Ecolog: The phenomenon is epidemic. (Please, someone, refute this.)
Science should never be subordinated to bureaucracy. But that's what happens when expediency rears its ugly head. Unfortunately, when bureaucracy is the selection process, science will suffer, unless "scientists" prostitute themselves. Technically, this is true only when scientists lie (intentionally, unintentionally, or by instutionalized habit) about reality. "Agroforestry" as a term may be legitimate, but to pass it off as a substitute for the displaced or "modified" habitat, is where disingenuousness barges through the door. A single bunch of snapshots of any phenomenon can be seriously misleading. Any "survey" that is not repeated until variations are exposed and stabilized is likely to be inadequate as an assessement of reality, or even an adequate representation of it. "Surveys" that leave out relevant variables and fail to represent trends and cycles are somewhere between limited value and dangerously deceptive. WT "The more you generalize about a population the less you know about any individual in [or subset of] that population." --Henry Geiger ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian D. Campbell" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 1:18 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Analysis of habitat specificity and circular logic > Dear listserv members: > > I've been reading a lot of literature recently on the effects of > fragmentation and land-use conversion from forests to agroforests and have > been really troubled by what seems a pervasive issue (at least in my mind); > defining the biodiversity value of a human-modified habitat type (e.g. > either fragment or agroforest). Almost all studies I've reviewed partition > bird communities into categories of "forest species", "rainforest > specialists", "agricultural generalists", among others, and proceed to > compare these among different land-uses. This is not my issue per se, but > rather, I find it very circular if one uses the data/observations they > collected in a study to define these groups; e.g. all species encountered in > a "control" site of extensive forest were defined as forest species. These > make useful and note-worthy observations but if one then proceed to include > control sites in a statistical comparison then I think there is major issue > with circularity. This also seems to me a very different approach than > having defined a priori (e.g. from distribution lists or other literature) a > set of forest-candidate species which may or may not be present in any given > site surveyed. Have others here found similar issues when reviewing papers > dealing with the biodiversity values of secondary forest and agricultural > habitats? > > Brian Campbell -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.15/1923 - Release Date: 1/29/2009 7:13 AM
