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18 comments:
Why do two groups look at the evidence differently?
One group (the skeptics) are birders.
The other group (the believers) are not.
(I generalize, but I think this is mostly true).
The hard-core birders I talk to are not at all convinced by the evidence. They totally understand the details required to get a record accepted. The believers have no concept of this or reject it, because they can't abide by the judgement of others. "It's my list."
Of course, I'll say it again, I am generalizing, but I think this will hold up.
….and I'm looking at the same data they are, but, looking at it stripped of many of their ever-present human preconceptions.
Cool… since Cyberthrush claims to be a primate but now apparently non-Homo, is he/she evidence that Bigfoot has computer access? Or is he/she admitting to being of alien origin? Either way, I appreciate and value the insights offered by non-human occupants of this planet.
To summarise cybethrush's "perspective", non-believers are either arrogant or stupid or both.
I don't agree.
ibwo-agnostic has a better explanation for two opposite views of the same evidence.
Well, I know Cyberthrush personally, and he is a very competent, and avid, birder. That does not mean I agree with him on everything--I'm certainly in the "agnostic" camp, and he thinks all this recent hoopla is convincing.
He rants a bit on his blog, but heck, that is what blogs are for! The format of a blog is basically "rant and response".
So the theory goes....
You certainly can't have all kinds of audio evidence and not have a photo? I think a lot of people have hung their hopes on the following logic: The bird, once it spots humans, flies straight away... it never doubles back.
That behavior is never observed in birds. The believer says: ahhh you just spotted a nomadic bird, why wouldn't it keep moving?
The skeptic adds, when it does double back, it's proven to be a Pileated. Many believers are birders, I don't buy the unnuanced
analysis on that. It's not the bird, it's the people seeing the bird that we either believe or do not, or worse, they are up to no good and gobbling up funds on some wild shark hunt. Visual id is either right or wrong. And when the protagonists leave a sloppy trail, that's ripe hunting grounds for the skeptic. And it does seem silly to talk about woodpecker holes and single-note kent calls.
Come on, a Pileated is almost as big as an IBWO, why wouldn't it make a big hole at times?
When they do that it either confirms your worst suspicions about the major players, or it doesn't confirm them. I hear a lot of good arguments for skepticism, and then I hear thinly-veiled "balderdash", that gut-level repudiation. I don't smoke from the TB pipe but to be a true agnostic means you barely care anymore. It's a study of humans at this point, the bird is either population <= 12 or extinct.
I can hear it already, what's in his pipe?
Paul in snowy New York
The format of a blog is basically "rant and response"
Yes, but Cyberthrush does not allow response. Oh....he pretends to. But look at the number of comments that he gets. He does not allow through any that question his view.
I don't care except that it makes for a boring blog. One time, he went away for the weekend and had 120+ comments. It was great! Even his faithful believers were coming around to the fact that CLO's evidence wasn't very good.
Then Cyberthrush came back on Monday and he was horrified. 120+ comments....many of which questioned the existence of the IBWO....he couldn't take it.
Ever since, he has edited his commenters. Lack of commenters is the death of a blog. IT'S BORING!
cyber said... So there is much too much I'm unwilling to presume to know...
Like what IBWO feeding sign actually looks like?
Like whether or not PIWO can produce the feeding sign they've been finding?
Like the maximum size hole a PIWO can make?
Like the ID of the Florida calls?
Like the ID of the Florida "double raps"?
Like what a PIWO can look like in flight?
Hmmmm. Sounds like there isn't much left. So cyber, just why do you believe? Because of a handful of very brief sight reports? This is a serious question. I'd love to know.
There are several types of "believers." The first are the pros who probably don't believe what they are saying and know the IBWO is extinct but justify their behavior because of $$$, fame or a misguided notion of environmentalism.
The second type of believer is just plain uninformed, or stupid, or gullible, or a combination of all three. These people are "born every minute," as someone famously observed many years ago.
The last type are the folks who SHOULD know better but won't let go of the IBWO myth simply because the belief in the myth makes them happy. They simply are not comfortable in a world where the possibility of a living IBWO does not exist, so they rebuke anybody who claims the bird is extinct.
Cyberthrush knows which group he falls into.
"The format of a blog is basically "rant and response"."
Or in the case of Cyberthrush, rant and no response as he does not allow critical comments.
I wish Cyberthrush, or better yet the CLO, Nature Conservancy, the Auburn team, Science, etc., had the guts to post well-written and polite but critical comments on their websites.
Note that the Cornell websites provide links to diverse believer websites, even the patently absurd and trivial, but rarely if ever have provided links to its critics, no matter how responsible and important, unless they have to (e.g., the Sibley response because it was in Science).
Those engaging in responsible public discourse should encourage rather than suppress critical debate.
"One group (the skeptics) are birders."
are good birders interested in a high level of rational discourse, not in being "nice" for its own sake
"The other group (the believers) are not."
are dude birders or stringers and irrational mystics squelching dissenting views and claiming to be "nice", the last recourse of scoundrels in science IMHO, when reason and evidence fail them
"to be a true agnostic means you barely care anymore"
Don't care about what? And what about us true atheists?
The last type are the folks who SHOULD know better but won't let go of the IBWO myth simply because the belief in the myth makes them happy.
There goes Amy again ... Insinuating that the IBWO is a 'MYTH' ... She always seems to lump the Bigfoot, Nessy, Unicorn, Tinkerbell theory in with a bonifide actual living creature that once (and maybe still is) flying on this good earth ... You, Amy, must have an 'invested interest' in the 'believe it or not' franchize to keep tooting your horn about that which isn't real ... The IBWO IS (was) real, Amy. Go to a museum of natural history and see for yourself ... Give the 'Bigfoot' thing a rest ...
