Thursday, March 16, 2006

Luneau's defense

While you are waiting to read Sibley's paper, you can take a look at a puzzling item currently on David Luneau's website here.

Luneau shows a blurry picture from the March 2005 "re-enactment" and then writes this (the bold font is mine):
That black trailing half of the PIWO wing just won't go away no matter how hard you hypothesize.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

STOP PRESS

Black Trailing Wing still exists!!


In indisputable photos of wooden models hanging from trees, the IBWO research team has shown that the Black Trailing Wing still occupies remote areas of southern swamps. They ask that no one abbreviate the subject of their research to "BTW" - which is frequently used to reflect "by the way" in electronic messages.

They have also expressed concern about the increasing popular use of the acronym "IBWO" as a substitute for "LMAO" in electronic messages. They point out there is no connection between the "Lord God Bird" and laughing one's ass off.
Or at least they don't want there to be.

Anonymous said...

This is sad really. I actually feel sorry for Luneau. The best he can hope for is this whole IBWO fiasco ends in a whimper rather than a bang.

That way, after a year or two when all the researchers slink away, he can still claim to have video'ed the last remaining IBWO in the universe.

Of course, the $20 DVD's will slowly stop selling. But what the hey...it was good while it lasted.

Anonymous said...

I suppose they are saying something like... the Luneau bird must be showing upperwing as it flies. The upperwing has a black trailing edge on a PIWO. We can't make out the black trailing wing on the video. They say: There should be some upperwing showing at some point in the flight of the Luneau bird, therefore it's not a PIWO because we don't see black trailing wing.
It's pretty darn contorted, esp since some viewers do see black trailing edges and in a blurry video, the white bleeds into and
reduces the darker parts of the wing. And again their idea that
a camera near the ground is only
seeing upperwing, not underwing.
And the whole 3d versus 2d wing shape controversy.
But in the sound-bite era of
public persuasion, a snappy line
carries the most weight.
It's the arena of public opinion in a dumbed-down shopping mall country and to even play, you gotta have these snappy comeback lines.

Paul Sutera, New Paltz, NY

Anonymous said...

Yes, but it's really easier than that. This should be about science.

The moto of this blog is "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" not "Extraordinary claims require 4 pixel birds".

It's just this simple. Show us a white bill on an Ivory-billed Woodpecker and until then assume every other big woodpecker is a Pileated.

Yes, search by all means as long as you can get funds. But don't publish until you have PROOF.