds to purchase a boat, driver etc – they don’t have one to survey and protect the shelters. We wanted to look at ways of both protecting the caves and at the same time possibly using them for tourism. While one small part of the community may not wish to have tourism in these caves, another part does and sees this as a way of sharing their culture. Tours were going there already after all. I also wanted to look around for funds to continue exploratory research – these islands have tremendous potential as we have seen. Dalton twists this to imply “National Geographic owes the Palauan’s money”. I am not National Geographic any more than a researcher using an NSF grant is the National Science Foundation. But it is important that field researchers work with the communities to make sure they benefit from not only the publicity around important finds, but from the research itself, to help better understand their origins and protect sensitive sites. But this takes time. I know, I have raised a lot of funds for development here in South Africa around palaeoanthropology.

In a telephone conversation with Dalton held at 7am on Sunday morning March 9th, when he called from “Hawaii”, and ambushed me with the news that Nat. Geo. had broken the embargo and he was just leaving Palau after digging for dirt, I was truly taken off-guard. I explained this history – he chose to ignore it in his first publication – and in his second. He even went so far as to go on and publish online the next evening after he promised me he would not go ahead with the story until after talking with me the next morning giving me time to find out what was going on. He had clearly already made up his mind and written his story. That, from my point of view, is a deliberate twisting of the facts and might now jeopardize our ability to raise funds for these much needed projects.

When you add in the fact that he is putting juicy quotes into the articles about the science – and he knows those facts to be wrong – then what am I to make of this? You may not see it as a big deal, but for Dalton to use the Fitzpatrick and Pietrusewsky quotes about body size knowing that it’s not true, I think this is a very big deal. Can we have powerful science journalist always having the last word on issues like this? What am I supposed to expect his agenda is – to discredit the research at any cost? You did the same in your gleeful first commentary on Dalton’s “new” revelations. You knew about John Hawk’s data in his commentary on Palau. You must have, you quoted his commentary elsewhere, but you chose instead to take a dig at us on other issues – where is the fairness and balanced journalism in that? Above, you just answered two separate people in one review – the only reference to the post I made was you did not like me talking about you heading off on tangents – fair enough. But for you to now say you don’t want to talk about the science is a bit unfair when you went to some considerable lengths to use Dalton’s quotes and take a “slap” at Hawk’s and me and my colleagues on these very scientific issues.

Finally, despite your denials, you did imply I was posting as Frodo Baggins – I presume in order to discredit my integrity in these posts. No one here is stupid. Amongst numerous other comments above the “Well, Dr. Berger if you’re not the person who wrote the comment by Frodo Baggins and since you don’t know who is… then you most likely have security problem with your computer(s).” and “Even if you don’t want the evidence, I’d figure out if anyone (Hobbit or human) may have used your computer(s) on March 11th, 2008, if I were you!” is juvenile sarcasm and your message is clear.

We as scientists are fairly limited in our ability to protect ourselves from this sort of journalism. In blogs, we have to answer as I am doing here. For journals like Nature, I have sent a correspondence to them and we will see – but as Dalton says – they effectively hold all of the cards as to whether they will even allow a reply.