In John Crewdson's May
Chicago Tribune piece, we see this:
"I've never seen such awful documentation on any record. I just look at the video and say, `God, it's hopeless.' It's hard for the human being, in such high-profile cases, to just relax and say, `Well, maybe we made a mistake.'"
-- Jon Dunn, field ornithologist and chief consultant for the National Geographic Field Guide
According to Laura Erickson
here, Pete Dunne has a very different view. An excerpt:
I have seen the evidence. I accept the eminient plausibility. Most of all, I accept the eyewitness accounts of birders whose skills, judgment, caution, and integrity I trust. It is less correct to say that I believe in the existence of the Ivory-bill than to say I accept its existence based upon the evidence and testimony presented.
Outside of Fitz et al, I think the vast majority of birding experts side more with Jon Dunn than Pete Dunne at present. What is Pete Dunne thinking?
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7 comments:
From the link:
"Wouldn't it be a funny world in which eyewitness accounts are sufficient to condemn people to death but insufficient to confirm a living bird?"
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Eyewitness acounts ARE sufficient, as long as they're reliable and detailed enough. And sometimes people are wrongfully condemned to death due to inaccurate eyewitness acounts.
But keep in mind that John & Pete are talking about 2 different pieces of evidence. If Pete said he believes the video to be an IBWO because he has faith in those who filmed it, that would be a more controversial statement. Like he said, he trusts the guys who have seen it, and I would bet he knows at least one or two of them pretty well, including Fitzpatrick. This seems like he is basically saying, "They're good guys and good birders. Give them the benefit of the doubt (about their sightings)."
I'm more interested to hear what he thinks about the video. That might be more telling. Has he commented anywhere about that?
This comment from Dunne is amazing.
Mistaken identifications are the largest single cause of wrongful convictions of innocent people. Eyewitness evidence, like forms of physical trace evidence, can be contaminated, lost, destroyed, or otherwise made to produce results that can lead to an incorrect reconstruction of the event in question.
The most sane comments were made by Mike Mlodinow who discussed what impact a mistake in accepting this record would have on conservation - by discussing Bayes' Rule etc ...
I've always felt that one of the key differences between the skeptics and the belivers is how they weigh "being wrong" about whether they claim that there are IBWO in AR.
I think people like Pete Dunne see absolutely no downside in being wrong. All that would happen is that more trees are preserved in AR ... why is that so bad.
Skeptics John Dunn link this to a much larger philosophical concept - indeed they link it to the meaning of "reason" itself.
At this point the belivers have simply staked out an emotional sacred ground, villified the motives of people who ask questions, and resorted to equating doubt with questioning the intergrity of the recent explorers club honorees.
Dunne doesn't want to discuss the video because at this point the video needs to remain "controversial" ...
The reality is that the video is beyond a reasonable doubt, exactly what david sibley says it is.
I suspect that Dunne is basically sticking his fingers in his ears and saying "na na na na na I .... am .... not listening to you".
Both Pete and Jon are just emphasing different aspects of the "Woodpecker's Prayer".
Pete just wants to "...forgive us our misidenitfications,
as we forgive those
who have misidentified others."
Whereas, Jon and other Skeptics embrace the remaining parts of the prayer.
Jon: Woodpecker in Heaven,
Jon: : let your holy self be seen,
Jon: : let your visage come,
Jon: : and not only to some,
Jon: : and please! on earth rather than heaven.
Jon: : Give us today the sight that we need,
Pete: : and forgive us our misidenitfications,
Pete: : as we forgive those
who have misidentified others.
Jon: : Do lead us into swamps,
Jon: : but save us from Elvis.
It's simple. Jon is a scientist. Pete in the most important ways is not. Pete is faith-based.
There you have it. The dichotomy of the world. We are just lucky that the inquisition no longer exists, or else our Skeptic necks would be stretched by now.
(That is, if we survived the burning at the stake.)
Trusting those who said they saw Elvis appears be a distraction to this discussion. What do we know about Cornell's first set of volunteers? How many of them had documented rarities before their woodpecker encounter(s)? Experience is not critical, but very important. If Remsen or Fitzpatrick (John, that is) had documented seeing/hearing an ivory-bill, we'd be much more inclined to "believe". Secrecy trumped experience in the first winter's search. By the second, Cornell apparently recognized their mistake and sought more experienced birders. I appreciated that Cornell accepted this 42-year-birder as one of them, but I soon bailed, partly on account of this blog.
Casey Taylor of Cornell was the observer for the only reported "robust sighting" since June 2004.
At this link, scroll down to the end to get an idea of her birding experience level as of 2004.
Dear "From the link"-
Eyewitness accounts can suffice in some cases, but not for presumed extinct species. Hard visual evidence is mandatory. Unfortunately, the Luneau video does not represent that hard evidence-it's actually a Pileated Woodpecker. At best, the ID is open to interpretation and therefore it's not 100% certain as was the claim. So, it's not proof, and it can't be the centerpiece of the whole Arkansas IBWO rediscovery, and it can't prop-up the pitiful cluster of B-Team sight records.
Fitzcrow didn't see the bird himself, but his brother (or whatever relation he was) Jim did (but Jim's binoculars weren't pre-focused for the distance to the bird so he opted not to use them- that's why he was only 98.5 % certain).
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