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I currently have a lot of IBWO dribs and drabs on paper I might write posts about (or just skip), but today a couple of folks emailed me about the Ivorybill eBird report in south Texas, which I was already aware of, and for which I see no credibility to speak of, so no I won’t be addressing that here (unless of course something were to change). But it did get me thinking more about something I’d already been pondering. For years now, with so much Ivorybill publicity, IBWO reports from non- or inexperienced birders, average folks/everyday-people, have been regularly popping up in social media and internet forums (some are recent and some from years past) — they are almost always weak, poor, undetailed, and essentially lacking in credibility. Almost always these reports can be shown to be a non-IBWO species, or at the very least can’t be verified as IBWO… so why do folks continually glob onto these shallow claims with so much hope and interest, despite the odds against them (I’m leaving out here all the reports from EXPERIENCED birders and wildlife officials). It’s almost embarrassing… it’s certainly one reason believers are regularly mocked by serious birders who perceive them as gullible, if not foolhardy. In a similar vein, a common line you hear is that country folk who live or spend a lot of time in deep woods (unlike most birders, even serious ones) reeeeally DO KNOW Ivorybills, really have seen them… just happens that when offered $10,000 or even $50,000 to find them, oh gee, all of a sudden they can’t. Bird identification is tough, and sorry, I don't ascribe great birding skills to woods-folk (not that it's impossible, but just that it's rarer than people enjoy imagining).
So why do so many believers keep falling for these feeble, rank amateur tales I wondered; why do they keep letting wishful thinking sully realism? There remains a deep-seated hope that somewhere along the way just one of them, just ONE, will be true, will be validated, and some ’nobody’ will gain instant fame; we root so much in America for the underdog, and we love to see the experts, the elitists, the intelligentsia nudged off their pedestals. Where does such an attitude stem from in the IBWO arena? I think there’s an answer, which is the Mason Spencer story — I won’t repeat it, since most readers here know it (but if you don’t, I’ve referenced it many times in old posts including this summary from wonderful author Christopher Cokinos).
It is Mason Spencer who haunts us still today and almost single-handedly gives so many a possibly false hope that some unknown person, some average bloke, may be the one to stumble upon this remarkable species and bring this story finally to a beautiful conclusion. Personally, I don’t see it likely ending that way… I see it taking LOTS of hard work and skill getting the evidence needed, and I wish many ‘truthers,’ as they’re often called, didn’t so easily (almost embarrassingly), fall prey to amateurish storylines…. but on the other hand, I can't deny the legacy that Mason Spencer handed us... and moreover, I can't read the future with any certainty.
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5 comments:
Could you give one example of a "believer" (meaning someone who accepts a truth with no evidence) falling gullibly for a story please? And where you have seen this?
I could list about fifty professionals who are not believers but are focused IB researchers, with professional backgrounds and extensive field experience, who have devoted time and in some cases money to this species, its search, and ecology. I have decided to join this effort and have been this way for 13 years. I have advanced degrees in natural science.
Importantly, almost all the recent search efforts have begun with stories, not random searches (Geoff Hill and his luck excepted). A scientist knows how to ask open objective, non-leading questions, and can vet a story so that very soon they know if it's worth pursuing. Of course the beginning stories are going to be amateurish-- the IB does not choose to reveal itself to professionals or to birders.
This is why a number of us spend time on Facebook It's the logical place for a random encounter to be made public. Not a big deal. Almost all are not IB. But, in the past five years, there have been a number of remarkable stories. One group concerned the Peace River, FL. Another more recent, the Pearl River Canal. A separate story than the Saluda one was made in an area close to it. There are stories close to the Principalis search area; since it's secret, the people could not have known.
Believe me, the researchers (don't you think "believers" is derogatory and was invented in the past couple of years by trolls?) are the ones laughing. The uninformed vocal critics are on the wrong side of history.
Hey John, first apologies… the mechanism that sends blog comments into my email to read for some reason only sent the first sentence of your comment and I didn’t realize ’til later you had written more extensively…. it doesn’t change much, but I’ll simply add that:
1) no, I don’t find “believers” to be derogatory but simply common lay language for placing people into groups. I’m happy to be a believer. (even “truthers” doesn’t bother me; “nimrods”, that would bother me ;)) p.s., in general, I also consider myself to be a "skeptic," just not in this particular debate, but on many other matters.
2) The point of the post (which I’ve now written a second possible post about) is that there are some individuals who are immediately enamored of inexperienced, unverified public claims, giving fodder to skeptics to cast believers in a bad light. Of course it is good that other, more knowledgeable readers “vet” such claims, but I’m simply saying that skeptics will paint believers as gullible as a group because of the optimism of a certain segment. (and by the way we do this in reverse as well, sometimes slapping all skeptics with some characteristic, when in fact there are nuanced gradients among them).
Yes I agree. My opinion is that in the IB community, it is best to share evidence-based hypothesis as much as possible, and there are lots since 2000, and are accelerating since 2015. I am thinking of offering a Mission Ivorybill Zoom to summarize these.
What's this about Geoff Hill's luck? Lucky how? Almost 17 years ago, he said they would have photo or video soon. He doesn't sound very lucky to me.
Being able to list 50 professionals with extensive field experience focused on finding the bird and failing for decades doesn't help your argument
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