The Arkansas IBWO claim only became a national event because of Cornell's involvement. Stringers see IBWO regularly somewhere within its historic range, but since they invariably lack documentation, their claims are routinely rejected. The sightings in this case are no different.
Furthermore, had the video simply been played at the AOU convention, it would have been hooted away like the photos produced by Lowery. But, after more than a year of secrecy, the video was produced along with a peer-reviewed paper, an elaborate analysis purporting to show that the bird photographed could only be an Ivorybill, and a long list of sight and sound records by people with degrees in biology. Since the search had been suppressed, birders without a conflict of interest had no opportunity to look for the bird until after publication, and then the area where the bird had been seen was closed off and policed with armed guards. The result was favorable publicity and enhanced professional status and increased funding for the insiders. In retrospect, the process appears to have been corrupt per se.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Another viewpoint
An anonymous person emailed me this:
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10 comments:
I guess I could agree except that I'd amend my version to say.. it has the appearance of overmarketing. So much is oversold in this mass media age but it's not corrupt unless one can be sure that the "insiders" now doubt they "have" the bird but are going for the funding anyway.
That would be corrupt. But if there are believers in the ranks
then they are garnering funding in the most market-savvy way, banking on reputation, advanced degrees and professional rank. Viewing the IBWO search as a product, if it exists...or appears to exist to the insiders, then they are acting in their minds, in good conscience using the "product" to further the greater good... and including themselves perhaps in that greater good! If the tide of belief
in turning to skepticism in the ranks of the Cornell insiders then they need (IMHO) to include some "product warning" labels on what they are (effectively) selling.
If you think well, 50-50 it might be leucistic Pileated, but if "Elvis" is an IBWO and we erred on the side of Scientific
caution, IBWO's might suffer if a lot of funds are pulled.
But Science, with a capital S
is supposed to rise above such
passions.
When you make a website to prove the video's IBWO conclusions, I worry that any expert can easily
bamboozle the likes of laymen like myself, the experts, even themselves!
For me it's enough to say, very human motivations are afoot
but I'll stop short of any firm conclusions until much later.
Paul Sutera, New Paltz, NY
Yup.
I'm glad that Cornell put the new video on their website for review.
To me it just confirms that the bird in the video is a Pileated Woodpecker. Dr. Jackson is right when he states there is just too much white on that bird for it to be an IBWO.
For the other reported sightings by the researchers I cannot say.
Closed off? Armed guards?
Blatantly untrue. This is innuendo and lies, not debate.
There is too much white on the bird for it to be an IBWO? I thought the argument was that there was not enough white on it and it was a normal Pileated?
I don't know enough about the internal goings on, to comment on much of this, but I would disagree with the use of the word 'corrupt'.
The mistakes made are well documented in Jacksons paper.
Scientists can make mistakes, like anyone else. Normally, the review process would stop these appearing in print. Unfortunately, this didn't happen here. Clearly, they should have contacted other experts before they published the paper.
I think they should withdraw the paper, but that would be a hard thing to do with a paper with this amount of publicity (and of course before the field season has ended). Wing beat frequency isn't going to convince any scientist.
If the Ivory-bill isn't refound, there aren't going to be any winners from this, at least in the ornithological/conservation world.
Closed off? Armed guards?
According to this Washington Post story , there were indeed armed guards posted for a time at the Highway 17 Bridge:
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was concerned enough about a birder invasion that the refuge manager posted a couple armed officers at the Highway 17 bridge, the closest put-in for a canoe and smack dab in the middle of the two-mile stretch where the sightings have occurred, to keep the hordes out of the restricted area.
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The current permit system for public access to "the hot zone" was implemented sometime later...
"There is too much white on the bird for it to be an IBWO?"
Cornell claims that their Figure S1 shows the upperside of the wing of a perched Ivory-bill. Jackson (and many others) say that Figure S1 shows too much white to be the upperside of the wing of a perched Ivory-bill.
The amount of white visible is more consistent with the underside of the wing of a Pileated already in full flight.
According to this Washington Post story , there were indeed armed guards posted for a time at the Highway 17 Bridge:
I would bet they were USFWS law enforcement officers who, like all federal law enforcement officers (including those who work for USFS and NPS), always carry a sidearm.
Calling them "armed guards" however is a bit misleading. They always have a weapon on them as part of their normal duties. I highly doubt that the weapons were a special case. I doubt that they were put in there like prison guards with an order to shoot to kill, and I also doubt that it was a Cornell decision to have them armed. It might not even have been their decision to put any guards there in the first place.
The amount of white visible is more consistent with the underside of the wing of a Pileated already in full flight.
I wouldn't call it "full flight". Whether it's the underside of the bird's wing or not, I think everyone agrees that after that white area (whatever it is) disappears, you can see the bird's tail flip up. So the bird couldn't have been in "full flight" at the time. It may have been beginning flight at the time.
When Jackson said "full flight" in his Auk commentary, I think he meant that the bird's wing was already fully opened, held vertically with the wingtip up.
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