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22 comments:
Oh, Cyberthrush.
He's an unusual specimen. Few people in the debate try so hard to justify their faith by shoddy science and weak logic.
Supposedly relocating the Ivory-billed woodpecker after 60 years is the very definition of extraordinary. To argue otherwise is a perfect example of rejecting reality and trying to replace it with a whole new reality. By the way Cyberthrush, there's a photo, an actual photo where you can ID the bird, of a young IBWO sitting on someone's shoulder back when the bird actually existed.
Your "proof" rant is equally silly and pointless. What you really mean is the IBWO shouldn't require solid evidence for people to accept its existence. There is solid "proof" of the existence of hundreds of rare birds. They get caught in mist nets. There are good photos. Sibley’s standard (as well as this blog’s) of “repeated sightings by independent observers of birds really well seen” is met over and over. We all know what proof means in the real world and we don't have it with the IBWO, so just suck it up and admit it. Save your "it depends on what the definition of 'is' is" type arguments because you're not going to convince anyone else but true believers.
And, forgive me, but you’re not going to gain much ground with your rants of "boo-hoo you don't believe in the bird and so it will die and when the Great Pumpkin shows up I'm not going to share any of my candy..."
Show me the bird. When you do you can gloat, but not before. Save the wildlands, yes. There are thousands of real species there worth protecting. If, by a miracle (and it would take a miracle) the bird lives, great. Unfortunately the IBWO is literally deader than the dodo and exists only in the fevered imaginations of the True Believers.
Uh, if Cyberthrush can't determine if Tanner or the earth actually exist, then he's in an alternative universe that will make it impossible to have a meaningful dialogue with.
While I won't call him a crack pot, I think a crack pipe has to figure into his thinking somewhere.
To sum up cyber's rants:
1) Claiming you saw an Ivory-billed, a bird not suitably documnented for 60 years, isn't extraordinary.
2) There is no such thing as proof in science. The crap they have is every bit as good as killer video of birds from a known location that can be refound.
3) If they can't find the bird, it's the fault of people who don't believe the bird is still alive because they discouraged so many people from looking for it.
It sounds like a man who is watching the clock tick down on his assertions with little coming out to back them up. It sounds like a man desperately trying to move the goalposts much closer so he can declare success when the previous definition of success remains unmet. It sounds like a man who is trying to place the blame of failure elsewhere.
This sounds like the voice of panic.
Cyberthrush thoughtfully included more than enough gratuitous ALL CAPS, italics, and exclamation points to PROVE that he is indeed a panicked crackpot!!!
Oy.
But if the photo comes and the party follows, of course I'll be delighted for those who did something positive along the way, had true patience and determination, kept the faith, moved things along, stayed focussed on the science of it all, did the difficult hands-on fieldwork, and realized the importance of the effort being made. In that event, I hope the select mocking cynics that I'm addressing, will puhhh-leeeze stay home
Yeah, I'll be rending my garments and, uh, gnashing my teeth ...
There is no such thing as proof in science.
Yeah, I've seen creationism peddlers bring this up to establish a post-modern baseline of "science is just politics." That way, everybody can play. You don't need a reasoning brain for that game, just a big mouth.
There is "such a thing as proof" in science and scientists even refer to this thing as ... "proof." Search the PubMed database for "prove" (and its variants) and see how many hits are retrieved. Why, even scientists at Cornell use the term ...
Well here is about the only thing left I have to stand on: All the places where Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers used to be were logged because they were easy places to drag logs out of. What was left was impenetrable wet swamps and so much harder to walk than the terrain where IBWO's used to live.
But that is a bit of a stretch because there are hospitable forests presumably where IBWOs can wander, and of course the cross rivers and creeks which would give you a really long look. Like the
looks I've had a Pileateds crossing the interstate.
On the minus side is the best argument I've heard in awhile:
In the late 19th Century hundreds of IBWOs were killed by trophy hunters. They really didn't have a lot of trouble finding and shooting these birds without ARUs and probably without binoculars,
playback, aerial surveys or even
gore-tex. I tire of the double-knocks and bark peelings. Please visit the Northeast, the Catskills are beautiful in summer and lots of neotropical nesters. There you can see bark shagged off recently dead trees around every corner.
