Parallels to Piltdown Man

In a recent comment on this blog, someone mentioned Piltdown Man.

In reading about Piltdown Man here, I do see some parallels to the current Ivory-bill situation.

...However, the genius of the forgery is generally regarded as being that it offered the experts of the day exactly what they wanted: convincing evidence that human evolution was brain-led. It is argued that because it gave them what they wanted, the experts taken in by the Piltdown forgery were prepared to ignore all of the rules that are normally applied to evidence.

I don't think anyone is accusing Cornell of forging any evidence, but it seems likely that experts in both cases were fooled in large part because they wanted to be convinced.

The "source population" and helmet cams

I just stumbled across this blog post from last month's Ivory-billed Woodpecker celebration in Brinkley.

Field Supervisor Elliott Swarthout is paraphrased this way (the bold font is mine):

So far, Bayou DeView within Dagmar Wildlife Management Area is the only spot with good sightings, and the team believes that the birds are nomadic and that the source population lives in White River National Wildlife Refuge, based on James Tanner's work.
...
In the coming months, the search will incorporate four ultralite plan[e]s in a 50-meter staged formation. The pilots will wear helmet cameras, and one ultralite with a fixed camera will film the landscape below. "We have some pretty high hopes for these guys," Swarthout said.

Arkansas Times article

Here's another spin-heavy article:

Glimpses of The Bird — or what could be The Bird — have counteracted any blues that a skeptical article in a national ornithological journal may have caused, people engaged in the continuing search for Arkansas’s ivory-billed woodpecker say.
...
“My opinion,” [Jerome] Jackson wrote, “is that the bird in the Luneau video is a normal Pileated Woodpecker.”

But opinion isn’t science, either, Jackson’s detractors have been quick to respond. Scott Simon, director of the Nature Conservancy of Arkansas, the non-profit conservation group that partnered with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in the initial documentation of the bird, said an e-mail he’d received put his own response well: “If you don’t like the science, write a scientific article.”

Luneau, who serendipitously caught the bird on film as he canoed the bayou checking on equipment, called Jackson’s piece “paradoxical,” in that it criticizes the science in an article that was not itself peer-reviewed.

Got that? Evidently Cornell gets to argue their side of the issue anywhere that they want, such as in this Arkansas Times article itself, while simultaneously suggesting that skeptics should confine their criticism to formal, peer-reviewed scientific papers.

And when Cornell offers up fleeting sight records where even the observer is not 100% convinced, are they relying on opinion or science?

...
Ivory-bill expert Jackson hit another nerve in his Auk article by suggesting that Cornell and TNC were using the bird as a fund-raising tool, noting instant solicitations for dollars by Cornell and the Nature Conservancy after April’s announcement of the bird’s discovery.

The nerve of that guy! Besides examples like the ones here, here, here, and here, to what could Jackson be referring?
-----

This Arkansas Times article was written by Leslie Newell Peacock. The following appears at the bottom of this Memphis Flyer article:

Leslie Newell Peacock writes for The Arkansas Times, where a version of this article first appeared. She is also the journalist whose researcher husband managed to keep the ivory-billed woodpecker a secret from her for 14 months.

Breaking down the requested federal funding

From a US Fish and Wildlife Service press release (the bold font is mine):

Deputy Interior Secretary P. Lynn Scarlett said today the President is requesting more than $2.1 million to bolster the recovery effort for the endangered Ivory-billed Woodpecker that John James Audubon once called “the great chieftain of the woodpecker tribe.”

“The rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker energized conservationists last year,” Scarlett said. “As the search of more than 550,000 acres intensifies, this funding will play a critical role in helping us ensure this second chance is not wasted. The work that is being done today will have lasting conservation benefits for this woodpecker, migratory birds and wildlife throughout the valley.”

Scarlett said the funding will benefit at least 28 species in the region in addition to this species of woodpecker, which had been thought to be extinct for more than 60 years before the April 28, 2005 announcement of its rediscovery at Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in the bottomland hardwood forests known as the Big Woods of Arkansas.
...
The President is requesting $1.6 million for recovery planning, $396,000 for monitoring work the Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture is beginning, and $197,000 for law enforcement, for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

I don't know very specifically how "planning", "monitoring" and "law enforcement" dollars would be spent. However, if a good portion of the "planning" money is to be spent flying people around to Ivory-bill meetings like this one, I'm having a hard time imagining much benefit to other wildlife species in the region.

