I buy my 7-yr old daughter those Audubon Stuffed birds with the real call when you squeeze them. I showed her a picture of their new offering: http://www.wildrepublic.com/pages/audubon/special/ivorybilledwoodpecker.asp
She said, "I don't want that. Not until they REALLY find one".
Takes much less time to cast doubt on a blurry video than to prove that the IBWO is extant.
That's why Sibley and Jackson had the advantage. ____________________ Methinks (freshly back from rehab) to suggest that Sibley et al. or Jackson had an advantage is kinda wacky.
Consider: Sibley et al had much less space (word count) to state their case.
Sibley et al did not have access to the original video, or the time before and after the "released" portions.
Sibley et al. did not have the editor of Science swingin for the fences for them,
Sibley et al. did not have 18 months to review review review, deinterlace, and manipulate the crappy video and finally decide it was the best they had,
Sibley et al. had to come at this after the major media blitz, the AOU plennary, etc etc.
It actually would take very little to prove the IBWO was extant if the freakin video was a video of an IBWO! If that bird is out there, we will all know it when we see the photo or video.
The reason it took Fitzcrow so long was that he was making a silk purse out of a PIWO ear.
Have you guys read www.fishcrow.com lately. The happy fellow claims that an Ivory Bill is stalking him and that they are making "bell like calls"?
Now don't get me wrong. I love Mr. Fishcrow. This IBWO affair would be a whole lot less fun without him. And he gave the world the english postscript of -crow, as in Fitzcrow.
I have gotten into trouble by suggesting this before, but I just have to ask,
Is www.fishcrow.com a practical joke?
It has all the characteristics of one. It's outlandish, over the top, ridiculous, and un-apologetic.
I think if it is a practical joke, then he goes from an Honored Ivory Bill Believer to the greatest Practical Joker of All Time. He would be equal to the Lord God Bird himself.
Hi, I can assure you the man is for real, has a real job, spent a lot of time alone in the swamps. That's what people say who know him personally... Now you can speculate all you like about the man's motives but he thinks he's seen and heard and photographed an IBWO, and has actually had the ear of several IBWO luminaries, both Cornell skeptics and believers. Now you wouldn't spend quite so much time there if you weren't somewhat intrigued? Would you? I'll guess that you check his website quite often and scan his photographs and videos diligently. Your fingers busily moving the video slider bar backkkkkkk and forth, backkkkk and forth. Scandalous!
No, I think he is (sadly)just a wee bit nutty, and needs his meds balanced. It seems like someone should be watching him closely...
For example....in his daily field notes of his trip to Stennis (American cits. only please) he ends up alone, sick, in a hotel for days. If you read it, think bipolor, and figure him deep in the depressive phase, and you'll get my drift.
The IBWO following him fits a bit more in the psychotic category...we need someone with the DSM to look him up.
Oh Yes, you are so right! Well, I don't spend a lot of time there but I do check it every few days. It just fascinates me. You are right about that.
It just seems so bizarre. If I wanted to make a practical joke, I would do just what he did. His site is hilarious in many ways.
When you say "..he thinks he has seen and heard and photographed an IBWO..", are you subtly making a joke about him?
You see. That's what I mean. Is everyone in on the practical joke but me? Did I miss an early thread on this blog, say in July 1995 etc., where you'all already have revealed the practical joke?
All kidding aside, can someone please help me figure this out?
Can someone please go to www.fishcrow.com, click on "Ivory-billed Woodpeckers of the Pearl River Basin", scroll down to the last photo and please tell me what the heck the arrow is pointing to on that blurry black triangle?
Now is that not the greatest practical joke of all time? The fellow is a genius! I bow before him!
Dear "confused." Fishcrow is dead serious but he's also seriously demented. The real joke is that the U. S. Navy apparently takes him seriously (and you wonder how "Iraqi WMD" got taken seriously!). Anyway, he's very well-documented as being real and believing that his IBWOs are real......
I never thought he wasn't real. Although, I suppose he could have made up a separate identity to post with. That would be an even better practical joke, I suppose. But I hadn't quite gone that deeply.
But when you say he "believes that his IBWOs are real", how do you know? Do you know him personally and can vouch for his purpose?
Otherwise, he could just be pulling one great practical joke, couldn't he?
Anonymous wrote: "But when you say he "believes that his IBWOs are real", how do you know? Do you know him personally and can vouch for his purpose?
