<P> These findings were radical at the time and continue to be debated . In 2002, the anthropologists Corey S. Sparks and Richard L. Jantz claimed that differences between children born to the same parents in Europe and America were very small and insignificant and that there was no detectable effect of exposure to the American environment on the cranial index in children . They argued that their results contradicted Boas's original findings and demonstrated that they may no longer be used to support arguments of plasticity in cranial morphology . However, Jonathan Marks--a well - known physical anthropologist and former president of the General Anthropology section of the American Anthropological Association--has remarked that this revisionist study of Boas's work "has the ring of desperation to it (if not obfuscation), and has been quickly rebutted by more mainstream biological anthropology". In 2003 anthropologists Clarence C. Gravlee, H. Russell Bernard, and William R. Leonard reanalyzed Boas's data and concluded that most of Boas's original findings were correct . Moreover, they applied new statistical, computer - assisted methods to Boas's data and discovered more evidence for cranial plasticity . In a later publication, Gravlee, Bernard and Leonard reviewed Sparks and Jantz's analysis . They argue that Sparks and Jantz misrepresented Boas's claims and that Sparks's and Jantz's data actually support Boas . For example, they point out that Sparks and Jantz look at changes in cranial size in relation to how long an individual has been in the United States in order to test the influence of the environment . Boas, however, looked at changes in cranial size in relation to how long the mother had been in the United States . They argue that Boas's method is more useful because the prenatal environment is a crucial developmental factor . </P> <P> A further publication by Jantz based on Gravlee et al. claims that Boas had cherry picked two groups of immigrants (Sicilians and Hebrews) which had varied most towards the same mean, and discarded other groups which had varied in the opposite direction . He commented, "Using the recent reanalysis by Gravlee et al. (2003), we can observe in Figure 2 that the maximum difference in the cranial index due to immigration (in Hebrews) is much smaller than the maximum ethnic difference, between Sicilians and Bohemians . It shows that long - headed parents produce long headed offspring and vice versa . To make the argument that children of immigrants converge onto an "American type" required Boas to use the two groups that changed the most ." </P> <P> Although some sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists have suggested that Boas was opposed to Darwinian evolution, Boas, in fact, was a committed proponent of Darwinian evolutionary thought . In 1888, he declared that "the development of ethnology is largely due to the general recognition of the principle of biological evolution"; since Boas's times, physical anthropologists have established that the human capacity for culture is a product of human evolution . In fact, Boas's research on changes in body form played an important role in the rise of Darwinian theory . Boas was trained at a time when biologists had no understanding of genetics; Mendelian genetics became widely known only after 1900 . Prior to that time biologists relied on the measurement of physical traits as empirical data for any theory of evolution . Boas's biometric studies, however, led him to question the use of this method and kind of data . In a speech to anthropologists in Berlin in 1912, Boas argued that at best such statistics could only raise biological questions, and not answer them . It was in this context that anthropologists began turning to genetics as a basis for any understanding of biological variation . </P> <P> Boas also contributed greatly to the foundation of linguistics as a science in the United States . He published many descriptive studies of Native American languages, and wrote on theoretical difficulties in classifying languages, and laid out a research program for studying the relations between language and culture which his students such as Edward Sapir, Paul Rivet, and Alfred Kroeber followed . </P>

Which artist had the greatest influence over the ideas used by the french royal academy