Certainty and doubt (1 Viewer)

Like with large raptors: people misidentify cetaceans, because they are unidentifiable. All what is visible is usually a bit of back, animal is distant, seen in poor conditions, for a short time, distinguishing characters are of quantity (size, shape, behavior) not quality (e.g. white wingbar/no white wingbar as in many birds), and there are few opportunities to get experience and practice.

There are two good ways to stop making mistakes: get photo evidence (I recently got surprisingly good results with making short films on a smartphone while watching through bins at the same time) or go birding (whaling? cetaceing?) with more experienced people and learn from them.

jurek said:

or go birding (whaling? cetaceing?) with more experienced people and learn from them.

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Whale-watching or cetacean-spotting if you like. :t:

Whaling is a big no-no! :eek!:

John

Farnboro John said:

Whaling is a big no-no! :eek!:

John

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That was kind of done to death in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, yes ...

RyanI said:

For me one of the big things to stop making a mistake is knowing when to let a bird go. Too many sightings i hear about in recent years in my area involve brief views, start off as possibles, end up as definite without seeing the bird again and the descriptions normally reflect this and end up rejected (sorry, not proven). This is not necessarily down to experience, too often you hear the same old excuses 'I've been birding 40 years', 'the committee has an agenda against me' etc but what it really boils down to is people have to be honest with themselves......

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None of the above would fit with the definition of a mistake or error. Not believing someone's sighting, even if you are right in the belief that the system of thinking they used to reach an ID is flawed, is not the same as assessing data in error. The data has to exist for someone to reach the right conclusion, in order for the error to exist. I.e, two people/groups assessing a photograph or numerical set and reaching different, conflicting conclusions.

Owen

Thanks very much for all of the input here folks - much appreciated, and I have plenty to be going on with.