Why?

From the comment section here:

I'm another anonymous poster who works for a leading conservation organization. I was one of the first to bring up the cold fusion comparison. Sometimes I send interesting leads to Tom, but due to where I work, there is no way I can have my name associated with any of this!

I'm also a long-time birder, and see this group think misID thing happen all the time. Sparling I can forgive. He just reported exactly what he saw.
Gallagher and Harrison is tougher. But even a generous interpretation has them fully trusting their ID of the bird based on only one field mark of a quickly observed flyby bird--very shaky evidence.

You can't really blame Fitz for throwing his weight behind this. Maybe he should have been more suspicious of his friend's bird sighting. But if someone you know and trust tells you something, you give them some benefit of the doubt. In this case, the original search was probably warranted.

Then it gets messy. People are now in the field looking for a known bird. Those kind of people make bad ID calls at rare bird stakeouts all the time. Especially when dealing with brief looks of flying birds. After the first season, there should have been some discomfort with the inability to get a good look at the bird.

But it is a big place. If you believe...and at this point, it was all about believing G&H, then it is easy to convince yourself that the Big Woods are so big, that it isn't a surprise that you didn't get a good look at the bird.

And then there was the video. Cornell did all they could think of to try and test it, but it was a crappy video. Maybe they overstated their case.

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

But one thing I'm wondering, is why did they build up the Big Woods partnership and launch a multi-million dollar land acquisition and field work campaign? What made them think they had enough evidence to justify that? I'm all for putting eyes in the field to try and verify an intriguing sighting. But somehow, it all exploded out of all proportion. The evidence was too weak for that kind of effort.

Of course, it was a judgement call. One that is easier to criticize now, two years later. But still...millions of dollars based on a flyby and a blurry video? For Fritz, that may have been a critical error.

For everyone else, well...they were basically trusting Fritz.

What a fascinating story. Hopefully it can all be told after the dust has cleared--as another cautionary tale for aspiring researchers, politicians, and the introduction to bird identification guides.

Another anonymous commenter responded:

I think the [above] posting by anonymous should be promoted to its own thread - this is a topic that people need to talk about ... "why".

This blog has always been a thought leader on this question and I think this post gets at some issues that we all need to talk about and hear what others think.

When they get burried down here so deep it is hard for others to join in ...

There are lots and lots of people whose lives have been effected by Fitzcrow and their rush to publication and their bogus interpretation of evidence.

This is the first frontier of therapy.