Otherwise, he could just be pulling one great practical joke, couldn't he?"
******* Well, I can't get too specific but no, I have not met the guy. But others have met with him and they just thought he was loony. I, too, seriously considered the practical joke scenario early on, but I don't buy it at this point. Besides, if he was joking then don't you believe that he could come up with better "bait" to lure us in, especially audio? Nope, he's a kook.
Besides, so far it's backfired and the joke is mainly on him (and the unfortunate few who have joined him at the Pearl).
"...don't you believe that he could come up with better "bait" to lure us in..."
OK, you had me convinced until you said the above. I think you are missing the genius of the practical joke. A good practical joke isn't about fraud. It's much better to put the bait out there and get the gullible. Better video or better sound that was just fraudulent would not fool us and is not necessary to fool the people that now believe in www.fishcrow.com.
See what I mean? It's a great practical joke, right?
If he has submitted to American Birds the same evidence that he shows on the website, then it is definitely not a practical joke.
Sad, yes, but not a practical joke. Now you have me hoping that it is a practical joke rather than the poor fellow getting his ego further deflated by American Birds.
anonymous wrote: "OK, so what was the comparative "submission-to-acceptance-to-publication" lag time for the Sibley et al. paper???? Anyone?"
Ok, I'll bite.
Sibley paper submitted 18 November 2005, accepted 6 March 2006, published 17 March 2006. 108 days from submittal to acceptance. Versus 19 days for the first Fitz et al. if you accept the dates in the actual paper or 17 if you believe Fitz's plenary account or 18 if you believe Fitz's Auk rebuttal (is anyone else confused?) but let's go with the published 19 days.
108 days versus 19 days.
In all fairness, you have to allow for foot dragging through the halls of the Ithaca branch of the Ivy League.
Does anyone know the sequence of events between Sibley et al. and publication with Fitz et al. response?
If you really want to get into Practical Joke hypothesizing, then how about:
--Kulivan’s original Pearl River sighting was on April Fool’s Day 1999. Don’t think that didn’t go unnoticed….
--Maybe Sparling’s AR sighting was a practical joke.
--Maybe the Gallagher-Harrison sighting was a practical joke (emphasis on “practical” if you get my drift)
--Heck, maybe Tom’s blog is actually a practical joke. Maybe Tom is really a believer (as in “TB”= “Tom the Believer” not “True Believer”) and he’s just been keeping the skeptics distracted……
Kulivan’s original Pearl River sighting was on April Fool’s Day?
Well, there you have it! And I bet fishcrow is really a pseudanonymous charactor of Kulivan's. In more than one way, that would explain this whole silly episode.
"P.S. Is it typical to simultaneously publish original author responses alongside responses to papers in Science?"
Yes. Standard practice in many journals to give the original author(s) the opportunity to respond to rebuttals in the same issue, immediately following the rebuttal
In answer to a previous question about the Technical Response by Fitzpatrick et alia: the Response was submitted 19 January 2006 and accepted 9 March (49 days). The Response was published alongside the Technical Comment, which is the usual practice in Science, 17 March (57 days, 8 days after acceptance). Did anyone notice that the Cornell video analysis was first posted on 8 February at a point when they had full knowledge of the impending critique by Sibley et al. I don't know if Jackson's Perspective (January Auk) was available by 8 Feb or not. Sleazy.
Methinks can speak for the author of the Moustacheiicrow - s/he will not care if another person goes freakin wild on the web and creates a million moustachii-Fitzcrow IBWOs. Fist you may want to start with all of the published images of Fitzcrow, Gallaghercrow (if he has a 'stache) and the rest of Team Elvis.
You fellows are good. I quietly sat here and absorbed your reasonable arguments of why www.fishcrow.com is not a practical joke. It just seemed all so accurate and down to earth.
I was convinced....but then.....
I went back to www.fishcrow.com and laughed and laughed and just came to the full realization that you fellows are just so wrong.
The best practical joke in the world, I tell you. Go see and read for yourself.
Anon said: Did anyone notice that the Cornell video analysis was first posted on 8 February at a point when they had full knowledge of the impending critique by Sibley et al. I don't know if Jackson's Perspective (January Auk) was available by 8 Feb or not. Sleazy. ___________________________
Methinks it is especially sleazy when you consider that the info in the Sibley et al. paper was embargoed - and the web site was clearly a way to address the criticisms in that TC in a public forum, out of the peer reviewed eye.
