Sibley: I Didn’t Include the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in My Book, So It Doesn’t Exist
The New York Times has a brief article on the latest news regarding the rediscovery of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker: Is Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Alive? A Debate Emerges.
Basically, David Sibley, author of the best field guide to North American birds, has a brief item in the current issue of Science questioning the validity of claims for recent sightings of the bird in Arkansas (Comment on “Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Persists in Continental North America”).
The authors of the original Science article on the rediscovery have a response in the same issue (Response to Comment on “Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Persists in Continental North America”).
Basically, Sibley’s all wet. If you read his (and his co-authors’) criticisms, and the original authors’ response, he really just flat-out loses the argument.
Since Sibley is in some ways the leading expert in the country on bird identification, his criticism is getting a lot of attention. But speaking as someone who’s been involved, at least peripherally, in the world of obsessive birders for more than 30 years, I’ve got my own take on what’s going on here.
Basically, Sibley represents the extreme example of something that turned me off from competitive birding (and yeah, for a certain type of person it actually is a competition) a long time ago. Really obsessive birders tend to be skeptical of claims made by anyone less expert than themselves. Being better at finding and identifying “good” birds (by which they mean, rarities, either birds that are locally rare because they are occurring outside their normal range, or absolute rarities, because there just aren’t very many of them) is how they measure their status, and in that scheme of things, the Ivory-Bill really is the holy grail. For someone like Sibley, the fact that he hasn’t personally seen and identified an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, while someone else claims to have done so, represents a significant challenge to his sense of self-worth.
This is the same thing that annoys me about certain way-committed skeptics of the paranormal. You can be wrong by being too skeptical, just as you can be wrong by being too credulous. Being skeptical to the point of error isn’t a virtue; you’re still wrong. That’s the trap Sibley has fallen into here.
March 25th, 2006 at 5:09 am
“Really obsessive birders tend to be skeptical of claims made by anyone less expert than themselves”
It’s easy to try and throw a wet blanket over anyone of stature who disagrees with Cornell – that way one doesn’t have to debate the evidence – Jackson, Sibley, Prum etc are all simply jealous because they didn’t rediscover the IBWO.
That blanket, however, has another side – those expert birders who become indignant and declare “how dare you question ME” when someone says “I don’t think that’s what you saw.”
It becomes even more troubling when the only ones recording sightings are IBWO devotees like Gallagher, Harrison, Luneau etc.
So did Sibley fall into the trap of being jealous – or did Cornell fall into the trap of being indignant?
March 25th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Actually, at least in my case, I think the arrow points in the opposite direction. It isn’t that I want to throw a wet blanket over any criticism so I won’t have to look at the evidence. I’ve _looked_ at the evidence, and I think it’s compelling. And in looking carefully at Sibley et. al’s challenge, I think it’s weak. So having arrived at that conclusion, like a lot of other people who recognize Sibley’s expertise, I have to come up with a way of understanding why he and his co-authors are pushing such a flawed and sketchy analysis.
I’ve never met Sibley, and only know him through a few profiles I’ve read, as well as (obviously) his books and his comments on this issue. So maybe my interpretation is wrong, and he actually isn’t engaging in the “not identified here” syndrome I’ve suggested. But I thought it was revealing that in his personal account of his conversion on the issue, which I hadn’t read when I posted this item, he describes how he was initially accepting of the identification, and it was only after he’d spent some time in a fruitless effort to see the bird himself that he came back to the Luneau video and suddenly saw what he thought was indistinguishable from a Pileated. “I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach,” he wrote. That doesn’t sound like someone performing a careful, objective analysis. It sounds like someone who has a lot of emotion invested in the question.
Yes, the Luneau video is brief, grainy, out of focus, and shows the bird from an unfortunate angle. But as with many other areas of scientific inquiry (astronomy, for example), it is possible to derive more information than is immediately obvious. That’s what the Fitzpatrick team has done. In contrast, what Sibley has done is to treat the video’s limitations as a an excuse to skew the analysis in the direction that supports his skepticism. For him it becomes a Rorschach pattern, and he’s able to interpret it in a way that serves his own psychological needs, rather than the need to objectively analyze the data.
Personally, I think the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof” position is unscientific. “Proof”, by definition, carries all the weight it needs for a truly objective analysis. Those raising an artificial bar requiring “extraordinary” proof in cases where the assertion under examination happens to contradict their preconceptions are not being scientific. They’re just illustrating a weakness of human nature that the scientific process is designed to overcome.