Paul in the Shawangunk Mtns.
Paul,
"What was left was impenetrable wet swamps and so much harder to walk than the terrain where IBWO's used to live."
This is a nice try... but many (most?) of these swamp forests were actually removed *by river* not by road. The logs were floated out by raft. The wetter, the better.
I live in the Deep South, but I am a transplant from the North (and a pretty developed part of the North, I might add). Amazingly, one of the things I miss about the North is that there is so little "apparently unaltered" habitat up there. Of course, many places were clearcut and are now second-generation forests. Chestnuts, elms, and (now) hemlocks are dying out, leaving a very different forest from what was present there in the 1800s. But it's far more "wild" than the dismal second-growth scraggly-trunked hardwood forests, the heavily channelized bottomlands, the virtually non-existant pine savannas (vs. the continuously-logged, choked with understory, and too-densely wooded pine plantations that have replaced them), and the strip-malls that are about 80% of the Gulf Coast habitats you see here now. There are no "mystical bayous" or "impenetrable bottomland forests" here any more, only in the minds of the romantics. They were very diligently removed between the Civil War and WWII. The South has perhaps the most plundered ecosystem in the continental USA. Period. Only the prairies of the Midwest could pose as a serious competitor.
Everyone must get it through their heads that the "wilderness" of the South no longer exists. If you don't believe me, look at the South on GoogleEarth. Go ahead... look. I'll wait... You'll be amazed by how little unaltered habitat there is. Instead, there are logging roads, canals, housing developments, and strip malls everywhere. It's kinda depressing for this Yank. Even the forest patches around the New York metro area were more impressive than what's left here!
Getting off my soapbox and wiping my eyes,
My Two Cents
But if the photo comes and the party follows, of course I'll be delighted for those who did something positive along the way, had true patience and determination, kept the faith, moved things along, stayed focussed on the science of it all, did the difficult hands-on fieldwork, and realized the importance of the effort being made.
"If" the photo comes? IF? Sounds like cyberthrush is choking on doubt.
I really like the term "stayed focussed on the science of it all". He just doesn't get it. The problem all along has been the LACK of science of it all. Let's recap:
- The video is a Pileated
- Fishcrow's videos might be woodpeckers
- Every supposed photo is useless
- No kent calls match known Ivory-billed calls by sonogram
- Every pair of sharp sounds recorded are called double-knocks
- Sightings are always brief and almost always missing most (sometimes all) field marks
- Thousands (tens of thousands?) of man hours have failed to produce one picture or one prolonged sighting by an experienced individual
- Thousands (tens of thousands?) of audio have failed to produce a single stream of calls, rather than just single calls
- Scaling data is held up as evidence with absolutely no baseline
Am I missing anything? Probably.
Those of us who are skeptical but not atheist are all for science. We'd love to see some real science, but the stuff being tossed out to us as evidence is junk that has more holes in it than the entire Choctawhatchee forest.
2:25 anon: nice recap!
I'm sitting on the fence but I'm facing the gutsy searchers and cheering them on--and my back is toward you hopeless, gutless bunch of cynical skeptics. Long live the pecker!
I'm sitting on the fence but I'm facing the gutsy searchers and cheering them on--and my back is toward you hopeless, gutless bunch of cynical skeptics. Long live the pecker!
Anon, you may not have your categories quite right here. Some of us who may appear to be your cynics were at one time searchers ourselves. Some of us for many years. We had hope. We just didn't find any IBWOs.
As to guts, I would like to see the institutions involved in the organized searches develop enough of those to admit they have made mistakes.
facing the gutsy searchers
What in the world is "gutsy" about perpetrating fraud, taking money from the naive and distracting individuals and agencies from the real conservation issues in this country?
But sure just keep cheering on the searchers. You likely can't think of anything better to do.
