But the central dispute seems to be over whether the field notes should have been checked. Castaneda's defenders don't think they're necessary. In science, normally the burden of proof is on the claimant. To the pro-Castaneda forces within the field, anthropology is a humanistic study, as well as a science. Ted Graves finds a degree of poetic licence tolerable.
Graves figures the conversations in the don Juan books are probably paraphrased.
Clem Meighan concurs. A lot of people get distressed because he reports things like being a frog and jumping across the pond as if it's really going on. It doesn't matter whether his informant is a full-blooded Yaqui who never left Yaqui City. If we'd flunked out Carlos Castaneda, it would have been much more of a discredit to the department than granting him a degree. De Mille thinks this is nonsense.