Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Chuck Hagner's off to the AOU meeting

Here.

Note that some IBWO-related abstracts for Saturday, August 11 were previously posted here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Until we hold a clear image in our hands, any attempt to study Ivory-bills will be meaningless.


Every once in a while Hillcrow gets it right.

Of course, this begs the question: didn't Hill already engage in attempts to study the ivory-bill without a clear image in his hand?

Anonymous said...

"Until we hold a clear image in our hands, any attempt to study Ivory-bills will be meaningless."

In other words:

"I've been engaged in meaningless studies."

or

"It's difficult to study birds that we can't actually find to study."

Actually, they have lots of clear images in their hands, it's just that the images depict Pileated Woodpeckers. And, the studies actually haven't been meaningless, they've been instrumental in demonstrating that "Ivory-bills" are probably still as extinct as they were prior to 4/1/99.

Anonymous said...

"We will also present a video taken in May 2006 of a bird that has plumage features consistent with Ivory-billed Woodpecker."

As I understand it, multiple attempts have been made to enhance their videos but they reveal nothing. Why is Hill not showing videos of animals seen using all of those "interesting" cavities?

I cannot believe that any professional society would allow the pseudo-science of this and the Rolek abstract to continue and to appear at their meetings. Sad statement about the state of peer review in this area of biology.

Anonymous said...

"I cannot believe that any professional society would allow the pseudo-science of this and the Rolek abstract to continue and to appear at their meetings. Sad statement about the state of peer review in this area of biology."

We've seen the AOU's cop-out excuses about why they aren't overly selective in weeding out garbage talks. I'm wondering where they would draw the line? If I submitted an abstract titled "Rediscovery of the Carolina Parakeet" would they allow it? Passenger Pigeon? How about "Discovery of a new population of California Condors in the Ozarks"?