CLO missed several due dates for their response, probably because they were working on the web site, and because they were hoping that, like Prum's paper, the TC would get withdrawn (Methinks is not an author of the TC, but I know that dates were missed). One can only imagine the degree of arm twisting that went on, esp when you look at the names of the people who were on the original CLO paper and compare to the responce to the TC.
I have always liked the way that CLO formatted that web page to look just like a peer reviewed piece - only it wasn't.
You also need to remember that CLO responded AFTER reading the Sibley et al. TC, and that Sibley et al. were not allowed to see the CLO response until the papers were accepted and the press embargo was lifted.
CLO lost this battle only because they were wrong from the get-go - they never had an IBWO. Their attempts to create a reality worked very well for them until they actually had to present data to a watchful community - and that didn't happen till the end of the '06 season.
This year we saw them grading sightings, spinning and twisting in the wind, but in the final analysis, they agreed that they didn't have anything. If their work had been under scrutiny from day 1, they never would have gotten into the mess they are in now.
My thesis: without the TC, they would have tried to foist more crap into the record, so I think the TC actually made a huge difference in stopping the continued pollution of the records.
30 comments:
I buy my 7-yr old daughter those Audubon Stuffed birds with the real call when you squeeze them. I showed her a picture of their new offering:
http://www.wildrepublic.com/pages/audubon/special/ivorybilledwoodpecker.asp
She said, "I don't want that. Not until they REALLY find one".
I couldn't have been more proud.
Good post, Tom. And a thanks to John Trapp for his blog.
Seems that even Cornell Acting Presidents are not so sure about the CLO sightings. Check out this speech,
Cornell Reunion Address
Note especially this quote,
"But what I like most about this story and the reason that it won't die is that nobody is actually certain that the identification is correct. "
OK, so what was the comparative "submission-to-acceptance-to-publication" lag time for the Sibley et al. paper???? Anyone?
Takes much less time to cast doubt on a blurry video than to prove that the IBWO is extant.
That's why Sibley and Jackson had the advantage.
Anon said....
Takes much less time to cast doubt on a blurry video than to prove that the IBWO is extant.
That's why Sibley and Jackson had the advantage.
____________________
Methinks (freshly back from rehab) to suggest that Sibley et al. or Jackson had an advantage is kinda wacky.
Consider:
Sibley et al had much less space (word count) to state their case.
Sibley et al did not have access to the original video, or the time before and after the "released" portions.
Sibley et al. did not have the editor of Science swingin for the fences for them,
Sibley et al. did not have 18 months to review review review, deinterlace, and manipulate the crappy video and finally decide it was the best they had,
Sibley et al. had to come at this after the major media blitz, the AOU plennary, etc etc.
It actually would take very little to prove the IBWO was extant if the freakin video was a video of an IBWO! If that bird is out there, we will all know it when we see the photo or video.
The reason it took Fitzcrow so long was that he was making a silk purse out of a PIWO ear.
Have you guys read www.fishcrow.com lately. The happy fellow claims that an Ivory Bill is stalking him and that they are making "bell like calls"?
Now don't get me wrong. I love Mr. Fishcrow. This IBWO affair would be a whole lot less fun without him. And he gave the world the english postscript of -crow, as in Fitzcrow.
I have gotten into trouble by suggesting this before, but I just have to ask,
Is www.fishcrow.com a practical joke?
It has all the characteristics of one. It's outlandish, over the top, ridiculous, and un-apologetic.
I think if it is a practical joke, then he goes from an Honored Ivory Bill Believer to the greatest Practical Joker of All Time. He would be equal to the Lord God Bird himself.
All joking aside, am I wrong here?
Hi, I can assure you the man is for real, has a real job, spent a lot of time alone in the swamps. That's what people say who know him personally... Now you can speculate all you like about the man's motives but he thinks he's seen and heard and photographed an IBWO, and has actually had the ear of several IBWO luminaries, both Cornell skeptics and believers.
Now you wouldn't spend quite so much time there if you weren't somewhat intrigued? Would you?
I'll guess that you check his website quite often and scan his photographs and videos diligently.
Your fingers busily moving the video slider bar backkkkkkk and forth, backkkkk and forth.
Scandalous!
No, I think he is (sadly)just a wee bit nutty, and needs his meds balanced. It seems like someone should be watching him closely...
