One excerpt:
Notably, on 13 December 2005 Sharon Stiteler, an official Cornell volunteer and experienced birder flushed and sighted a large woodpecker, noting white trailing edges in the wings.If Sharon actually believes in her own sighting, how can we explain her recent comments here?
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8 comments:
There goes $10 million bucks down the drain.
We just spent a zillion dollars and 1000's of "man hours" tracking a non existent bird.
All this time and effort was based on the 1 extinct IBWO discovered in the Bayou de Ville.
Nice to see Birc Chick get top billing on the serious sighting.
And you guessed it; I have no PHD nor did I major in biology.
So my opinion means as much as anybody elses from what I can gatherfrom of all these "experts."
Thank you and have a great weekend.
Can I present a cogent summary of this sexy report?
We didn't find a single thing in our search but we still have hope. Plus, we had so much fun farting around with these toys. It would be sorta sad for the fun to stop right now just because some fuddydud thinks the IBWO is extinct.
Not related to the CLO but relevant to the previous dicussion of Kennedy and peer review at Science:
"The University of Missouri has opened an inquiry into whether researchers in the biochemistry department there manipulated images published in a February 2006 article in Science... ...Last month, Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy issued an editorial expression of concern cautioning readers that the results reported in the paper "may not be reliable."
from:
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/36408/
This supports my contention that when "important" research is shown to be bogus, editors are apologetic and stand up for scientific integrity, but they don't apply the same level of rigor to a human interest feel-good stories about a bird.
Good point above, IBWO atheist, about what is considered "important research". Kennedy would never take the time recant a "feel-good story", especially since conservationists and TBs feel that the even if the CLO data was invalid it worked to the good of conservation. It is hard to see how that type of rationalization could be made for results in the fields of physics, medicine, physiology etc.
An even more concise summary of the well-written report:
Elvis has left the building.
Fraud is fraud.
I know it's fun to bash CLO, but I think they did a pretty good job this time. I'm all for them continuing their search over the next handful of years. The money they spent has not been wasted, and they are planning on being even more efficient in their next search, so they should deliver more searching for their $$.
If they keep up this good work for a few more years, they should prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are no IBWO in Arkansas. And then maybe this hysteria will die out.
Andy R said...
I know it's fun to bash CLO, but I think they did a pretty good job this time.
Say someone provided you with flimsy evidence that a natural resource (and it could be a resource that needs to be conserved or has the potential of being exploited) was in a certain area.
Say you take the flimsy evidence and using your major media and political connections and the trust the public puts in your institution have the announcement of your discovery of the resource be “historical” in nature.
Say that there is then a major attempt to assess the extent of that resource with concurrent attempts at conservation using substantial amounts of both public and federal funds.
Say that after three years of assessment of the resource no one else can find it and the original evidence has been examined by others who feel it does not indicate your purported resource exists.
If you issued a report three years after your discovery where you admitted that you were unable to find any evidence that the resource you had touted exists anywhere in the world, do you think that anyone would think your report on the negative findings constituted a “pretty good job”.
An admission of one’s error, perhaps with a thoughtful apology, would be a “pretty good job”. Continuing the charade is a “pretty bad job” and a clear indication that the CLO lacks the maturity to examine their past actions and admit where they were wrong.
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