Bird Watcher's Digest has published John Acorn's review of The Grail Bird
here (the bold font is mine):
...Yet careful analysis of the footage resulted in a paper in the prestigious journal Science, placing the stamp of academic approval on the rediscovery. (Although I have to remind you, here, that Science's biggest competitor, Nature, published a great-looking photograph and scientific description of the Loch Ness monster back in the 1970s.)
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And what about Gallagher's frequent analogy between the ivorybill and Bigfoot? Let's face it, if this were Bigfoot, there is no way that anyone at Cornell University would have accepted the measly evidence, and no way that we would be seeing a major conservation effort to save the species. Gallagher's stories tell of grueling interrogations by skeptics, and the successful sightings that passed these tests, but the book never mentions the fallibility of human perception and memory.
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...But a manager with the National Wildlife Refuge system told me that from their perspective the big mystery is why so few birders have come to Arkansas up to now. Perhaps we all have our doubts.
For me, the rediscovery of the ivorybill has been an emotional ordeal. I find the story of its decline dark and depressing. On the other hand, I find Gallagher's take on the rediscovery elating, but only if I don't think about it too terribly much.
After the end of the review, this information about Acorn is provided:
John Acorn is a biologist, writer, broadcaster, and university lecturer living in Alberta, Canada. He is best known as the host of the television series Acorn: The Nature Nut.
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8 comments:
Perhaps Loch Ness fans should hire the birdforum 'scientists' - they have convinced themselves a video of a woodpecker that doesn't show a white trailing dege in flight is an Ivory-bill.
Can't imagine you've actually read that thread very closely if you haven't noticed the rather wide ranging discussion about what the video does and doesn't show, if the white is or is not there, what color the bird's crest is, etc., or the fact that non-trolling skeptics are being treaded respectfully and politely.
"non-trolling skeptics are being treaded respectfully and politely."
Until they're banned. You are allowed to be a skeptic on pieces of evidence; as long as you make it clear you believe the bird survives. People who persist in their skepticism are eventually branded as TROLLS (usually capitalized. Not to be confused with at least one genuine troll who has appeared there recently.)
The thread "Debate: Evidence for the Survival of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker", once one of the most popular threads on Birdforum, was effectively shut down as Birdforum moderators banned skeptics without explanation. Then they changed the name of the thread to "Evidence for the Survival of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker". A rather different connotation, don't you think?
Here's a quote from that thread from a "middle-of-the-roader" just before the thread melted away:
If you go to the "updates" thread you will surely get the majority view about the IBWs but you wont get a balanced view. All questions about WHETHER the IBWOs survive or not were diverted [by Birdforum Moderators] to this thread here. And if you have read 17 pages you can see that any expression of doubt (even here) is met with aggressive messages (if you're lucky) and personal attacks (if you're not).
The (quite wrong) assumption seems to be that if you don't believe the evidence, or if you point out problems with the evidence then you must WANT IBWOs to be extinct. This is quite ridiculous and if I hadn't read it I would not believe such attitudes existed.
Well the present discussion is remaining mostly civil, even with opinions ranging from "it's the bird no doubt" to "I don't see or hear anything useful in all this" being layed out. No one has been banned, not even the self-identified "troll." I think there's probably been more honest scruitiny of that new report in a few days than the Cornell data got in their first few months after release. I'm not going to fault someone who says "It's too flimsy, nothing meaningful can be gotten from it" so long as they have actually looked at it and reviewed the analyses they are disagreeing with. Indisputable facts: the video images are blurry and tiny, the audio does not sound like any known Ivorybill recordings, the sightings are all by the same person who was alone in every case. That's quite a mountain to be up against. Whether that constitutes the "end of story" or the "beginning of a challenge" appears to be a matter of personal judgement on which people will inevitably disagree.
Yesterday, they were talking about which journal to publish the record in. Now I see there is a range of opinions on how certain they are that it IS one.
I just don't understand how you can look at the video and think it could be an Ivory-bill. It seriously undermines the credibilty of these guys.
Or maybe it seriously undermines your credibility as someone who can look beyond superficial first impressions. The name calling game can work both ways, and isn't helpful either way.
"Yesterday, they were talking about which journal to publish the record in. Now I see there is a range of opinions on how certain they are that it IS one."
That is called a discussion, where people are not entrenched as either "skeptics" or "believers," but actually consider each others observations and ideas, and modify their own opinions and ideas after doing so. It's the way most reports of rare birds are evaluated. It's the way most progress in understanding of the natural world takes place.
But initially they seemed to all be agreeing that it was one. I accept that is not the case now.
For me the bird is clearly not a IBWO, so what am I supposed to do? Say I think it could be an IBWO?
What if the bird is extinct? This situation (PIWO being mistaken for IBWO) could go on and on until eventually the bird is declared extinct.
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