For example....in his daily field notes of his trip to Stennis (American cits. only please) he ends up alone, sick, in a hotel for days. If you read it, think bipolor, and figure him deep in the depressive phase, and you'll get my drift.
The IBWO following him fits a bit more in the psychotic category...we need someone with the DSM to look him up.
Oh Yes, you are so right! Well, I don't spend a lot of time there but I do check it every few days. It just fascinates me. You are right about that.
It just seems so bizarre. If I wanted to make a practical joke, I would do just what he did. His site is hilarious in many ways.
When you say "..he thinks he has seen and heard and photographed an IBWO..", are you subtly making a joke about him?
You see. That's what I mean. Is everyone in on the practical joke but me? Did I miss an early thread on this blog, say in July 1995 etc., where you'all already have revealed the practical joke?
All kidding aside, can someone please help me figure this out?
Can someone please go to www.fishcrow.com, click on "Ivory-billed Woodpeckers of the Pearl River Basin", scroll down to the last photo and please tell me what the heck the arrow is pointing to on that blurry black triangle?
Now is that not the greatest practical joke of all time? The fellow is a genius! I bow before him!
Dear "confused." Fishcrow is dead serious but he's also seriously demented. The real joke is that the U. S. Navy apparently takes him seriously (and you wonder how "Iraqi WMD" got taken seriously!). Anyway, he's very well-documented as being real and believing that his IBWOs are real......
"..he's very well-documented as being real..."
I never thought he wasn't real. Although, I suppose he could have made up a separate identity to post with. That would be an even better practical joke, I suppose. But I hadn't quite gone that deeply.
But when you say he "believes that his IBWOs are real", how do you know? Do you know him personally and can vouch for his purpose?
Otherwise, he could just be pulling one great practical joke, couldn't he?
Anonymous wrote:
"But when you say he "believes that his IBWOs are real", how do you know? Do you know him personally and can vouch for his purpose?
Otherwise, he could just be pulling one great practical joke, couldn't he?"
*******
Well, I can't get too specific but no, I have not met the guy. But others have met with him and they just thought he was loony. I, too, seriously considered the practical joke scenario early on, but I don't buy it at this point. Besides, if he was joking then don't you believe that he could come up with better "bait" to lure us in, especially audio? Nope, he's a kook.
Besides, so far it's backfired and the joke is mainly on him (and the unfortunate few who have joined him at the Pearl).
Besides, so far it's backfired and the joke is mainly on him (and the unfortunate few who have joined him at the Pearl).
"Unfortunate"?
Rumour has it that he has actually submitted his Stennis sightings to American Birds, or whatever they call it now.
Thats what they get for publishing all the CLO lame sightings...now thay actually have to review his!
"...don't you believe that he could come up with better "bait" to lure us in..."
OK, you had me convinced until you said the above. I think you are missing the genius of the practical joke. A good practical joke isn't about fraud. It's much better to put the bait out there and get the gullible. Better video or better sound that was just fraudulent would not fool us and is not necessary to fool the people that now believe in www.fishcrow.com.
See what I mean? It's a great practical joke, right?
If he has submitted to American Birds the same evidence that he shows on the website, then it is definitely not a practical joke.
Sad, yes, but not a practical joke. Now you have me hoping that it is a practical joke rather than the poor fellow getting his ego further deflated by American Birds.
Ouch!
can someone do a montage of IBWO's in fiztmoustachii??
Every picture on the web has an IBWO in the moustache ... we need a moustache photo montage!
And please, hombres, I am getting sick of all the anonymii ... make up a pseudonymn ... how hard can that be?
I never did figure out if Tom Nelson knows the author of the fitzmoustache IBWO ... don't let that thing fade into the history of the blog.
"I never did figure out if Tom Nelson knows the author of the fitzmoustache IBWO..."
I don't know the author.
Tom
anonymous wrote:
"OK, so what was the comparative "submission-to-acceptance-to-publication" lag time for the Sibley et al. paper???? Anyone?"
Ok, I'll bite.
Sibley paper submitted 18 November 2005, accepted 6 March 2006, published 17 March 2006. 108 days from submittal to acceptance. Versus 19 days for the first Fitz et al. if you accept the dates in the actual paper or 17 if you believe Fitz's plenary account or 18 if you believe Fitz's Auk rebuttal (is anyone else confused?) but let's go with the published 19 days.
108 days versus 19 days.
In all fairness, you have to allow for foot dragging through the halls of the Ithaca branch of the Ivy League.
