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You are citing the preliminary study by Angel in 1945 (published when Greece was recently liberated from military occupation and moving towards civil war!) not

You are citing the preliminary study by Angel in 1945 (published when Greece was recently liberated from military occupation and moving towards civil war!) not the 1985 study by Angel and others which Kron cites. In his later work, Angel and colleagues decided that the first estimate had been too short. As a general rule, its best to check the most RECENT publication on a subject, especially in fields like natural science where data grows and methods improve over time. You wouldn't rely on computer science papers from 1945 without seeing if the art had developed since then would you?

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
Post a link to the 1985 study. Here's one from 2023: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12520-023-01744-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12520-023-01744-1 In any case, there's really no good reason to never mention the 1945 studies at all when they're still cited today. It's bad practice.
- pixodaros 2y ago
  Its not open access because it was a book published in 1985! You have to do a little bit of work to research this like any subject but I provided a link to an open-access paper which summarizes it and two other studies (your local public library can probably get you a copy through interlibrary loan). Its not standard practice to cite obsolete papers and 1945 is obsolete in almost any field of research. I have no idea why the chapter in "Men of Bronze" picked a paper from 1945 as its source of Truth about Ancient Heights but I suspect it was the first thing the author could find that seemed to support the predetermined conclusion. Remember that in 1945 statistics was pencil-and-paper!
  - A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
    I didn't ask for open access. Any link would have sufficed. Without any of that, how do you know that "Angel and colleagues decided that the first estimate had been too short"? Based on what? What did they say? If you are correct, why didn't Angel publish a correction to his previous article? Why is it that most of Angel's 1945 article's citations come after 1985 and indeed after 2005? (>20 citations since 2005, of 27 total on CrossRef.) Ultimately, what you're saying doesn't make much sense. It's either bad science and bad publishing practices, or you are mistaken. (I'd argue that Kron is basically unethical, in any case. There's absolutely no reason not to mention the popular and much-cited 1945 work, even if only to highlight its errors and note that it has been superseded. He covered it up and is guilty of worse cherry-picking than you accused the book authors of.) Also, that exhaustive 2023 review finds results which are much closer to Angel's 1945 paper -- and indeed cites that paper -- rather than to whatever you're claiming happened in 1985. So by your own argument Angel's 1985 study is now irrelevant and no longer matters.
    - pixodaros 2y ago
      Because a peer-reviewed article published in 2005 which I did link says "Lawrence Angel's anthropological studies of Greek skeletal remains give mean heights for Classical Greek males of 170.5 cm or 5' 7.1" (n = 58) and for Hellenistic Greek males of 171.9 cm or 5' 7.7" (n = 28), and his figures have been corroborated by further studies of material from Corinth and the Athenian Kerameikos." and cites studies by Angel et al. 1985, Robinson 1984, and Kovacsovics 1990 and his own work on Italy. And when someone's later article says n=170, but an earlier article says n=163, usually they changed their mind in the meantime, especially when the first article had to use the data from another country available in the middle of a war and analyze it with pencil and paper. Archaeology continued after 1945 and electronic computers became a thing! It is possible that some person might have scanned the 1985 book and posted an unofficial copy but tracking things like that down is your job.
      - A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
        > And when someone's later article says n=170, but an earlier article says n=163, usually they changed their mind in the meantime, especially when the first article had to use the data from another country available in the middle of a war and analyze it with pencil and paper. Archaeology continued after 1945 and electronic computers became a thing! > It is possible that some person might have scanned the 1985 book and posted an unofficial copy but tracking things like that down is your job. "Usually"? This is pure conjecture. I don't suppose you've even read the 1985 paper? It could be different samples, from different locations, which date to different eras. I believe there's a Mycenean tomb with a few skeletons at an average of 170cm, though the sample size was very small. This sort of thing is much more likely than "oops, we made a measuring error and were off by almost 10cm!!" (Were this the case, Angel would have published a correction.) There are lots of different possibilities. It could certainly be the case that the 1985 paper is being misquoted or misused. That Kron didn't even mention the 1945 paper, when building an argument that sought to contradict its findings, speaks volumes of his so-called ethics and must lead an unbiased observer to believe that something is amiss. That is, at the very least, a clear case of cherry-picking in the academic literature. > Archaeology continued after 1945 and electronic computers became a thing! Indeed, yet, as I've said, a very detailed 2023 review found results far closer to Angel's 1945 results. What are your thoughts on this?

