Excerpt From My PhD Dissertation: Who Counts as a Scientist and What Do We Consider Legitimate Ways of Knowing?

For longtime readers of the blog, you’ll know I started this adventure before I finished my doctorate degree. I’m proud to say I am now officially Dr. Daisy! I have completed my PhD in Anthrozoology! My full dissertation, entitled “The Gnu Normal: Interactions Between Wildebeest, Maasai, and Conservation in Kenya” is published open access through the University of Exeter. However, I wanted to publish an excerpt here that is relevant to cryptozoology. In my second chapter I discuss who we consider an expert, and what forms of knowledge we consider legitimate.

The following is part of Fiore, R. (2023). The Gnu Normal: Interactions Between Wildebeest, Maasai, and Conservation in Kenya. [online] pp.166–169. Available at: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/133345.

The terms scientist and expert do not mean the same thing in all contexts. With the rise of the internet, public values have changed, and a larger cross-section of people are now seen as having legitimate perspectives and even expertise (Suldovsky, Landrum, and Stroud, 2019). On the other hand, the recognition of imposter syndrome (an inability to internalize academic success) shows that people traditionally seen as experts may not consider or believe themselves to be so (Watson and Betts, 2010).

            Perhaps one of the best places to consider who counts as a scientist or expert and who does not is in the field of cryptozoology—the study of animals undescribed by science (Hurn, 2017). Despite the fact that cryptids once included such animals as okapi, Komodo dragons, coelocanths, and dugongs, which we have discovered and know to be real, the very thought of cryptozoology engenders scorn and laughter in large parts of the scientific community (Forth, 2021; Mullis, 2019).

            Justin Mullis (2019) belittles cryptozoologists by pointing out that they publish for a popular audience instead of for experts, despite this being a major critique of science. He also accuses cryptozoologist of “eschewing the rigors of science” and “lacking even the most rudimentary knowledge of those fields” (Mullis, 2019; p. 247). This completely ignores such prominent cryptozoologists as Henry Bauer, professor of chemistry, peer reviewed author, and Loss Ness monster believer. Dr. John Bindernagel was a prominent Canadian wildlife biologist who spent decades searching for Bigfoot. The list goes on, but not one is mentioned by Mullis. He further dismisses the whole discipline by pointing out that Bernard Heuvelmans, often called the father of cryptozoology, was inspired to become a zoologist in the first place by stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne (Mullis, 2019). We conveniently skate over the fact that the great Jane Goodall was inspired to study animals by a stuffed toy.

            The point Mullis demonstrates is that scientists themselves are often the harshest in deciding who is allowed to be called an expert. The disdain for and dismissal of cryptozoology by so many proves this; Mullis is far from alone. In 2014, while attending the International Society of Primatology conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, I heard the fascinating local legend of Cu Rua, the sacred turtle of Hoan Kiem lake. It was described as an immense turtle the size of a car, that watched over the city for hundreds of years, taking offerings left by locals in a small temple in the lake. Like most arrogant Westerners, I looked at the tiny and polluted lake and knew that no such turtle existed, despite the guarantees of locals, who knew far better than me, that it did. The turtle can be found on several websites for cryptids even today. I was embarrassed and humbled when it washed up dead in 2016. The 200-kilogram turtle was a species of giant softshell turtle that may have had only four individuals left on the planet. My arrogance, because I was a scientist, led to my dismissal of local knowledge and an assumption that I knew better than people living in the area.

            Are animals like the Jersey Devil, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster real? Are they flesh and blood? Does it matter? As Hurn points out, the people around them are shaped by their interactions with them, and the knowledge of cryptids, and their existence within our culture is shaped by us (Hurn, 2017). In this way, they become real, regardless of whether they are actually out there (Hurn, 2017). So, doesn’t this make the search for them a legitimate endeavor? Most anthropologists couldn’t help but agree, but it still does not seem to make cryptozoology a legitimate way of knowing in the eyes of most.

            I do not have a definitive answer for who is considered an expert and when, except that it is fluid and depends on the time and place. The same person is an expert in one context and not in another. Someone can be considered a valuable expert in an online blog about Bigfoot, and a quack at an academic conference. Perhaps we ourselves decide when we are experts by how we present ourselves. For my purposes, I considered anyone who had participated in conservation research in Africa—as a student, a primary researcher, an assistant, a field tech, or an observer—someone who might have valuable insight on the experience.

For full references from this section see Fiore, R. (2023). The Gnu Normal: Interactions Between Wildebeest, Maasai, and Conservation in Kenya. [online] pp.386-433. Available at: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/133345.