Does anyone know the sequence of events between Sibley et al. and publication with Fitz et al. response?
anonanon
Does anyone know the sequence of events between Sibley et al. submission of the paper and publication with Fitz et al. response?
anonanon
P.S. Is it typical to simultaneously publish original author responses alongside responses to papers in Science?
OK, does anyone know what the comparative "submission-to-acceptance-to-publication" lag time for Fitzcrow's American Birds paper will be???? Anyone?"
If you really want to get into Practical Joke hypothesizing, then how about:
--Kulivan’s original Pearl River sighting was on April Fool’s Day 1999. Don’t think that didn’t go unnoticed….
--Maybe Sparling’s AR sighting was a practical joke.
--Maybe the Gallagher-Harrison sighting was a practical joke (emphasis on “practical” if you get my drift)
--Heck, maybe Tom’s blog is actually a practical joke. Maybe Tom is really a believer (as in “TB”= “Tom the Believer” not “True Believer”) and he’s just been keeping the skeptics distracted……
P.S. Is it typical to simultaneously publish original author responses alongside responses to papers in Science?
I can't speak directly about Science, but overall, it's a generally accepted practice (i.e., nothing unusual about it).
Kulivan’s original Pearl River sighting was on April Fool’s Day?
Well, there you have it! And I bet fishcrow is really a pseudanonymous charactor of Kulivan's. In more than one way, that would explain this whole silly episode.
"P.S. Is it typical to simultaneously publish original author responses alongside responses to papers in Science?"
Yes. Standard practice in many journals to give the original author(s) the opportunity to respond to rebuttals in the same issue, immediately following the rebuttal
In answer to a previous question about the Technical Response by Fitzpatrick et alia: the Response was submitted 19 January 2006 and accepted 9 March (49 days). The Response was published alongside the Technical Comment, which is the usual practice in Science, 17 March (57 days, 8 days after acceptance). Did anyone notice that the Cornell video analysis was first posted on 8 February at a point when they had full knowledge of the impending critique by Sibley et al. I don't know if Jackson's Perspective (January Auk) was available by 8 Feb or not. Sleazy.
Methinks can speak for the author of the Moustacheiicrow - s/he will not care if another person goes freakin wild on the web and creates a million moustachii-Fitzcrow IBWOs. Fist you may want to start with all of the published images of Fitzcrow, Gallaghercrow (if he has a 'stache) and the rest of Team Elvis.
Set yourselves free and create away!
You fellows are good. I quietly sat here and absorbed your reasonable arguments of why www.fishcrow.com is not a practical joke. It just seemed all so accurate and down to earth.
I was convinced....but then.....
I went back to www.fishcrow.com and laughed and laughed and just came to the full realization that you fellows are just so wrong.
The best practical joke in the world, I tell you. Go see and read for yourself.
Anon said:
Did anyone notice that the Cornell video analysis was first posted on 8 February at a point when they had full knowledge of the impending critique by Sibley et al. I don't know if Jackson's Perspective (January Auk) was available by 8 Feb or not. Sleazy.
___________________________
Methinks it is especially sleazy when you consider that the info in the Sibley et al. paper was embargoed - and the web site was clearly a way to address the criticisms in that TC in a public forum, out of the peer reviewed eye.
CLO missed several due dates for their response, probably because they were working on the web site, and because they were hoping that, like Prum's paper, the TC would get withdrawn (Methinks is not an author of the TC, but I know that dates were missed). One can only imagine the degree of arm twisting that went on, esp when you look at the names of the people who were on the original CLO paper and compare to the responce to the TC.
I have always liked the way that CLO formatted that web page to look just like a peer reviewed piece - only it wasn't.
You also need to remember that CLO responded AFTER reading the Sibley et al. TC, and that Sibley et al. were not allowed to see the CLO response until the papers were accepted and the press embargo was lifted.
CLO lost this battle only because they were wrong from the get-go - they never had an IBWO. Their attempts to create a reality worked very well for them until they actually had to present data to a watchful community - and that didn't happen till the end of the '06 season.
This year we saw them grading sightings, spinning and twisting in the wind, but in the final analysis, they agreed that they didn't have anything. If their work had been under scrutiny from day 1, they never would have gotten into the mess they are in now.
My thesis: without the TC, they would have tried to foist more crap into the record, so I think the TC actually made a huge difference in stopping the continued pollution of the records.
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