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago

Post a link to the 1985 study. Here's one from 2023: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12520-023-01744-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12520-023-01744-1 In any case, there's really no good reason to never mention the 1945 studies at all when they're still cited today. It's bad practice.

pixodaros 2y ago
Its not open access because it was a book published in 1985! You have to do a little bit of work to research this like any subject but I provided a link to an open-access paper which summarizes it and two other studies (your local public library can probably get you a copy through interlibrary loan). Its not standard practice to cite obsolete papers and 1945 is obsolete in almost any field of research. I have no idea why the chapter in "Men of Bronze" picked a paper from 1945 as its source of Truth about Ancient Heights but I suspect it was the first thing the author could find that seemed to support the predetermined conclusion. Remember that in 1945 statistics was pencil-and-paper!
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  I didn't ask for open access. Any link would have sufficed. Without any of that, how do you know that "Angel and colleagues decided that the first estimate had been too short"? Based on what? What did they say? If you are correct, why didn't Angel publish a correction to his previous article? Why is it that most of Angel's 1945 article's citations come after 1985 and indeed after 2005? (>20 citations since 2005, of 27 total on CrossRef.) Ultimately, what you're saying doesn't make much sense. It's either bad science and bad publishing practices, or you are mistaken. (I'd argue that Kron is basically unethical, in any case. There's absolutely no reason not to mention the popular and much-cited 1945 work, even if only to highlight its errors and note that it has been superseded. He covered it up and is guilty of worse cherry-picking than you accused the book authors of.) Also, that exhaustive 2023 review finds results which are much closer to Angel's 1945 paper -- and indeed cites that paper -- rather than to whatever you're claiming happened in 1985. So by your own argument Angel's 1985 study is now irrelevant and no longer matters.
  - pixodaros 2y ago
    Because a peer-reviewed article published in 2005 which I did link says "Lawrence Angel's anthropological studies of Greek skeletal remains give mean heights for Classical Greek males of 170.5 cm or 5' 7.1" (n = 58) and for Hellenistic Greek males of 171.9 cm or 5' 7.7" (n = 28), and his figures have been corroborated by further studies of material from Corinth and the Athenian Kerameikos." and cites studies by Angel et al. 1985, Robinson 1984, and Kovacsovics 1990 and his own work on Italy. And when someone's later article says n=170, but an earlier article says n=163, usually they changed their mind in the meantime, especially when the first article had to use the data from another country available in the middle of a war and analyze it with pencil and paper. Archaeology continued after 1945 and electronic computers became a thing! It is possible that some person might have scanned the 1985 book and posted an unofficial copy but tracking things like that down is your job.
    - A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
      > And when someone's later article says n=170, but an earlier article says n=163, usually they changed their mind in the meantime, especially when the first article had to use the data from another country available in the middle of a war and analyze it with pencil and paper. Archaeology continued after 1945 and electronic computers became a thing! > It is possible that some person might have scanned the 1985 book and posted an unofficial copy but tracking things like that down is your job. "Usually"? This is pure conjecture. I don't suppose you've even read the 1985 paper? It could be different samples, from different locations, which date to different eras. I believe there's a Mycenean tomb with a few skeletons at an average of 170cm, though the sample size was very small. This sort of thing is much more likely than "oops, we made a measuring error and were off by almost 10cm!!" (Were this the case, Angel would have published a correction.) There are lots of different possibilities. It could certainly be the case that the 1985 paper is being misquoted or misused. That Kron didn't even mention the 1945 paper, when building an argument that sought to contradict its findings, speaks volumes of his so-called ethics and must lead an unbiased observer to believe that something is amiss. That is, at the very least, a clear case of cherry-picking in the academic literature. > Archaeology continued after 1945 and electronic computers became a thing! Indeed, yet, as I've said, a very detailed 2023 review found results far closer to Angel's 1945 results. What are your thoughts on this?