Scientific Specializations for Exploring Unknown Island

[Icelander]

Premise

You are an aging Texan billionaire in 1995, cosmopolitan, but based in Texas, with outposts in Louisiana, Florida, France, several Caribbean islands and various African countries.

Your influence is mostly concentrated in Texas, but you've got well-placed contacts in France, Africa and former Indochina. In general, your business involves mining, prospecting, petroleum products, natural gas, minerals, diamonds, cobalt, copper and other natural resources, as well as plenty of unrelated businesses that occured to you as you were exploiting Third World countries for natural resources

You have suspected that for years that conventional science cannot explain all there is in this world and that there are supernatural things unknown to the mainstream establishment.

For the past nine years, you have known for a fact that science is wrong and that the world is more mysterious than anyone lets on in public. For the almost a decade, you've spent many millions of dollars employing scientists, mercenaties, investigators, scholars, theorists and kooks, trying to explain the inexplicable events you were witness to. You've also endowed many universities in your intellectual orbit, focusing on fields of study relevant to the paranornal, magic and the possibility of other worlds.

You think you've finally found something that will prove to governments, universities and think-tanks around the world that science is wearing blinkers. An island in the Caribbean where no island was before. A bona fide extraplanar intrusion or at least a virgin piece of land, never mapped, explored or quantified, something for which conventional science didn't account.

Question

You plan an expedition; drawing on all the connections and goodwill thirty years as a Texan millionaire (later billionaire), oilman, investor, enterpreneur, robber baron and philanthropist can muster.

You want reputable scientists, capable experts, competent specialists and academics familiar with exploration, new discoveries and first contact with what could be a new, extraplanar, paranormal, supernatural biosphere.

What kind of scientists do you recruit, among your widespread contacts?

That is, what kind of degrees do they have, what universities do they come from and what institutions are they connected to?

Latest version of a list for the expedition, expanded to twelve spots. Still a botanist and entomologist without background (inc. which universities they come from) and I'm still looking for the last two scientific specialties.

Hi, everybody! Great to see you again!

I've been away for unpleasant health related reasons, but hope to avoid future episodes of ill health and enjoy many more years with you.

[Anthony]

That depends a bit on what you know about the mysteries, and what actual oddities you run into.

Step one is probably aerial surveying -- ordinary geological surveying for the natural causes of the shapes of the land, and an archeology team for evidence of human (or inhuman) activity. As an oilman, you can probably handle the geological survey with people who already work for you, but you'll probably need to recruit archeologists. This is unlikely to be hard.

Step two depends on what you find, but unless something really stands out, it's probably just repeating the same types of surveys on the ground.

Step three is calling in specialists for the weird stuff you find. What that will be depends on what weird stuff you find.

[Icelander]

Let's say that you detected the island from aerial surveillance and that you notice that satellites and other impersonal means of detection seem less reliable at noticing it than observation by humans. It's there... but not there, for any number of remote sensing technology.

You're planning the first expedition, to land on the unexplored island. Let's say you've got around eight spots to fill with scientists and academics, the rest of your expedition is filled with trusted personal friends and security staff.

What scientific disciplines do you want represented?

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Icelander

... Let's say you've got around eight spots to fill with scientists and academics,... What scientific disciplines do you want represented?

By GURPS skill:

Geography (Physical)
Naturalist
Botany (geographical specialization)
Zoology (geographical specialization)
Geology
Meteorology
Navigation (Sea)
Cartography

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

By GURPS skill:

Geography (Physical)
Naturalist
Botany (geographical specialization)
Zoology (geographical specialization)
Geology
Meteorology
Navigation (Sea)
Cartography

Quite right.

One might add Electronics Operation (Scientific) and Expert Skill (Oceanography or other relevant fields)

Also Archeology, Anthropology, Diagnosis, Forensics, History, Linguistics, Physiology and more because of the possibility there might be people on the island or at least some evidence of their visits to it.

What I'm trying to determine is what kind of background and education do scientists who have some of these skills have?

What real-world academic degree, obtained some time between 1955-1995, would each of the eight members of the scientific team need to have in order to cover a particular niche out of these skills?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Hi, everybody! Great to see you again!

I've been away for unpleasant health related reasons, but hope to avoid future episodes of ill health and enjoy many more years with you.

Good to have you back!

Almost every kind of scientist can be useful here. One starts with an expert in the geology of the Caribbean, whom you'll probably do best to look for at the Mona, Jamaica campus of the University of the West Indies. Establishing the relationship - or otherwise - of the geology of this island to the surrounding areas will be important. If it's extra-planar, then new kinds of minerals, unusual isotope ratios in common minerals, and other such details may be present, which will be quite convincing.

