Fossil warriors won't call a truce for Sediba

HIS amazing find will do little to endear Lee Berger to many fellow scientists.

MOCKED for years as a foolhardy Indiana Jones-inspired adventurer more interested in showmanship than the deadly serious science of finding and interpreting antique fossils that hold the key to human evolution, Lee Berger is now turning the tables.

The American paleoanthropologist is revelling in a dazzling limelight, fielding questions from a fascinated media, public and scientists hungry for more facts about the remarkable features of a spectacular new discovery he has made with Queensland-based geologist Paul Dirks.

Yesterday, after an international embargo on the discovery was lifted with articles in Science journal and the mainstream media, Berger chaperoned VIPs including South Africa's Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe to the Cradle of Humankind near Johannesburg. In front of a large audience in a live telecast they marvelled at the two-million-year-old human-like skeletal remains that were unearthed from a "death trap" cave by Berger and his son Matthew.

"They represent a completely new and unexpected species of human ancestor to science, something we did not think was there," Berger said.

As he colourfully interprets the fossil find as a blockbuster, one of the most astonishing in terms of its significance, completeness and condition, Berger displays his ease and daring in the public eye. His flamboyance and transparency make him a PR natural and a darling of the public and media.

And in the ruthlessly competitive field of paleoanthropology, discovering fossils such as Australopithecus sediba is rare indeed. Berger can now look forward to long-term generous funding, highly anticipated research and endless invitations to international conferences. But although the public is in no doubt, the scientific perception of Berger is mixed. For a decade, leading peers have attacked and dismissed Berger, accusing him of scientific sins including fabrication, exaggeration and taking false credit.

Some notorious disputes were leaked to the press. In his book In the Footsteps of Eve, Berger writes of one such instance that he "rode out the media storm of unfavourable publicity and weathered the indignity of being named Idiot of the Week by The Sunday Times".

Berger's book was slammed by Bernard Wood, of George Washington University's department of anthropology, for exceeding "by literally an order of magnitude the mistakes . . . I have ever encountered in a book. Their crassness in my experience is without equal." The book, he said, "brings disgrace to our scientific community".

Renowned University of California paleoanthropologist Tim White savaged Berger on the release of his subsequent book, The Official Field Guide to the Cradle of Humankind, calling it "in many ways worse than useless, given the astonishing density of errors and misleading statements". He added that it showed a disturbing "pattern of fabrication".

White wrote in the South African Journal of Science: "Berger's rise to prominence signals a new era: one of smoke and mirrors, in which style triumphs over substance. In his short career, Berger has not in fact found very much but shows a remarkable ability to inject himself, via funding and publicity, into discoveries made by others." In case anyone missed the point, White branded Berger an enthusiastically ambitious but inexperienced American "more fascinated with fame and fortune than with serious science".

While some scientists resent Berger's style and see him as the enfant terrible of paleoanthropology, to many he has been a breath of fresh air: a brilliant, dynamic, smooth-talking, if sometimes brash, academic whose passion for fossils knows no bounds.

His prolific writing, his harnessing of mainstream media to promote the science and his efforts to court wealthy funders such as the Oppenheimer family have stimulated broader public interest. His fans says the criticisms of the books were over the top.

Now that Berger's find appears to have trumped his harshest critics, the war of the fossil finders will move to a new footing. One of the chapters still to come revolves around the responses of scientists whose long-time research and interpretations of various species may be threatened by what these latest discoveries could mean in the context of human evolution.

Berger, basking in the afterglow of Sediba, emphatically rejects the searing criticisms of his conduct. He tells colleagues that professional jealousy of his high profile has affected many peers for a long time and they should get over it and move on.

Just six weeks ago, in the most recent assault, the ABC's Media Watch took aim, lampooning Berger for his driving role in a National Geographic documentary, Mystery Skulls of Palau, and what was said to be its "fundamentally flawed" interpretations. Media Watch correctly noted that "in South Africa, where he made his name, his work is not universally admired".

Peter Brown, who holds the chair of paleoanthropology at the University of New England, tells Focus: "I'm not aware of any jealousy of Lee Berger and I don't think that this was behind the more outspoken criticisms of his previous claims.

"Within the anthropological profession he has gained a well-earned reputation for unwarranted media hype, with the Palau Island hobbit debacle supported by National Geographic being the most recent example.

"In this instance he appeared a rank amateur working well outside his range of expertise and was justifiably criticised in the scientific literature and press. It seemed that he was just trying to increase his media profile by getting on the hobbit critic bandwagon. This is not to say that he has not published a few important and well-researched papers. He has.

"But he may not be remembered for these. In the long term he could be remembered for adding to the pool of knowledge about South African hominins through prospecting new locations, rather than through interpretation and synthesis of the importance of these discoveries."

Brown suspects Berger's place in history will depend a lot on how the Science journal articles, published yesterday, are received.

"The scientific community may be sceptical about the interpretation of significance but be grateful for the discovery and the speed of publication," he says.

Dirks, a geologist who has mediated some of the fossil fights, admits the ferocity of the enduring criticisms of Berger has surprised him. For seven years Dirks, who heads the school of earth and environmental sciences at Queensland's James Cook University, managed the equivalent school at Johannesburg's Witwatersrand University, where Berger was a colleague as the turf wars in paleoanthropology played out.

Dirks, who was responsible for supervising some of Berger's work and is credited with making a powerful contribution to the discovery of Sediba, tried to cool longstanding tensions after a spectacular public spat between the school's fossils experts.

"One of the major reasons for conflict is there are so few good fossils," Dirks says. "Those who find them can then have a very powerful influence over the science. There is a long history of paleoanthropologists jealously guarding their finds to control the science. People don't seem to value the fact that Lee goes to places and finds things. He has a fantastic capacity to see the unusual, the big picture, but his critics get stuck into him about the detail. This latest find is indisputable, it is a great find, and my hope is that Lee's openness about it will lead to much more mutual respect that will be good for science. But there will also be a lot of jealousy."

White responds: "I see no evidence that [jealousy] has been the case, or that this proposition would constitute refuge that Dr Berger's supporters might hope for." White, who reviewed Berger's Science paper on the discovery and interpretation of Sediba, describes the find as "a step forward in understanding details of the hominid family tree", but questions the argument that the species is ancestral to Homo.

Asked about his previous criticisms of Berger, he says: "That's why we have to take each of his discoveries and claims at face value, and one at a time. I think most scientists in the community will evaluate these claims at face value, trusting the review process at Science. My reviews of these papers point out flaws, but nothing involving authenticity. Skeletons of this antiquity are so rare that their significance will be appreciated despite the past controversy. The interpretations will be questioned, I think quite rightly, but not the value of the fossils."

Given the history of bad blood in the war over fossils and their finders, this may be as good as it gets for Berger.