Amy, your PubMed citations notwithstanding, you really oughta delve into Karl Popper, figure out what he has to say about falsification, and ask yourself again, "Do scientists prove anything?"
Amy, your PubMed citations notwithstanding, you really oughta delve into Karl Popper, figure out what he has to say about falsification, and ask yourself again, "Do scientists prove anything?"
The falsifiability criterion is just one view of what science is. Whether you accept it or not depends on how big a pinch of salt you take with your Popper
I always find it amazing that Popper will get on an airplane. His philosophy would seem to make the thing impossible to fly.
"Amy, your PubMed citations notwithstanding, you really oughta delve into Karl Popper, figure out what he has to say about falsification, and ask yourself again, "Do scientists prove anything?"
Many skeptics have PubMed citations and have read Popper too, as well as those who have misappropriated his philosophy, so don't think you can fool or impress us by invoking him. The uncorroborated hypothesis that IBWOs persist may not have been proven wrong in a technical sense, but it certainly has been shown to be wrong for all practical purposes.
The problem with you TBs from a Popperian perspective is, in part, that you are insufficiently critical in your assessment of evidence as you do so with reference to inappropriate, superfluous, and misleading background knowledge (assumptions) while attempting to confirm (verify) a preferred outcome. TB's are attempting to concoct proof by compiling an array of unrelated, misinterpreted, and ambiguous evidence dependent on dubious background knowledge. This is exactly the kind of verificationist research that Popper abhorred.
It is very easy to satisfy even the most hardcore skeptics. All we ask is that TBs provide the type of documentation provided routinely for all truly extant North American birds. We merely request that the IBWO be documented with the same rigor as is required for any other significant bird record by any credible bird records committee (like those in England; obviously not including the Arkansas BRC!).
You guys take yourselves too seriously. I took exception to the use of "prove" and pointed to Popper, whose view of science many of us subscribe to. Who said anything about me being a believer?
Anon 11:44: Don't worry. I wasn't intending to condemn you as a TB. My comments were really aimed at any lurking CLO scientists and other serious TBs. For some reason I still have some vestigal faith that a few of them might eventually be swayed by reasoned argument, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Why bring up the nature of proof in science and mention Popper if you didn't intend to provoke serious commentary?
Amy, your PubMed citations notwithstanding, you really oughta delve into Karl Popper, figure out what he has to say about falsification, and ask yourself again, "Do scientists prove anything?"
I'm aware of Karl Popper's ideas about falsification and the difficulties of "proving" certain things to a mathematical certainty using the scientific method.
Nevertheless, scientists do prove things all the time. Every day. The things that they prove, however, usually are not particularly to most people, or most scientists.
The only time people really care about scientific "proof" is when there is prestige, money, or religion involved.
To "prove" a hypothesis assumes that you have considered ALL plausible alternatives and ALL possible experiments that could falsify it. Splitting hairs here, but this perspective gives us a reality check for our confidence, something both believers and skeptics should bear in mind.
My hypothesis that the IBWO has been extinct for decades is very easily falsifiable. All it takes is for credible observers to post details of their sightings including photos and/or video on the internet. This could be accomplished literally within minutes or at most a few hours after a sighting.
The TB's hypothesis that the IBWO persists cannot be so easily falsified, if at all. They expend great effort to protect their favored hypothesis from severe tests and instead seek to verify their hypothesis, i.e., to prove it through induction. They also consistently embrace gratuitous technology and pseudostatistics. Furthermore, they make strenuous efforts to dismiss potential falsifiers, and do so without adequate justification. Thus the TB's are doing precisely what Popper sought to avoid. If they are doing science at all it is clearly very bad science from a Popperian perspective.
Popper's great contribution was to distinguish hypotheses subject to well-defined tests (good science) from hypotheses that are protected from severe tests (bad or non science). In the case of the IBWO, the TB's protect their hypothesis by constructing an elaborate, superficially-impressive apparatus of superfluous, ad hoc background knowledge, including absurd assumptions about bark adhesion and theories of drastic changes in IBWO behavior and habitat preference as a result of uniquely rapid evolution.
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