Below are links to two papers published last year in Atualidades Ornitologicas in Brazil. I want to thank the lead author, Andre Nemesio, for allowing me to post these:
1. Paper 1 (PDF format), published in the May/June '05 issue, authored by Brazilian ornithologists A. Nemesio and M. Rodrigues.
2. Paper 2 (PDF format), published in the Nov/Dec '05 issue, authored by A. Nemesio, Jerome Jackson, and M. Rodrigues.
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Its odd that Science didn't even acknowledge that they had submitted a paper, but then its not in the interests of Science to have a high profile paper like this shown to be inconclusive. Though, this is what is now happening.
There are many obvious reasons that this paper would not have been accepted by Science that have nothing to do with the motivations presumed by the above comment. Major difficulties include:
It is simply not true that ornithological data are based on those three things listed alone (specimens, photos, recordings). Sight records have been a cornerstone of North American field ornithology for many decades.
The lecture on Mendelian inheritance and the genetics of pigmentation is utterly unnecessary and condescending to the readers of Science. Regardless of this, authors also present no actual evidence of the occurence of this phenomenon in the pileated woodpecker. Such evidence was presented later, by the Cornell researchers themselves, but that is beside the point of the merits of this manuscript.
The repeated statement that one can "barely see a bird" in the video images is a exaggeration. One can "see a bird" in those images quite easily, regardles of how one feels about whether or not that bird can be identified to species.
Overall, the paper is poorly written, both the Portuguese original and the English abstract.
The second paper presents nothing additional except for personal opinions about the habit and audio recordings, unsupported by data or sonigraphic analysis. It also contains a significant mistatement: It is at most 60 miles from the Highway 17 bridge to the southernmost portion of the White River NWR; the recordings and sightings must have been less than 60 miles apart, possibly much less. The paper claims that they were over 80 miles apart.
The majority of manuscripts submitted to Science are not accepted. Given the sloppiness of the preparation and organization of these papers, they did not stand a chance of acceptance regardless of their subject matter.
I've got to agree to a point, I don't think those papers were brilliantly written, at least the English versions.
It's also true that it is not accurate to say "you can barely see a bird" in the photos. In some, you CAN'T see a bird AT ALL, since Cornell did mistake a tree for an Ivory-Bill.
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