[1] The Puget Sound Regional Council selected the Japanese Gulch Fish Passage Project in 2012 for a Vision 2040 Award, highlighting the anthropology and archaeology field training led by Murphy.
[2] His academic publications focus on wildlife corridors,[3] social marketing,[4] environmental education,[5] and Mormon representations of Native Americans.
In 1997, he located an isolated LDS faction in Mexico of the Third Convention group, which scholars previously believed to have died out decades earlier.
[6][8] Bautista went on to found his own church movement along with a colonia in Ozumba, but most scholars in Mormon history believed the community had dwindled away in the 1980s, partly based on claims from Mexican Latter-day Saint Agrícol Lozano Herrera.
[10] Murphy posited that DNA evidence suggests that Native Americans are descendants of individuals from northeastern Siberia—corroborating conclusions that anthropologists have long held.
(The remaining 0.4 percent is near-universally agreed among anthropologists and biologists studying the issue to represent genetic markers that were introduced after the year 1492.
[14] In a note Murphy sent to several supporters for wide public distribution, Murphy expressed hope that other scholars in similar positions might benefit from Latimer's decision: We hope that other stake presidents will follow this most recent example of President Latimer and likewise refrain from using the threat of excommunication as tool for disciplining scholars.