Jane Goodall - Criticism

Criticism

Some primatologists have suggested flaws in Goodall's methodology which may call into question the validity of her observations. Goodall used unconventional practices in her study, for example, naming individuals instead of numbering them. At the time numbering was used to prevent emotional attachment and loss of objectivity. Claiming to see individuality and emotion in chimpanzees, she was accused of "that worst of ethological sins", anthropomorphism.

Many standard methods are aimed at helping observers to avoid interference and the use of feeding stations to attract Gombe chimpanzees is, in particular, thought by some to have altered normal foraging and feeding patterns as well as social relationships; this argument is the focus of a book published by Margaret Power in 1991. It has been suggested that higher levels of aggression and conflict with other chimpanzee groups in the area were consequences of the feeding, which could have created the "wars" between chimpanzee social groups described by Goodall, aspects of which she did not witness in the years before artificial feeding began at Gombe. Thus, some regard Goodall's observations as distortions of normal chimpanzee behavior. Goodall herself acknowledged that feeding contributed to aggression within and between groups but maintained that the effect was limited to alteration of the intensity and not the nature of chimpanzee conflict, and further suggested that feeding was necessary for the study to be effective at all. Craig Stanford of the Jane Goodall Research Institute at the University of Southern California asserts that researchers undergoing studies with no artificial provisioning have a difficult time viewing any social behaviors of chimpanzees at all, especially any related to intergroup conflict.

Some recent studies such as those by Crickette Sanz in the Goualougo Triangle (Congo) and Christophe Boesch in the Taï National Park (Côte d'Ivoire) have not shown the aggression observed in the Gombe studies. However, not all primatologists agree that the studies are flawed; for example, Jim Moore provides a critique of Margaret Powers' assertions and some studies of other chimpanzee groups have shown similar aggression to Gombe even in the absence of feeding.