There goes Amy again ... Insinuating that the IBWO is a 'MYTH'
A living IBWO is a myth. It is an extinct bird. Care to bet otherwise? $1000 bucks to you if the bird is alive as of August this year. Let me know what odds are acceptable to you. How much are you going to pony up? How confident are you that this giant woodpecker is hiding from thousands of searchers for more than half a century?
Go ahead. Put your money where you mouth is. Please.
Now for the undiluted bad news: the bird is extinct. I am right. You are wrong. You may never believe that I am right, but that doesn't change the fact that I am right and will remain right forever and ever and ever. Meanwhile, you will be wrong until you come to your senses.
... She always seems to lump the Bigfoot, Nessy, Unicorn, Tinkerbell theory in with a bonifide actual living creature that once (and maybe still is) flying on this good earth
Maybe the dodo is still walking the earth. And the Great Auk. And the Elephant Bird. Maybe brontosaurus too. Maybe they're just really "elusive." Right? Isn't that the "logic" at work here?
Go to a museum of natural history and see for yourself
Why not educate yourself and visit the Bigfoot Museum?
http://www.bigfootmuseum.com/
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/February/07/local/stories/02local.htm
http://www.bigfootdiscoveryproject.com/
While you're at it, read a couple books on fraud, scams and self-delusion.
I don't think that the IBWO was spotted in Arkansas at all. Not after all the evidence surfaced.
I was hoping that the Florida sightings would bear fruit but so far it doesn't look promising either.
But I can't beleive that the other sightings over the past decade could all be erroneous. Maybe this was the last gasp for these birds?
Sadly if by some miracle one or two are verified, we could only watch as they finally fade into oblivion.
I for one would not want to witness that. I think the prudent thing to do would be to end this whole affair after this season and leave well enough alone.
If it was meant to be... it will be.
I can't beleive that the other sightings over the past decade could all be erroneous.
Why not?
Why can't "the other sightings" all be ascribed to the same human flaws which are so plainly evident in the more recent sightings?
What could possibly be so controversial or improbable about hundreds of people making eyewitness claims about separately observed events which turn out to be erroneous and based on the power of suggestion and/or wishful thinking?
"Why can't "the other sightings" all be ascribed to the same human flaws which are so plainly evident in the more recent sightings?"
I think that well may be the case for all the recent sightings post the CLO debacle.
The Kullivan sighting in 1999 always intrigued me though.It was clear,at close range,of long duration, and unambiguous. You can say it was all fabricated, but for what purpose?
The Collins' sightings initially had me hopeful but I've since ruled out it's validity because of the lack of additional hard evidence.Videos if they have to be doctored and enhanced to show detail are basically useless in this case especially if after all that manipulation they are still ambiguous.LOL
The current round of sightings by Auburn are not IMHO worth any mention and the recordings just don't make any sense.
I think all the reports we're hearing about now can be attributed to hysteria.
What's sad is the way this whole thing is impacting science and our regard for it. It's a little like amateur night in high school.
The Kullivan sighting in 1999 always intrigued me though.It was clear,at close range,of long duration, and unambiguous.
News flash: the Kullivan "sighting" (whatever the heck that is) was no less bogus than any other "sightings" post-1950.
The bird has been extinct a long time. A "sighting" doesn't change anything, unless that "sighting" occurs in the presence of dozens of unrelated people who are very well-informed about the natural variations in the appearance of pileated woodpeckers, and that "sighting" is repeated by a second unrelated group of observers who actually know how to operate a camera.
Anything short of that is just more manure on the pile and that has been the case for a long long long time.
Imagine if I truck myself down to some Arkansas swamp tomorrow and then I come back with some story about my "unambiguous" "long duration" sighting of an IBWO, complete with drawings, all distinguishing features accounted for, I heard the double-knocks, etc. I've got it all written down in my "birding diary" or whatever.
Does that change a darn thing?
Does it matter if my story is "intriguing"? Does it matter if I'm the world's expert on pileateds?
Nope. I might as well have claimed to have seen a sabre toothed tiger. My diary is evidence of nothing except my ability to use a pencil.
Kullivan:
Here are our choices...
1. He got the best look at a pair of IBWOs for 60+ years. He knew exactly what they were and the significance of said sighting. After watching them for several minutes he STILL didn't try to use his camera to get a photo for fear of spooking them.
2. After returning from a turkey hunt on April 1, 1999 (April Fool's Day) Kullivan, for an April Fool's joke, told people he had seen IBWOs. It started out as a joke and got out of hand.
3. He saw an aberrant Pileated(s) and simply "filled in the blanks" on the other field marks in his own mind.
4. He flat out lied for the glory of claiming he had seen what most considered an extinct bird.
5. He saw some cool big woodpeckers and when he got back looked in a bird book. Holy smokes, IBWOs!!! (thousands of people have honestly but incorrectly IDed Pileateds as IBWOs this way since Cornell's announcement. They later became certain of seeing field marks they simply didn't see.)
Over 200 innocent people confessed to the Lindberg baby kidnapping, even though they knew they could be executed for the crime.
Every single sighting in the last 60 years that could be proven one way or another to be IBWO/Pileated has proven to be a Pileated.
You forgot:
6) Kullivan knew that his favorite turkey hunting spot was slated for clearcutting, and he wanted to be sure it didn't happen, so he came up with a conservation tactic that might save it. Hmmmmm, now what would be the biggest attention grabber?
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