“This is more of the same,” said [Mark] Robbins, ornithology collections manager at the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History.
No authoritative photographs or video prove the ivory-bill’s existence, he said. Most scientists want irrefutable proof.
“You can go to the Ozarks of Missouri or northern Minnesota and find big roost holes,” Robbins said. “The size of the holes is meaningless. It’s too bad that money keeps getting wasted and nothing comes of it.”
Friday Funny: MAD SCIAM MAGAZINE
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Mark Robbins wants proof? Restores my faith in American Ornithology.
Comments will be slow due to everyone at the AOU meeting in Mexico.
We'll try to hold off the TBs while your gone, folks!
Mark Robbins
The size of the holes is meaningless.
So is the "bark scaling" data, the bizarre collection of culled audio, and the "field notes."
Hill et al. seem to think that if you put a rock and a tiny chunk of dry ice in a cardboard tube, it's fair to call it a "smoking gun."
Maybe it worked that way when we were seven year olds, but adults should know better.
In Mark Twain's "What Stumped the Blue Jay," a jay finds a knot-hole in the roof of a cabin. The jay says "It looks like a hole, it's located like a hole -- blamed if I don't believe it IS a hole!" Other jays join in trying to fill the hole with acorns, until they realize they've been trying to fill a cabin. "The whole absurdity of the contract that the first jay had tackled hit him home and he fell over backwards suffocating with laughter, and the next jay took his place and done the same thing." It's too bad some humans can't recognize the folly of their beliefs, and have a good laugh afterwards.
Hi everybody;
This is "no one" calling; I am at not at the AOU meeting; must earn money and work.
$100 to the anonymous who said: "I just saw a unicorn".
$200 to the anonymous's whom correctly observed that:
a) Fitzcrow is off the hook and simply seeking to establish the final truth with endless searches.
Maybe it is and maybe it isn't.
b) Hillcrow clearly is a young professor; innocent, naive, and a possible dupe of Mr. Fitzcrow.
c) Mr. Fishcrow, Cinclodes, Collins now has the same credibility as Auburn and CLO.
Mark Robbins stated: "You can go to the Ozarks of Missouri or northern Minnesota and find big roost holes," Robbins said. "The size of the holes is meaningless. It's too bad that money keeps getting wasted and nothing comes of it."
If true, methinks this is an easily testable hypothesis. Methinks it would be better to present more data and less rhetoric.
METHINKS II
Hey methinks ii, speaking about easily "testable," please tell us which of the holes had a known origin? Answer: none. I think that before you start guessing, you ought to establish what you *know* instead of developing a story based on guessing. Your rhetoric should be directed at the people publishing a "sounds good" story based on uncertainty, not the skeptics.
Regarding hole size, did the Auburn crew really test the hypothesis that squirrels, raccoons, gray foxes, and other arboreal mammals sleep in tree holes? Many of these mammals need to enlargen woodpecker holes to make them habitable for themselves. So a "large woodpecker hole" does not mean a "large woodpecker." Again, examining hole contents (such as, lets say... a sleeping mammal... or at least mammal hairs) would answer that question rather quickly.
I'd argue, furthermore, that if someone carries out Robbins' hypothesis, they should also set up some ARUs and determine if there are double raps in the Ozarks, etc. I bet they'd get em. Heck, they should set up ARUs in Sapsucker Woods and see what happens! Could be eye-opening.
My Two Cents
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