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Over on FB, Chris Sharpe links to this recent journal article focusing on government expenditures toward the IBWO (often a bone of contention):
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ibi.13144
A common issue in IBWO debates is how much money has been spent on the IBWO that could have gone toward the benefit of other, less-debated species. The authors argue, perhaps a bit simplistically, that “continued expenditure of resources on the species are all exacerbated by prestige and affiliation bias;” i.e., and really to no surprise, the expertise and academic affiliations of a few of the players in this saga have unduly influenced the continuation of the debate (a sort of 'appeal to authority' fallacy), notably within the USFWS (the authors believe the IBWO should be declared extinct). One could almost look through the other end of the prism to say that the reason the IBWO debate is NOT taken seriously by so many is simply because the bulk of IBWO proponents LACK the expertise or academic affiliation which is often considered fundamental — i.e., a lot of noise from a bunch of rank-amateurs (it would be argued) — and that too is a bias of sorts (against those who may actually have excellent bird-identification skills, but have not written books, academic papers, lack PhDs. or academic affiliations, or other name-recognition, etc.).
I suppose the authors are attempting to explain, for those still baffled by it, why this whole debate continues on, but to fault "prestige" in "scientific discourse" seems a bit ill-guided as it is a natural (even logical) "bias" common to most scientific endeavors.
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