Discipline and credibility in the post-war australopithecine controversy: Le Gros Clark versus Zuckerman

Paleoanthropologists and outside commentators have often remarked upon the apparent difficulty of securing shared belief among experts in the science of human evolution. The field has been and continues to be particularly prone to disagreement and even controversy among its practitioners to a degree that sets it apart from other areas of scientific inquiry. The fact that the field lies at the intersection of a number of disciplines may help to explain this predicament. Displays of discipline serve as an important resource for scientists as they work to secure credibility. Where a field of inquiry spans a host of disciplinary approaches, there can be disagreement about the kind of disciplined behavior appropriate to making credible claims about that field's subject matter. A conflict of this sort emerged after WW II over the claim that the australopithecines of South Africa represented a likely ancestral link in the evolution of human beings. W. E. Le Gros Clark, working in the established disciplinary tradition of comparative anatomy, endorsed the claim of ancestry, while Solly Zuckerman, reflecting his recent immersion in war-time operations research, criticized that claim on the grounds that it came without the rigorous quantitative demonstration that he felt was the hallmark of a properly disciplined science.