Friday, April 28, 2006

Hoaxes in ornithology

Interesting ID-Frontiers post here.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Tom:

You are a brave and determined man, you are also right, but I'm just not seeing how you get from where we are to where you seem to be pointing: fraud.

Just to review, we are at: "moot issue, we were only able to document one bird wandering at end of its reproductive life"

The secret to a long life is knowing when its time to go ...

Tom, you're a hero in my book, you took an unpopular stand, you've laid out the argument, you've told it like it is. David Sibley and Jerome Jackson have said the same things you've said in major established publications.

Did you notice though that the truth is too embarassing for some powerful and wealthy people and this whole thing has simply just gone away?

So, the explorers club did not cancel its awards banquet to honor the discoverers, the book publishers did not have to appear on Oprah, Katie Couric did not ask hardball questions, Cornell did not have to explain how their name has forver been associated with the bogus 33.3 wrist measurement. The guy who loned the jet was not outed. The high net worth individuals have not been asked if they still believe ... and Sibley is truely contrite that he had to dissent.

All of this is by way of saying to you that at this point you have to come up with some new angle - just nodding and pointing at an accusation of fraud only makes you seem as if you are "out to get them" -

If the truth didn't work - pointing toward malfeasance isn't going to work either.

Remember, Fitz has moved on, the leaves are out, the birds have moved deep in the swamp.

Anonymous said...

The Carpinterio Real is well reasoned. But he is seems more concerned with the process than the outcome. Fitz may have moved on as you say but the poor guy has a price to pay.

Fellow scientists, Sibley et al, have already taken a chunk out of his rep. Here on this blog we are discussing Fitz. Everyone is discussing Fitz and how such an respected man could go so wrong.

Is it fraud? Tom never said that. He's just pointed out an article that points out that such debacles COULD turn into fraud at some point.

That's why this discussion is so important. It's not about process. It's about the outcome of one of sciences biggest boondoogles ever.

And it's not over yet.

Anonymous said...

Did you folks watch the National Geographic channel last night? It was about how "sea monsters" can be so regularly seen but only captured on blurry video.

What a hoot. They showed one famous video of a Loch Ness monster-type which when blown up was clearly a line of birds feeding on the water.

Anonymous said...

Carpinterio Real speaks some truth, and, importantly
"Did you notice though that the truth is too embarassing for some powerful and wealthy people and this whole thing has simply just gone away?"

The wheels spin slowly, niether CLO or TNC can back out of this one fast, and I don't expect that. Unfortunately, the longer they linger and allow the spin, the more it starts to look faudulent. People often get nailed in the cover-up, rather than the original mistake.

The power of the current CLO position is that no one can say how long it should take to say with certainty that the birds are NOT out there - the old you can't prove a negative. Zeros, in this and most other cases, give you lots of information. Unfortunatly, they are often overlooked.

As an aside, my read on the Sibley et al. team is not that they were contrite, contrite implies it was their mistake they were attoning for...I'd go more with melancholy or pensive. In interviews they seemed genuinely saddened that they were the ones to come out with the "Emperor has no clothes" ..but this may just be splitting hairs. Contrite is where CLO and TNC need to go, and we may not ever see that.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of hoaxes. Did you see Christen's blog today. She went to White Water NWR and took very scientific measurements of bark scaling. Then she abruptly says "Now I know what IBWO scaling looks like."!!!

No sightings of IBWO mind you. She doesn't even post any blurry video of an IBWO. Just annouces that she now knows what "IBWO scaling looks like."

Is this how bilogists are trained to think in our universities now? Or are these blogs actually hoaxes and/or practical jokes meant to provoke us? If so, then I would applaud them. They are good.

Anonymous said...

It was about how "sea monsters" can be so regularly seen but only captured on blurry video.

There's a lesson there.

Anonymous said...

Where is the evidence that Fitz has moved on? Has anyone read the Auk response to Jackson's Perspective? This is far from over.

anonanon

Anonymous said...

Well, one thing is true, a person only gets to publish one blurry ELVIS video per scientific career.

So whether Fitz stays or goes, his career has pretty well peaked. It would be hard to top this.

Anonymous said...

I haven't seen the April 2006 Auk. Has anyone else read it in depth? I've heard rumors that it nearly slanders Dr. Jackson, a man I respect very deeply. I'd be interested to hear comments on it or if someone could post excerpts to the site.

Anonymous said...

Corollary 6: The hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true.

Anonymous said...

That is one heck of a fascinating article. Well worth a read. Thanks for posting that.

Anonymous said...

An article in New York Times on issues of peer review:

"For Science's Gatekeepers, a Credibility Gap"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/health/02docs.html