Here. Follow-up posts here and here.
Some 2002 thoughts from Alan Wormington are here.
Gas Power Will Remain Crucial
3 hours ago
My Blog List
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Reconstructing the Esper Reconstruction5 months ago
-
Energy output dented by wind drought5 months ago
-
ビタミンと勃起の関係9 months ago
-
What I’ve Been Up To10 months ago
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments
11 comments:
Y'all might be interested that I e-mailed the following request to Dr. Hayes about his survey:
Dr. Floyd E. Hayes
Department of Biology
Pacific Union College
Angwin, CA 94508
Hi Floyd,
I recently filled out your survey of opinion about the existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=211781934539 Your inclusion of the Fishcrow Web site (http://www.fishcrow.com/winter06.html) casts doubt on the integrity of your survey and indicates that you find Fishcrow's evidence compelling. Because compelling arguments are relevant to public and scientific opinion, I encourage you to remove Fishcrow and add instead the following Web site: http://www.tomnelson.blogspot.com Otherwise I think birders and ornithologists will feel inclined to disparage your results (which are of interest to many of us), regardless of the robustness of your statistical methods.
Thank you
Malcolm or Mark
Malcolm Mark Swan, GIS Analyst
The Nature Conservancy Central U.S. Region
711 Navarro Suite 410, San Antonio TX 78205
210-224-8774 ext. 234
"Your inclusion of the Fishcrow Web site...indicates that you find Fishcrow's evidence compelling."
If that statement reflects the prevailing inferential capability of birders and ornithologists, we supporters of this website must all be Plutonians.
"If that statement reflects the prevailing inferential capability of birders and ornithologists, we supporters of this website must all be Plutonians."
To clarify, I used "indicates" in the sense of "hints" or "suggests", but I see how it can be read as "implicates" or "proves", which wasn't intended.
First of all, this isn't a popularity contest. Floyd Hayes's online survey feeds right into the "we can identify it through public opinion" approach, which is what CLO is selling: e.g. it's reported as a Bachman's Warbler but 'we just can't identify it' [even though its a friggin obvious Yellow Warbler]. The survey seems unlikely to get a truly useful result, the slant to questions and the questions asked being the biggest tip-off that any statistics will be unreliable.
I enjoyed the exchange with Mark Swan. I think he gets it right, but the interesting thing is how his words were misinterpreted. Over on ID Frontiers, some folks say words are just as verifiable as physical evidence. This exchange shows that not only are the words used in a description several steps removed, but the person reading those words removes them even further because they apply their own interpretation to them.
Nope, if a photo is determinative, then it is verifiable and independently so. That's what is needed in the case of the IBWO reports, not a survey.
We may soon re-enter a "dark age" of science if we aren't careful.
Could it possibly be that Dr. Hayes is just interested in finding out how many people are convinced by the evidence presented by Cornell and Fishcrow?
"Your inclusion of the Fishcrow Web site...indicates that you find Fishcrow's evidence compelling."
Yikes! The problem with this statement is a lot bigger than the subtle meanings of “indicates”. It shows a complete misunderstanding of survey’s structure. There is no more “hint” or “suggestion” that Hayes finds Fishcrow compelling than there is “hint” or “suggestion” that he find the evidence for Bigfoot compelling. It’s not the word choice that’s the problem. It’s the entire line of reasoning.
Try as I may, I cannot follow Swan’s reasoning, nor can I follow that of his defender. I’m sure the fault is mine.
Oh well, I guess we can all agree that the Hayes straw poll will prove absolutely nothing about the actual status of IBWO. Who’s going to tell Dr. Hayes? I’m sure he’ll be crushed…
Oh well, I guess we can all agree that the Hayes straw poll will prove absolutely nothing about the actual status of IBWO. Who’s going to tell Dr. Hayes? I’m sure he’ll be crushed…
Again, let me ask, could it be possible he's interested in finding out how many people are convinced by the evidence presented so far, or maybe in finding correlations between belief in the existence of the Ivory-billed and other beliefs or demographics?
At what point did he say he was going to prove the existence of IBWO through a survey?
"Again, let me ask, could it be possible he's interested in finding out how many people are convinced by the evidence presented so far, or maybe in finding correlations between belief in the existence of the Ivory-billed and other beliefs or demographics?"
The survey states an intention to assess opinions about the evidence, but the questions appear insufficient and too limited in scope to achieve this goal. It seems purely popular in nature. Had some detailed questions about the evidence been included or links to alternative evaluations (the survey only directs the reader to the CLO website and to the Fishcrow website), then I might believe this could lead somewhere.
Yeah, it's possible the anonymous questioner above is right, but the survey as constructed seems unlikely to yield robust conclusions. On top of that, the survey seems slanted toward assessing CLO's influence in the populist areana rather than assessing beliefs. Is CLO marketing involved here? I'm sure they are not, but this is the sort of research they might want conducted. "What is the success of our message" ... "must fine tune to achieve maximum belief penetration"
The survey states an intention to assess opinions about the evidence, but the questions appear insufficient and too limited in scope to achieve this goal. It seems purely popular in nature. Had some detailed questions about the evidence been included or links to alternative evaluations (the survey only directs the reader to the CLO website and to the Fishcrow website),...
On top of that, the survey seems slanted toward assessing CLO's influence in the populist areana rather than assessing beliefs.
I guess that's one way to look at it, but when you include questions about the existence of Bigfoot in the same survey, it seems (to me) to be, um, not very nice to the CLO and Fishcrow evidence. Seems like you're all reading too much into this.
I guess Mr. Wormington must have been squirming when the audio from Pearl River was conclusively identified as automatic weapons fire. Not a word of reanalysis or retraction to follow-up that "little mistake". And there has been nothing but head-in-the-sand denial and belligerence from CLO et al. to follow the massive mistake they made in going forward with Luneau's miserable-quality video of a Pileated Woodpecker.
Post a Comment