Hill interview--quotes and comments
There is an interesting interview with Geoff Hill
here (an Oxford University Press blog).
Some choice quotes:
- We haven’t proven that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers exist in Florida.
- If we go a couple more years without proof that at least one Ivory-billed Woodpecker still lives in North America, I think that claims of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers will lose all veracity....Arguments for preserving forested wetlands for ivorybill habitat will no longer be taken seriously. I wouldn’t call this backlash. I would call it a reasonable response to the failure of the academic and bird watching communities to prove the existence of a vertebrate species.
- I can’t provide any technical comments on the Luneau video. It basically comes down to whether you see a white trailing edge on a black wing. Some see it. Some don’t. I see it some days. Some days I don’t.
- In my opinion the Cornell group made one honest mistake—they convinced themselves that the Luneau video constituted definitive evidence for a living Ivory-billed Woodpecker and they published it as such....The assertion by the authors of the Science paper that the bird in the video is an Ivory-billed Woodpecker has not been proven wrong. What has been proven wrong is that the video constitutes indisputable evidence.
- The thing that I feel is most damning to the Arkansas evidence, and now to our claim of ivorybills in Florida, is the failure of large organized searches to obtain a clear photo or video of the bird. I think skeptics can reasonably point to that failure as evidence that ivorybills no longer exist.
- (But later he says) My best day was January 21, 2006, the day I got a clear look at an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
Gosh, he got a clear look at an Ivory-bill, but he's not sure they exist, or has not proven they exist, or admits they may be extinct. I cannot quite follow the logic.
Likewise, I cannot follow his logic that the assertion that the Luneau video shows an Ivory-bill has
not been proven wrong, but that the assertion that it "constitutes indisputable evidence"
has been proven wrong. I guess it depends on what your definitions of
proven and
wrong are. (Where have I heard that before?) So I take a blurry photo of a black-and-white duck on the Atlantic coast and claim it is a Labrador Duck. Others disagree, pointing out it could be, for instance, an Oldsquaw.
I'm not wrong--my assertion that the evidence is indisputable is wrong. Yeah right.
He actually sounds rather skeptical. (I'm no psychologist, but this reminds me of somebody with a major case of
Cognitive dissonance.)
I guess his skepticism is good, on the balance--every scientist should be skeptical of their own data, at least at some point. At what point, however, is it irresponsible to publish data of which you, yourself, are skeptical, and which you know will have important policy implications? I guess it is not irresponsible if you really need a grant. (He says:
Without funding we couldn’t continue to search, so our choice was either to bury our evidence or come forward. ) OK, with that inspirational thought, I'm off to write some grant proposals!