And it’s simply not true that the only ones who have reported sightings are Ivory-bill devotees. Yes, the latest round of excitement was triggered by Gallagher and Harrison’s simultaneous sighting, and they would certainly qualify as “devotees” (though I think labelling them as such does not demonstrate that they would have conspired to lie, which is the only way to argue that they did not, in fact, see an Ivory-bill).
Gene Sparling was not a devotee at the time of his sighting. Melinda LeBranch and Melanie Driscoll were not devotees at the time of their sightings.
March 25th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Oh, and as a side point, I don’t think the Fitzpatrick team has been indignant in response to Sibley’s criticism; at least not publicly so. They’ve responded reasonably and thoroughly to the specifics of Sibley’s argument, and otherwise are letting the evidence speak for itself. It’s true that I’ve gone the extra step of questioning Sibley’s motivations, but I’m not being all indignant about it.
I just think Sibley’s wrong, and I find that interesting. An important factor in this is that Sibley isn’t a scientist. I’m not saying that to question his qualifications to speak as an expert on bird identification. But I think his approach to this issue betrays a lack of scientific rigor.
March 25th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
“I’ve _looked_ at the evidence, and I think it’s compelling. And in looking carefully at Sibley et. al’s challenge, I think it’s weak”
And that’s exactly what this is all about. I look at Cornell’s “proof” and find it lacking. I look at Sibley et al and see where they may have a point. Mainly because I came to a similar conclusion – a bird flushing as opposed to a perched bird when I manipulated Luneau’s video with my mouse.
I think Sibley et al’s SOM is much more detailed than the piece – and I really don’t understand that.
Ornithologists can not even agree wether they’re looking at a dorsal or ventral side of a wing in the Luneau video – either ornithology has a long way to go as a science or the video is truly lacking.
“I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach,” he wrote. That doesn’t sound like someone performing a careful, objective analysis. It sounds like someone who has a lot of emotion invested in the question.”
Harrison then sat on a log and put his face in his hands.
“I saw an ivory bill,” he sobbed. “I saw an ivory bill.”
I guess that sounds only like objective science.
“For him it becomes a Rorschach pattern, and he’s able to interpret it in a way that serves his own psychological needs,…”
What Cornell and/or TNC needs could possibly be met by the rediscovery of the IBWO?
Gallagher and Harrison’s simultaneous sighting, and they would certainly qualify as “devotees” (though I think labelling them as such does not demonstrate that they would have conspired to lie, which is the only way to argue that they did not, in fact, see an Ivory-bill).”
There is actually another scenario other than conspiracy to lie – it’s called mistaken identity. I’ve birded with those who couldn’t focus binoculars and those who could tell the difference between an alder and willow flycatcher without ever hearing a note – but I’ve never birded with anyone who didn’t make a miscall – “whoa! a blackbilled cuckoo just flew into that tree – noo, wait, it’s a yellow-billed”
“Gene Sparling was not a devotee at the time of his sighting. Melinda LeBranch and Melanie Driscoll were not devotees at the time of their sightings”
I don’t know what these people felt about IBWOs before their sightings. I do know that IBWOs have been reported somewhere by someone every year since 1944. I have even had people call me, here in the mountains of Western North Carolina to report IBWOs in their yard.
Sparling’s sighting would have been another report if Gallagher & Harrison hadn’t reported their sighting.
‘but I’m not being all indignant about it.”
I never said you were being indignant. You said some “expert” birders get
jealous if other birders see rarities that they don’t. I said some “expert” birders get indignant when others point out that their ID was mistaken.
“But I think his approach to this issue betrays a lack of scientific rigor.”
Well, if Sibley isn’t a scientist maybe he has an excuse for any lack of scientific rigor. But what about Cornell?
To build rigid cardboard cutouts of PIWOs & IBWOs and have people manually manipulate their wings up and down as they are being videoed out of focus till they get something that matches Luneau’s video might qualify for a middle school science project but one would think Cornell would be a bit more sophisticated.
I only had one semester of ornithology but I know birds don’t simply flap their wings up and down. It’s more akin to a swimmer doing the breast stroke. And, in addition the wingtips (wrist & fingers) can even rotate independently – like a propeller. This rowing motion propels the bird and provides lift.
Sibley et al’s opinion that a camera mounted below, showing a bird flying away and gaining altitude would show the top of the ventral side of the wing as the lowest (bottom) point on the downstroke makes sense to me.