Amelia Earhart captured by Japanese, didn't crash in the sea

[_Chap]

I'd have liked to post some pictures and other links here, but autocorrect kept on insisting that the letter j followed by p is an abbreviation for the long, long silent poster 'Jesse Pinkman'.

Can this autocorrect be switched off, please?

Anyway, this silly and (as we now see) irresponsibly publicised theory is now officially buried under Mount Doom.

by the way, there is a copy of the book in the Library of Congress, no doubt planted by the ever-devious Japanese ...

[_Xenophon]

Thought about this thread now that major news outlets were discussing some research conducted at the University of Florida that claims to debunk Hoodless's original theory on the Nikumaroro skeleton and claims to show reason to suspect it was in fact the remains of Amelia Earhart. You can read it here. I'll skip to the juicy stuff for you:

To address the question of whether the Nikumaroro bones match estimates of Amelia Earhart’s bone lengths, I compare Earhart’s bone lengths with the Nikumaroro bones using Mahalanobis distance. This analysis reveals that Earhart is more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99% of individuals in a large reference sample. This strongly supports the conclusion that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to Amelia Earhart.

We can agree that Hoodless may have done as well as most analysts of the time could have done, but this does not mean his analysis was correct. All we now have are the few measurements he gave in his report and his brief summary of the methods he used. It is important to extract as much as possible from the information at hand. In doing so, I will show that Cross and Wright (2015) present Hoodless as more unerring in forensic anthropology than most anthropologists of his time, and further that they have misinterpreted some of the other data available about Amelia Earhart.

In the case of the Nikumaroro bones, the only documented person to whom they may belong is Amelia Earhart. Her navigator, Fred Noonan, can be reliably excluded on the basis of height. His height was 6'1/4", documented from his 1918 Seaman’s Certificate of American Citizenship. I made nine stature estimates of the Nikumaroro bones, three each for the humerus, radius, and tibia, using male equations in Fordisc for 19th-century males, WW2 males, and 20th-century males. Noonan’s height falls outside the 90% confidence intervals for all nine estimates, and outside the 95% for five of the nine estimates. It is clear that the Nikumaroro bones are unlikely to have belonged to Noonan.

[_Jersey Girl]

I read about that yesterday. Now, I can't recall what device they used to examine the bone fragments. Do you know? If you don't have time, I'll go dig it up myself. No pun intended.

[_Xenophon]

I read about that yesterday. Now, I can't recall what device they used to examine the bone fragments. Do you know? If you don't have time, I'll go dig it up myself. No pun intended.

Unfortunately I do not as it wasn't listed in the research document I posted, as far as I'm aware. If it helps in your hunting here is the relevant paragraph that might lead you to a good source:

Metric data from the Nikumaroro bones are limited to seven measurements, four of the skull (maximum cranial length, maximum cranial breadth, orbital height, and orbital breadth) and three long bone measurements (length of the humerus, radius, and tibia; see Burns et al. 1998 for measurements). I use data from the Forensic Anthropology Data Bank (FDB), Trotter’s U.S. military data (see Jantz & Meadows Jantz 2017 for full description of data), and literature sources to evaluate quantitatively both Hoodless’s methods and Cross and Wright’s (2015) claims about the former’s effectiveness. I reassess cranial affinities using Fordisc 3.1 (Jantz & Ousley 2005) with realistic assumptions about who could have been on Nikumaroro Island during the relevant time period. Earhart’s bone lengths were estimated using photographic evidence and regression analysis.

[_Jersey Girl]

I read about that yesterday. Now, I can't recall what device they used to examine the bone fragments. Do you know? If you don't have time, I'll go dig it up myself. No pun intended.

Unfortunately I do not as it wasn't listed in the research document I posted, as far as I'm aware. If it helps in your hunting here is the relevant paragraph that might lead you to a good source:

Metric data from the Nikumaroro bones are limited to seven measurements, four of the skull (maximum cranial length, maximum cranial breadth, orbital height, and orbital breadth) and three long bone measurements (length of the humerus, radius, and tibia; see Burns et al. 1998 for measurements). I use data from the Forensic Anthropology Data Bank (FDB), Trotter’s U.S. military data (see Jantz & Meadows Jantz 2017 for full description of data), and literature sources to evaluate quantitatively both Hoodless’s methods and Cross and Wright’s (2015) claims about the former’s effectiveness. I reassess cranial affinities using Fordisc 3.1 (Jantz & Ousley 2005) with realistic assumptions about who could have been on Nikumaroro Island during the relevant time period. Earhart’s bone lengths were estimated using photographic evidence and regression analysis.

That's okay, Xeno. I know a little too much about bone, software, and the data bases used to make comparative analysis, as well as how faulty they are. I was just curious what tools and methods (machines/software) they were using to do it.

It's an interesting story to follow!

[_Quasimodo]

That's okay, Xeno. I know a little too much about bone, software, and the data bases used to make comparative analysis, as well as how faulty they are. I was just curious what tools and methods (machines/software) they were using to do it.

It's an interesting story to follow!

Here's a bit more about methodology from phys.org:

https://phys.org/news/2018-03-forensic-analysis-bones-amelia-earhart.html

Jantz, using several modern quantitative techniques—including Fordisc, a computer program for estimating sex, ancestry, and stature from skeletal measurements—found that Hoodless had incorrectly determined the sex of the remains. The program, co-created by Jantz, is used by nearly every board-certified forensic anthropologist in the US and around the world.