I can understand this opinion, and it is not pleasant. In short, personal attacks were made against others, which made it pertinent to discuss the possible reasons, which may have been related to public behaviour (everything discussed about CPBell has been in the public domain, some of it put online by himself).
Well, my reading of this thread is that DR Bell's previous employment issues were raised pretty early on in the debate, whilst he was in fact being rather courteous and other posters were praising him for his openness. I wonder how other members would feel about having their character slandered by strangers online, regardless of whether this info is in the 'public domain'. Someone had to go digging...
They will use a quantitative method (i.e they will count things). Whereas as far as CPBell has given away, he used a qualitative method (i.e. his students made a rough guess of the number without counting). That is quite a serious source of error.
Yes but my broader point here is that you and others are seeking some kind of infallibility from Dr Bell's methods where this does not exist in numerous other studies. My example of bird ringing sites still stands - the habitat codes used by ringers to assign habitat are broad and qualitative (e.g. urban, semi-rural, rural), yet these data are used, to take a hypothetical example, to show that species A is increasing/decreasing in Habitat B. The classification of habitat is a subjective qualitative decision made by the ringer - ringers do not, as far as I am aware, undertake NVC surveys of their ringing sites. My own garden ringing site is in a village, yet the habitat code for 'Rural' states that this means farmed land with scattered buildings: my small village does not fit this description yet neither does it fit 'semi-rural.
Also, you will find very few papers where the author suggests that their answer is the last word on a subject, and the case is now closed. In fact, CPBell's paper does not make this claim either. But on this thread, he IS stretching his conclusions and appears to making a claim of certainty. This is the second major bone of contention for me.
OK, but if AN Other author were to come on this forum and allow 2+ years of every Joe having a pop, do you not think that their position would harden? or would they simply say 'OK, you are a regular contributor to Birdforum, you can clearly measure the 3rd primary length on a dodgy photo and deduce subspecific identification, you clearly know best, fair do's!'. Come on.
As an aside, my point about sparrowhawk vs cats may have been flippant, but if a paper entitled 'Cats responsible for Sparrow declines' had been published, I would bet my last pound that no-one on here would have given it such a mauling and indeed would have sagely nodded their heads and said 'Of course, we knew it all along'. An example, in my line of work I deal with numerous local planning authorities. It is 'received wisdom' that cats kill hazel dormice and therefore any new development site will have to take measures to ensure that cats do not enter dormice habitat (or potential habitat). This usually takes the form of a planning condition requiring certain fencing specs or, I kid you not, a Section 106 agreement preventing homeowners keeping cats. Is this based upon sound scientific evidence? No. The only study on cat predation - 'What the cat brought in' - found that something like 0.003% of catches were dormice. Yet the 'belief' that cats must kill dormice persists (despite them being arboreal for most of the time) and impacts upon interpretation of planning policy.
It is precisely because this paper goes against received 'wisdom' that it is seen as fair game. This attitude colours all subsequent discussion on the matter, until we reach a point whereby the 'true' reason for it being wrong is down to methodology: this may or may not be the case, but I would expect at least a little humility from those against the findings in admitting that the only reason they are so worked up is down to inherent prejudices towards any notion that it is not humans who are responsible for bird declines.
As you were...