This morning on one of the talking heads programs there was a brief feature on Jane Goodall and interview with her. The interviewer characterized her as “one of my heroines” but I was shocked at how little context was given to her and her work.
In the 1950s and 1960s Louis Leakey recruited a number of young women to go out into the bush and observe primates in their natural habitats. They were of a type: young, attractive, photogenic, shy, liked animals, possibly somewhat socially anxious. The three who stuck with the work were Jane Goodall who observed chimpanzees, Dian Fossey who observed mountain gorillas, and BirutÄ— Galdikas who observed orangutans in Borneo. Leakey called them “the Trimates” which I find somewhat demeaning and they were also called “Leakey’s Angels” which is even more so. Of the three it is a matter of record that he propositioned Jane Goodall who turned him down and Dian Fossey who didn’t.
They weren’t scientists. They were dispatched to the bush without the physical or educational equipment to do the work they were supposed to do, without staff, and with minimal funding. Dian Fossey was murdered by rebels.
I’m not a professional in the field so I’m in no position to assess the work they did but that’s simply not how good science is done or, perhaps more precisely, it reflects a 19th century idea of how science is done.
I’m not criticizing Mss. Goodall, Fossey, or Galdikas. Quite the contrary. I think they were courageous and determined. More than anything else I think their experiences highlight what an arse Louis Leakey was.
There isn’t an infinite amount of money available for the sort of research they did and we can only speculate on what might have happened without a self-aggrandizing publicity hound like Leakey sucking all of the air out of the room. Maybe it takes a Leakey to get this sort of work done but that doesn’t make him any more admirable.
