Thursday, March 02, 2006

Arkansas Times article

Here's another spin-heavy article:
Glimpses of The Bird — or what could be The Bird — have counteracted any blues that a skeptical article in a national ornithological journal may have caused, people engaged in the continuing search for Arkansas’s ivory-billed woodpecker say.
...
“My opinion,” [Jerome] Jackson wrote, “is that the bird in the Luneau video is a normal Pileated Woodpecker.”

But opinion isn’t science, either, Jackson’s detractors have been quick to respond. Scott Simon, director of the Nature Conservancy of Arkansas, the non-profit conservation group that partnered with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in the initial documentation of the bird, said an e-mail he’d received put his own response well: “If you don’t like the science, write a scientific article.”

Luneau, who serendipitously caught the bird on film as he canoed the bayou checking on equipment, called Jackson’s piece “paradoxical,” in that it criticizes the science in an article that was not itself peer-reviewed.
Got that? Evidently Cornell gets to argue their side of the issue anywhere that they want, such as in this Arkansas Times article itself, while simultaneously suggesting that skeptics should confine their criticism to formal, peer-reviewed scientific papers.

And when Cornell offers up fleeting sight records where even the observer is not 100% convinced, are they relying on opinion or science?
...
Ivory-bill expert Jackson hit another nerve in his Auk article by suggesting that Cornell and TNC were using the bird as a fund-raising tool, noting instant solicitations for dollars by Cornell and the Nature Conservancy after April’s announcement of the bird’s discovery.
The nerve of that guy! Besides examples like the ones here, here, here, and here, to what could Jackson be referring?
-----

This Arkansas Times article was written by Leslie Newell Peacock. The following appears at the bottom of this Memphis Flyer article:
Leslie Newell Peacock writes for The Arkansas Times, where a version of this article first appeared. She is also the journalist whose researcher husband managed to keep the ivory-billed woodpecker a secret from her for 14 months.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Leslie Newell Peacock writes for The Arkansas Times, where a version of this article first appeared. She is also the journalist whose researcher husband managed to keep the ivory-billed woodpecker a secret from her for 14 months."

NEWSFLASH !!!!!

It's still a secret.