Do you believe there is intelligent life anywhere else in the Universe? I suspect most scientists think there is, not because there is any hard evidence for such a belief; there is NONE (no documented crashed saucers with little green men, no radio signals received despite decades of scanning for such, no messages in cosmological bottles saying 'Hi ya Earthlings!'). Yet most scientists likely believe such because of the probabilities involved --- given BILLIONS of stars with potentially BILLIONS of planets, the likelihood that we reside on the absolute only one to harbor advanced lifeforms (....and yes, I'm assuming there IS intelligent life on Earth ; - ) is so miniscule as to be beyond debate.
I mention all this because the Ivory-bill debate is of a similar form. The scientific evidence supporting Ivory-bill existence is weak... but it is head-and-shoulders above the huge absence of evidence for Ivory-bill extinction. For the umpteenth time --- NO solid scientific evidence has yet been presented for the extinction of this species; NONE, EVER, NADA, ZERO ACTUAL EVIDENCE, just speculation and conjecture. And when I ask people for evidence, all I get is a recitation that persons A, B, and C, went looking for IBWOs in places X, Y, and Z, and couldn't find any. Well, DUUUUUHHHHHHHH!! Meanwhile persons D, E, and F claim they HAVE seen them and places T, U, and W haven't even been adequately searched... EVER. As long as skeptics start with an unproven and biasing assumption ('Ivory-bills are extinct') they will lack the objectivity and open-mindedness required in a scientific review of evidence. You can't declare things extinct that are being repeatedly reported, without thorough searches. Some want to believe that a lone grad student (a grad student mind you!) did such an infallible study with flawless conclusions, that no IBWOs could have persisted through the 1940's. I'll remind folks yet again of the MOST important passage in James Tanner's entire monograph (from his "Introduction"):
"The chief difficulty of the study has been that of drawing conclusions from relatively few observations, necessary because of the extreme scarcity of the bird. My own observations of the birds have been entirely confined to a few individuals in one part of Louisiana... the conclusions drawn from them will not necessarily apply to the species as it once was nor to individuals living in other areas. The difficulty of finding the birds, even when their whereabouts was known, also limited the number of observations. Especially was this true in the non-breeding season. With these considerations in mind, one must draw conclusions carefully and with reservations." [all italics added]"Draw conclusions carefully and with reservations" --- hmmm... what a novel idea!!!
...And the skeptics' current mantra that anything which hasn't been photographed by humans doesn't exist should be of interest to physicists who tell us that over 90% of the universe is made up of "dark matter" never seen (let alone photographed) by human eyes.
But seriously... the arrogance and ego-centrism underlying certain skeptics in their persistent judgment that ALL sighters (every one of them over 5 decades) must be wrong, mistaken, foolish, incompetent, dishonest, fanciful, delusional, crazy, or worse, while they, as armchair skeptics often far from the scene, of course know better, is also NOT a part of good science. I need only believe one claim in the last several years; skeptics must disbelieve thousands of claims (and yet those same skeptics will readily accept and turn in brief and undocumented sightings for bird counts all the time, with no verification whatsoever that the spotters even left their living room, let alone saw the species being recorded).
Most English words are vague and ambiguous --- "extinct" is NOT!! It doesn't mean there are less than 30 left, or only 5, or maybe only 1; it means there are ZERO left, zero anywhere. It is a word to use with utmost care, given the difficulty of 'proof.' Obviously, the documentation of a single Ivory-billed Woodpecker will mean the species isn't extinct and NEVER has been. All of us in the birding community should have a vested interest in this species being found and protected (even though it will likely be too little too late); too many on the skeptical side have so painted themselves into corners by now that they have a vested interest in the species never being documented. Pity. (...or so it seems to me).
And just to play catch-up on a few things:
1) as far as Rich Guthrie's claim, I find it credible, but still don't have enough details to be fully convinced --- and it is really somewhat inconsequential since photographic documentation is now required; ALL sightings are immediately considered suspect in too many quarters.
2) An Oxford University Press interview here with Auburn's Dr. Hill: http://blog.oup.com/2007/05/birds/
3) And with summer approaching, if you like trashy pulp fiction you may wish to read this science-fiction offering:
http://www.worldtwitch.com/ivorybill.htm
ooops, gotta go now, there are some little green men knocking on my window....
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