I'm told that an article called "Gambling on a Ghost Bird" will be published in this week's
Science.
The article will evidently be available
here after 5pm EDT today.
Update: Ok, I just forked over my $10 for this article.
Some excerpts:
To many critics, this is a story of good intentions gone awry and the power of belief, amplified by secrecy. A top-notch team of scientists was misled by hope, it seems to them, and buoyed by confidence that more searching would bring the definitive photo. Fitzpatrick and his colleagues reject those explanations, defend their objectivity, and say they have no doubts or regrets. Now, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) begins to assess the efficacy of the searches it funds, most birders and ornithologists seem resigned that even if an ivorybill was in Arkansas in 2004, the chance to save the species is past. "I want to hope against all odds," says James Bednarz of Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. "But my scientific logic says it's deep in the vortex of extinction."
...
But Fitzpatrick decided to press ahead, having great confidence in Gallagher's sighting. "I have to put my faith in those people able to separate fact from fiction," he says. He was also convinced that if he didn't act, the bird would truly go extinct. There had been no previous exhaustive searches, he points out. Cornell had the tip, the resources, and the gumption. "Nobody else had the balls to do it," Fitzpatrick says.
He insisted on secrecy--a decision that would later bring the team criticism for being insular and insufficiently skeptical. Fitzpatrick feared that if word of the search got out, "the place would become Coney Island with birders piling in all over the place." Ultimately, some two dozen police officers were ready to protect the habitat after the announcement, but there was no onslaught...
...
By February 2005, Fitzpatrick recalls, he realized that "we need to begin to act as though the Luneau video plus sightings plus sound is going to be enough."
...
Not long after The New York Times reported the existence of the skeptical but not-yet-published paper, Jackson says, [science adviser to Secretary Gale Norton, and former assistant director of the Lab of Ornithology James] Tate called Jackson on a Saturday night and told him to "back off." Tate denies that and says he just wanted to discuss Jackson's criticisms. "My concern was that the skeptics would destroy our opportunity, destroy that second chance to get the biological information of what the birds needed," Tate says.
...
...The recordings convinced co-authors Richard Prum of Yale University and Robbins that at least two ivorybills were living in the Big Woods. They withdrew the paper on 1 August, saying they didn't want to undermine conservation efforts. (In retrospect, now that it's clear the recordings are not solid evidence, they regret the move. "I blinked," Prum says.)
...
After another round of rebuttals commenced, Fitzpatrick confronted Jackson during an August 2006 meeting in South Carolina and asked him not to publish. Jackson recalls Fitzpatrick heatedly telling him, "You are going to be independently responsible for the extinction of the ivory-billed woodpecker because you are preventing me from raising money for conservation." Shortly thereafter, Fitzpatrick contacted Jackson again and offered co-authorship on a future paper if Jackson would pull his letter. "That's not how I operate," Jackson told him. Fitzpatrick says he wanted to focus on the bird and avoid another unproductive exchange: "It was not my desire to prolong and underscore resentments and personal disagreements."
...
Fitzpatrick rejects the charge of groupthink, insisting that the team was as objective as any scientists could be. Both Fitzpatrick and Science's Kennedy defend the decision to publish, noting that the paper was vetted by peer reviewers. "We got more than satisfactorily positive reviews," says Kennedy, who adds that he wasn't fazed by the lack of a clear video. "I thought that it was very important, even if there was some possibility that this might be wrong."
...
Fitzpatrick anticipates another year or two of searching at most. "It's just too expensive," he says, noting that it's become harder to raise money. Even if the team quits emptyhanded, Lammertink says, it will be difficult to prove the bird is not there. "It may always remain a question mark."
Whether that uncertainty will haunt Cornell remains to be seen. "In some people's minds, the failure to find better evidence in the last couple of years has not been good for the reputation of the Lab of Ornithology," says Russell Charif of Cornell. That specter doesn't worry Fitzpatrick. "I move with the actions that I deem appropriate for the possibility that the birds are there," he says. "And I don't look back."
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