Jerome Jackson speaking in Memphis

From the Tennessee birding listserv (the bold font is mine):

Dr. Jerome Jackson, noted ornithologist and Professor of Biology at Florida Gulf Coast University, will present a program "In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker: Past History and Recent Reports" at the special MTOS potluck and barbecue dinner meeting on Wednesday, March 15. Dr. Jackson is an authority on the Ivory-billed woodpecker and other woodpeckers. He was at the forefront of those who held out hope for the bird's rediscovery, but has also led the drive to require scientific evidence rather than wishful thinking to document the woodpecker's reemergence. TOS members from around the State are welcome to join us for this special program. Guests are welcome. For reservations please contact Barbara Priddy at 901-384-0197 or booker62@xxxxxxxx

Groupthink illustrated

In my opinion, the story of the "six-pixel bird" provides a textbook real-life example of groupthink. A small error by one person became a colossal error when it was simply accepted without question by large numbers of other people.

From page 223 of "The Grail Bird" (the bold font is mine):

As I watched the area where I thought the bird would be, I noticed a black-and-white object on a tree,", he [David Luneau] said. "After watching this part of the tape many times, I began to have more confidence that the flying bird was really our quarry."

David showed the videotape to Bobby [Harrison] soon after he made it, so I called Bobby to get his opinion. He laughed. "It makes a bad Bigfoot movie look good,", he said. "But you know, I do think it's the bird. I especially like that black-and-white shape on the tree. The size is perfect. And I've been to that tree and looked at that spot on its trunk. There's nothing like that on it."

After the initial error by Luneau, the branch stub error was evidently accepted as truth by the rest of Cornell's vaunted team; by The Nature Conservancy; by the peer reviewers at Science magazine; by the Department of the Interior scientists; the Arkansas bird records committee; the "60 Minutes" crew and the rest of the mass media, etc etc.

Cornell's full team mistook a tree branch for an Ivory-bill, given a year's time to replay and analyze a video endlessly. Surely it would be easier for individual team members to mistake a Pileated for an IBWO, given a one-time fleeting glimpse, and easier yet to mistake a glimpse of an abnormal Pileated for an IBWO.

You didn't need to be an eminent ornithologist to catch this error--all you had to do was watch the Luneau video and notice all the other potential "six-pixel birds" as they appeared and disappeared elsewhere on the screen.

(Note--Cornell's current, tortured defense of the "six-pixel bird" is here.)

Tell us what you really think

More from WorldTwitch here and here:

The latest Ivory-billed Woodpecker episode is over. It isn't there now, and it wasn't there in 2004 or 2005. We've been fooled, but not everybody is staying fooled...it has received widespread publicity as "fact" thanks to the unscientific cooperation of Science magazine. Apparently Science only considered the quantity of dubious evidence cumulated by the "rediscoverers" rather than the total absence of any proof that would persuade a competent state rare bird records committee.

The Birdchaser weighs in

Here.

Skeptical article at DamnInteresting

Now available here.

Small Chicago Tribune article

A bit more doubt from the mainstream media:

...A kayaker said he spotted one in 2004 in an Arkansas wildlife refuge, a sighting allegedly repeated by two more men, one an author conveniently about to publish a book on the bird.
...
But with no more sightings, doubts are growing as to the credibility of the discovery, and an academic cockfight has begun. "Faith-based ornithology" is what the reputed find was called in an article in the journal The Auk by Jerome A. Jackson, an ivory-bill expert at Florida Gulf Coast University. Jackson says the videoed bird is really a pileated woodpecker. Yale's Richard Prum suggests that the team better turn up more proof in 2006 or they'll have laid a giant egg.

Questioning the Luneau audio

I'm wondering why the fleeing "Ivory-bill" in the Luneau video evidently makes no audible sound.

Other bird sounds are heard loud and clear in the video, including a singing Prothonotary Warbler and lots of calls that may be from Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers. The "Ivory-bill" is supposed to be perched nearby for 20 or more seconds as the canoe approaches (with the trolling motor on), and evidently remains perched momentarily even after Luneau shuts the motor off. No kent calls are heard.

Then the bird flushes at a distance of 20 meters. Remember, Tanner said this (the bold font is mine):

The wing-feathers of Ivory-bills are stiff and hard, thus making their flight noisy. In the initial flight, when the wings are beaten particularly hard, they make quite a loud, wooden, fluttering sound, so much so that I often nicknamed the birds 'wooden-wings'; it is the loudest wing sound I have ever heard from any bird of that size except the grouse.

On Cornell's web site, you can listen to this existing recording of the initial wingbeats of an Ivory-bill flushing from a tree--coincidentally, these wingbeats are at a roughly similar frequency to the initial wingbeats of the Luneau bird. (By the way, note that the Luneau bird's wingbeats appear to quickly slow to less than 8 wingbeats/sec).

If you look at the silent video Cornell offers in their online Luneau video defense, you can see that Robert Henderson (in the front of the canoe) doesn't react as if he's heard any loud wing sound.

I can hear the originial Luneau audio because I shelled out the money for the DVD here. Online, you can hear the Luneau audio somewhat when John Fitzpatrick plays the Luneau DVD about a third of the way through his AOU plenary.

I think Cornell should make the Luneau video AND audio available as part of their online Luneau video defense. I think they should also address the issue of the missing loud wingbeat sound.