Those rumors about a Sibley "Science article" are starting to get very specific indeed:
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9 comments:
I've already seen the talking points circulated by USFWS in anticipated response to the article.
This ought to be interesting. I wonder if there will be anything new in it for we who have been keeping up online?
FWIW, this is SOP in controversial topics, rebuttal article and re-rebuttal by the original authors. Sometimes it goes on for many cycles, but only as long as the authors continue to have new things to say.
But will Cornell, The Nature Conservancy and Audubon return all of the donations and funding they obtained through use of the "rediscovery" of the IBWO? The real crime is not the rushing to print with shaky evidence, it is going to a naive public (and apparently government) with requests for funds as if the evidence was rock solid.
As I commented elsewhere these things rarely end in an easy capitulation by either camp until and unless conclusive new results turn up. This is just salvo #2 of many.
It is good to remember that humans did not evolve to process information so that it could be most accurately stored or passed on to others. Humans see and remember things in a way that best allows them to survive and raise young. There may well have been selection against humans who did not do this. In pre-industrial societies humans had all sorts of "myths to live by". Maintaining these myths and/or deceiving others with them became harder as the tools of science developed and brought us closer to "the truth". The ability of humans to entertain myths makes us a more interesting (but also aggressive) species, and, as the IBWO issue now shows, it can be a major burden when addressing something as simple as whether another species exists or not.
"it is good to remember that humans did not evolve" - should've stopped there. Unfortunately, it appears that you have allowed "the tools of science" to blind you to "the Truth" I fail to see what any of this had to do with a dispute over bird identification?
"it is good to remember that humans did not evolve" - should've stopped there. Unfortunately, it appears that you have allowed "the tools of science" to blind you to "the Truth" I fail to see what any of this had to do with a dispute over bird identification?
Here we go....
In the words of that immortal but lovable schlub Charlie Brown...
GOOD GRIEF !
"it is good to remember that humans did not evolve" - should've stopped there
Denying evolution won't make it go away and, more pertinent to the the IBWO discussion, denying extinction won't bring species back. But your desire to deny human evolution demonstrates my point that humans would frequently rather live with a comfortable myth then a typically less pleasant reality.
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