If this island is of any size, inspecting the photographic archives of the Landsat program will show that it wasn't there in the past, but is now. You might well find that a fisheries expert is the kind of person who would be closely familiar with Landsat imagery and its interpretation.

Once on the island, you'll want botanists, entomologists, ecologists, and so on to classify the species found there and explore their relationships with species in surrounding areas. You'll also want a meteorologist to see if the island seems to have been subject to a different climate to the area where it is now.

[Icelander]

This list has not been published to players yet, it's just my private notes and guesses. Father Coughlin is more useful than he seems, as he has connections among Vatican people who believe in the paranormal and has studied magical theory for years.

---

Commander Samuel H. Shackleford, PhD (b. June 27, 1938; Corpus Christi, TX); oceanographer from Texas A&M, Galveston; US Navy Reserves, veteran expedition leader.

Reverend Francis Coughlin S.J., PhD (b. September 9, 1939; Dublin, Ireland); theologist and bioethicist from Loyola University.

Dr. Spencer Duvall, PhD (b. October 28; 1943; Houston, TX); MD and forensic anthropologist from UT-Medical Branch and Texas State University; US Army Reserves.

Professor Denzel Rolle (b. August 1, 1948; Nassau, Bahamas); cultural anthropologist from University of Texas - Austin.

Professor Harlan P. Wehmeyer (b. May 14, 1935; Galveston, TX); geologist/mining engineer/geophysicist from Texas A&M.

Hubert Caron, PhD (b. September 23, 1961; Lille, France); biologist (biodiversity, ecology) from Sorbonne Université.

J. Garrett Sullivan, PhD (b. August 15, 1956; Dallas, TX); post-graduate biochemist research assistant from Baylor College of Medicine; former USASF Medical Sergeant.

Martin Luther 'Marty' White, PhD (b. March 19, 1964; San Antonio; TX); linguist from UT-Austin and Université Paris-Sorbonne.
---

Edit: Due to great suggestions in this thread, I've added more scientists, see updated list here.

[Agemegos]

It looks to me as though your list is light on an ornithologist, an entomologist, a botanist, and perhaps a vertebrate biologist such as a herpetologist. Also, I recommend wider connections with Caribbean institutions and fieldwork and the universities of the former colonial powers of the area.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

It looks to me as though your list is light on an ornithologist, an entomologist, a botanist, and perhaps a vertebrate biologist such as a herpetologist.

Yes, you are right in that Hubert Caron is carrying a lot of weight, in that he's expected to be the Subject Matter Expert for anything alive without a language of its own...

But who to drop for him?

Or, alternatively, make more rounded, given that the billionaire in question has had years to develop close relationships with top scientific talent in the region (especially Texas, where he is a huge source of funding for multiple universities) and attract scientists and scholars who might believe in the paranormal and alternative theories.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Also, I recommend wider connections with Caribbean institutions and fieldwork and the universities of the former colonial powers of the area.

Good point.

Denzel Rolle is Afro-Caribbean and educated either in the UK or the Caribbean, before a PhD from UT-Austin.

From my limited research, most post-graduate programs on the islands are considered inferior to the best universities in the US or UK, especially before 1995. This scenario is historical background (the expedition got lost and one PC has just recently returned from 23 years 'Elseahere'), in actual play it is New Year's 2018-2019, and, for example, graduates of the University of West Indies are a lot more significant than they were in the 1990s in the setting backstory.

Still, do you have suggestions for adjustments to better incorporate Caribbean expertise for this 1995 expedition?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Icelander

From my limited research, most post-graduate programs on the islands are considered inferior to the best universities in the US or UK, especially before 1995.

Yes, but

1. The best graduates from Caribbean institutions and even the best undergrads often got scholarships to study and train in the USA (Fulbright Program and so on), UK, France, Netherlands etc.
   
2. Scholars and scientists from the USA and other former colonial powers often made use of old collections and traditions relating to, and rich contacts in, former colonial territories to do fieldwork there or otherwise develop specific expertise.
   
3. For observational work of a preliminary character, such as this, it is actually more useful to have detailed local knowledge than to have a prodigious intellect and a profound grasp of analytical principles. An amateur butterfly-collector who has seen several thousand Antillean clearwings and can tell at a glance that that is not one might be more useful than the world's leading expert on the evolution of the Lepidoptera. You want someone who knows what bugs and stuff in the Caribbean look like and do in the wild so that he can tell what is worth collecting for the experts.

There is a certain tendency in people of a very dynamic disposition to overlook (c) and to get the "best people" — meaning the most famous and best connected, the ones they know — rather than people with the most specifically relevant specialised knowledge and experience. They tend to rate talent more highly than laboriously-acquired skill.